Middle classes and music

From the nz-folk list: Here's an extract from a recent article about classical music concerts inthe New Yorker. I wonder if a similar phenomenon took place in folk music at around the time the EFDSS formed? Folk music is probably not what it once was.

With the aristocracy declining in the wake of the French Revolution and subsequent upheavals, the bourgeoisie increasingly took control of musical life, imposing a new conception of how concerts should unfold: programs favored composers of the past over those of the present, popular fare was banished, program notes provided orientation to the uninitiated, and the practice of milling about, talking, and applauding during the music subsided. To some extent, these changes can be explained in anthropological terms: by applauding here and not applauding there, the bourgeois were signalling their membership in a social and cultural élite. As Johnson points out, they felt obliged to reconfirm that status from year to year, since, unlike the aristocrats of yore, they lived in fear of going back down the ladder. “The bourgeoisie isn’t a class, it’s a position,” the Journal des Débats advised. “You acquire it, you lose it.” Attending concerts became a kind of performance in itself, a dance of decorum.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2008/09/08/080908crmu_music_ross