The Art of Appreciation

"A lucid and richly documented study of cultural hierarchy and of the changing social, institutional, and ideological forces shaping music education in mid-twentieth-century Britain. A very fruitful cross-pollination of musical and cultural histories."--Philip Rupprecht, author of British Musical Modernism "A highly important corrective to the existing narrative of British cultural history. Beautifully researched, insightfully contributing to debates about the nature of cultural hierarchies, the periodization of artistic trends, and the relationships between modernity, modernism, and the status of British music. Guthrie's keen ability as a close reader of both printed words and musical texts shines through."--Joan Shelley Rubin, author of The Making of Middlebrow Culture "Thoroughly researched and lucidly argued, The Art of Appreciation effectively grounds big questions about art music and mass culture in a set of more specific historical debates--about how people should listen and how the new media of mass culture should be harnessed for pedagogical purposes. In showing us how experts sought to manage new forms of musical consumption, it reveals a great deal about the promise they held, as well as the anxieties they provoked."--Heather Wiebe, author of Britten's Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction