Findings

In exploring the creative potential of embodying working-classness through a variety of new interdisciplinary compositions, I have found the following:

• Embodying working-classness in new interdisciplinary compositions provides new perspectives on how working-class experiences can effectively challenge the cultural contexts and values of classical music’s culture.
• There is a necessity for interdisciplinary methods to be employed to embody working-classness due to the complexity of working-class experience being unable to be expressed fully within pure musical sound.

By embodying the working-class experience into classical music, the compositions within my portfolio provide a challenge to the inherited and perpetuated 'ways of being' cultivated within classical music. Each composition provides a unique reconsideration to the values supported within classical music and promotes innovation to enable classical music to become an art form that can be open to all, regardless of class.

My analysis will follow the chronological order of the development of the portfolio with particular attention towards Seven Working-Class Time Pieces and Escapism. Analysing the portfolio in a chronological order provides a clarity in the development of how I have explored the creative potential of embodying working-classness. Using a chronological method, I am able to identify several through-lines across all of the compositions, such as:

• Developing how I effectively embody the relational 'ways of being' that constitutes being working-class to provide the complexity of working-class experiences in my compositions (see Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, Escapism, Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations and The Weight of History and Background Etudes.
• The significance of time, in particular the cyclical nature of time (Wark, 2015; Bourdieu, 1984) within the working-class experience.
• Considerations of performance environment (see Holding and The Damned).
• Questioning whether my compositions have a cultural belonging to classical music’s culture (see Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, Holding, It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class, and Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations). 

Focussing on Seven Working-Class Time Pieces and Escapism is due to these two compositions providing the more significant developments in my portfolio. 

Seven Working-Class Time Pieces

Seven Working-Class Time Pieces was the first composition I created in developing the portfolio. It was written while I was not receiving funding for my PhD and was on Universal Credit due to the Covid-19 pandemic making me unable to work. In Seven Working-Class Time Pieces I effectively embody working-classness through a variety of short pieces that explore different aspects of time. The subject for each of the pieces is as follows:

1. Expiration Date presents the desire for purchased items to last a long time to avoid feeling like money has been wasted which could have gone towards bills. 

2. Off Time addresses feelings of anxiety with having free time due to the want to not be lethargic and constantly productive.

3. Needed Time of Arrival negotiates the issues in lacking time and lamenting the time wasted on commuting which could be spent on more important things such as time with family and friends through the fantastical solution of being able to teleport.

4. Part Time explores the temporary ownership of purchased objects and debating over the questions of need and want in purchasing practices.

5. Queuing examines the wasting of time by people in positions of authority during moments of significance and relating this to the immediate crises of waiting for job seekers benefit payments.

6. Repetition shares the scenario of two girls debating whether they would earn more money over time from whenever they were pissed off or stressed in comparison to a lump sum.

7.   Per Hour analyses the sense of worth in terms of your per hour rate of pay and relating this to educational attainment in trying to find a job during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In developing Seven Working-Class Time Pieces my primary concern was how to effectively explore the working-class experience of time and relate such experiences to the wider cultural relationships that form such experiences. I began by considering my own experiences of time and identified the areas of working on a zero-hour contract and the time I had spent looking for a job (7. Per Hour), my experience in working with upper/middle-class people in positions of power to try and resolve issues (5. Queuing), wanting to make the most out of objects I had purchased (1. Expiration Date), and my feelings of worthlessness in being unemployed and being ‘off’ time (2. Off Time). Having identified these four initial areas, I then expanded my research to other working-class representations of time such as Tony Harrison’s poetry embodying intergenerational concerns between himself and his father (Harrison, 1978) and mind-mapping to identify other experiences of working-class time such as my extended auntie’s purchasing things only to return them shortly after (4. Part Time) and my friends complaining about the amount of time they spend on commuting (3. Needed Time of Arrival). 6. Repetition was created after all the previous pieces had been completed and came about from a conversation I overheard on a train to Manchester. Once I had a reasonable idea of the concepts behind each piece, I then proceeded to consider how time could be represented using artistic mediums.

Seven Working-Class Time Piece uses text, a metronome, a Casio SA – 46 keyboard, text that the performer recites, and a small element of costume in the form of a particular shirt. I will now go through the reasoning for each of these artistic mediums and how they were used in each of the pieces.

