In this Book
- Middlebrow Modernism: Britten’s Operas and the Great Divide
- Book
- 2018
- Published by: University of California Press
- Series: California Studies in 20th-Century Music
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Situated at the intersections of twentieth-century music history, historiography, and aesthetics, Middlebrow Modernism uses Benjamin Britten’s operas to illustrate the ways in which composers, critics, and audiences mediated the “great divide” between modernism and mass culture. Reviving mid-century discussions of the middlebrow, Christopher Chowrimootoo demonstrates how Britten’s works allowed audiences to have their modernist cake and eat it: to revel in the pleasures of consonance, lyricism, and theatrical spectacle even while enjoying the prestige that came from rejecting them. By focusing on moments when reigning aesthetic oppositions and hierarchies threatened to collapse, this study offers a powerful model for recovering shades of grey in the traditionally black-and-white historiographies of twentieth-century music.
Situated at the intersections of twentieth-century music history, historiography, and aesthetics, Middlebrow Modernism uses Benjamin Britten’s operas to illustrate the ways in which composers, critics, and audiences mediated the “great divide” between modernism and mass culture. Reviving mid-century discussions of the middlebrow, Christopher Chowrimootoo demonstrates how Britten’s works allowed audiences to have their modernist cake and eat it: to revel in the pleasures of consonance, lyricism, and theatrical spectacle even while enjoying the prestige that came from rejecting them. By focusing on moments when reigning aesthetic oppositions and hierarchies threatened to collapse, this study offers a powerful model for recovering shades of grey in the traditionally black-and-white historiographies of twentieth-century music.
Table of Contents
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- List of Illustrations
- pp. vii-viii
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xii
- 1. Middlebrow Modernism
- pp. 1-29
- Bibliography
- pp. 215-219
Additional Information
ISBN
9780520970700
Related ISBN(s)
9780520298651
MARC Record
OCLC
1038032572
Pages
252
Launched on MUSE
2019-02-13
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY