# Was classical music composed for a narrow audience?



## Guest (Aug 7, 2016)

In another thread about listening to the unfamiliar, it struck me more forcefully than ever that prior to the age of recording, classical music either had to be so repetitive that it could be grasped at one sitting, or the audience had to be musically sophisticated to comprehend the work. Obviously, early composers needed patronage and later composers needed performances, so they had to take listeners' needs into account to some extent, but I get the impression that they rather took them for granted, composing what they wanted regardless of the ability of the paying 'public' (not to be confused with the general public of course) to understand the music.

The most striking example I have come across is Mahler's 3rd Symphony, which runs to more than 90 minutes. Few, if any listening to this for the first time could possibly have comprehended its 'meaning' (or even understood the 'programme' of ideas that prompted Mahler to write it - which he reportedly shared with others, though not the public).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Mahler)

We now have the luxury of recordings that enable multiple listenings, and I've found it sufficiently attractive to want to persevere with it, having watched the LSO, conducted by Haitink at the Proms, just one and a half times.

I'm posting this question because I'm interested in this idea, and not because I want to complain, nor to expose elitism (at least, not that variety that implies superiority). I'd like to find whether there is agreement on what seems to be a very straightforward fact.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

In the 19th century, the music was not necessarily written to be grasped at a single hearing (nor in the 18th century was this possible with the more complex works of Mozart, for example, to say nothing of Bach). Instead of recordings, people purchased piano arrangements of orchestral works, usually for piano four-hands to preserve as much as possible of the originals, and these would serve to help familiarize both musicians and interested amateurs with the work.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Was classical music composed for a narrow audience? *

In my experience drawn from attending concerts in several of our nation's great concert halls, I must say "yes" to this question. Seldom have I had enough "elbow room" to fully enjoy sitting for hours in a concert. And I am not an especially "wide" person. So ... I suspect that the "narrower" a person is, the better suited is that person to the confining seat in the contemporary concert hall.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

My impression of the relationship between composer and audience in the historic past can be conveyed by this letter from Mozart to his father regarding the first performance of his "Paris" symphony:



> Just in the middle of the first Allegro there was a passage which I felt sure must please. The audience was quite carried away-and there was a tremendous burst of applause. But as I knew, when I wrote it, what effect it would surely produce, I had introduced the passage again at the close-when there were shouts of 'Da capo'. The Andante also found favor, but particularly the last Allegro, because, having observed that all last as well as first Allegros begin here with all the instruments playing together and generally unison, I began mine with two violins only, piano for the first eight bars-followed instantly by a forte; the audience, as I expected, said 'hush' at the soft beginning, and when they heard the forte, began at once to clap their hands.


This implies a two-way relationship - the audience has a certain amount of knowledge and expects the composer to take them on a particular kind of journey, while the composer, like an expert tour guide, uses his awareness of their knowledge to give them what they want while also subverting their expectations in a positive way.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

When concerts started with John Banister, the audience had the right to demand what was played. Equally, a competent musician could attend for free.

Much of the music in the 18th century theatre was made up of pastiches of older works. Handel was notorious for re-using his material and Vivaldi was accused of having only one concerto.

Rather than the later piano, the domestic music scene would have developed from a chest of viols via arrangements for fiddles, cello, and continuo.

Bach assumed that a player would have a thorough knowledge of harmony as well much as the ABRSM requires theory study before allowing players to progress to the higher grades.

All of this tells us that an audience would have a good working knowledge of the conventions and be able to cope with them.

Music was written for an educated audience but not a narrow audience.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Taggart said:


> When concerts started with John Banister, the audience had the right to demand what was played. Equally, a competent musician could attend for free.
> 
> Much of the music in the 18th century theatre was made up of pastiches of older works. Handel was notorious for re-using his material and Vivaldi was accused of having only one concerto.
> 
> ...


Agree but given the percentage of musically-educated people, one could argue "educated"="narrow".

Also, I believe people are *still *accusing Vivaldi of only having one concerto


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Sometimes I wonder who the audience for a piece like Finnissy's History of Photography is -- it's so full of inter-textual references, which is what makes it function as music I suppose, that it's obviously aimed for people far more erudite than I am. Also Ferneyhough's Shadowtime. 