I realised that to effectively share the complex relationships between the individual and larger society that informs your class position, I needed to use text. While film and theatre were considered, both would not provide the clarity that text could provide in sharing the relational experience that forms working-classness. The use of text throughout each of the pieces provides a clear and concise contextualisation towards the working-classness of each of these scenarios (e.g. 1. Expiration Date highlighting the concerns of lack of finances resulting in a desire for all purchases to be worth their monetary cost). Considerations were made for having the text be projected or read by audience members, but both options were dismissed. Having the text be projected would have detracted from the intimacy of the single performer and made the intimate content of many of the pieces be diminished. Having the audience read out the text would also remove the intimacy of the text and would also result in some audience members pretend to be working-class which is not the intention of the piece. The desire for intimacy across the composition was to counteract what I consider the often grandiose identity attached to classical music.

The use of text within Seven Working-Class Time Pieces takes on two main forms; calculation and contextualisation. The text provides calculation in 1. Expiration Date, 3. Needed Time of Arrival, 5. Queuing, 6. Repetition and 7. Per Hour. The use of the text to provide calculations helps to provide a quantifiable way in which value is understood in each piece. These values can be of the cost per wear of a shirt (1. Expiration Date), watching the cost of a taxi fare increase (3. Needed Time of Arrival) the time taken on tasks (5. Queuing), adding up how much money would be earned from a hypothetical game (6. Repetition) or the time spent trying to find a job in relation to the time spent in training/education (7. Per Hour). Outside of calculating, the text provided the working-class context to each of the piece’s scenarios.

The ways in which the text provided the working-class context are as follows:

1. Expiration Date – the text presents the working-class tension of over-calculating purchases out of the fear of money being wasted on a poorly considered purchase.
2. Off Time – the text addresses the working-class experience of anxiety when being out of work and how anxiety feeds into never fully being able to switch off due to the pressures of maintaining work due to the precarity of your financial situation.
3. Needed Time of Arrival – the text negotiates the context of limiting the possibilities of having superpowers to simply solve the issue of commuting taking up your time, providing a limitation of expectation replicated in working-class experiences (Arthur, Hollingworth, and Halsall, 2007).
4. Part Time – the text explores the reasoning for part time ownership of objects due to being unable to afford keeping them and the strength of not needing to own new things to feel good about yourself.
5. Queuing – the text examines the issue of time as a commodity to solve issues by providing a parallel to the time needed to receive job seekers allowance.
6. Repetition – the text shares various scenarios and instances in which the two girls are pissed off and stressed to understand whether they would earn more or less from their hypothetical scenario due to their current struggle with a lack of funds.
7. Per Hour – the text analyses the relationship between the time spent training to the time spent trying to get a job. This is related to how understandings of personal value may be affected due to being paid a particular hourly rate and limited expectations of value being recognised.

1. Expiration Date - the music consists of a C# minor 7 added 6^th chord that becomes shorter as the text reduces in each line, CiT5. The shrinking of the chord’s length (or value) relates to the shortening length of time left for the shirt being worn by the performer which is paralleled in the decreasing number of words in each line of text

3. Needed Time of Arrival – the music consists of an eight-note rising melody that slowly compresses into a chord of decreasing duration to emulate the desired shortening of time expressed within the text, CiT4.

5. Queuing – there is no pitched musical material in queuing as the focus is on the text and the manipulation of the metronome to emphasise the tedium of waiting.

6. Repetition – the music provides the calculation of each instance of the girls being pissed off or stressed through repeating two notes, a low F# and high C, CiT1. The choice of using the lowest and highest notes to form a tritone was to highlight the difference between each emotional state and to embody the tension formed from the girls’ interactions with each other. Please click on images to enlarge.

7. Per Hour – the music floats between a fast and slow change (CiT4) between a F minor 7 chord and an Eb minor 7 added 6^th chord to provide a listless yet hopeful desire for steady work, emulating both the excitement of possible employment with the increased rate of change and the attempts to sustain enthusiasm with the return of the metronome at the end.

A creativity in thriftiness is evident throughout most of the pieces due to the limitations of how the music is developed. The primary means of achieving this creativity in thriftiness is through the gradual manipulation of musical material over time. Through compressing musical ideas (Note duration in 1. Expiration Date, 3. Needed Time of Arrival, and 7. Per Hour, CiT3) and having the text transform the understandings behind the repetition of musical ideas (accumulation of value in 6. Repetition, CiT1), a creativity in thriftiness is achieved that emulates the working-class ways of being of making the most out of limited capitals.

