MUSIC and CAPITALISM

Beschreibung

This book argues that the need for music, and the ability to produce and enjoy it is an essential element in human nature. Every society in history has produced some characteristic style of music. Music, like the other arts, tells us truths about the world through its impact on our emotional life. There is a structural correspondence between society and music. The emergence of 'modern art music' and its stylistic changes since the rise of capitalist social relations reflect the development of capitalist society since the decline of European feudalism. The leading composers of the different eras expressed in music the aspirations of the dominant or aspiring social classes. Changes in musical style not only reflect but in turn help to shape changes in society. This book analyses the stylistic changes in music from the emergence of ‘tonality’ in the late 17th century until the Second World War.

Sabby Sagall is former Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of East London, UK. He writes regularly for the Socialist Review and Socialist Worker, and is the author of Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism, and Genocide (2013).

This book argues that the need for music, and the ability to produce and enjoy it, is an essential element in human nature. Every society in history has produced some characteristic style of music. Music, like the other arts, tells us truths about the world through its impact on our emotional life. There is a structural correspondence between society and music. The emergence of 'modern art music' and its stylistic changes since the rise of capitalist social relations reflect the development of capitalist society since the decline of European feudalism. The leading composers of the different eras expressed in music the aspirations of the dominant or aspiring social classes. Changes in musical style not only reflect but in turn help to shape changes in society. This book analyses the stylistic changes in music from the emergence of ‘tonality’ in the late seventeenth century until the Second World War.

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Sabby Sagall

Themen in »MUSIC and CAPITALISM«

Capitalism Art Melody Harmony Rhythm Classical Romantic Modernist Baroque Beethoven Brecht Fischer musical production musical education bourgeois

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“In a bold, highly schematic attempt to reinterpret the history of ‘classical’ music, its composers and their works as embodying the ever-shifting sociopolitical trends of the times, Sagall leads us from the dominant aristocracy of the Baroque era through the rising industrial bourgeoisie that endorsed the rebellious ‘Romanticism’ of Beethoven and his successors to the fractured capitalism of 20th century atonalism and beyond.” —Daniel Snowman, author of A Social History of Opera

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