Approaching the absolute -- Idealizing music -- Haydn's difference -- Entertaining possibilities in Haydn's symphonies -- Haydn, the string quartet, and the (d)evolution of the chamber ideal -- New world dualities -- Popular music contra German idealism: Anglo-American rebellions from minstrelsy to camp -- "Popular music" qua German idealism: authenticity and its outliers -- Musical virtues and vices in the latter-day new world -- Appendix A : More extended musical examples -- Appendix B : Listing of video examples from films.

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Traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. The author identifies in Haydn and in early popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a strain of high camp -- a mode of engagement that relishes both the superficial and serious aspects of an aesthetic experience -- that runs antithetical to German Idealism's musical paradigms. By considering the disservice done to Haydn by German Idealism alongside the emergence of musical camp in American popular music, the author outlines a common ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of shared pleasure that points to ways in which camp receptive modes might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydn's music that has mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, the author remaps the historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that dominate musicology while troubling the divide between serious and popular music.

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