- Title
- Musical entertainment in Newcastle, New South Wales, in the 1870s: audience, identity, power and cultural ownership
- Creator
- English, Helen
- Relation
- Crossroads Vol. 6, Issue 2, p. 73-83
- Relation
- http://www.uq.edu.au/crossroads/archives.html#v6i2
- Publisher
- Queensland Association of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics Publishing
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- In 19th century Britain, the expanding middle classes and their aspirations to distinction through cultural capital led to a change in the perception of cultural products and their status. The century witnessed extraordinary cultural growth and diversification, especially in musical works and activities. In this period there was a gradual separation between music perceived to be 'art' and that seen as 'popular'. From the 1830s, supported by new upwardly mobile consumers, art music evolved greater complexity, whilst new popular forms and styles, such as opera fantasies, ballads and blackface minstrelsy, proliferated in counterbalance. Social groupings began to distinguish themselves through the kind of cultural products they preferred and in England the upper middle classes moved into positions of cultural leadership, for example running the Philharmonic Society of London and initiating the Tonic Sol Fa movement. This evolving cultural landscape with its potential for distinctions of taste, power and class was imported to Australia by successive waves of immigrants. This paper will show how Newcastle, New South Wales, resisted the transposition of such a hierarchy and how popular music and entertainment became mainstream, pushing high status music and theatre to the fringes.
- Subject
- cultural growth; 19th century Britain; musical entertainment; Newcastle, (NSW)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1342305
- Identifier
- uon:28941
- Identifier
- ISSN:1833-878X
- Language
- eng
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