When high culture became popular culture: Classical music in Postwar America, 1945--1965

In the past decade or so, studies of postwar American culture have focused on either "popular" culture (television, movies, and rock and roll) or "high" culture (the avant garde and the visual arts). Implicit in these studies is the idea of a cultural hierarchy, of a cultural divide, in the U.S. at mid-century. This dissertation challenges that assumption. I argue, instead, that the years following World War II saw the popularization of high culture in America. As evidence, I point to the production and reproduction of high culture on TV (by variety shows like CBS's Ed Sullivan Show, by specialty shows like Opera Cameos, and by groups like the NBC-TV Opera Theater Company); the creation of a vast constituency of high-culture consumers; the tremendous popularity enjoyed by figures like Van Cliburn, Leonard Bernstein, and Leontyne Price; the Great Debate about the shape and form of American culture and the new cultural populism; the increase in the U.S. government's interventions in the arts; and the creation of cultural centers like Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as public monuments. The rise to power of the arts in America, and of American artists in the world, form a crucial subtext to this study. It is, after all, the role of high culture in the shaping of postwar national identity, the relationship between culture and society, and the experience of culture in all of its complexity that this dissertation seeks to recover.