William Castor's post

In the second section of his book “The Sacralization of Culture”, Levine discusses the very distinct changes that begin to invade American culture during the years following the American Civil War and especially during the beginning of the twentieth century. As in the first section concentrating on the American representation of the works of Shakespeare, the second section follows the paths of the symphony, opera, museums, and even photography. Through his study of the changes present in art during this era, what Levine truly elaborates on is the more complicated maturing of a recently established nation. We would be wise to remember that many of the changes occurring in the arts, were occurring only a century after the American Revolution.

One of the most prominent aspects of both the first and second sections of this work is the necessity of the American wealthy class to separate and establish themselves as a new world aristocracy; an aristocracy that mimics, borrows from, and idolizes that of the continent that had been shrugged off only several decades earlier. On page 140 Levine writes, “The process of sacralization reinforced the all too prevalent notion that for the source of divine inspiration and artistic creation one had to look not only upward but eastward toward Europe.” What has happened in this process of sacralization, and especially of the art of European masters, is the early nineteenth century struggle against European class structures and elitism prevalent in the American people is being paved over for the emergence of American class structures and elitism. The earlier struggle against the traditional European class structure is present on page 97 as Levine quotes Parker Willis on Jenny Lind and her American tour (1850-1852) and highlights that the success of her tour “was ‘proof of the slightness of separation between the upper and middle classes of our country.’” By the twentieth century, that “slightness” will be under attack as the wealthy individuals within American assume the role of financially supporting and intellectually structuring artistic expression. These ideas are evident on pages 122 and 123 most notably in the phrases “merchant princes” and “paternal rule.”

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American performers and conductors often reinterpreted work of great masters to suit the tastes of their American audiences. Levine describes this as “a ethos that did not consider opera-or most other forms of music, for that matter-to be finished, inalterable works of art” (95). Levine later goes to great lengths to convey the notion that late nineteenth and early twentieth century “educated” artists and critics would not accept and deviation form the original piece. They viewed works, especially musical works, of the European masters to be infallible and unchangeable to any decent composer or performer.

In the concluding pages of his discussion of, or critique of, the change in American attitudes about the consumption of art, Levine makes a very important observation. He states that although the movement to confine art, i.e. opera, symphony, sculpture, etc., to locales of high appreciation and study was successful it was not permanent. On 167 he observes that institutions of high culture that had become elitist and sacred by the beginning of the century began again throughout the rest of the century to reach out to the masses. Although not completely returned to the days of the marriage of high culture and common performance in one evening, we do have a more accessible attitude.