Neal Zaslaw argues something similar for Mozart's Jupiter symphony.

Contrary to the OP I don't think length is necessarily an issue, Mahler 3 seems transparent to me, not at all arcane -- or maybe I've missed something!


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Taggart said:


> When concerts started with John Banister, the audience had the right to demand what was played. Equally, a competent musician could attend for free.
> 
> Much of the music in the 18th century theatre was made up of pastiches of older works. Handel was notorious for re-using his material and Vivaldi was accused of having only one concerto.
> 
> ...


I say Amen to this .:tiphat:


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> In the 19th century, the music was not necessarily written to be grasped at a single hearing (nor in the 18th century was this possible with the more complex works of Mozart, for example, to say nothing of Bach). Instead of recordings, people purchased piano arrangements of orchestral works, usually for piano four-hands to preserve as much as possible of the originals, and these would serve to help familiarize both musicians and interested amateurs with the work.


I can see how this would have helped, though as compositions became more complex, the value of this must have diminished. I can't help thinking that a piano transcription of Mahler's 3rd Symphony might not convey the whole import of the work! Were there piano transcriptions of, say, Eroica?



Nereffid said:


> My impression of the relationship between composer and audience in the historic past can be conveyed by this letter from Mozart to his father regarding the first performance of his "Paris" symphony:


I think it also illustrates that for many, grasping the "meaning" of a work was much less important than simply enjoying the musical experience as it happened. To that extent, composers could be said to compose for any audience.



Taggart said:


> When concerts started with John Banister, the audience had the right to demand what was played. Equally, a competent musician could attend for free.
> 
> Much of the music in the 18th century theatre was made up of pastiches of older works. Handel was notorious for re-using his material and Vivaldi was accused of having only one concerto.
> 
> ...


I recognise that the further back in time you go, the more you might see a closer relationship between composer/performer and audience. All of this seems to relate to a time before the burgeoning complexity of concert performances for an even-more-educated audience.



TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> Agree but given the percentage of musically-educated people, one could argue "educated"="narrow".


Precisely.



Mandryka said:


> Contrary to the OP I don't think length is necessarily an issue, Mahler 3 seems transparent to me, not at all arcane -- or maybe I've missed something!


I don't think length "is *necessarily *an issue" - it just so happened that I was prompted by this particularly long symphony. However, as compositions became longer, denser, containing less repetition or familiarity, it must have been increasingly difficult to understand.

Since the commercialisation of recording and playback devices did not really begin until the end of the 19th C, how often might an audience have heard a symphony by Mahler, or Bruckner? And how often would earlier symphonies by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven have been performed?


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> I can see how this would have helped, though as compositions became more complex, the value of this must have diminished. I can't help thinking that a piano transcription of Mahler's 3rd Symphony might not convey the whole import of the work! Were there piano transcriptions of, say, Eroica?


Naturally there were. The IMSLP page for the work (click the "Arrangements/Transcriptions" tab) has a number of versions that were made in the 19th century, including one by Czerny:
http://ks.imslp.info/files/imglnks/...hoven-Czerny_Symphonie_Nr.3_piano_4_hands.pdf



MacLeod said:


> Since the commercialisation of recording and playback devices did not really begin until the end of the 19th C, how often might an audience have heard a symphony by Mahler, or Bruckner? And how often would earlier symphonies by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven have been performed?


Mahler's Third Symphony was not heard in its entirety until several years after it was composed, and it was not played twice in the same location within Mahler's lifetime, to my knowledge.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

MacLeod said:


> The most striking example I have come across is Mahler's 3rd Symphony, which runs to more than 90 minutes. Few, if any listening to this for the first time could possibly have comprehended its 'meaning' (or even understood the 'programme' of ideas that prompted Mahler to write it - which he reportedly shared with others, though not the public).


Well, as someone who sat through it all without pause for a first time (after just familiarizing myself with the 1st movement in a lot of "lazy listening") just a few months ago, I'd imagine that anyone who heard it for the first time might have to realize that they aren't going to 'grasp it' but that they can 'enjoy it' as though it were a movie. A musically inclined person who enjoy music moment to moment, and is comfortable with or willing to step out of their comfort zone for Mahler's musical style, should not have a problem getting really into it, unless they just don't jive with it personally. But for me personally, I do not need to understand structure for the rest of the music to be enjoyed. It all comes in time, but in the mean time, you are experiencing a sound movie, sit back and listen!

