In this research I have created an effective portfolio of new interdisciplinary compositions that embody working-classness into classical music. In my literature review I have investigated the ways in which class and working-classness can be understood through analysing sociological research from Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1984), Beverly Skeggs (Skeggs, 2004a; 2011), and the work of other working-class artists (Mark Anthony Turnage, Tony Harrison, and Grayson Perry) in conjunction with questioning what is classical and contemporary classical music and my use of interdisciplinarity. From this, I developed my methodology to creating my interdisciplinary compositions through considering content through my use of a creativity in thriftiness (see Teplitzky, 2022; Cooper, 1994) and context through the ideas of praxis and metapraxis from Jani Christou (1970) with the creation of Seven Working-Class Time Pieces. Developing on from Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, I created compositions that explore 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) and how the embodiment of working-classness challenges classical music’s values.
In considering future research, I do not think I will continue with an examination of working-classness in classical music in such a strict manner. In order to effectively embody working-classness in classical music I had to adopt a strict methodology to avoid what I perceive to be the stereotyping of working-classness in other media (e.g. Greek by Mark Anthony Turnage, 1988). While I could have relaxed my methodology through areas such as:
· Limiting the embodying of working-classness to media other than music (e.g. interviews with working-class people)
· Having the compositions provide a working-classness through drawing from ‘working-class’ musical origins (e.g. folk music)
· Having my compositions provide a working-classness through being performed in ‘working-class’ environments (e.g. former Working Men’s Clubs)
it would have weakened the research to having the classical music provide an aesthetic disposition (see Peterson and Simkus, 1992; Lizardo and Skiles, 2012) to working-classness and fail to fully investigate the embodiment of working-classness within classical music.
In future research, I intend to explore other artistic practices that have challenged the value practices that enable a ‘classification’ of value within society. My primary interest is in the work of the Situationist International (SI) whose work considered how through creating interruptions to everyday life they could challenge the imposing presence capitalism has in making people become passive spectators to their lives (Debord, 1967; Hemmens and Zagarias, 2020). Considering SI practices I intend to develop and refine their work to effectively challenge particular concerns of modern life such as the use of AI to bring dead celebrities back from the dead for financial profit (e.g. Carrie Fisher in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker and Harold Amis in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, see Velasquez, 2023) and the maintaining of arguably unnecessary jobs (see Graber, 2018).
While I do not wish to continue to research working-classness and classical music in as strict a manner, I feel it is important to outline potential avenues for other researchers to consider. As all of the compositions have stemmed from my own personal working-class experience in relation to pre-existing qualitative research on working-class lives, there is potential for future research to be created that explores intersectional working-class experiences, such as class and gender (see Skeggs, 2004a) and class and race (see Akala, 2019). There is also potential in exploring working-classness and classical music through a greater consideration of space and place, and how particular working-class localities may be used to provide new creative developments to classical music (see McKenzie, 2015). In considering working-classness and classical music, there is also the potential of exploring other working-class composers and re-examining their creative outputs through the consideration of their class background (such as Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies) and the potential connections their class background have on their musical language. Such research could provide both new considerations to classical music as an art form and how classical music’s culture is enacted by the members of its culture. There are also further considerations of how specific interdisciplinary methods may provide a means of exploring the creative potential of working-classness in classical music, such as artificial intelligence and its potential threat to working-class jobs (see Kelley, 2021). These are just some potential areas of research that can be explored to provide a deeper consideration for how working-classness can bring creative developments to classical music.
In my own research, I have managed to effectively provide new creative potential to classical music by exploring numerous means in which working-classness can be embodied within classical music. Each of the compositions within my portfolio provide a depth of working-class experience that challenges the stereotypical understandings of working-class people and the culture and values that have constructed classical music as it is experienced today. Through adopting a creativity in thriftiness and a relational network, I have managed to have working-classness be present in both the creative process of composition and in the reception of how we understand classical music through its performance.
Time has been a considerable element for myself in exploring working-classness and classical music. With the working-class experience of time often being an attempt to recover from the past while trying to survive the present in the hopes of a better future, I hope my research provides a voice in ensuring that classical music can be accessible to all and that numerous working-class voices will be present and ingrained in developing classical music’s future.