Middlebrow modernism -- Sentimentality under erasure in Peter Grimes -- The timely traditions of Albert Herring -- The turn of the screw, or : the Gothic Melodrama of modernism -- The burning fiery furnace and the redemption of religious Kitsch -- Death in Venice and the aesthetics of sublimation.

Open Access Unrestricted online access star

"At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This provocative study is situated at the intersection of the history, historiography, and aesthetics of twentieth-century music. It 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 midcentury discussions of the 'middlebrow, ' Christopher Chowrimootoo demonstrates how these works allowed audiences to have their modernist cake and eat it too: to revel in the pleasures of consonance, lyricism, and theatrical spectacle even while enjoying the prestige that came from rejecting them. By focusing on key moments when reigning aesthetic oppositions and hierarchies threatened to collapse, Middlebrow Modernism offers a powerful model for recovering shades of gray in the previously black-and-white historiographies of twentieth-century music"--Provided by publisher

English.

Description based on print version record.