Music and Class
Who pays, who plays and who is written into the script, music has always spoken for class.
Related
Question
Who sits in the hall, and who stands on stage? From patrons to box office, from servants to workers' choruses, music has always arranged the distance between people.
Historical background
Court and church patronage tied musicians to nobles. Public concerts and music publishing in the eighteenth century made composers face a market. Nineteenth-century opera brought servants, courtesans, and workers onto the stage, and the recording and pop industries of the twentieth century produced new class tastes.
Key cases
La serva padrona (1733) lets the servant Serpina outwit her master. Le nozze di Figaro (1786) places a servant above a count, and The Internationale (1888) traveled from workers' meetings to an international movement. The three rewrite rank through comedy, opera, and march.
What to listen for
Hear whether the servant speaks in faster phrases, whether the noble is mocked by a heavy bass or clumsy harmony, and whether the refrain is deliberately easy to sing together.
Related
Class conflict is made comic in Opera Buffa; the public concerts of Classical changed the audience, and Opera turned social rank into a role.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- Grove Music Online 的 Opera buffa 与 Internationale 条目，用于核对喜歌剧与工人歌曲的阶层主题
- 威廉·韦伯，《Music and the Middle Class》一书对19世纪音乐会生活的研究，用于核对听众结构的变化
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.