Practice-based research has been used to explore how to embody working-classness in the folio of interdisciplinary compositions. Practice-based methods enable a qualitative means of engaging in the 'ways of being' within working-classness (Skeggs, 2004a; 2011; Stallybrass, 1998) through the creation of new interdisciplinary compositions that embody the alternative cultural practices created by the working-classes. Below is a step-by-step process detailing my methods and their relevant theoretical background in direct relation to my composition Seven Working-Class Time Pieces with some reference to other compositions in the folio.
A diagram of my Methodological approach can be found below:
Each composition within the folio began by exploring a particular aspect and/or stereotype that is present within working-class identity. In the case of Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, for example, it was the exploration of time within the working-class experience. When considering the concept for each piece I considered a particular working-class aspect and my own lived experience as a starting point. I am aware of the subjectivity such a method provides, however, using my lived experience enabled me to avoid stereotyping working-classness by providing a depth of personal understanding that is lacking in pre-existing media (see BBC, 2020; de Waal, 2018). To enable a sufficient level of criticality, I used auto-ethnographical methods to expand on my personal understanding. Auto-ethnography allows a critical reflexivity in the development of these initial ideas through actively addressing my self in the development process (see Bartleet, 2009; Ellis, 2004) and understanding my positionality in approaching these aspects of working-classness. In using a combination of mind-mapping, summative writing, and improvisation I developed initial thoughts and possible starting points for each new composition. Mind-mapping enabled me to explore my thoughts and perceptions about a subject and establish several questions to develop my research into the subject. Summative writing provided further clarity in defining the possible composition and to establish loose boundaries as to the potential development of the idea. Improvisation was used to explore possible connections between the subject matter and the artistic mediums used. In developing Seven Working-Class Time Pieces I began by mind-mapping several themes including sustainability, types of work (zero-hour contracts, part time), and free time (working-class leisure activities). Summative writing focussed key elements from the mind-mapping into fixed ideas (e.g. sustainability through the time ‘invested’ in a shirt, see 1.Expiration Date). Improvisation helped to expand ways of thinking about musical material and its relationship to the subject matter (e.g. sustainability through note duration translating to how long an idea lasts before changing, see 1.Expiration Date).
Once I established an initial idea I moved between practical research (music composition) and literary research (investigating the subject). This symbiotic approach to praxis enabled me to be critically reflective of pre-existing research and its relation to my own research. Using an early draft of my literature review as a foundational understanding of working-classness I moved to more specific research related to the subject to critically engage with my personal experience and ensure stereotyping was not present (see Bartleet, 2009). This research consisted of a variety of academic writing, articles in newspapers/digital media, and pre-existing creative outputs from other artists (film, text, music, etc.). Using a variety of traditional and contemporary research sources enabled for a deeper understanding on the subject in question and assisting in developing my own positionality through my compositional outputs. In Seven Working-Class Time Pieces I established parallels between literary research (e.g. Skeggs’ writing on affect, see Skeggs, 2004b; 2011) with uses of time by working-class artists (e.g. the representation of intergenerational differences in The Queens English by Tony Harrison, see Harrison, 1978). In developing a connection between literary and practical research, I used mind-mapping to analyse how I am relating the subject matter to the artistic media of my interdisciplinary compositions and my own experience of being working class. This again was achieved through auto-ethnographical methods to allow a critical reflexivity in the evaluation of the research and to identify any biases that may arise (e.g. romanticising/simplifying a subject). I also analysed drafts of my compositional work separately from literary research both individually and with my supervisors to ensure I effectively addressed the conceptual idea of the composition within my creative outputs. The selection of interdisciplinary media to be used for each composition was determined by establishing suitable connections between literary and practical research (e.g. using a metronome to have a physical manifestation of time in Seven Working-Class Time Pieces).
In embodying working-classness in the new interdisciplinary compositions I focussed on two main areas:
- Content - exploring how the compositions use musical material in the creative process to represent the conceptual idea of working-classness (e.g. time – use of duration in note length, musical idea length, tempo of music).
- Context – examining how the compositions use interdisciplinary media (text, film, and/or theatre) to enable a working-class context through expressing the ‘ways of being’ working-class (e.g. the use of a metronome to provide a physical representation of time throughout Seven Working Class Time Pieces.)
