Modern classical music in gaming

[Jester]

You do realize the Beethoven, Mozart, and the like, did write pop music, or what was considered pop music in their time?

This claim is often made. I'm not sure it's true.

Mozart did not write music for the median Austrian working schlub. He was not "popular" in the sense of writing "for the people" - he was not the Bruce Springsteen of his day, nor even the John Williams. Mozart, Beethoven, and most big-name composers up until about 1900 wrote for more or less the same reason: someone very rich from a relatively high social class paid them to. They wrote operas, mostly aimed at rich folk, masses aimed at the church, dances for court functions, chamber music for dinner parties, that sort of thing. That's not pop music.

There was a "popular" music, what is today called "folk" music - a body of well-known, usually traditional songs sung in taverns, played by itinerant musicians, sung in churches, and so on. But there was no money to be made in writing that music. There were no copyrights, and so the kind of individual authorship that Mozart enjoyed then, and Lady Gaga enjoys now, would have been impossible.

Now, from about the 1820s onwards, there was a bleeding downwards of high-society pleasures like musical theatre, household pianos and sheet music. By the late 19th century, even working-class folk could enjoy music that was formerly an upper class phenomenon - thus, things like tin pan alley, Verdi operas, and the birth of the modern piano lesson for youngsters. But that was long after Mozart was dead and buried.

-Jester