Sounds of the Metropolis: The Nineteenth-Century Popular Music Revolution (in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna).

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On hearing the words 'popular music revolution,' thoughts are likely to turn to the decade of the 1950s when rock 'n' roll overturned established ideas about the character and style of popular music. Alternatively, one might assume that the topic was the jazz of New Orleans and its legacy in the syncopated dance styles that preceded rock 'n' roll. However, the nineteenth century witnessed a revolution in popular music. No longer was the popular style something that offered a more easily digested concoction of the techniques and cultural values found in high-status music. Popular styles began to assert their independence and distinct values. By the end of the century, as a result of the growth of the music market and the increased professionalism in the musical world, there was a variety of popular genres, each with its own peculiar characteristics. London, New York, Paris, and Vienna feature prominently as cities in which the challenge to the classical tradition was strongest, and in which original and influential forms of popular music arose. Indeed, these cities were home to four distinct revolutions in popular style: London was the birthplace of music hall, New York of minstrelsy, Paris of cabaret, and Vienna of popular dance music/genres that endured well into the twentieth century.The reader may wonder what I mean by writing of a popular music revolution. I trust that my research will demonstrate that such a term is not inappropriate, and I also hope that it will make clear that I am referring to a revolution in musical style as well as genre. This revolution was driven by social changes and the incorporation of music into a system of capitalist enterprise: it resulted in a polarization between the style of musical entertainment (or 'commercial' music) and that of 'serious' art. Nobody doubts that this fissure between art and entertainment was created in the nineteenth century. Henry Raynor speaks of the 'great schism,' and Theodor Adorno of the 'scars' left on western music culture as a consequence of nineteenth-century commercialism. I wanted, in this research project, to select the key genres and styles that precipitated musical change at that time, and that continued to impact upon popular music in the next century. By the end of the nineteenth century, popular music could no longer be viewed as watered down or more easily assimilated art music; it had its own characteristic techniques, forms, and devices.While acknowledging the importance of social and cultural context, I also wish to analyze the musical features that constitute the new popular styles. I argue that 'popular' refers here, for the first time, not only to the music's reception, but also to the presence of these specific features of style. The term 'light' [leicht] was coined to act as a descriptor of this particular musical character. This new categorization of music production was inextricably linked to the industrial production of sheet music and the growth of the music entertainment business; yet, significantly, it meant that it became possible for a composition to be popular in style without necessarily being popular in terms of commercial success. Thus, the shift in meaning of 'popular' provided critics with a means of condemning music that bore the signs of the popular/which they regarded as fashionable and facile, rather than progressive and serious/whether or not such music enjoyed success in the market place. The impact of the popular music revolution reverberated into the twentieth century, and it became an incontrovertible truth for modernists like Pierre Boulez that music written in a popular style was tantamount to music written for sale (the creation of 'objects of musical consumption') and, consequently, it was anathema to the composer of 'serious' or 'learned' music.