The examination of content was influenced by the idea of a creativity in thriftiness (see Teplitzky, 2022; Cooper, 1994). In examining context, I was influenced by the ideas of praxis and metapraxis in the writings of Jani Christou (see Christou, 1970) to establish a relational network for each of my compositions.
These two areas of methodological focus enable a deeper representation of working-class identity by having the working-classness of the research outputs be central to the creative process. Splitting my consideration of how to embody working-classness into two main areas helped to provide an easier means of understanding how working-classness can affect the compositional process as well as the overall creative output of each composition. In doing so, I was able to establish clearer connections between content and context to provide a cohesive embodiment of working-classness in each composition and consider how the work of other working-class artists in different media may inform my compositional outputs.
The concept of a creativity in thriftiness was derived from interviewing the working-class artist Darren Neave (Teplitzky, 2022) and the research of Emmanuel Cooper (see Cooper, 1994). A creativity in thriftiness is the consideration of making the most out of your artistic materials due to your lack of capitals in possession. In Cooper’s work, a creativity in thriftiness can be considered by referencing arts practices that employ pre-existing objects (e.g. found object art such as Duchamp’s Fountain (1917)), whether that be leftover glass from a factory or in embellishing pre-existing possessions. A creativity in thriftiness has some overlap with other arts practices such as conceptual art (see Godfrey, 1998), minimalism (see O’Brien and Robin, 2023 ), or simply being economic in ones use of creative resources. The decision, and the distinction, of using a creativity in thriftiness was to provide both an ingrained notion of practice informed by one’s social class and a connection to a historical art culture of working-class art to provide a wider context for my own compositions. In doing so, my economic use of material is considered through the wider context and relationships of their creation and critically addressing the economic use of material as being due to a lack of resources in the first instance. The decision to actively engage the precarity of my working-class experience in lacking capitals within my creative practice allowed for a reflexive approach towards how my working-classness is embodied within my creative outputs.
I focussed primarily on a creativity in thriftiness through the act of composing itself. In the case of composition, that would be how musical ideas are developed. The decision to focus on a creativity in thriftiness through composing is to directly explore how working-classness can provide new considerations to the creation of classical music at the fundamental level of writing new music.
In analysing my compositions, I will refer to the use of a creativity in thriftiness in each piece by referencing these numbers as follows: Creativity in Thriftiness 1 = CiT1
A breakdown of my use of a creativity in thriftiness is as follows:
CiT1: Repetition of musical material (Seven Working-Class Time Pieces 6. Repetition). Please click on images to enlarge.
CiT7: Recycling of pre-existing elements (It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working Class using the oboe theme from I’ve Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher (1965))
CiT8: Use of low-valued items within compositional outputs (e.g. using cheap recorders in The Damned and a cheap keyboard in Escapism).
A significant consideration for embodying a creativity in thriftiness is in the capacity to recognise the nature of a musical idea and avoiding any unnecessary change that causes the musical idea to become something new and not recognisable. For example, in 1. Expiration Date, the only aspect changing is the duration of the chord as dictated by the shortening of the text throughout the piece.
I could have enacted other forms of musical development such as changing the density of notes within the chord, the harmonic phrasing of the chord (through harmonic inversion), or changing the sound of the chord to name a few, but such aspects would then change the nature of the musical idea away from a declining duration to a focus on harmonic and/or timbral difference.
Using a creativity in thriftiness in my handling of content I have been able to ensure a strict limitation of musical material and development to emulate the lacking quantities of capitals faced by the working-classes (see Bourdieu, 1984) and provide approaches to achieving a ‘person valued’ means towards musical composition (see Skeggs, 2004b; 2011). To aid in identifying and sharing the working-class context to understand my use of a creativity in thriftiness as opposed to simply being economic with creative material, I have actively considered how to effectively share the working-class context that informs the reasoning for using musical material in such a way.
