Literature Review

Working-class identities have continued to be discriminated against within historical and contemporary media. Some examples of such discrimination are provided:

• The oversimplification of the working classes into stereotypes in documentary series’ such as Benefits Street (Benedictus, Allen, and Jensen, 2017; Harrison, Rainsborough, and Taylor, 2021).
• The appropriation of working-class aesthetics in the fashion industry (e.g. Models: Street to Catwalk) (Brown, 2019; Jeffries, 2020), Pop music (see Bloom, 2021; Ferrier, 2023), and as bar/restaurant experiences (see Lately, 2017).
• Working-class actors being typecast into only playing criminals or cleaners (Friedman and Laurison, 2017; The Acting Class, 2017).
• The criticising of an accent as being unclear and not being appropriate for a particular job (e.g. Alex Scott being criticised by Lord Digby Jones for her Olympics 2020 coverage, see BBC, 2021).

What is evident from these examples is an oversimplification of working-class lives into stereotypical representations, often for the benefit of upper/middle class audiences (see Peterson and Simkus, 1992; Lizardo and Skiles, 2012).

In approaching pre-existing research of both class and classical music, it is imperative that my research effectively counteracts and challenges the notions of stereotype through my research outputs. To do so, I need to highlight the literature surrounding questions of what class is and what classical music is. Below I have provided a breakdown of these two distinct areas and their relevant research. I have also provided an evaluation of how I consider my work to be interdisciplinary and the necessity of interdisciplinary methods to effectively articulate the complicated socio-economic relationships that inform the working-class experience. I will then provide an analysis of how working-classness has been present in other artforms. 

What Is Class?

What is (Contemporary) Classical Music?

I am considering “classical music” to be an umbrella term for an art form of historical significance that uses particular instruments and established musical forms (e.g. sonata, symphony, etc.) to create a distinct culture of interaction and enaction for both practitioners and audiences. Such interactions may be pedagogical methods, canonicity and repertoire, means of engagement (e.g. live concerts in particular venues), and cultural status (see Bourdieu, 1984; Bull, 2019). Contemporary classical music is the modern development of this art culture which encourages a wider consideration and application of other musical genres (e.g. jazz), art forms (e.g. theatre), instruments (e.g. electronic synthesisers), and means of engagement (e.g. YouTube score follower pieces).

Considering my personal understanding of both classical music and contemporary classical music, I find a sense of responsibility and, in many ways, a need to meet/address the expectations developed from classical music’s past within contemporary classical music. These expectations include how you approach composing for a particular instrument/group of instruments (e.g. string quartet) and musical forms (e.g. theme with variations) because of how other composers have written for them. An example of this can be found in Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations exploring the form of a theme and variations.  As to why I feel a sense of responsibility in meeting/addressing classical music’s history, I understand this as being a concern of tension in fitting into the constructed history that is classical music and wanting to challenge the notion of fit (see Glass Slipper effect (Ashcraft, 2012)). By including this notion of responsibility towards the ‘canon’ of classical music as a composer, my approach to classical music provides a direct means of dealing with the notion of ‘fit’ and the class-based tensions that I have as a working-class composer.

What is present in considering both classical music and its contemporary development is that a work that is purely musical (lacking any interdisciplinary element such as text, be that sung/performed text or projected) and is in some way programmatic (see Kregor, 2015) there can be a lack of clarity in conveying the programmatic idea purely through music due to the abstraction inherent within sound and the focus on musical craft above clearly articulating an idea (Lippard and Chandler, 1968). There are circumstances in which this may not be the case, such as quotation through referencing of other musical material (e.g. Bartok quoting folk melodies, see Eardley, 2001). However, such referencing places a particular knowledge requirement onto the understanding of the work and thereby a demand of cultural capital to fully comprehend the composer’s intention. As my work is programmatic (in that it is representing a specific non-musical element of working-class identity) I have adopted numerous non-musical elements such as spoken text (Seven Working-Class Time Pieces), projected text (Baguette Baton) and film (Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations) to provide clarity in the subject being expressed. To avoid placing a knowledge requirement on understanding the subject matter of my work I have considered the area of specialisation within Legitimation Code Theory (see Methodology for more information). While my work is situated within the contemporary classical music genre, I have actively explored the historical developments of classical music in how I approach embodying working-classness because the culture of contemporary classical music has been informed by classical music’s past. As such, I will be using classical music and contemporary classical music interchangeably.

