Description
Book SynopsisFrom 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 impactwell 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 milieuthe middlebrowemerged at the heart of Britain's experience of modernity.
Table of ContentsList 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
