Anton Webern and Mainstream Music Culture in the United States, 1923–1987

253 pagesThis dissertation, the first dedicated study of the reception of the music of Anton Webern in the United States, focuses on moments at which U.S. musicians, scholars, and institutions have sought to render Webern’s music accessible to mainstream classical music audiences. The first chapter covers the circulation of Webern’s music in the United States during the 1920s and 30s, a period that saw the emergence of a transatlantic culture of new music. The second chapter documents several forgotten encounters between Webern and U.S. middlebrow culture at midcentury, including efforts to portray Webern’s works as music for children. The third chapter argues for the centrality of U.S. recordings to the establishment of Webern’s legacy, while the final chapter focuses on the experiences of Hans Moldenhauer, a German-American émigré who lived in Spokane, WA and forged a transatlantic network of Webern studies during the second half of the twentieth century. Together these disparate historical moments constitute a new history of Webern’s music, in which it appears not as challenging, hyper-intellectual, or esoteric, but rather as intelligible, accessible, and appealing