In exploring the continued historical significance of classical music within contemporary classical music’s culture I can examine significant class-based barriers that are still present in its culture. Some of these include cost of access (e.g. music tuition, The Weight of History and Background Etudes), expected familiarity with particular instruments (It’s Hard to Make An Oboe Sound Working Class), sites of action and interaction (The Damned, Holding), and cultural matching to suit the established gatekeepers of the art form (Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations, see Glass Slipper effect (Ashcraft, 2012)). These class-based barriers form the key areas I explore and address in my interdisciplinary compositions.

Considering the relationship between the working classes and classical music, there is evidence of the working classes engaging with classical music in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, both in attending and participating (see Rose, 2021, Bull 2019). However, there is little consideration of how working-classness has been embodied in the creative outputs of working-class composers. Arguments can be made that the work of composers such as Harrison Birtwistle (e.g. Grimethorpe Aria (1973) and Yan Tan Tethera (1984)), Mark Anthony Turnage (e.g. Greek, 1988), and Gavin Higgins (e.g Rough Voices, 2020) may embody a working-class identity. I would argue that such examples are only recognisable as being working-class through a combination of using extraneous material (e.g. interviews with the composers and programme notes) to force an identity onto the musical material, recognising the class-based work of their collaborators (Tony Harrison for Birtwistle and Stephen Berkoff for Turnage), quotation of arguably working-class music (e.g. Turnage quoting London Girls by Chaz and Dave (1983) in Greek (1988)), or limiting the class-based analysis to relying on working-class stereotypes (e.g. Rough Voices simplifying working-class anger and its reasoning to a dissonant sound world (Higgins, 2020)). However, it makes sense for contemporary classical and classical music to lack the interest of such relational considerations between oneself and society when we consider classical music’s major development as a culture stemmed from the commercialisation of classical music at the end of the 18th century. With the rise of music publishing, journalism, concert series’ and instrument makers, it can be argued that the Enlightenment ideals of autonomous individuality were enacted in refining the culture of classical music to the wants of their target audience, the upper and middle-classes (see Citron, 1992, p. 32-36; Bull, 2014). With such a prominent fixation on the individual and the continuing emphasis on individuality in contemporary understandings of self (see Skeggs, 2004a, p. 19-20) it can be considered that classical music has thrived due to its prioritising of the individual first and the relational context of that individual second. Such a focus can be argued as one of the reasons as to why the relational experience of class is hidden from classical music in favour of the ‘ways of being’ that are more aligned to the individuality found in the work of upper and middle-class composers. That is why to effectively embody working-classness into classical music there needs to actively be the presence of the relational experience that informs working-class identities to effectively provide the working-class voice to classical music.

What also lacks in considering a working-class identity in the artistic outputs of working-class composers is that classical music is arguably used to provide an aesthetic disposition to working-class identities. An aesthetic disposition can be understood as a means of framing a particular cultural object/activity to enable it to be more culturally acceptable for (predominantly) upper/middle class audiences to engage with (see Peterson and Simkus, 1992; Lizardo and Skiles, 2012). An example would be of adapting stereotypically working-class spaces into trendy bars (see Lately, 2017). Such ‘polishing’ (see Friedman and Laurison, 2020: p.128)  of working-class identities for upper/middle-class consumption reduces working-class experiences and fails to convey the depth necessary to counteract the continued stereotyping within contemporary media.

In approaching contemporary classical music through a greater consideration of its cultural values I can analyse the intricate class-based relationships that inform its canonicity (see Citron, 1992). Questioning the culture of classical music through the lens of social class enables new creative avenues for contemporary classical music’s future both in terms of creative outputs and in considering whether, how, and why working-class composers have been excluded from classical music in comparison to other creative industries (see Friedman and Laurison, 2020; Brooke, O’Brien, Taylor, 2020).

What is Interdisciplinarity?

I am considering interdisciplinarity as being the crossing over and synthesising of several artistic disciplines to effectively express complicated subject matter. I consider my work to be interdisciplinary rather than multidisciplinary as I am the sole creator of all of the materials used within each composition and that I have used the interdisciplinary elements within my compositions through my knowledge as a composer.

