Research Aims

Social class has not received as much of a consideration within the current artistic landscape of contemporary classical music. While matters such as racial (Andre, 2018) and gender disparity (Kouvaras, Williams, and Grenfell, 2023) and their impact on creative practice have been researched, class has received less scrutiny. Other artistic fields have made some progress in considering class within their artistic cultures, such as in film (Adler-Bell, 2023; Thorpe, 2022), television (see Benedictus, Allen and Jensen, 2017; Harrison, Rainsborough, and Taylor, 2020), and pop music (Hall, 2021; Bloom, 2021). Such research has examined the limited and often stereotypical representations of working-class identity within these fields. Examples include the documentary series Benefits Street (Benedictus, Allen and Jensen, 2017; Harrison, Rainsborough, and Taylor, 2020) and the use of working-class aesthetics in Models: Street to Catwalk (Brown, 2019; Jeffries, 2020). General analysis of working-class presence within the arts has also seen a recent boon in outputs, both in contemporary analysis of working-class persons in artistic fields and examining intergenerational trends (Carey, O’Brien, and Gable, 2021; Brook, Miles, O’Brien, and Taylor, 2023). Working-classness within classical music has had a limited representation within contemporary research, focussing primarily on the performance of classical music and questions of access (see Bull, 2019; Born, 2010). In considering the creation of new musical compositions, working-classness has received an over-simplified representation of working-classness that I believe perpetuate working-class stereotypes (e.g. Rough Voices by Higgins (Higgins, 2020) and Greek by Turnage (Turnage, 1988)).

In my practice-based research I have developed a portfolio of new interdisciplinary compositions that explore working-classness in a greater level of depth. The compositions within my portfolio explore working-class identity within classical music by considering class as the ways of being that are developed due to the relationships between yourself and larger society because of the quality and quantity of capitals you possess (see Bourdieu, 1984: p. 95, Skeggs, 2004a). Working-classness can be understood as the struggle for value due to having both a quantitative and qualitative lack of capitals. Capitals can refer to either one or a mixture of economic capital, cultural capital, symbolic capital, and social capital. Economic capital refers to your income and property, cultural capital as hobbies and interests perceived to be of a high cultural status (such as opera or fine dining), symbolic capital as the representation of abstract knowledge (such as a degree or a corporate brand) and social capital as the network of personnel and/or organisations you can access. In approaching class through both the cause and effect of its establishment and emphasising the socio-economic relationships that are created within society, I can effectively provide a more nuanced consdieration towards class through my research outputs and better address my own positionality through considerations of geographical difference, intergenerational difference, and intersectionality with other cultural identities. 

My methodology is informed by Bourdieu’s theory of Habitus (Bourdieu, 1984: p. 95), Skeggs’ concept of 'person value' (Skeggs, 2011), the work of other working-class artists (e.g. Grayson Perry and Tony Harrison), and auto-ethnographical research methods. This methodology enables working-classness to be imbedded in both the sonic/non-sonic elements used and their construction to create original interdisciplinary compositions.

The impact of my research is the production of a portfolio of compositions that effectively provide new considerations to various aspects of classical music’s culture, including:


The portfolio and the following research exposition also provide a resource to address the stereotyping of working-classness in contemporary creative outputs, a methodology for how working-classness can be embodied in artistic practice, a display of how interdisciplinary methods can be used to express the working-class experience, and a resource in aiding other working-class artists to express their class through classical music.