El Sistema as a bourgeois social project: class, gender, and Victorian values

Anna Bull

El Sistema as a bourgeois social project: class, gender, and Victorian values

Education

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This article asks why classical music in the UK, which is consumed and practiced by the middle and upper classes, is being used as a social action program for working class children in British music education schemes inspired by El Sistema. Through exploring the discourse of the social benefits of classical music in the late nineteenth century, a particular classed and gendered morality in relation to music can be traced that has parallels today. This paper argues, first, that classical music education fits with a middle-class disposition by rewarding investment in a future self; second, that it cultivates an ideal of hard work as a moral project; and third, that classical music allows young women to perform a “respectable” female identity. UK Sistema-inspired programs, in drawing on Victorian ideas of the “civilising influence” of culture, symbolise hope for the continuation of the bourgeois social project into the future.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	120-153
Number of pages	34
Journal	Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education
Volume	15
Issue number	1
Publication status	Published - 1 Jan 2016

Bibliographical note

Article does not have DOI

Keywords

class
gender
Sistema
UK
inequality
classical music education

Access to Document

https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/el-sistema-as-a-bourgeois-social-project(0a11e28b-8cd1-4adb-8ff6-38e06401f308).html

Cite this

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