The music most of us idolize now was much newer back then, and lots of people who are less historically and intellectually inclined, and maybe with less pretense to being a musician, would have been exposed to music we now cal 'classical.' I think this 'classical music' was pretty widespread amongst the urban and/or educated population, at various levels and with various distributions of style to demographic. I can't give you the specifics on it, this is just speculation so take it for what it is worth. But my point is, all kinds of people would have felt this was a sensation and a norm to some degree, and thus the group mentality of trends and fads may have contributed to a widespread public ability to be reasonably interested in things like opera, and to a lesser degree(slight or great depending on region), symphonic concert music. Chamber music was also not far away, and the sheet music market was booming for a reason. Culturally speaking, I'd imagine that people didn't have to go as far out on a limb to be interested in music of their day. Today, it's really niche because it's history as well as beautiful music, and so much new music is what defines generations of today.


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## Miles120 (Aug 11, 2016)

Very interesting Discussion. 

Yes, i think it was composed for a narrow audience. After all, records and Cd's have made music easily accessible to all classes within a society. However, one can assume that those who heard classical music live were privileged within the given society; due to the exclusive nature of the distribution (i.e, live performances). Again, one can assume that those who could afford a piano and the written arrangements to play it at home were privileged. I am no expert or scholar on the matter, so take this comment with a pinch of salt. Its based largely on the assumption that early classical music was distributed along class lines.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Funny that nobody has mentioned vocal music. I would imagine vocal musical forms connected with listeners more immediately than complex instrumental works. And its function was not primarily entertainment until the development of opera in the late 16th century. Opera began as entertainment for small court audiences, but within 40 years it began to be composed and programmed for a larger public. Much of its early success relied on the superior works of Monteverdi. And the definition of the word opera means work both in the sense of the labor done, and the work produced.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

If we think only of the aristocracy and the bourgeois, most music was composed for a fairly wide audience. If we include the peasants and the urban poor, most music - basic church music excepted - was composed for a fairly small audience.

But we never do think of those latter classes, so most music was composed for a fairly wide audience.


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## Hildadam Bingor (May 7, 2016)

science said:


> If we think only of the aristocracy and the bourgeois, most music was composed for a fairly wide audience. If we include the peasants and the urban poor, most music - basic church music excepted - was composed for a fairly small audience.
> 
> But we never do think of those latter classes, so most music was composed for a fairly wide audience.


This is true if "bourgeois" is understand as including the "petit bourgeoisie" - the class that makes history - which is sometimes is but sometimes isn't.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Classical music is definitely not composed for a mass audience but for an audience of a particular taste/preference eve since the piece was first composed. It's a historical fact. But what is more interesting today is that older music is now far more available than ever before because of performers, recording technology and the internet. But today classical music as we all know, is still only listened by a minority of the population.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

People experience a piece in different ways; just listen to the chitchat around you on the way out of the concert hall next time. Sometimes it's hard to believe that we were all at the same concert  

People will "get" a piece, or not, at different levels. Some of them will be prompted by something in the piece to sit and reflect on something personal that needs to be reflected on, and while they may in one sense ignore large sections of the piece, the piece has done something important for their day and maybe even their life.
Some people will try to follow along with what the composer's intentions were, and maybe they get it or maybe they get a part of it, or maybe they get something that the composer never intended but would have loved.
Some people have just learned about some technical element of music for the first time and now they're seeing it everywhere, as happens when we learn about some element of art for the first time.
Some people just love one of the performers.
Some people are just using the music as pleasant background noise for whatever else they may be doing.

I think it's always been that way, if you allow for changes in concert-going habits (for example, sitting silently in a darkened concert hall is a relatively new habit)

Ideally everyone is charmed by something in the music.
At the very least, we hope that no one falls asleep


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

My impression, totally without proof, is that a broad range of people started to see music as an art of great interest during the classical period. Certainly Mozart’s music crossed the bridge between aristocrats and the middle class, and between the middle class and the lower -- at least in Leipzig and music-mad Vienna. By Beethoven’s time, even servants in the palaces of the greats might have a strong interest and even an expertise in serious music, not much different from aficionados of today – the movie “Eroica” plays with this conceit.