Both 2. Off Time and 4. Part Time do not effectively achieve a creativity in thriftiness. 2. Off Time uses a continuously shifting chromaticism and changes in musical density to provide an unsettled listlessness to match the feeling of being in-between on and off work. 4. Part Time uses an overabundance of musical ideas and instrument sounds to highlight the unnecessary need for newness highlighted in the text. 2. Off Time was an experiment as to whether a creativity in thriftiness could be applied to chromatic writing. I do not think 2. Part Time is successful in embodying a creativity in thriftiness as the fluctuating harmonic centre of the chromatic movement means there is no consistent harmonic centre, or identifiable object to be used thriftily, making it difficult to establish a recognisable level of thriftiness. 4. Part Time also does not adhere to a creativity in thriftiness as it is exploring the idea of conspicuous consumption (see Veblen, 1899) through the wasteful use of musical ideas actively challenging the basis of a creativity in thriftiness. I consider 4. Part Time to provide a useful starting point for future compositions by offering an opportunity to test the limitations of a creativity in thriftiness. This was important as while a creativity in thriftiness is important to approach the working-class experience, I wanted to consider how I may enable more emblematic classical writing within my research (see Escapism). Some considerations of emblematic classical music include:

• Instrumentation.
• Musical language.
• Typical musical forms used in classical music.

Seven Working-Class Time Pieces provided several of the key points of development for the entire portfolio. These points are:

• Solidifying the idea for a creativity in thriftiness as an approach to embodying working-classness in the musical writing.
• Providing a means of considering how to embody the complexity of the working-class experience by using several pieces that are presented together to create a relational network.
• Understanding how challenging a creativity in thriftiness can enable space for more emblematic classical music writing.

As a result of Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, I then created several works that could improve on how to have my compositions feel more belonging to the classical music culture through addressing different elements of classical music (such as instrumentation) and finding ways of creating space for a more emblematic classical musical language.

Holding, It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class, Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor, and Baguette Baton

Holding

Holding was written immediately after Seven Working-Class Time Pieces. In Holding, I wanted to consider possible alternative scenarios in which classical music exists. The reasoning for this was to try and establish more connections between how the working-classes experience classical music outside of what I consider to be the typical concert hall/recital hall experience for classical music. While classical music is experienced outside of these environments (such as listening privately at home) I believe the emblematic environment to experience classical music is in concert/recital halls. Considering such scenarios helped to provide new opportunities for how my compositions could be experienced and to refine my personal understanding of how classical music is intended to be experienced. Developing my personal understanding enabled me to clarify my positionality and identify additional areas in which to explore in other compositions (see The Damned).

Holding is a composition for telephone consisting of an eleven-minute audio loop moving between the text used on the universal credit helpline, autobiographical text informed by my own experience while being put on hold with universal credit, and original music in a classical style mimicking the character used for holding music. Holding attempts to provide a working-class content and context to classical music through two areas. The working-class content is achieved through a creativity in thriftiness being employed to the musical language and the musical instruments used, wherein the composition uses instrumental imitation (CiT1), layering of musical ideas (CiT2) and harmonic modulation (CiT6) to keep the holding music just interesting enough to engage the listener so as to placate them, and digital instrumental sounds that are cheaply accessible (CiT8). The importance of placating the listener was to actively employ the use of classical music as a tool to deter anger (see Thompson, 2017). The working-class context is achieved by emulating the physical experience of having to call universal credit to address an issue and combining personal experience with the automated voice-over from the universal credit helpline. Connecting my own personal experience with the objective experience of being on hold provides a relational network to show how the blunt, objective reality of being on hold connects to the personal, emotive struggle with feeling valued while also highlighting how the music is being used to manipulate/placate the person on hold.

Holding provided a unique experiment to how I could approach the delivery of my compositions. I consider the working-classness to be fully embodied throughout the composition but again, due to the experimental nature of the composition’s delivery, I do not think it sits comfortably within classical music’s culture. As Holding uses classical music as a tool to placate people being put on hold it detracts from the primary intention of what classical music is, which I would argue is entertainment/expression. As such, having the classical music element of Holding function as a tool means that the composition doesn’t consider the musical element as being the most significant component of classical music’s experience. Because of this, there is a lack of consideration for the wider culture of how classical music is experienced, such as performance environment and instrumentation.

It's Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class

It's Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class provides further development towards the considerations of classical music’s culture through actively analysing the class identity and historical understanding of an instrument, the oboe. In It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class for oboe and narrator, I actively explore the ridiculous attempts of how to make an oboe sound working-class. The working-classness of the oboe is explored through several layers. The musical material adopts a creativity in thriftiness by having the musical material be a derivative of the theme from I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher (1965), (CiT7), 

repeating the main theme (CiT1), 

stretching the duration of the notes in the opening (CiT4), 

and decreasing the length of the quoted Sonny and Cher theme (CiT3). 

