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Situated at the intersections of twentieth-century music history, historiography, and aesthetics, Middlebrow Modernism uses Benjamin Britten’s operas to illustrate the ways in which composers, critics, and audiences mediated the “great divide” between modernism and mass culture. Reviving mid-century discussions of the middlebrow, Christopher Chowrimootoo demonstrates how Britten’s works allowed audiences to have their modernist cake and eat it: to revel in the pleasures of consonance, lyricism, and theatrical spectacle even while enjoying the prestige that came from rejecting them. By focusing on moments when reigning aesthetic oppositions and hierarchies threatened to collapse, this study offers a powerful model for recovering shades of grey in the traditionally black-and-white historiographies of twentieth-century music.

"“…an insightful study on the elusive concept of the middlebrow in the critical reception of Benjamin Britten’s stage works. … Importantly, Chowrimootoo confronts the ambiguities inherent in conceptions of the middlebrow, yet he does not seek to resolve them. Instead, he accepts that Britten identified as both a composer who valued accessibility and public service, and as one who advocated for the serious study and interpretation of his music.”" - North American British Music Studies Association Reviews