Music matters: *Class, taste, and technology in American modernity, 1945--1972.
Item
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Title
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Music matters: *Class, taste, and technology in American modernity, 1945--1972.
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Identifier
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AAI3083653
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identifier
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3083653
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Creator
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Doane, Randal Delane.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Patricia T. Clough
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Date
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2003
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Social Structure and Development | History, United States | Music | American Studies
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Abstract
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In this historical-interpretive study I examine the limited democratization of musical distinction in the United States, from 1945 to 1972. Herein I use the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu to analyze how the structures of gender, class, and technoscience delimited the commodification and representation of the classical music field as the cultural homology for middle-class social spaces. I focus, first, on the buoyant discourse of technoscience in the post-war era, and how the advent of the long-playing microgroove record (LP) was articulated to middle-brow "modern living." I analyze the reports in the popular press of the quality of pre-microgroove phonographs, the reception of the microgroove LP, and the coding of class and gender in representations of phonograph consoles in popular magazine advertisements. Second, I examine how agents of consecration within the classical music field constructed its nouveau middle-class audience, and how mail-order music clubs emerged and combined LPs and how-to-listen texts into a single package for the autodidactic mode of acquisition. Herein I analyze the discursive modalities of a sample of how-to-listen texts, the musical selections and discourse of mail-order music clubs, and changes in listening hexis with the development of stereophonic sound. Fourth, I examine how the laws of functioning of the classical music field were transposed to the field of popular music, and how these privileges and prohibitions were employed to consecrate distinctive rock LPs, beginning in the mid-1960s. For case studies, I analyze LPs by Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Marvin Gaye, in terms of the LP's adherence to---or deviation from---the privileges of the classical music field. I conclude by considering the negation of these classificatory schemes with the rise of disco and digital music technology.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
