volution of the Concept of Popularity of a Classical Musician: Historical and Cultural Analysis

Music culture plays an important role in historical development of culture. Performers face the problems of finding their place in the world, choosing the trajectory for their personal evolution and professional development and nowadays these issues have become pressing for the professional community of musicians. One of the complex issues researchers need to address is the evolution of the concept of popularity of music performance. Even though the topic of the popularity of the musician, especially in the spectacular genres of performance, has been extensively studied, there are very few works, which focus on the performer of classical music in the context of cultural pragmatics. The study of a significant historical period in the development of European culture from the Ancient World to the present reveals a number of features in the interpretation of the concept of popularity in different historical periods. Complex cultural analysis as the primary method of research was used to investigate the unique features of each period. The study analyzed popularity of the performer of classical music within a particular sociocultural context and resulted in a set of distinct historyspecific concepts of popularity. This paper presents the findings on the evolution of public’s attitude toward musical performance and investigates historical group values determining popularity. It is noted that popularity is a matter of both church and secular music. Classical music performer, intentionally or not, addresses the problem of cultural education of the public and forms their values. At the same time, musicians directly depend on the existing tastes and preferences of their audience. This paradox of popularity has existed through all ages of European music culture. Popularity may take various forms from adoration to hate. In the field of classical music, popularity is achieved by people who have a certain charisma that in terms of attractiveness to the public matters more than professionalism.