In 1948, the composer Benjamin Britten inaugurated the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts in the provincial British town of Aldeburgh. My research explores Britten’s attempt through the Festival to democratize culture and combat the alienation and consumerism of modernity by creating a vividly human community based upon shared, localized musical experience. Through amateur participation and interpersonal connection, Britten sought to affirm the social value of art in the modern era and make it available to all people, enacting the social ideals of the time in the realm of culture