Obviously music was still written “for” those who paid for it, but more and more the payers were a broad cross-section of the general public, the buyers of sheet music. Almost all of Beethoven’s later income for instance, if not earned as a performer, came from publishers of sheet music. This was an uncertain economic life, and he got only partial relief from an aristocratic stipend granted him about 1809. From that point forward, the audience for “classical” music probably wasn’t much different from its audience today.

As I say, this is a general impression. I have seen nothing analyzing the question.


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## Guest (Aug 12, 2016)

So to return to my first example, Mahler composed the 3rd symphony either not worrying whether anyone would understand that it was 'about'...



> "Pan Awakes, Summer Marches In"
> "What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me"
> "What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me"
> "What Man Tells Me"
> ...


...or satisfied that some knowledgeable few might get it.
...or in the full knowledge that he had written it only for people who had the capability to understand it at one sitting, or subsequently by purchasing a piano transcription.

Curiously, Mahler elaborates on the programme in letters to friends. I note that others do the same (Bruckner re his 8th, for example). That seems to confirm that the programme is only significant for the composer and he is not interested in whether anyone gets it...except his friends. Therefore I infer that some composers believed that music could convey a programme and it was important enough to them to confide in their friends, regardless of the reception by the wider public. To that extent, it might be said that in fact, some composers wrote for a very narrow audience indeed: themselves and their close friends!


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

KenOC said:


> By Beethoven's time, even servants in the palaces of the greats might have a strong interest and even an expertise in serious music, not much different from aficionados of today - the movie "Eroica" plays with this conceit.
> 
> Obviously music was still written "for" those who paid for it, but more and more the payers were a broad cross-section of the general public, the buyers of sheet music. Almost all of Beethoven's later income for instance, if not earned as a performer, came from publishers of sheet music. This was an uncertain economic life, and he got only partial relief from an aristocratic stipend granted him about 1809. From that point forward, the audience for "classical" music probably wasn't much different from its audience today.
> 
> As I say, this is a general impression. I have seen nothing analyzing the question.


I would like to see figures telling us what percentage of the population could afford to regularly attend concerts or buy sheet music, because my impression has been that before the 20th century a substantial minority of people were just about at subsistence levels. I've also read elsewhere (can't remember where, sorry, so I'm willing to concede I'm wrong on it) something to the effect that the poorest people at a Beethoven concert were usually the musicians themselves.
I'm not sure exactly how far down the social pyramid classical music could actually trickle (Prince Lobkowitz's servants aside, of course!).


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Nereffid said:


> I'm not sure exactly how far down the social pyramid classical music could actually trickle (Prince Lobkowitz's servants aside, of course!).


Depends on the society. Carolan's father was a blacksmith yet his son met Geminiani in Dublin. In Scotland, you have the Earl of Kellie who went to Mannheim to study under the elder Johann Stamitz working alongside people like William Marshall who began as a dancing master. There was always an opportunity for a skilled youth to progress through musical ability and to some extent that gave them the incentive to develop their skills. In England there was also the opportunity to progress through church music.

Niel Gow was a weaver to trade but again had a taste for the minuets - according to his son. Equally as a fiddler playing for the gentry, he would be expected to be acquainted with the latest tastes in music rather than just the folk music for which he is famous.

As to sheet music, it would be common for the major musical society in a town to have a library of sheet music which its members could borrow from in order to prepare their concerts - see this thesis on The Edinburgh Musical Society : its membership and repertoire, 1728-1797 for details of purchases by the Society and payment to professional musicians.

I am not as familiar with continental practices, but would assume that there would be similar examples.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> So to return to my first example, Mahler composed the 3rd symphony either not worrying whether anyone would understand that it was 'about'...
> 
> ...or satisfied that some knowledgeable few might get it.
> ...or in the full knowledge that he had written it only for people who had the capability to understand it at one sitting, or subsequently by purchasing a piano transcription.
> ...


