The Beggar's Opera piece satirised Italian opera, which had become popular in London. According to "The New York Times": "Gay wrote the work more as an anti-opera than an opera, one of its attractions to its 18th-century London public being its lampooning of the Italian opera style and the English public's fascination with it." Instead of the grand music and themes of opera, the work uses familiar tunes and characters that were ordinary people. Some of the songs were by opera composers like Handel, but only the most popular of these were used. The audience could hum along with the music and identify
Music of Scotland in the eighteenth century the social upheavals of the Agricultural revolution and Highland Clearances that were seen as destroying the traditions and culture of the Highlands, the music of the Highland bagpipes began a revival. The Highland Society of London, formed in 1778, put an emphasis on bagpiping, particularly the ceòl mór (the great music), which had developed for ceremonial purposes for the Gaelic aristocracy from the seventeenth century. From 1781 the society organised ceòl mór competitions that became the basis for later gatherings in Scotland. The Italian style of classical music was probably first brought to Scotland by the cellist and composer Lorenzo