A working-class context is achieved by examining the following areas within the text:

• The familiarity people have with different musical instruments based on different musical genres and their stereotypical contexts.
• Explaining why the music is based around I Got You Babe due to it being one of the primary examples of how people recognise the oboe.
• Evaluating why an oboe doesn’t fit into an understanding of what working-classness is.
• Considering how different stereotypical working-class accents could be emulated by the oboe.
• Addressing the stereotypical nature of trying to make the oboe conform to sound as though it were working-class.
• Examining wider questions of how familiarity limits perceptions of the working-classes through considering the casting of working-class actors (The Acting Class, 2017).
•  Admitting the point of the piece is not to actively try to change the oboe but to question the restrictions of its identity due to what it is familiar with.

A relational network is again established here but rather than having several individual pieces as in Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, the composition achieves a relational network by providing several sections that connect to create a narrative for the oboe’s classed position (e.g. the ways in which different instruments are classed). Having the combination of content and context to explore the tension in making an oboe sound working-class enables the composition to effectively address classical music’s culture through unpacking the class identity of the oboe. It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class provides a key development in my research towards trying to effectively embody working-classness in classical music. By having the composition use a particular aspect of classical music’s identity (in this case an instrument) to explore how working-classness may be embodied in classical music’s culture (through the ridiculousness of emulating stereotypical accents), It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class provides a development in understanding how working-classness can be embodied in classical music and provide new creative possibilities.

Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor

Leading on from It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class, I wanted to further explore how I could embody working-classness into another aspect of classical music’s culture. In Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor, I approached the idea of a chamber ensemble, the piano trio, to explore how the precarity of the working-class experience may affect it. Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor for Piano Trio and Narrator has the ensemble react to a mediocre arts administrator informing them of the lack of funds to perform Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor, which has resulted in the Piano Trio being unable to afford its violin player. Acknowledging the struggles of funding and compromise that exist in classical music, the composition actively shows how the impact of compromise can be experienced musically and theatrically. A creativity in thriftiness manipulates the original musical ideas from Faure’s composition (CiT7) using repetition (Cello bar 3 repeating at bar 28, bar 32, and bar 102, CiT1),

and lengthening notes (bars 60 to 63, CiT5)

to coincide with the sharing of the context provided by the narrator to provide potential solutions to compensate for the lack of capital to fully perform the original composition.

While Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor directly deals with classical music it does not fully encapsulate the working-class experience. This is due to the composition focussing solely on general experiences of precarity found within classical music rather than precarity born from working-class experience. While there is an obvious lack of capitals and a subsequent precarity present within the piece (through the loss of the violin player), the composition does not provide a direct connection to the specific lived experiences and contexts of these experiences that informs a working-class way of being. This lack offered a key challenge to my research in that it raised the question of whether it was important that elements such as precarity and loss needed to be understood within a working-class context to be valid and what would be required to contextualise this precarity to a working-class way of being.

Baguette Baton

Developing from these concerns, Baguette Baton offered a means of identifying such contextual markers and an opportunity to explore how to enable a greater level of expressive music within a creativity in thriftiness. In Baguette Baton for large ensemble, SSATB singers, and projected text, I explore the class-based reasoning behind being a fussy eater and the ways of validating such behaviour. The composition effectively uses a creativity in thriftiness by having all the musical material be limited to supporting the sung text through a combination of long held notes (CiT1 and CiT5) 

and copying the sung melody with instrumental doublings both in unison and in harmony (CiT2 and CiT6).

By having the music become more expressive during the descriptors of how I pretend my plain baguette tastes (such as being like meat or cheese), the musical language has the capacity to be more emblematic of typical classical music while still embodying a creativity in thriftiness. This is further emphasised by having both the sung melody and the instrumental accompaniment stop near the end of the composition, leaving the text to be projected by itself at the end to make the musical colouring more evident. The text also provides the greater context as to why I choose to eat a plain baguette, the potential health issues of this, the class-based history of why I eat a plain baguette, and how such experiences have shaped my ways of being to this day. In doing so, the composition enables a relational network to be established to provide the detail and relationships that connect my working-classness with being a fussy eater.

Baguette Baton helped to solidify the significance of time as a factor to distinguish between the precarity found in Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor and a working-class experience of precarity. Found within qualitative studies exploring working-classness (see Cruz, 2021; McKenzie, 2015; Sennett and Cobb, 1972), concerns of repeating history, lack of progress, and of your working-classness almost haunting your experience, considerations of time helped to refine how I achieved a working-class context in my compositions by sharing the past, present and future that formed the working-class ways of being with different objects (e.g. eating baguettes) due to your capital possession (e.g. eating baguettes as they are a large amount of cheap food to sustain yourself).

