Music 101 Series Returns with Dr. Peter Hoyt to Explore Comedy in the 18th Century

COLUMBIA, SC – The CMA presents “Comedy in the Age of Revolutions: Popular Humor in the 18th Century,” a six-week “Music 101” lecture series with Dr. Peter A. Hoyt, on Wednesdays beginning April 8 through May 13, 2015, 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. This informative and entertaining series explores how popular forms of comic art began to undermine the ancien régime in the century before Napoleon. In addition to examining the music, literature, and fashion of the time, particular attention is paid to the brilliant satirical drawings that spawned the modern political cartoon.

Before the American and French revolutions, tragedy and comedy were defined by social class. Whereas aristocratic characters were always represented in serious situations, the lower orders of society were considered intrinsically comic and thus the proper subjects of comedy. By asserting that “all men are created equal,” the Declaration of Independence was therefore challenging assumptions about both society and humor.

“The eighteenth century was, perhaps more than any previous epoch, given to the use of wit and satire to accomplish serious goals,” says Hoyt. “When the ancient Greeks wrote about laughter, they often portrayed it as something malicious, as something that implied the inferiority of the person at the butt of the joke. In the years around 1700, however, English playwrights began to regard comedy as a vehicle for correcting the ills of society, even the ills that stemmed from the aristocracy. This new ability to laugh at everybody implied an equality that would, in time, become enshrined in the revolutions of 1776 and 1789.”

Dr. Hoyt, a former president of the Mozart Society of America, is the CMA’s adjunct curator for music and a frequent guest lecturer and program annotator at Lincoln Center in New York.

Series: $80 / $64 for members. $15 single lectures.

For more information, visit columbiamuseum.org