Hegemony and Mozart

In the program notes for Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D Major, Paris, part of a wonderful program of music at a recent concert by the Minnesota Orchestra, I found the following statement intriguing: “In structuring the symphony, Mozart omitted the minuet movement, which was not yet accepted in Parisian symphonies, and kept the harmonic scheme simple throughout.” I could not help but wonder to whom the minuet movement was anathema, and why it might be so? Joseph Haydn is credited with giving the tradition of a dance-like third movement--either a minuet (based on the old courtly dance) or a scherzo (meaning “joke”-- a quick, often lighthearted tune: see my own Symphony #1 in a Minor Key: a Meditation on Time and Place, and especially Movement 3) for the four-movement symphony. Mozart’s Paris symphony contains only three movements.
     I am not an historian of music or a music archaeologist (an unearthed symphony by Henri-Joseph Rigel opened the program: the Friday and Saturday concerts were the first performance of Rigel’s work in the 115-year history of the Minnesota Orchestra!) Rigel, though German, wrote in Paris. The program notes by Michael Adams, for thirty years a member of the viola section of the Orchestra, notes that Rigel’s music is especially notable for its “Sturm und Drang” style . . . a movement popular with Parisian audiences who favored bigger orchestras and more dramatic music. Sturm and Drang translates to Storm and Stress. Rigel (1741-1799) would have composed during a part of the same time period as did Mozart (1756-1791), and though Rigel was German he seemed to understand French tastes in music. Rigel’s Symphony No. 4 in C minor also has only three movement, omitting the third movement minuet or scherzo. Perhaps the light-hearted minuet or the humorous scherzo was not appealing to the Parisians who desired greater drama, Sturm und Drang, in their music.
     I guess what I am wondering is what it might mean that the dance-like (or joke-like) third movement was not yet accepted in Parisian symphonies. Accepted by whom, I wondered. Of whom were the Parisian audiences composed? Who would set the standards by which composers and their compositions were measured. What was wrong with the minuet or scherzo?
     Of course, the answer to these puzzlements is hegemony. I understand hegemony to mean ideology normalized. The idea that the discoveries of science equate to truth might be hegemonic, as might be the idea that gun ownership is a civil right guaranteed by the Constitution. Hegemony teaches that home ownership is available to everyone and is preferred as domicile choice, and that justice is, indeed, blind. Etc. Hegemony makes the every day reality look as it does and makes what is lived seem to be the only possible existence. Those in power use hegemony to maintain their power by normalizing the reality in which they have power and by which that power can be maintained.
     Hegemony determines what might be acceptable and what might not be so, and it also establishes by whom acceptability might be asserted. In an interesting essay in a recent London Review of Books, “Merely a Warning that a Noun is Coming,” Bee Wilson notes that as British soldiers returned from World War I “swearing became normalized, but it was only acceptable when used by men and addressed to men.” Women who did swear were socially and sometimes legally disciplined. What this reveals about British society beliefs about women and language is an instance of hegemony! Of course, it was men of a certain social class and standing who determined the standard.
     So, I wonder who attended concerts in 18^th century Paris? I look about me in Orchestra Hall—that night every seat was occupied, though I think they were in the Hall mostly for Fauré’s Requiem—and wonder who they might be (who am I?) and what to us would be deemed in music acceptable.
     I know that cultural historians might offer some explanation for the Parisian’s preferences: did the Sturm and Drang music prefigure the Revolution? And I wonder what today makes the extensive corruption of the Trump Presidency acceptable to even a small portion of the American public? What permits this population to excuse, to ignore, or to reframe the actions of a bunch of mostly venal, very wealthy and incompetent men and women into some notion of acceptability.