These four compositions helped to refine my understanding of how working-classness can provide new considerations to classical music. Each of the four compositions provided a consideration for how I approached the embodying of working-classness in future compositions. This can be seen below:

1. Holding provided an initial consideration of performance environment which was developed in The Damned and The Weight of History and Background Etudes.
2. It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class provided a deeper consideration of how instrumentation was used as seen in Escapism and The Damned.
3. Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor provided initial considerations of how musical form which was developed in Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations and The Weight of History and Background Etudes.
4. Baguette Baton provided a means of considering how I can enable a more emblematic classical style of musical writing in Escapism.

3.  I will now analyse Escapism which enabled a greater means of fitting in with classical music’s culture while still ensuring a working-class way of being was present.

Escapism

Escapism is a chamber concerto that explores the nature of wanting to escape the precarity experienced due to your class position. The concerto establishes a relational network of working-class experiences of escape through the areas of work and meritocracy (1. Vice), therapy (2. Don’t Look Back), sensory release (3. I Just Wanted to Write Some Music and 4. Why Doesn’t It Feel Like It Used To) and imagining changing your physical location (5. Stargazer). Escapism consists of four movements that focus on being explicit in their working-classness and one movement that enables a greater presence and place for classical music within the composition. In doing so, the four explicitly working-class movements help to provide the relational network to shape the understanding of the more emblematic classical music movement. Doing so provided a better balance between working-classness and classical music for the overall composition and thereby a more effective approach to embodying working-classness within classical music.

I will now analyse the four explicitly working-class movements and how they achieve their working-class content and context before finishing by analysing the ‘classical music’ movement.

1. Vice

1. Vice uses a creativity in thriftiness combined with a working-class context to explore ideas of meritocracy in mundane work. Meritocracy is the idea that hard work results in rewards such as success in your career and a higher rate of pay (see Young, 1957). Considering how to effectively embody working-classness into the idea of meritocracy I examined my own experience of working and the lack of progression or reward in my previous job as a waiter. One of the more tedious aspects of the job was polishing copious amounts of cutlery. In developing the composition, I wanted to effectively showcase the inane repetition found within particular jobs while providing the wishful thinking that you will be rewarded and be able to move on to something more significant due to your hard work. The creativity in thriftiness within the composition works through two areas: 

1. The ensemble play a hopeful melodic motif that shrinks as the piece develops, similar to 1. Expiration Date from Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, CiT1 and CiT3. Please click on images to enlarge.

2. The cheap keyboard (CiT8) plays an ascending Ab Minor Melodic scale which is rhythmically aligned to the polishing of cutlery as seen in the film, CiT4.

The use of the film and text provides the working-class context to the movement. The text provides numerous diary entries over the space of a year where a fictionalised version of myself provides updates on their hopeful career progression. Including areas such as the physical and emotional exhaustion from work, lack of clarity from management about career progression, and dedication to working hard, the text embodies the working-class struggle of experiencing social mobility (see Friedman and Laurison, 2020). Coinciding with the text, the film speeds up with the character talking about trying to work faster and eventually slowing down due to exhaustion and injury, providing further detail through sharing the physical precarity in an attempt to prove their value to work in a better position.

Considering how the music works with the interdisciplinary elements, the ensemble’s motif functions as dramatic underscoring to the text to emphasise the feelings of aspiration towards hopeful career progression due to your hard work. Such aspirations decline over time to eventually be lost as it becomes clear the hard work provided is not going to be rewarded (in a similar manner to 1. Expiration Date from Seven Working-Class Time Pieces). The keyboard’s repeating scale also provides a feeling of aspiration. Having the keyboard’s scale fail to resolve to the tonic and having to continue to repeat to match the repetition of polishing cutlery provides the feeling of hopelessness in trying to escape the problems with working-class lives through believing in meritocracy.

2. Don't Look Back

2. Don’t Look Back goes against the creativity in thriftiness in the same way as 4. Part Time from Seven Working-Class Time Pieces but with the idea of self-help guides promoting a dismissal of the past. As many working-class lives are bound to their communities and their histories (see Rose, 2021; McKenzie, 2015) the language of self-help promoting a rigid and insular individuality provides a unique consideration to ideas of escape. The movement uses four different self-help posters that provide inspirational phrases for how to deal with life. Each of the four phrases promote a dismissal of the past in favour of a forward-thinking focus that is present in neoliberal ideology (see Bauman, 2000). The four phrases provide a context for escaping which is encapsulated in the music by a continually changing musical character using changes in musical genre, instrumentation, pulse, harmony, dynamic, and duration. Such changes are emphasised by descriptors over each bar. The keyboard provides an atonal chord sequence to match the constant changes and to provide the notion that it is good to not look back.

