Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: trajectories of twentieth-century music
- 1 Peripheries and interfaces: the Western impact on other music
- 2 Music of a century: museum culture and the politics of subsidy
- 3 Innovation and the avant-garde, 1900–20
- 4 Music, text and stage: the tradition of bourgeois tonality to the Second World War
- 5 Classic jazz to 1945
- 6 Flirting with the vernacular: America in Europe, 1900–45
- 7 Between the wars: traditions, modernisms, and the ‘little people from the suburbs’
- 8 Brave new worlds: experimentalism between the wars
- 9 Proclaiming the mainstream: Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern
- 10 Rewriting the past: classicisms of the inter-war period
- 11 Music of seriousness and commitment: the 1930s and beyond
- 12 Other mainstreams: light music and easy listening, 1920–70
- 13 New beginnings: the international avant-garde, 1945–62
- 14 Individualism and accessibility: the moderate mainstream, 1945–75
- 15 After swing: modern jazz and its impact
- 16 Music of the youth revolution: rock through the 1960s
- 17 Expanding horizons: the international avant-garde, 1962–75
- 18 To the millennium: music as twentieth-century commodity
- 19 Ageing of the new: the museum of musical modernism
- 20 (Post-)minimalisms 1970–2000: the search for a new mainstream
- 21 History and class consciousness: pop music towards 2000
- 22 ‘Art’ music in a cross-cultural context: the case of Africa
- Appendix 1 Personalia
- Appendix 2 Chronology
- Index
- References
12 - Other mainstreams: light music and easy listening, 1920–70
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: trajectories of twentieth-century music
- 1 Peripheries and interfaces: the Western impact on other music
- 2 Music of a century: museum culture and the politics of subsidy
- 3 Innovation and the avant-garde, 1900–20
- 4 Music, text and stage: the tradition of bourgeois tonality to the Second World War
- 5 Classic jazz to 1945
- 6 Flirting with the vernacular: America in Europe, 1900–45
- 7 Between the wars: traditions, modernisms, and the ‘little people from the suburbs’
- 8 Brave new worlds: experimentalism between the wars
- 9 Proclaiming the mainstream: Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern
- 10 Rewriting the past: classicisms of the inter-war period
- 11 Music of seriousness and commitment: the 1930s and beyond
- 12 Other mainstreams: light music and easy listening, 1920–70
- 13 New beginnings: the international avant-garde, 1945–62
- 14 Individualism and accessibility: the moderate mainstream, 1945–75
- 15 After swing: modern jazz and its impact
- 16 Music of the youth revolution: rock through the 1960s
- 17 Expanding horizons: the international avant-garde, 1962–75
- 18 To the millennium: music as twentieth-century commodity
- 19 Ageing of the new: the museum of musical modernism
- 20 (Post-)minimalisms 1970–2000: the search for a new mainstream
- 21 History and class consciousness: pop music towards 2000
- 22 ‘Art’ music in a cross-cultural context: the case of Africa
- Appendix 1 Personalia
- Appendix 2 Chronology
- Index
- References
Summary
Problems and definitions
It should be stated at the outset that light music and easy listening are not diluted forms of heavy music and difficult listening prepared for those with delicate musical digestions. The music discussed in this chapter produces effects and valorizes moods, identities, and ideas that no other music does. When, for example, the crew of HMS Amethyst sailed down the Yangtse under fire from Chinese guns during the Second World War, they chose to demonstrate British composure by singing ‘Cruising Down the River’ (Beadell/Tollerton, 1945). Three types of easy listening need to be distinguished, and in none of these cases does that necessarily entail the meaning ‘facile’, nor imply that it is appropriate to describe the music as easy technically. First, there is the type that is often tightly controlled but perceived as cool, sophisticated, relaxed, and classy, which ranges from the crooners to the more varied song stylists like Frank Sinatra. Second, there is the type that evokes a nostalgic mood and whose present reception therefore differs from its original meaning (it is usually categorized as nostalgia or, in France, as rétro); an example would be a song like ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’ (MacDonald/Carroll, 1913) sung by Laurel and Hardy, the corny and sentimental quality of which may now be valued as offering an experience of something vulnerable and human that high art generally guards against. Third, there is the apparently easy listening that proves emotionally difficult listening, as often occurs in the French chanson réaliste.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music , pp. 307 - 335Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
References
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