On 26 May 2007 at 18:01, Mariposa Symphony Orchestra wrote: > The whole point of this sidebar thread (and to which I believe you > agreed) is that 'classical' music in 19th century America was a tad > more ubiquitous than may be the perception.
I think you're completely missing the point. The real point is that our modern distinction of "classical" vs. "popular" didn't really exist. A lot of things that we consider "art" today were seen commonly in popular venues. But I don't believe that anything close to a majority of the popular entertainments put on in these "opera houses" were art music at all, partly because the distinction post-dates the period, but also because even if we were to apply this anachronistic definition of "art music", I believe that the prevalence of things we'd see today as art music was pretty small as a percentage of the season's program in the vast majority of these "opera houses." The exceptions to this would be the big cities with large ethnic populations from cultures that liked their opera (mostly the Italians and Germans). I believe there weren't large enough ethnic enclaves in very many places at all to support pure opera houses in the same sense that the Met is an opera house. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