4. Why Doesn't It Feel Like It Used To

4. Why Doesn’t it Feel Like it Used To provides a creativity in thriftiness to explore my experiences of underage drinking. The movement uses a series of screenshots of varying smiling emojis and alcoholic beverages against a bright yellow background. Beginning with a bottle of Smirnoff Ice and eventually ending with a bottle of reasonably tasty red wine, the screenshots eventually change to have less enthusiastic emojis and a less saturated yellow background to match the declining joy to be found in drinking due to building up a tolerance for alcohol. Musically, the keyboard provides a series of long held chords that are left to fade out naturally due to the instrument voice used, CiT5. These chords are accompanied by the ensemble providing stab chords that gradually become repeated notes that eventually fall apart to provide a further decline in the enthusiasm of the drinking, CiT1, CiT5. Please click image to enlarge.

The decision to have the ensemble play repeated notes was to provide a direct expression of trying to keep something brief be sustained. Long notes were considered for the ensemble, but these would detract from the effect provided by the keyboard. The ensemble eventually reduces its forces from the full ensemble to the solo flute to help provide a decline in the feelings of joy you get from drinking underage.

5. Stargazer

5. Stargazer provides a creativity in thriftiness and a working-class context to explore the idea of space travel and the efforts made by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Besos to offer space travel as a holiday option. The movement uses film footage of a dull shining star due to light pollution with text exploring my lack of interest in stargazing due to lack of resources to enjoy it (such as a good telescope and living in an area with light pollution), the desire for science to try and find new worlds to inhabit, whether poverty is a thing in space, and why billionaires want to escape the planet. The working-classness is achieved in the movement by having the text directly draw on the ideas of whether there is poverty in space and the idea that even those who are successful in capitalism want to run away. The decision to have the text be delivered live was to provide a level of intimacy found with the presence of a live person that felt necessary for the conceptual intent of the movement.

Each of these four movements provide a different level of focus towards embodying working-classness in classical music. The most explicit movements are the 1^st and 5^th due to their direct referencing of both meritocracy and poverty. The 2^nd and 4^th use the established context provided by the 1^st movement to enable more space to allow for a balancing between classical music and working-classness. With each of the movements the significance of time is also prevalent in shaping a working-class way of being. Both 1. Vice and 4. Why Doesn’t It Feel Like it Used To provide a historical look that provides a nostalgia for the past and a lack of change to the ‘present’ time. 2. Don’t Look Back and 5. Stargazer provide a look to the future, of wanting to be free of history and a desire for change from the precarity of the past. Having both the past and present interact provides the relational network that makes the subject matters for each of these movements be understood as conveying a working-class way of being.

With this relational network established, I was able to have a clear example of classical music in the 3^rd movement, 3. Interlude – I Just Wanted to Write Some Music.

3. Interlude - I Just Wanted to Write Some Music

3. Interlude – I Just Wanted to Write Some Music provides no working-class context and exists solely as an opportunity to enable a more emblematic classical musical language. The role of the movement in the piece is to provide the sensory escapism that instrumental music can provide. The musical language focuses on two primary ideas:

1.     1. A chordal motif in the ensemble accompanied by the keyboard providing repeating octave leaps to give rhythmic interest, CiT1 and CiT5.

1.     2. An E melodic minor riff that is passed around the ensemble while the keyboard provides stab chords, CiT2.

Escapism provided a key development in my understanding of how working-classness can be embodied in classical music. By having the working-class relational network established by the four blatantly working-class movements I was able to provide a space for a musical language that was more emblematic to classical music in the 3^rd movement. Learning from Escapism, I developed how I may adapt this approach in the final compositions in my folio.

Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations, The Damned, and The Weight of History and Background Etudes

Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations

Developing on from Escapism I wanted to explore whether I needed to adopt a multiple movement structure of blatantly working-class movements to allow space for more emblematic classical music. I also wanted to return to explore more explicit aspects of classical music’s culture (such as musical form). In Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations for Alto Saxophone and Film, I reconstruct the idea of a theme with variations to address ideas of code switching in working-class experiences and the impact of these changes on personal understandings of value. Code switching is a process wherein people from outsider communities adjust their personalities and identities to better suit the dominant environments they interact with (see Gardner-Chloros, 2009). In considering class-based experiences of code switching (see Ashcraft, 2012), Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations uses several scenarios as an impetus for causing changes to the musical theme. These scenarios are:

1. Figuring out what is appropriate to wear for an event at a university.
2. Navigating an unfamiliar building that is an art gallery.
3. Trying to not appear as though you are shopping for a bargain.
4. Anger and confusion as to why food is being served in an unconventional manner in a posh restaurant.
5. Irritation at methods of therapy.

