40 Renner ⦁ Revolutions representation in Parliament and mocking English leaders became popular.”91 In the famous Stamp Act of 1765, the angered colonists composed the song titled, “A Taxing We Will Go” as a way to show their belief that they were receiving “taxation without representation.”92 As stated by Welch, “songs and music about the colonists daily lives gave way to reflect their growing frustrations and mood towards England, independence, and war.”93 Differing from early America, France was at the center of musical culture. Opera was popular in the eighteenth-century Europe and France was known as the “traditional home of opéra comique.”94 When the struggles of the Revolution began, France sought continuity.95 Malcolm Boyd explains that “basic industries continued, including manufacture of musical scores and parts. At least fifteen piano makers continued working in Paris during the decade…. In music the continuities are chiefly visible in opera.”96 Operas produced at this time were full of political and patriotic messages.97 A leading composer of opera during the French Revolution was Luigi Cherubini. Cherubini and other composers used opéra comique as their main platform. Winton Dean explained that composers used it because “grand opera with its classical and mythological subject, its sophisticated tone and contempt for mundane, its tradition of ballet and heroic declamatory recitative, had been an idealized projection of the Ancien Régime.”98 While opéra comique was typically seen as amusement for the public, because of the Revolution, Cherubini took it more seriously and “the elements of comedy and parody soon dwindled and disappeared.”99 Dean stated that “the world of pastoral make-believe has gone; instead we may be confronted by political agitators, passport inspections and resistance movements, 91 Welch, 6. 92 Welch, 6. 93 Welch, 8. 94 Boyd, 6. 95 Boyd, 3. 96 Boyd, 4. 97 Dean, 78. 98 Dean, 81. 99 Dean, 82.
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