Jani Christou’s ideas of praxis and metapraxis inform how I approached achieving a working-class context within my compositions. Christou describes praxis and metapraxis as:
…an action … purposefully performed to conform with the current overall logic characteristic of the art, that action is a “praxis”, or a purposeful and characteristic of action. But whenever an action is purposefully performed so as to go beyond the current overall logic characteristic of the art, that action is a “metapraxis”, or a purposeful non-characteristic action: a “meta-action”. Thus, in the performing arts, any action which requires its performer to go beyond the current logic of the medium to which he belongs, requires him to go beyond the logic of his worlds of action, as it were. That action is a “metapraxis”, and it is purposefully “non-characteristic”. (Christou, 1970)
In approaching ideas of praxis and metapraxis, my creative outputs challenge the cultural values ingrained within contemporary classical and classical music. Christou’s considerations of praxis and metapraxis provide a consideration of what is and isn’t accepted in an art culture. Such considerations align with questions of cultural matching (see Ashcraft, 2012; Friedman and Laurison, 2020, p. 124-125) and provide a means of understanding how working-class ‘ways of being’ may challenge classical music’s culture. The importance of having a combination of both praxis and metapraxis is to discern the relationship between characteristic and uncharacteristic actions and how one may relate to the other to establish an artistic culture. An example may be the taboo of clapping in-between the movements of a symphony. A consideration for praxis and metapraxis also provides a parallel to my own use of content and context to embody a working-class identity to my compositions by having the content of a composition be addressed in the context provided (1. Expiration Date having the chord become shorter while the text highlights the concerns of sustainability) to provide a relational network for how the working-classness is present in my compositions.
Considering praxis, I wanted to ensure there was an element of recognition available for the works I created to be contemporary classical music. This desire for recognition was to ensure that my work was not as easily rejected due to being regarded as outside typical practice and to effectively have working-classness embody recognisably contemporary classical music. These assumptions are informed by personal experience and feedback from established classical music ensembles. The means in which I achieved this were through employing established musical forms (Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations), use of instrumentation (the oboe in It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working Class), referencing canonical works (The Weight of History and Background Etudes referencing the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No.2, (Bach, 1717-1720)) and the performance context (Escapism being presented as a chamber concerto). Deciding on which elements were characteristic was determined through analysing the culture and aesthetics of classical music through academic research, imagery/text generated based on popularity in search engines, and reflection on my own experience working within the art form. In approaching metapraxis, I actively brought in the unspoken ‘ways of being’ adopted within contemporary classical music and challenged their class-based discrepancies through my use of interdisciplinary mediums. As classical music rarely engages with concerns pertaining to social class in a recognisable form, I made the working-classness explicit in each of the works to ensure there was no possibility of misrepresentation. This was important to provide a clarity to why the ‘ways of being’ explored in each composition are specifically pertaining to the working-class experience by sharing the relational network that forms the working-classness of the experience. The primary means of achieving the working-class representation was using text to highlight the intricate relationships that form working-class identities. Some examples include highlighting the scarcity of capitals (e.g. in Seven Working Class Time Pieces 1. Expiration Date the need of making the most out of superfluous purchases), the desire for sustainability (Baguette Baton stating the need for ensuring no waste in eating unfamiliar foods), and the relationship between the working-classes and other classes (It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class highlighting the class-based familiarity of instruments due to music genres).
While text was a consistent component across the entire portfolio, additional methods were employed depending on the nature of the composition in question and identifying the clearest media object(s) to convey the conceptual idea of each composition. These methods are:
- Use of humour to provide contrast from the seriousness I find within classical music (e.g. the narrator in Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor).
- Use of an informal means of speaking in delivering text (e.g. the narrator in It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class).
- Presentation of media (e.g. the stylisation of the PowerPoint in The Damned to replicate a comprehensive school lesson and the films for Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations being shot from a first-person perspective to emphasise the internal monologue.)
- Instrumentation outside of standard classical music performance (e.g. use of a cheap keyboard in Escapism and use of cheap recorders in The Damned).
- Recreating a particular performance context (e.g. The Damned being a comprehensive school music lesson using cheap recorders).
In my approach to content and context, the compositions within the folio provide a nuanced perspective to how working-classness can challenge and provide new insights into contemporary classical music. By having the content embody a sense of thriftiness and the challenging of context by identifying working-class contexts and embodying these through interdisciplinary methods, the folio provides a bespoke method towards understanding how the working-class experience may effect contemporary classical music.
