Working-class actors, Class and classical music
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Working class actors: Laurie Taylor asks if acting is becoming an increasingly exclusive and elite profession. He talks to the actor Julie Hesmondhalgh and to Dave O'Brien, Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Edinburgh, and author of a new study which suggests that working class actors face increasing economic, as well as cultural obstacles, comparable to skydiving without a parachute. Also, class and classical music. Anna Bull, lecturer in the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies at the University of Portsmouth, considers why this musical genre is seen as such a middle class preserve.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.5 | This is a Thinking Loud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and |
| 0:37.0 | much, much more about thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co. UK. |
| 0:43.0 | Be my law for no one else can end this yearning this need that you and you alone create. Hello. Yes, it was Mario Lanza who started all the trouble. You see before he arrived |
| 1:09.2 | on our living room radiogram my sister I could play as much Elvis or Cliff Richard as we wanted but |
| 1:14.0 | Mario Lanza was Dad's record and it was special because in Dad's words it wasn't |
| 1:20.0 | muck it was classical. There be no one but you for me. |
| 1:27.0 | Eternally. Well, it paved the way for my humiliation at school. |
| 1:37.0 | When to some hilarity I said, I quite like classical music actually especially Mary |
| 1:44.4 | O'Lanza. It's also a memory that confirms my sense as I settle down in the |
| 1:49.3 | Barbican hall for an evening of Beethovenor Brahms that I don't have as much right to be in this place |
| 1:54.9 | as all those solidly engrossed music lovers in the neighbouring seats. |
| 2:00.1 | I've always suspected that this ambivalence towards classical music the feeling that one should like it |
| 2:04.5 | but also the feeling that it somehow belongs to others is class related. |
| 2:09.0 | But I now have a chance to put some empirical dressing on that supposition because I'm joined by Anna Bull who is a lecturer in |
| 2:14.9 | sociology at the University of Portsmouth and the co-author of a new paper in the journal Cultural |
... |
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