Listening in Paris: A cultural history by James H. Johnson

Abstract

Those of us with an interest in the culture and politics of French musical life in the nineteenth century have been very glad to see the publication of two books which cover specific aspects of the period. Katharine Ellis’ Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris, 1834-80¹ is a history of musical culture in Paris as revealed through the columns of Paris' more eminent music critics. James H. Johnson's Listening in Paris:A Cultural History writes a very different history. It traces the changes in awareness of Parisian audiences to their musical surroundings and gives philosophical and practical reasons for why in 1750, the Opera was a place to chat and conduct affairs (business and otherwise) but, by 1850 the mood had changed--audiences sat, often transfixed, by the goings-on on the stage before them.