In considering my work as interdisciplinary I can recognise connections to the work of the composers Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, and Chrysanthe Tan. Anderson’s use of storytelling in songs such as O Superman (Anderson, 1982) employs a strongly post-modernist position through unclear narratives in the text, found sounds (birdsong), and vocoder processing of her voice to enable audiences to openly interpret her work. In Stargazer from Escapism I provide a more direct narrative to directly address my ambivalence to stargazing with economic restrictions (lack of a good telescope and light pollution due to where I live) and why others (such as Elon Musk) are interested in space travel as potentially a means of escaping capitalism. In Walshe’s ULTRACHUNK (Walshe, 2018) Walshe performs alongside a video of herself created using AI to create a dialogue between historical versions of herself and her current self. In The Weight of History and Background Etudes I combine a performance of the piece alongside different film etudes that provide the hidden history of class-based precarity in learning how to perform the composition. In Tan’s if you lived in your body (Tan, 2016), the looping and layering violin music connects to the repetitive nature of the text, as heard in the mantra of “if you/I lived in your/my body,” (Tan, 2016), to weave music and text to convey the struggle and attempts to find a sense of place in themselves as a trans person. In Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations, I apply a similar approach through having a musical theme that is varied and manipulated through several scenarios pertaining to class code-switching, such as deciding on appropriate clothing to wear at a university event, to provide the class-based conflict of fitting into unfamiliar environments by combining film with music.

In doing so, my use of interdisciplinarity develops and expands on the work of contemporary interdisciplinary composers and contributes to new approaches to using interdisciplinarity to effectively embody working-classness into the compositions.

My reasoning for creating interdisciplinary compositions was due to music by itself being unable to clearly express the complicated relationships, and the cause of these relationships, that informs the working-class experience and my own working-class experience. To have written purely musical compositions would have led to much of the details that inform the class-based relationships between self and society to have become abstracted or omitted entirely. I wanted to avoid this so as to ensure I was providing a detailed examination of the intricate relationships that inform working-classness and to avoid perpetuating working-class stereotypes within media (e.g. Benefits Street (Benedictus, Allen, and Jensen, 2017; Harrison, Rainsborough, and Taylor, 2021)).

My use of interdisciplinarity can be seen in the following examples:

• The presentation of the soloist in The Damned to establish a hierarchy by having the performer present themselves as a teacher educating the audience to play the recorder  as though they were the performers’ students.
• The combination of sung and projected text in Baguette Baton to emphasise the decline of musical embellishment in describing the fantastical eating of food (e.g. imagining the soft dough as though I was eating glutinous rice). 
• The duration of the text in Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, 1. Expiration Date decreasing alongside the shortening of the accompanying chord to match the decline of time left to wear the shirt.
• The juxtaposition of having a cheap keyboard in Escapism alongside traditional instruments in classical music to emphasize the difference between expected and unexpected instrumentation within a classical music environment.
• Escapism, 1. Vice in manipulating the film to be faster and slower in polishing the cutlery to correlate to ideas of working harder and work burnout as expressed in the text.
• Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations using changes of outfit to parallel the changes in harmony taking place.

I will now analyse how some artists in other creative fields have approached embodying working-classness in their creative outputs.

Working-Classness in Creative Outputs

In examining the output of artists from working-class backgrounds, there are several works that can be perceived to embody a working-class identity. I will examine three of these works by artists from different artistic fields to investigate the following:

• How they represent working-classness in their creative outputs.
• Whether the working-class identity represented can be understood through Skeggs’ ‘person valued’ understanding of working-classness.

I have chosen these three works due to the prominence of their creators in being recognised as working-class artists creating work about working-classness. The three artists have been selected due to their artistic mediums (music theatre, literature, and visual art) being the main artistic mediums I have employed in my own interdisciplinary compositions.

There is a greater presence of working-classness in pop music, however I will not be examining this in my research. There are two main reasons for this: the first is that the inherent commercial implications of pop music (music predominantly designed for mass consumption) provide an exchanged-based sense of value onto its context. To examine this would require a deeper analysis of the music market and this is outside of the purview of my research. Second, pop music has historically had a rich representation of working-classness (see Simonelli, 2013; Wiseman-Trowse, 2008) whereas classical music does not. As pop music is seen as a ‘low’ art form and classical music as a ‘high’ art form (Bourdieu, 1984; Bull and Scharff, 2017) there is the implication that working-classness is better represented by ‘lower’ artforms. My research aims to question this through the embodying of working-classness in classical music. To include analysis of working-classness in pop music would detract from this focus.

