Middlebrow Modernism: Britten’s Operas and the Great Divide

California Studies in 20th-Century Music

by Christopher Chowrimootoo

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. 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 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.

Genres: Music

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2018

Reviews

[Ruchika Jain · Rating 5 out of 5]

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I like the book, I don't like the book, I like the book, maybe, maybe not' , ¥ ; &