In having these several scenarios connect to one another, a relational network is established to provide a deeper consideration for how class-based code-switching effects various instances of the working-class experience. By having a combination of arguably elitist spaces (a university, an art gallery, and a posh restaurant) and more public spaces (a supermarket) to provide multiple narratives of class-based code switching, the nuance and negotiation of values within class-based code switching can be shown. Again, time is used to provide a depth of consideration through highlighting the continued uncertainty with posh environments even after a considerable amount of time in higher education (bar 125 onwards)

and emphasising the change of self over time because of these different instances of code switching (from bar 263).

Each of these scenarios consist of a number of negotiations of self that are conveyed through an internal monologue. In questioning what is appropriate/inappropriate for each of the environments (e.g. knowing what you should wear to an event) and highlighting concerns of appearing appropriate (e.g. knowing the right way to experience and navigate an art gallery), the film provides a clear expression of the concerns of lacking the right capitals to fit in to each of these environments because of your class. The film also avoids over-simplifying the issue of class-based code switching by highlighting the positionality of the person in the film. In the final variation, the inner monologue acknowledges its own possible fault in whether it needed to negotiate a sense of self in these various scenarios. In doing so, the film manages to reconfigure the function of the inner monologue’s negotiations to address its own biases within these scenarios and emphasise that the various instances of code switching have been its own creation, thus a theme with variations forced by the expectations of the inner monologue. The decision to do this was to avoid the composition overly simplifying the experience of code switching and having the working-classness of the composition fall into indulging the “working-class person angry at the system" archetype (see O’Neill, 2021).

The relational network established in the film is reflected in the musical language of the composition. The creativity in thriftiness is achieved by having the main theme be slowly manipulated through a reduction of musical material to show the overall effect of trying to code switch to these numerous scenarios. The degradation of the theme consists of the following stages for each of the scenarios:

1.     1. Harmonic modulation mirroring the potential outfit choices resulting in a boring outfit being chosen and the theme being changed from Eb Major to F# Minor, CiT6. Please click on images to enlarge.

1.     2. Breaking down of the theme into smaller sections that are slowed down and sped up to emulate feelings of uncertainty and forcing progression to  navigate an art gallery, CiT 3 and CiT4 (See bar 96 in comparison to bars 101 to 110).

1.     3. Note repetition, melodic fragmentation, and big dynamic changes to convey hesitancy when shopping for a bargain, CiT1.

1.     4. Complete breakdown of theme to harsh noise to represent anger and confusion at food being served in a shovel in a posh restaurant, CiT3 (from bar 232).

1.     5. Recalling the changes that have taken place to the theme to reflect on the changes of self from going through these instances of code switching, CiT3 (from bar 256 to bar 272).

By having a creativity in thriftiness actively challenge the idea of a theme and variations the composition manages to effectively provide a new consideration for how working-classness can bring new creative considerations to classical music, wherein a musical form that is typically used to showcase a composer’s technical ability is repurposed to explore a more personal experience of change.

Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations effectively weaves a creativity in thriftiness in the musical language with the relational network established by the connecting of these different scenarios to provide a unique exploration of how working-classness can bring creative developments to classical music.  

The Damned

Having managed to provide a clear example of how working-classness can bring creative developments to classical music, I wanted to return to explore alternative scenarios in which classical music exists for the working-classes. The Damned adopts the setting of a comprehensive school music lesson to perform a recorder concerto. The teacher (the soloist) provides a lesson to the class (the ensemble) as to how to play the recorder through imitation. The pace of learning within the lesson eventually rushes to leave the ensemble unable to keep up with the soloist through overcomplications of the notation and lack of technical ability through the performance requirements on the recorder (e.g. knowing how to play certain notes). Such distancing is emphasised by a classroom assistant removing the recorders from the ensemble for their failures. By having the ensemble unable to fully participate with the performance and be forced to become a spectator to the musical activity, the composition emphasises the lack of capitals possessed by the ensemble (the audience) to create a sense of abandonment and a feeling of lacking value. An additional layer is added through the soloist’s musical material not being played properly towards the end. This provides a further distancing and highlights the wider context and significance of private tutoring within music education to ensure students may succeed in the world of classical music.

The Damned does not provide a full representation of a creativity in thriftiness. A partial creativity in thriftiness is created through the use of cheap recorders (CiT8), however the musical language is structured to deliberately leave the audience behind. At the beginning of the composition the ensemble and the soloist perform a slowly developing melody based around the three notes taught to the ensemble. The melody eventually develops to become more complicated both harmonically and rhythmically to leave the ensemble stranded and left with the understanding they do not have the capitals needed to continue to participate. In doing so, The Damned provides a similar quality to 4. Part Time by using an overabundance of material. The difference being that the overabundance of material in The Damned is to emphasise the disparity of capitals between the soloist and the ensemble. The working-class context is achieved through recreating a comprehensive school music lesson which is accompanied by a PowerPoint to aid the lesson. The PowerPoint adopts a condescending character through infantilising imagery which is eventually replaced in favour of showcasing an overcomplicated scoring of the soloist’s musical line. Providing such a contrast was to emphasise the knowledge discrepancy and further demean the ensemble due to their lack of capital.

I consider The Damned to be a better exploration of how to provide a more working-class experience of classical music in a traditional classical music performance environment by recontextualising the idea of a concerto through a comprehensive school lesson. However, I do think that The Damned could have done more to replicate a school environment in terms of its staging. I hope to explore the significance of performance environment in exploring the creative potential of working-classness in future research.

The Weight of History and Background Etudes

Having achieved an effective approach to embodying working-classness in classical music with Theme with Variations Forced by Expectations, I wanted to return to the method adopted in Escapism of having several working-class movements provide space for more emblematic classical music. While Escapism provides an embodiment of working-classness in classical music, I wanted to explore whether I can refine this embodiment further while still using the multiple movement method.   

In The Weight of History and Background Etudes for Violin and Film, I explore the Chaconne from the Bach Violin Partita No.2 in D Minor (Bach, 1717 - 1720) to provide a parallel between the histories of learning an instrument and dealing with the cultural significance of a piece of canonic repertoire. A creativity in thriftiness is achieved by having the musical language consist primarily of the opening chords from the Chaconne (CiT7). 

Similar to the approach used in the second section of Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations, the music is developed by having these chords rhythmically rock to emulate hesitancy and urgency (CiT4). 

Doing so provides the feeling that the musical line is practising to try and achieve a perfect performance of the Chaconne’s opening. Alongside the attempts to perfect the Bach Chaconne are several short film etudes. These etudes provide the relational network and working-class way of being to the composition. These etudes, continuing to use the significance of time in embodying a working-class way of being, follow a timeline from the violinist first learning to play to them learning a new piece. Developing on from both Holding and The Damned, the films take place in various rooms that look old-fashioned and outdated to help provide the working-classness in each of the scenarios. This is achieved through cheap looking antiques, old furniture, outdated technology, and a general sparsity in the rooms. By having the films provide a more working-class environment while still allowing the composition to be experienced in an emblematic classical music venue, I have been able to provide a means of connecting the working-class experience of classical music (hearing it at their home) to the expected environment of classical music (a concert/recital hall). 

Each of the film etudes shows the performer practising with the voice of a parent in the background to provide a further contextualisation of the working-class experience of learning an instrument. This contextualisation is achieved by the parents disembodied voice providing the following information in the following films:

Background Etude No.1 - The loan of an instrument from the local school rather than owning the instrument independently.

1.     Background Etude No. 2 - Recognising the music being performed (which is then contrasted with film 4).

1.     Background Etude No. 3 - Discussion of the intergenerational difference between the parent’s experience and what they aspire for their own child’s (see Sennett and Cobb, 1972).

Background Etude No. 4 - Hearing of potential future concerns potential future concerns and uncertainty over knowing the music their child is playing.

Background Etude No.5 -  Continued hearing of potential future concerns.

1.     Background Etude No. 6 - Addressing the cost of maintaining the child’s violin playing and questioning whether they should be encouraging their child to play an instrument due to concerns over money.

By having a series of etudes taking place across a period of time and interrupting the main musical component, the working-classness is embodied into the emblematic classical music to provide a new consideration for how we deal with history, both a working-class history and a classical music history. To provide a greater relationship between the film etudes and the live music, the music within the film etudes connects to the live music. By having sections of the live music be paralleled in the film etudes (film 4 and film 5), a misshaping of time is created where the film etudes are providing a hidden history to the learning of the live music. In showing this hidden history, the composition enables a greater consideration towards how environment may affect the learning of an instrument. This enables a greater connection between the live music and the film etudes to strengthen the embodiment of the working-classness into the classical music.

The Weight of History and Background Etudes employs the developments found within Escapism and Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations to effectively embody working-classness into classical music to provide new considerations for classical music’s culture and values.

The creative potential of embodying working-classness within classical music is evident throughout my portfolio. The embodiment of working-classness has provided new considerations to the culture and values of classical music through exploring its performance environment (Holding, The Damned, and The Weight of History and Background Etudes), its instruments (It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class), its musical forms (Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor and Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations), the experiences of those within the culture (Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor and The Weight of History and Background Etudes), and its musical language (Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, Baguette Baton and Escapism). In doing so, the portfolio provides a range of considerations to classical music as well as a new depth of understanding for the working-class experience that has been absent in classical music.