In the opera Greek (1988), British composer Mark Anthony Turnage draws on the original play by Berkoff (a recontextualization of Oedipus Rex by Sophocles) to create a work representing the working-classes through a layering of high cultural art forms. Through the retelling of the Grecian tale in 1980’s East London with working-class signifiers (e.g. the local pub) and the application of an East London dialect (e.g. Eddy – Oedipus – struggling to pronounce the word “croissants”), Turnage manages to represent a working-class identity within the work. A critique of the work is that the working-classness of the piece is justified using a high art context (opera) in delivering the artistic intention, making the working-class representation feel superficial. I would argue that Turnage’s use of the myth and application of artistic medium provides an aesthetic disposition onto the work to validate its working-classness. With classical music already being understood as a clear expression of cultural capital (Bull and Scharff, 2017; Bull, 2019) the decision of representing the working-classes through an established incest tragedy frames the working-classes as being (morally) lesser, something perpetuated in other areas (e.g. the scally fetish wherein people dress in working-class attire to engage in ‘taboo’ sexual acts, see Eror, 2014). The applied aesthetic disposition can be seen further in the compositional language itself. Through the referencing of the song London Girls by Cockney duo Chaz and Dave (1983) alongside the work of Jazz artist Charles Mingus and composer Hans Werner Henze, Turnage further suggests this validation of working-classness through the inclusion of arts cultures with a greater cultural capital than its subject matter. I do not see Greek as being an effective example for Skeggs’ ‘person-valued’ understanding of working-classness due to its heavy use of high-art cultural objects and means of presentation (Greek being an opera) to validate its working-classness. Greek can be seen as a representation of working-classness using classical music archetypes, but the representation of the working-classes raises the question of whether working-class artworks need to be validated by being framed in an upper/middle class context.

In The Queen’s English by Tony Harrison (1978), the poem does not rely on an upper/middle class cultural context to validate its working-classness. Harrison achieves this by using vernacular to recontextualise the medium into a working-class context. There is the argument that Harrison can be seen to provide a superficial representation of working-classness by having the poem be written in a regional dialect. Such arguments are avoided through using the Leeds vernacular of his father in dialogue with (what can be understood to be) standard English vernacular. Harrison’s contrast of dialogues emphasises the intergenerational class divide between Harrison and his father. By highlighting the difference and intergenerational distance of culture between Harrison and his father (“Too posh for me he said (though he dressed well)/ If you weren’t wi’ me now ah’d nivver dare!’” and “to remind yer ‘ow us gaffers used to talk./ It’s up your street in’t it? Ah’ll buy yer that!’”) Harrison represents the affectual significance of his father’s dialect to his own understanding of working-classness, how this has changed over time, and what this distancing of identity means for his creative practice. With space and place being a significant factor for working-class identity (see Paton, 2014; Allen and Hollingworth, 2013), the use of locality through vernacular moves beyond the surface level representations of working-classness found in Turnage to provide a deeper understanding by highlighting the meaning and value of vernacular to working-class identity.

The concern of a working-class stereotype being presented and framed in an upper/middle class context could be seen in the work of Grayson Perry. The Adoration of the Cage Fighters from Perry’s The Vanity of Small Differences series (2012) can be seen as providing an aesthetic disposition and a stereotypical representation.

Such an interpretation is lessened through Perry’s approach in representing working-classness. In Perry’s collection of six tapestries that recontextualise A Rake’s Progress by Hogarth (1732-1734), Perry provides a contemporary version of social mobility in the character of Tim Rakewell. The modern retelling enables Perry to investigate how working-classness is understood in the aftermath of the 20^th century by providing an affectual rendering to the social mobility of his fictional character. In The Adoration of the Cage Fighters, Perry captures a working-class identity through a variety of working-class signifiers (e.g. a miner’s lamp and a Sunderland A.F.C football shirt) to convey a working-class identity to the tapestry. This again can be seen as similar to the application of working-class signifiers by Turnage. I would argue that Perry avoids this by emphasising the affectual significance of these working-class signifiers in representing the intergenerational change to working-class communities, from an occupational community (the miner’s lamp) to a cultural community (the A.F.C. football shirt). Through the miners’ lamp combined with the A.F.C football top, Perry has provided both past and present understandings of working-classness by situating these objects next to each other. In providing the affectual significance of community through these objects, Perry has encapsulated a working-class identity through his representation of intergenerational difference and the objects that are associated with these identities, thereby providing depth to the changing ways of being between working-class communities. This enables the work to be recognised through Skeggs’ concept of ‘person value’. There is the issue that Perry’s work can be seen in providing an aesthetic disposition through his use of tapestry. Perry’s reasoning for using tapestry is to enable an ease of accessibility in presenting the works (in both transportation and ability to be reprinted), however the artistic form still has a history of high-cultural significance and it could be perceived to be providing an aesthetic disposition to validate the working-classness.

What is evident in analysing current texts concerning working-classness and art practice is the complexity in recognising the working-class experience beyond the symbols generated from working-class culture. Such simplifications limit how audiences can understand the implications of being working-class and detracts from the relational experiences that inform a working-class identity. In my research I have sought to address this through my artistic practice effectively considering content and context to share such relational experiences. I will now outline my methodology in developing new interdisciplinary compositions through an analysis of Seven Working-Class Time Pieces and reference to other compositions.