Larry Hamberlin
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195338928
- eISBN:
- 9780199855865
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195338928.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, Opera, Popular
This chapter and the next examine novelty songs that use both opera and ragtime to express tensions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, racializing them as tensions between white and black America. ...
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This chapter and the next examine novelty songs that use both opera and ragtime to express tensions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, racializing them as tensions between white and black America. Chapter 6 is an in-depth treatment of a single song, Ted Snyder and Irving Berlin's “That Opera Rag” (1910). Through a close reading of the music and lyrics, an examination of the song's use in a stage comedy, Getting a Polish, and a consideration of the stage persona of May Irwin, the actress who interpolated the song in that comedy, the chapter demonstrates how contemporary audiences could perceive multiple levels of meaning that interact in a complex piece of social and musical commentary.Less
This chapter and the next examine novelty songs that use both opera and ragtime to express tensions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, racializing them as tensions between white and black America. Chapter 6 is an in-depth treatment of a single song, Ted Snyder and Irving Berlin's “That Opera Rag” (1910). Through a close reading of the music and lyrics, an examination of the song's use in a stage comedy, Getting a Polish, and a consideration of the stage persona of May Irwin, the actress who interpolated the song in that comedy, the chapter demonstrates how contemporary audiences could perceive multiple levels of meaning that interact in a complex piece of social and musical commentary.
