So, I wonder how these composers would fit in with those definitions: Beethoven (Fidelio and the Ninth Symphony), Britten (his operas), Xenakis, Yun, and Brahms (Academic Festival Overture)?
There are several issues which arise from this...
- Several of the works you've mentioned are textual, and could be said to derive their "political" nature from the text onto which they have been fused... after all, the text pre-existed the music. Would that same music without that text, or with a different text, still remain "political"?
- Are works "political" only when they purport to challenge or overthrow the existing status quo? For example consider Cimarosa's comic opera IL MATRIMONIO SEGRETO, roughly contemporaneous with Mozart's allegedly "political" opera about a wedding, LE NOZZE DI FIGARO. Cimarosa's opera winks indulgently at the "right" of aristocrats to subvent the law, and to behave in social unacceptable or repellent ways (the appalling "tests" to which "Count Robinson" subjects his potential bride and her family)? It could equally be argued that this trifling social comedy is a deeply political work that seeks to garner support for the continued rule of the moneyed classes over their social and financial inferiors? Equally you could argue that FIDELIO isn't political - it merely asks that existing laws be upheld.
