The origins of New Music: a study of the social history of a cultural phenomenon

Against the backdrop of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of social distinction and Wolfgang J. Mommsen's socio-historical works on culture and the arts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this study attempts to trace the emergence of New Music in the 1950s. Contrary to the self-perception of New Music representatives, music is understood here less as the result of the progressive history of so-called 'art music', and more as an expression of the social demarcation of an intellectual milieu. We seek the roots of New Music in the educated middle classes of the 19th century and their transformation in the 20th century.