The challenge

 I'm studying how the Lorca music intersects with categories of taste, like middlebrow or kitsch. But I myself occupy a position in this hierarchy. I like music that has a certain integrity. It can be alienated from what Lorca was doing, different in whatever way, but it cannot be cheap in its effects.  

It's actually an objective judgment to call something middle-brow or kitsch. That simply is that sort of taste. The cursi is cursi and is perfectly recognizable as such. Those are sociological facts. 

So middle-brow elevates in cheap ways (adding strings to a song that doesn't need them, to make it sound more refined). Kitsch just goes all out, and has the strings + a canned rock-beat on the drums. Kitsch doesn't care whether it's elevated, but will add a little bit of strings just to be sure. It is hybrid in all the wrong ways. 

Obviously I am just arguing with myself here.  Instead of saying "this is kitsch," I could say, "this is the sort of thing people call kitsch." Or middle-brow. Instead of trying to find a non-pejorative way of talking about it, I could just own it.