Locating Classical Music in Culture

This chapter reframes existing research on classical music by putting it into dialogue with sociological understandings of class and gender to outline what a social analysis of classical music should look like. This also lays the foundations for theorizing more widely how music might be analysed in relation to class, an urgent theoretical intervention at a time of increasing economic inequality within many nation-states. It asks, how are musical institutions, practices, and aesthetics shaped by wider conditions of economic inequality, and in what ways might music enable and entrench such inequalities or work against them? The chapter argues for understanding music and inequality through a multi-scalar approach that examines how sociocultural discourses and practices can be traced within musical practices, and how such practices can then be heard in the aesthetic that they create.

Conclusion

The conclusion lays out four ways in which the tradition and practices of classical music form an ‘articulation’ with the middle classes: the formal modes of social organization that it requires; its modes of embodiment; its imaginative dimension; and the aesthetic of detail, precision, and ‘getting it right’. It argues that the aesthetic of classical music does the boundary-drawing work of retaining this as a middle-class space and practice, and within these spaces, classical music cultivates a form of selfhood characterized by emotional depth that is recognized as valuable. It draws out two ways in which this book contributes to a wider understanding of the middle classes: the ways in which gender identities structure classed reproduction, and the continuing role of classical music as legitimate culture conferring institutionalized cultural capital. Finally, it lays out ways forward for classical music in policy and practice.

‘Instead of Destroying My Body I Have a Reason for Maintaining It’

This chapter assesses the encounter between a youth opera group and Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Singing opera gave the young women in this group a sense of control and embodied confidence, negating the body image issues that several of them described. Against this, the strongly gendered institutional and cultural context of classical music, including the musical-dramatic text of The Magic Flute itself, undermined this experience thanks to the ideology of ‘fidelity’ to origins and authenticity that is normative in classical music culture. This inhibited the radical potential of the bodily empowerment that the young women experienced through limiting the possibilities for re-imagining the musical text, thus also limiting any possibilities for changing the practices that bring the text to life.

Boundary-Drawing around the Proper

This chapter draws on the musical biographies of the young people in this study to map out the ‘institutional ecology’ of youth classical music in England. Music conservatoires and exam boards, many established during the late Victorian period, were influential in consecrating classical music as more valuable than other genres by institutionalizing musical standards. During the 1880s and 1890s, these institutions served a demand for training ‘respectable’ middle-class femininity and reinforcing boundaries between middle and working classes. The chapter concludes by examining how this boundary-drawing around the ‘proper’ was reproduced by young people in this study today through ideas of what counted as ‘serious’ or ‘proper’ music. Such taste boundaries work to safeguard classical music’s privileged status in education and funding and reinforce its association with valued class identities.

A Community-in-Sound

This chapter describes how young people in this study recognized an emotional depth in classical music that they stated they did not get from other musics, and that was particularly linked to the Romantic repertoire they preferred. The participants’ recognition of a deep interiority both in themselves and in this music constitutes a form of interpellation of themselves as subjects who are able to recognize the value of this music. Through this process, classical music can be seen as a cultural technology for knowing the bourgeois self. The embodied and affective experience of playing in classical music ensembles and the acoustic aesthetic facilitate transcendence of the body. The sound itself does the work of opening up the individual to facilitate a sense of community. Crucially, this deeply personal experience links young people into institutions and social groups that possess high levels of economic, social, and cultural capital.

‘Sometimes I Feel Like I’m His Dog’

In a close analysis of rehearsal processes in the youth choir and two youth orchestras in this study, this chapter describes in detail the gendered interaction between conductor and musicians. The charismatic authoritative leadership of their male conductors was appreciated and enjoyed by the young musicians. The chapter focuses particularly on the interactions that facilitated this charismatic authority. To this end, the construction of conductors’ charisma is analysed in its workings through consensual as well as more coercive practices such as humiliation and fear, and the ways in which these reinforced gendered norms are drawn out. The deference and conformity that are normal within classical music practice can be read politically as trust in the authority and expertise of adult leaders that is continuous with a wider middle-class trust in institutional authority. These social relations are, in part, inscribed in the musical text.

Rehearsing Restraint

This chapter analyses the structure of the rehearsal process to reveal norms of bodily practice that can be linked to theorizations of how white identities are embodied. This analysis also reveals a contradiction: the body is required to be present in order to create sound but is at the same time effaced or transcended. The mechanisms through which this occurs included ‘controlled excitement’: cultivating strong emotions but always keeping them under control. This was both an aesthetic quality and a social disposition that was cultivated within classical music practice. This disposition was drawn on in rehearsals in ways that highlighted apparently disembodied qualities in European music while bodily presence was emphasized in non-European music. This mode of embodiment maps onto a raced, classed, and gendered hierarchy of value in which women and non-white others are associated with the bodily and white men with the cognitive.

‘Getting It Right’ as an Affect of Self-Improvement

This chapter examines rehearsal practices in the youth music groups in this study to analyse the practices that were required to attain ideals of aesthetic beauty. It introduces the idea of ‘getting it right’ as an important component of classical music education as observed in this study. Getting it right necessitated ongoing correction of the young musicians from teachers and conductors, and this formed the main practice of rehearsals. This rightness held a moral connotation for some of the young people, and the work of practising that was required to attain ‘rightness’ also held different meanings for young people in different class positions. However, within the powerful relationship of trust that many of the young people formed with their teachers, getting it right necessitated correction from teachers that for a few pupils turned into bullying or emotional abuse.

‘Everyone Here Is Going to Have Bright Futures’

This chapter examines the contrasting ideas of musical standards of ability revealed by this study to explore how classical music is used to draw boundaries around social groups. Using close ethnographic description, it shows how musical ability is produced and recognized in and between musicians. This reveals a tension between the accepted idea among classical musicians that somebody’s musical standard varies according to who they play or sing with, and a firm belief in hierarchies of ability, which could reinforce social hierarchies such as gender. The chapter goes on to describe how musical standard was part of the rationale behind an exodus from a state-run music education programme by two of the groups in this study, following a wider trend of middle-class ‘exit’ from public services. Finally, it outlines a typology of three groups that shows how class and gender were highly formative in determining these young people’s pathways.