Composing Capital

Classical Music in the Neoliberal Era

Marianna Ritchey

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780226640235, 9780226640068
• eBook ISBN: 9780226640372
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

The familiar old world of classical music, with its wealthy donors and ornate concert halls, is changing. The patronage of a wealthy few is being replaced by that of corporations, leading to new unions of classical music and contemporary capitalism. In Composing Capital, Marianna Ritchey lays bare the appropriation of classical music by the current neoliberal regime, arguing that artists, critics, and institutions have aligned themselves—and, by extension, classical music itself—with free-market ideology. More specifically, she demonstrates how classical music has lent its cachet to marketing schemes, tech firm-sponsored performances, and global corporate partnerships. As Ritchey shows, the neoliberalization of classical music has put music at the service of contemporary capitalism, blurring the line between creativity and entrepreneurship, and challenging us to imagine how a noncommodified musical practice might be possible in today's world.

Index

Adorno, Theodor W.: on atomized listening, 127–28; on autonomy, 9–10, 140, 145; on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, 126–28; and critique, 16–17, 159; on music’s potential to change society, 152–53; on new music, 80; and the New Musicology, 9–10; on repetition, 127; on subjective freedom, 147–48; on tradition, 123

Afrofuturism, 44

“Aging of the New Music, The” (Adorno), 80

alienation: of audiences by modernism, 3, 8, 65–66, 69, 77, 153; autonomous music and, 10, 127, 152; contemporary composers’ attempts to resolve, 53; of labor, 56, 187n20; as a social problem, 56, 83, 148–49, 187n20

Alsop, Marin, 25

Amadeus (film), 12

Apple (corporation), 38, 42, 47, 115, 136, 138, 141. See also Jobs, Steve

Applebaum, Richard, 34

appropriation, cultural, 70–71, 81

artistic critique of capitalism. See under Boltanski and Chiapello

Attali, Jacques, 152; and neoliberalism, 11–12; and the New Musicology, 10

audience (in classical music): hatred of, 8, 66; pleasing or reaching of, 3, 4, 19, 65–66, 69, 77–78, 80, 94, 97, 144, 147, 153, 176n52; widening of, 19, 25, 30, 65, 92, 118–19, 128, 140. See also participatory art

automation, 23, 51

autonomy, 6, 7; the academy and, 24, 66; Adorno and, 140, 145; collective vs. individual, 61, 75, 83, 144–46; as musical ideal, 9, 144, 160–61; musicology and, 7–10; as resistance against market logic, 8–9, 24, 55, 66, 144–46, 160–61

avant-garde, 47, 58, 70, 77–78, 95, 111, 147, 176n52

Avila, Eric, 108

Babbitt, Milton, 8–9, 65–66

Babes in Toyland (band), 84

Bach, J. S., 20, 26

Bang on a Can, 60, 78

Barton, William, 42

Baskin, Ozgur, 41, 42

Bates, Mason: education and awards, 21, 24; and tech entrepreneurship, 47–48, 55; and techno, 25, 30–32; “Mothership,” 26, 30–33, 35, 44–45; The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• introduction / Music and Neoliberalism
• one / Innovating Classical Music
• two / “Indie” Individualism
• three / Opera and/as Gentrification
• four / Intel Beethoven: The New Spirit of Classical Music
• conclusion / Music against Capitalism
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index