"Through detailed archival work, this book identifies a coherent intellectual and artistic tradition that critics of the 1940s called "middlebrow." It began in literary circles in the 1910s as a response to the emergence of modernism, continued to grow and develop through the second world war, and spread outward into music and theater. What gradually emerged was an approach to art that advocated mixing highbrow, folk, and popular culture. The rationale was civic: Middlebrows believed they could unify a fractured and war-torn society by pulling together the disparate publics for each category of art. This book focuses on the development of the middlebrow style on Broadway during the 1940s. It shows that although the familiar term "integration" has typically been a formal concept in musical-theater studies, contemporary writers more often used the word to signify blending high-art, folk, and popular culture, especially in the early collaborations between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and in thecriticism of Brooks Atkinson and Olin Downes. This book then demonstrates how the middlebrow style became associated with the early civil rights movement, especially in the music of Duke Ellington. Finally, it describes how Kurt Weill and Langston Hughestapped into middlebrow tradition to bring European-style opera to American audiences in a manner that would feel socially relevant. The book ends by considering what the middlebrow might offer the broader study of modernism as a concept that pulls together facets of the modernist-era art which have previously seemed incompatible: artistic autonomy and popular culture"-- Provided by publisher.
In a country divided by war and racism, a group of middlebrow critics believed that art could heal society by blending high art, folk, and popular culture, thereby uniting the separate audiences for each genre. Their work culminated in a new kind of musical theater that appeared on Broadway during the 1940s, including Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, Duke Ellington's Beggar's Holiday, and Kurt Weill's Street Scene. Ultimately, The Middlebrow Musical unsettles seemingly familiar concepts such as high art and pop culture, and invites readers to reconsider how past writers and musicians have invoked these categories toward civic ends.
Rattled by two world wars, ongoing discrimination, and economic calamity, a group of critics in 1940s New York sought to promote art that would do nothing less than heal the world. The primary obstacle to this project, they believed, was that American culture had splintered into factions, which in turn divided American audiences: highbrow art, which these writers regarded as obscure and elitist; folk art, which they found provincial and alienating; and popular culture, which they considered merely commercial. Blending these kinds of art, they argued, could draw together a fractured society into mutual understanding (if not necessarily agreement) by situating the most sophisticated ideas within longstanding expressive traditions, accessible to all. Their contemporaries called this culture “middlebrow” and believed that its culmination appeared on Broadway.
The Middlebrow Musical straddles the study of popular musical theater and opera, and in so doing charts a new path through modernism. Through detailed archival work, this book uncovers the crucial critical networks that originally theorized a middlebrow approach to culture, beginning in the literary circles of Van Wyck Brooks and Archibald MacLeish, and radiating outward to major theater and music critics including Brooks Atkinson and Olin Downes. Their broad influence on theater becomes clear as this book follows three shows from their earliest conceptions to their opening-night reviews: Richard Rodgers's and Oscar Hammerstein II's Oklahoma!, Duke Ellington's and John Latouche's Beggar's Holiday, and Kurt Weill's, Elmer Rice's, and Langston Hughes's Street Scene. Each chapter features behind-the-scenes communications, which reveal how these Broadway writers explicitly deployed middlebrow theories to negotiate high-art aspirations toward operas, symphonies, and experimental theater; toward contemporary folk-music studies; and toward popular-culture accessibility, all with civic intentions of pulling disparate audiences together into a thoughtful reflection upon the modern, war-torn world.
While The Middlebrow Musical focuses on Broadway, it also offers new strategies for understanding the relationship between popular and highbrow culture during the early decades of the twentieth century. Compared to the experiments of high modernism, many of the works featured in this book have struck previous scholars as conservative or cautious. The Middlebrow Musical invites readers to take another look, to consider the forgotten principles that inspired these works, and to recognize them as equally daring and controversial contributions to twentieth-century art.
Lisainfo e-raamatute kohta