In developing the interdisciplinary compositions I had several experimentation sessions. These sessions were to determine the success of the interdisciplinary compositions, identify possible issues that were missed in the early creation process, and to consider developments for the composition in question. Such experimentation also helped to provide areas of consideration for future compositions in how I approached the use of content and context in developing compositions. An example of this was the use of duration to explore loss in 1. Expiration Date from Seven Working-Class Time Pieces being developed in 1. Vice from Escapism. Feedback was gathered during rehearsals through conversations during the rehearsal process with objective onlookers and performers of the compositions, documenting the process through audio-visual recording, and reflective writing. Conversations with both objective onlookers and performers provided a spectrum of considerations to better understand how the compositions were understood and interpreted to then develop the composition further. AV recording provided a means of seeing the work from an audience’s perspective, enable any missed rehearsal interactions (e.g. the improvised addition of changing the instrument voice during a performance of 4.Part Time from Seven Working-Class Time Pieces), and to provide documentation for any experimentation done within rehearsal or performance. Reflective writing helped to consolidate these interactions, establish current strengths/weaknesses, and determine effective solutions to provide further clarity.
Once I had an initial draft of the completed composition, I shared the work with colleagues to gather feedback. When sharing, I considered theories related to Legitimation Code Theory in gathering feedback (Maton, 2014). Considering LCT helped to consider whether I was establishing a class-based knowledge requirement in the compositions and how I could effectively ensure there were no barriers to understanding the working-classness within a composition. LCT provides clarity in the knowledge requirements of subject matters by emphasising the pre-existing knowledge required to engage with different subjects (see Lamont and Maton, 2010; Maton, 2014). Development of my work has focussed on specialisation within LCT. Specialisation refers to the pre-existing knowledge/ability required to access certain subject matters. The three legitimation codes of knowledge codes, knower codes, and elite codes were considered in analysing my research outputs. Knowledge codes focus on the subject matters’ pre-existing information and whether this information is clear (e.g. knowing that 1+1=2). Knower codes focus on the personal attributes of the person engaging with the subject matter (e.g. the individual talent required to be good at a sport). Elite codes focus on a combination between knowledge and knower codes (e.g. the information and pre-existing talent required for playing an instrument). In using LCT I was able to critically evaluate whether the new compositions can be recognised as embodying working-classness by anybody engaging with the piece or whether an audience needs to have pre-existing knowledge to recognise the working-classness (e.g. emphasising the part time ownership in 4. Part Time being due to lack of money). Doing so provided a critical analysis of my work and consider developments for the composition in question and the creation of new compositions.
Once I gathered initial feedback, I then applied this feedback to the composition to finalise the piece. Once completed, I then share the work with a more diverse range of people through a combination of performances, conference presentations, and online distribution. Expanding the sources of feedback to a wider audience provided additional considerations for developing future compositions from a wider range of cultural backgrounds (e.g. whether the working-classness in a composition required a particular geographical knowledge e.g. The Damned reflecting music tuition in UK comprehensive schools). Gathering feedback from the sharing of my research was achieved through informal conversations with individuals and formal feedback sessions. The combination of informal and formal data gathering helped to provide ease of expression for individuals who may not feel comfortable with particular data gathering means. Data-gathering in both a typical performance environment and an academic context helped to provide scrutiny to my creative outputs and to address any exceptions that may arise (e.g. a composition being excused for not embodying working-classness because of its aesthetic quality).
I then analysed the completed composition through auto-ethnographical methods (e.g. mind-mapping) to determine its success. The use of autoethnography was to help consolidate the initial research for creating the piece with the final product to identify any future developments and considerations in creating future compositions.
Once a sufficient number of compositions were completed I then analysed the completed compositions as a folio and created a critical commentary detailing my research findings. By considering the compositions both in isolation and as a folio I was able to determine both the depth of working-classness examined in each individual composition and the breadth of working-classness across the folio. When I found a lack/concentration of a particular element of working-classness within the folio, I amended this through creating new compositions that can address such concerns.
Through this methodology I have been able to effectively position myself as a researcher and ensure I have consolidated a diverse understanding of working-classness within my outputs.