The Art of Appreciation

Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain

Kate Guthrie

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780520351677
• eBook ISBN: 9780520975897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: 20th Century History

From the BBC Proms to Bernstein's Young People's Concerts, initiatives to promote classical music have been a pervasive feature of twentieth-century musical life. The goal of these initiatives was rarely just to reach a larger and more diverse audience but to teach a particular way of listening that would help the public "appreciate" music. This book examines for the first time how and why music appreciation has had such a defining and long-lasting impact—well beyond its roots in late-Victorian liberalism. It traces the networks of music educators, philanthropists, policy makers, critics, composers, and musicians who, rather than resisting new mass media, sought to harness their pedagogic potential. The book explores how listening became embroiled in a nexus of modern problems around citizenship, leisure, and education. In so doing, it ultimately reveals how a new cultural milieu—the middlebrow—emerged at the heart of Britain's experience of modernity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• The Art of Appreciation
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Music Examples
• 1. The Art of Appreciation
• 2. “Audiences of the Future” The Robert Mayer Concerts for Children (1924–1939)
• 3. Victorians on Radio Music and the Ordinary Listener (1926–1939)
• 4. Music Education on Film Instruments of the Orchestra (1946)
• 5. Outside the Ivory Tower Extra-Mural Music at the University of Birmingham (1948–1964)
• 6. The Avant-Garde Goes to School O Magnum Mysterium (1960)
• 7. Epilogue The Middlebrow in an Age of Cultural Pluralism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index