How did popular music influence classical music?

Question

In the baroque, classical, and romantic periods, how did popular "low culture" music influence the classical music produced during those periods? Were influences more frequently from previous classical composers? Were the modernists (Bartok, Stravinsky, etc) the first to pull material from "peasant tunes" and other popular music of the day?

Answer 1

During the Baroque era, the music was basically divided in three categories, according to its usage: church music, chamber music and dance music (plus the opera). The boundaries between “popular” and “high cultured” music were not so marked, and we can find many examples of mix: from dance rhythms used as grounds for “high cultured” pieces (Ciaccone, Sarabande etc., and later the Suites) to the songs which we classify as “classical music” but which were actually intended for being simple “songs” (the Elizabethan repertoire for voice and lute, for instance).

Even after the cultural division between “high” and “low” began to be more marked (which actually happened towards the beginning of 18th century), the exchanges went on without breaks.

We can detect them, for instance, in many Haydn and Mozart’s compositions; Beethoven himself arranged Irish and Scottish songs collections; many Schubert’s Lieder are actually “popular”; Čajkovskij and Mahler let popular or folk melodies enter in their symphonies…

During the period of the so-called “National Schools” (Smetana, Dvořák, Grieg…) the insertion of folk themes in a “high cultured” context became programmatic, prefiguring the ethnomusicological researches of such composers as Bartók and Kodály.

During the 20th century, while “high cultured” music was going to become more and more abstract and conceptual, we find nevertheless some examples of these exchanges. Just to quote few examples (beyond Stravinskij’s borrowings from folk themes and jazz rhythms): Schönberg wrote some cabaret songs; Bohuslav Martinů included a charleston in his ballet “La revue de cuisine”; Šostakovič wrote a lot of music inspired by popular themes and jazz; Luciano Berio composed a “Folk songs” cycle for the extraordinary mezzo Cathy Berberian...

Answer 2

During the Baroque era, the music was basically divided in three categories, according to its usage: church music, chamber music and dance music (plus the opera). The boundaries between “popular” and “high cultured” music were not so marked, and we can find many examples of mix: from dance rhythms used as grounds for “high cultured” pieces (Ciaccone, Sarabande etc., and later the Suites) to the songs which we classify as “classical music” but which were actually intended for being simple “songs” (the Elizabethan repertoire for voice and lute, for instance).

Even after the cultural division between “high” and “low” began to be more marked (which actually happened towards the beginning of 18th century), the exchanges went on without breaks.

We can detect them, for instance, in many Haydn and Mozart’s compositions; Beethoven himself arranged Irish and Scottish songs collections; many Schubert’s Lieder are actually “popular”; Čajkovskij and Mahler let popular or folk melodies enter in their symphonies…

During the period of the so-called “National Schools” (Smetana, Dvořák, Grieg…) the insertion of folk themes in a “high cultured” context became programmatic, prefiguring the ethnomusicological researches of such composers as Bartók and Kodály.

During the 20th century, while “high cultured” music was going to become more and more abstract and conceptual, we find nevertheless some examples of these exchanges. Just to quote few examples (beyond Stravinskij’s borrowings from folk themes and jazz rhythms): Schönberg wrote some cabaret songs; Bohuslav Martinů included a charleston in his ballet “La revue de cuisine”; Šostakovič wrote a lot of music inspired by popular themes and jazz; Luciano Berio composed a “Folk songs” cycle for the extraordinary mezzo Cathy Berberian...

Answer 3

This is a very large topic, but, to make a long story short, popular music has been incorporated into the more formal "art musics" since the late Middle Ages at least (like the late 13th Century motet "On parole - A Paris - Frese nouvel" which incorporates the cries of a street seller). Bach uses two popular songs in the final variation of the Goldberg Variations. The "polonaise", "mazurka" of Chopin, the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt, etc etc. show the increasing presence of popular music. This became almost obligatory as the old Empires broke up and long-suppressed cultures were rediscovered.