Boundary-Drawing around the Proper

Abstract

This chapter draws on the musical biographies of the young people in this study to map out the ‘institutional ecology’ of youth classical music in England. Music conservatoires and exam boards, many established during the late Victorian period, were influential in consecrating classical music as more valuable than other genres by institutionalizing musical standards. During the 1880s and 1890s, these institutions served a demand for training ‘respectable’ middle-class femininity and reinforcing boundaries between middle and working classes. The chapter concludes by examining how this boundary-drawing around the ‘proper’ was reproduced by young people in this study today through ideas of what counted as ‘serious’ or ‘proper’ music. Such taste boundaries work to safeguard classical music’s privileged status in education and funding and reinforce its association with valued class identities.