Actually, the later in Mahler's life, the less highly he thought of programs. The famous and very descriptive program that's frequently reprinted in concert notes for the Second, for example, Mahler dismissed as an extremely superficial level of understanding the work. What Mahler's music is "about" is always in the music, and the programs are merely an attempt to get people to hear it on some level. Then they may be safely discarded, as even in cases where he took some programmatic inspiration, Mahler moved beyond it in the process of composing.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Actually, the later in Mahler's life, the less highly he thought of programs. The famous and very descriptive program that's frequently reprinted in concert notes for the Second, for example, Mahler dismissed as an extremely superficial level of understanding the work. What Mahler's music is "about" is always in the music, and the programs are merely an attempt to get people to hear it on some level. Then they may be safely discarded, as even in cases where he took some programmatic inspiration, Mahler moved beyond it in the process of composing.


A recent source that elaborates this topic and directly addresses Mahler's Third is this dissertation from 2010, which is (or was) available online for free download:

Timothy David Freeze, _Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony: Program, Reception, and Evocations of the Popular_.

Some specific quotations supporting and extending Mahlerian's points include:

"In 1902, Mahler reiterated the purpose of the Third Symphonies titles, by then discarded: 'At the time, those title were my attempt to give non-musicians a handle and signpost for the intellectual and, more importantly, the emotional content of the individual movements and their relationship to one another and to the work as a whole."

"Mahler preferred to steer clear of 'New German pedantry' [referring to advocates of program music like Liszt and later Strauss] and to contrast himself with Strauss, as Arthur Seidl had once put it in a letter. Mahler replied: "You are right, that my music 'arrives at a program as the final, ideal clarification, whereas for Strauss the program is an assigned task.'"

"Mahler's criticisms are important for what they imply about his own written programs: they were hapless attempts to capture in words meanings that were essentially musical"


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

SONNET CLV said:


> *Was classical music composed for a narrow audience? *
> 
> In my experience drawn from attending concerts in several of our nation's great concert halls, I must say "yes" to this question. Seldom have I had enough "elbow room" to fully enjoy sitting for hours in a concert. And I am not an especially "wide" person. So ... I suspect that the "narrower" a person is, the better suited is that person to the confining seat in the contemporary concert hall.


You have to remember, that before recording and player pianos, this was the ONLY way you could get to hear music, unless you made it yourself or somebody played it.


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## Johnnie Burgess (Aug 30, 2015)

millionrainbows said:


> You have to remember, that before recording and player pianos, this was the ONLY way you could get to hear music, unless you made it yourself or somebody played it.


There was no other way before recording.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2016)

Mahlerian said:


> What Mahler's music is "about" is always in the music, and the programs are merely an attempt to get people to hear it on some level.





EdwardBast said:


> "Mahler's criticisms are important for what they imply about his own written programs: they were hapless attempts to capture in words meanings that were essentially musical"


Of course. I am not claiming that any of the titles first attached, then discarded, are what the symphony is 'about', nor, by implication, that Mahler was a writer of mere program music. (Though from my admittedly superficial reading, it seems that Mahler did not reject the idea of using fairly explicit and concrete subjects as source material for his music - eg "The second part of the 8th symphony follows the narrative of the final stages in Goethe's Faust"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Mahler)#Part_II:_Closing_scene_from_Goethe.27s_Faust ).

My point is that even this great symphonist would have said that his music was 'about' something, and my question related to the idea that for anyone to get what it was about, they would have had to have a fairly sophisticated understanding of musical forms and traditions on which they could draw at one sitting. This was just as true of his later as of his earlier works. Wiki quotes famous musicians who've had things to say about his 9th Symphony:



> [Mahler's] Ninth is most strange. In it, the author hardly speaks as an individual any longer. It almost seems as though this work must have a concealed author who used Mahler merely as his spokesman, as his mouthpiece. This symphony is no longer couched in the personal tone. It consists, so to speak, of objective, almost passionless [_fast leidenschaftslose_] statements of a beauty which becomes perceptible only to one who can dispense with animal warmth [_animalische Wärme_] and feels at home in spiritual coolness [_geistiger Kühle_]. (Arnold Schoenberg)





> It expresses an extraordinary love of the earth, for Nature. (Alban Berg)


As for the idea that the masses of the 18th and 19th C had regular access to classical music concerts...!?


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