Working Class-ical Music: Exploring the creative potential of embodying working-classness in a folio of new interdisciplinary compositions

AIDAN Teplitzky

In my practice-based research I have developed a portfolio of new interdisciplinary compositions that explore the creative potential of embodying working-classness in classical music. The impact of my research is the production of a portfolio of compositions that effectively provide new considerations to various aspects of classical music’s culture, including: • Performance Environment (Holding, The Damned, and The Weight of History and Background Etudes) • Instrumentation (It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class) • Musical forms (Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor and Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations) • The experience of those working in/engaging with classical music’s culture (Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor and The Weight of History and Background Etudes) • Musical language (Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, Baguette Baton and Escapism). The following exposition also provides a resource to address the stereotyping of working-classness in contemporary creative outputs, a methodology for how working-classness can be embodied in artistic practice, a display of how interdisciplinary methods can be used to effectively express the working-class experience, and a space for other working-class artists to express their class through classical music.