Beauty in Music

Overview & Synopsis

This book is interdisciplinary in nature and examines the debate over beauty in twentieth-century art. It synthesizes artistic phenomena and composers’ aesthetic attitudes considering the ideological and social contexts of music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The proposed historiographical structure is based on the premise that diverse artistic phenomena and aesthetic attitudes can be interpreted in relation to the concept of beauty, which was largely “banished” in the twentieth century. Jarzębska addresses the debates over models of musical culture in the interwar period, inspired by the ideas of national and progressive music. She also explores issues related to musical life, which in the postwar period was influenced by the Iron Curtain and , at the turn of the second millennium by postmodern philosophy and the rise of rock culture.