Popular Classics: Western Art Music and the Everyday Listener

流行经典：西方艺术音乐与日常听众

• 批准号: AH/X012859/1
• 负责人: Kate Mabel Guthrie
• 金额: $ 26.53万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX012859%2F1
• 关键词: Popular; Classics; Western; Art; Music

This project seeks to re-write the history of twentieth-century art music from a novel perspective: that of the everyday listener. Despite significant advances in reception and listening studies over the past 30 years, histories of Western art music continue to privilege critics' and academics' voices. This has contributed to a narrow vision of music history dominated by revolutionary modernists and their elite critics-a history that obscures how older styles of art music, such as classical and romantic, that were much more widely listened to by the public, became deeply embedded in the day-to-day of modern life. My project pursues a broader account: it examines the kinds of emotional investments that non-expert listeners made in art music; and recovers the listening rituals-particularly those associated with listening at home-that reflected and shaped these cultural values. In so doing, it explains not only how such a broad audience for art music was sustained, but more importantly, why listeners believed that art music mattered. To reanimate historical audiences' perspectives, my research centres on the audience of the twentieth century's most influential music educator, Leonard Bernstein. Although best remembered as a composer and conductor, Bernstein's legacy as an educator is such that he has been credited with nothing less than "convert[ing] an entire generation of casual American music listeners into avid music lovers." To recover this other aspect of Bernstein's career, I draw on two data sets. First, I use the huge collection of undocumented fan-mail in the Leonard Bernstein Archive, which Bernstein received during the 1950s,1960s and 1970s - the decades from which the majority of his CBS broadcasts date. This correspondence sheds light on the value that past generations of listeners found in classical music and how they articulated their emotional investments. It also enables me to reconstruct the dynamic relationship that existed between pedagogue and student, even where these "encounters" were via television. Second, I will conduct at least 30 new oral history interviews with former television audience members. These oral histories will complement my archival research, recovering the listening rituals that accompanied viewing of Bernstein's broadcasts, and exploring the significance that listeners perceive these classical music encounters to have had on their long-term artistic interests. This research will be published as a monograph and a journal special edition. Beyond providing a new account of 20th-century musical culture, my project uses this historical research to initiate a conversation about arts outreach today. Recent years have witnessed a heated international debate in the Anglophone sphere about the place of the arts and humanities in education, a debate whose stakes have only been heightened by the pandemic. Attempts to justify on-going investment have focused overwhelmingly on economic and social benefits, while overlooking the question of the arts' emotional appeal. In reanimating the emotional investments made by historical audiences, my project opens the way to ask how engaging with this overlooked aspect could provide a new and powerful means of articulating why the arts matter in the present day. This question is explored through two interconnected strands of engagement activities. First, taking advantage of social media's interactive nature, I seek to engage a community interested in music education and the lessons that Bernstein's work can inspire via a monthly podcast and vlog, hosted on buzzsprout and listed on all major podcast repositories. Second, I will work collaboratively with the Project Executive and project partner Positive Note, a classical music film production company, to produce 4 youtube films and 8 TikTok shorts, aimed at KS4 pupils and their teachers, which put lessons learnt from Bernstein's audiences into practice for young audiences today.

这个项目试图以一种新的视角重写二十世纪艺术音乐的历史：日常听众的视角。尽管在过去30年里，接受和倾听研究取得了重大进展，但西方艺术音乐史仍然优先考虑评论家和学者的声音。这导致了一种由革命现代主义者及其精英批评家主导的对音乐史的狭隘看法--这段历史掩盖了更广泛地被公众聆听的更古老的艺术音乐风格，如古典和浪漫主义，是如何深深植根于现代生活的日常生活中的。我的项目追求更广泛的描述：它考察了非专家听众在艺术音乐中做出的各种情感投资；并恢复了反映和塑造这些文化价值观的聆听仪式--特别是与在家聆听有关的那些仪式。通过这样做，它不仅解释了艺术音乐如此广泛的受众是如何持续的，更重要的是，为什么听众相信艺术音乐很重要。为了重振历史观众的视角，我的研究集中在二十世纪最有影响力的音乐教育家伦纳德·伯恩斯坦的观众身上。尽管伯恩斯坦作为一名作曲家和指挥家被人们记住，但他作为一名教育家的遗产是如此之高，以至于他被认为是将整整一代不经意的美国音乐听众转变为狂热的音乐爱好者。为了恢复伯恩斯坦职业生涯的另一个方面，我利用了两个数据集。首先，我使用了伦纳德·伯恩斯坦档案馆中大量未经记录的粉丝邮件，这些邮件是伯恩斯坦在20世纪50年代、60年代和70年代收到的--他的大部分CBS广播都是从这几十年开始的。这封信揭示了过去几代听众在古典音乐中发现的价值，以及他们如何表达自己的情感投资。它也使我能够重建存在于教育者和学生之间的动态关系，即使是在这些通过电视进行的“相遇”的地方。其次，我将对前电视观众进行至少30次新的口述历史采访。这些口述历史将补充我的档案研究，恢复伴随着观看伯恩斯坦广播的收听仪式，并探索听众感知这些古典音乐接触对他们长期艺术兴趣的意义。这项研究将以专著和期刊特别版的形式出版。除了提供对20世纪音乐文化的新描述外，我的项目还利用这一历史研究发起了一场关于今天艺术拓展的对话。近年来，英语国家围绕艺术和人文在教育中的地位展开了一场激烈的国际辩论，这场辩论的利害关系因疫情而加剧。试图证明正在进行的投资是合理的，但压倒性地专注于经济和社会效益，而忽视了艺术的情感吸引力问题。通过重振历史观众的情感投资，我的项目开启了一条道路，让我们思考如何参与到这个被忽视的方面，才能提供一种新的、强大的手段来阐明艺术为什么在当今如此重要。这个问题是通过两个相互关联的接触活动来探讨的。首先，利用社交媒体的互动性，我试图吸引一个对音乐教育感兴趣的社区，以及伯恩斯坦的工作可以通过每月的播客和Vlog，托管在buzzsprout上，并在所有主要的播客资源库中列出的课程。其次，我将与项目执行和项目合作伙伴Positive Note(一家古典音乐电影制作公司)合作，制作4部YouTube电影和8部TikTok短片，针对KS4学生和他们的老师，将从Bernstein的观众那里学到的东西应用到今天的年轻观众中。