Why is classical music predominantly the preserve of the white middle classes? Through a richly detailed ethnography, this book contributes to this ongoing debate with a timely and provocative intervention, locating classical music within one of the cultures that produces it--middle-class English youth -and foregrounds classical music as bodily practice of control and restraint.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1. Locating classical music in culture
Chapter 2. Boundary-drawing around the proper: from the Victorians to the present
Chapter 3. 'Everyone here is going to have bright futures'. Capitalising on musical standard
Chapter 4. 'Getting it right' as an affect of self-improvement
Chapter 5. Rehearsing restraint: how the body is transcended
Chapter 6. 'Sometimes I feel like I'm his dog': gendered power and the ethics of charismatic authority
Chapter 7. 'Instead of destroying my body I have a reason for maintaining it.' Young women's re-imagining of the body through singing opera
Chapter 8. A community in sound: constructing the valued self
Conclusion
Appendix One
References