How classical music is embedded in a cultural public sphere?

Juan Wang

doi:10.5216/mh.v17i2.46860

Abstract

Classical music as a special form of culture has been widely defined within an ideological and social sphere in people’s everyday life. A particular form of power structure has encouraged individual musicians or music events organisers to re-think the relationship between the governmental structure and individual agencies within the local music sphere. It has become clear that musical exercise is not simply invented by individual musicians or individual music organisations, but through their political cultural sphere and through society. This paper discusses the nature of democracy over classical music and explores classical music in the context of cultural public sphere by theoretically reflecting the notion of public sphere by Habermas, and argues that the policy for classical music is all about bringing democracy to the local public, but, on the other hand, the local public still have concerns on whether local government really takes the necessary steps to make democracy widely available for all forms of music organisations and for everybody in the cultural sphere. The papers also discusses how the culture democracy exercise at a local music level, and explores that music education policy system together with an effective musical education curriculum should also play a positive role in addressing such concerns.

Highlights

Como a música clássica está inserida em uma esfera pública de cultura? Resumo: A música clássica como forma especial de cultura tem sido amplamente definida dentro de uma esfera ideológica e social na vida cotidiana das pessoas
The question to be raised here is what is the relationship among cultural policy, cultural industry and the market mechanism in relation to the issues on individualism and cultural consumption?
McGUIGAN (2004) says that “for Adorno and Horkheimer, commodity exchange and serial production signaled the degeneration of culture under monopoly capitalism

Summary

Classical music and Class distinction

The approach of consumption has always been associated with the patterns of inequality and social differentiation, with the consumer reproducing their class position (BOURDIEU, 1984). It is not hard to see that Bourdieu’s position is based on a vision of humanity that art rejects; he argues that taste is based on an aversion to the “facile,” by which he means the immediate, the bodily, and the simple (JOHNSON, 2002) This is further illustrated in Bourdieu’s (1986) demonstration of how class distinctions are reinforced by the criteria for the selection and presentation of food that have nothing to do with its nutritional value. There are diverse voices, such as Richard HOGGART (1995), who was beginning to mount a critical appraisal of the traditional division between high arts and popular culture and call attention to the depoliticizing effects of the established cultural consensus Such lines of criticism had relatively little purchase on the policies of the mainstream political left, for whom the cultural agenda was mainly a matter of disseminating official culture to the public in general (WILLIAMS, 1979; HEWISON, 1987). Cultural practitioners and the public should adopt a liberal view towards understanding cultural value, while a liberal attitude towards cultural diversity should appear among relevant cultural practitioners, especially government officers

Power and resistance at a local public sphere

Classical music reflecting local public value