Analysing musical culture in nineteenth-century Europe: towards a musical turn?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to establish the extent to which the history of music can offer new perspectives on the modern period. We need a change of perspective, moving away from the aesthetic debates on music to an investigation of actual experiences and practices of participants. Audience behaviour provides a link between musical production and society. In order to make opera houses and concert halls visible as social spheres, this article draws on examples from the musical life of Berlin and London in the 1800s. Music should no longer be regarded as a peripheral phenomenon, but instead as a potential historical question. The analysis of musical performances prompts at least one: music matters.

Keywords:

• cultural history
• music and society
• European History
• audience behaviour

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude to Volker Berghahn, Heinz-Gerhard Hapt, Margret Menninger, Juergen Osterhammel, James Retallack, Jutta Toelle, Bernd Weisbrod, and Sarah Zalfen, who read the text and provided valuable suggestions for its improvement.

Notes

 1. Cf. Charle, Théâtres en capitales; Blanning, The Triumph of Music; Hall-Witt, Fashionable Acts; Ther, In der Mitte der Gesellschaft; Applegate, Bach in Berlin; Frisch, German Modernism; Steinberg, Listening to Reason; Gramit, Cultivating Music; Bereson, The Operatic State; Bödeker, ed., Le concert et son public; Bashford, ed., Music and British Culture; and the second edition of the classic study by Weber, Music and the Middle Class. The Social Structure of Concert Life in London.

 2. Cf. Augustine, Patricians and Parvenus; Döcker, Die Ordnung der bürgerlichen Welt; Jefferies, Imperial Culture in Germany, 1871–1918; Hettling and Hoffmann, ed., Der bürgerliche Wertehimmel. Innenansichten des 19. Jahrhunderts; Gunn, The Public Culture of the Victorian Middle Class; Horn, Pleasures & Pastimes in Victorian Britain; Sigsworth, ed., In Search of Victorian Values.

 3. Cf. Kannonier, Zeitwenden und Stilwenden; Knepler, Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts; Isherwood, Music in the Service of the King; Schleuning, Der Bürger erhebt sich. Geschichte der Musik im 18. Jahrhundert; Rosselli, The Life of Mozart.

 4. Botstein, Music and its Public.

 5. The critical remarks by Trevor Herbert, ‘Social History and Music History,’ 146–56, and Treitler, ‘History and Music;’ may serve as a case in point here. The eminent musicologist Carl Dahlhaus remained as usual an exception. Cf. Ninenteenth-Century Music; along with Ballantine, Music and its Social Meanings; Leppert, Music and Image, and the challenging approach of DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius.

 6. This is regularly called for but is seldom accomplished. Cf. Taruskin, Text and Act. Essays on music and performance; Cook, ‘Music as Performance;’ Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 144–5; Gramit, Cultivating Music, 164–5.

 7. Stockfelt, quoted in: Finnegan, ‘Music, Experience, and the Anthropology of Emotion,’ 181–92, 184.

 8. Cf. Bennett, Theatre Audiences. Small, Musicking. Among the various scholars highlighting the importance of the analysis of receptions are Danuser und Krummacher, eds., Rezeptionsästhetik und Rezeptionsgeschichte in der Musikwissenschaft; Hinrichsen, ‘Musikwissenschaft: Musik — Interpretation — Wissenschaft;’ Thompson, ‘Reception Theory and the Interpretation of Historical Meaning;’ Kemp, ed., Der Betrachter ist im Bild.

 9. Cf. Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera; Fenner, Opera in London; McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn; Mahling, ‘Zum “Musikbetrieb” Berlins und seinen Institutionen in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts;’ Rehm, Zur Musikrezeption im vormärzlichen Berlin; Zerback, ‘Die Verbürgerlichung des städtischen Raumes.’

10. Adorno, ‘Bürgerliche Oper;’ Cf. Früchtl, ‘Der Schein der Wahrheit. Adorno, die Oper und das Bürgertum.’

11. Cf. Fryer, The Opera Singer and the Silent Film; Müller, 'Musik als nationale und transnationale Praxis im 19. Jahrhundert.'

12. ‘What ultimately matters is not what is but what people believe is.’ Connor, Ethnonationalism, 93.

13. Paulmann, Pomp und Politik; Vernon, Politics and the People; Plunkett, Queen Victoria; Budds, Music at the Court of Queen Victoria; Rowell, Queen Victoria Goes to the Theatre; Daniel, Hoftheater; Andres and Geisthövel, eds., Die Sinnlichkeit der Macht. Herrschaft und Repräsentation seit der Frühen Neuzeit.

14. Vossische Zeitung, 20 Jan. 1816.

15. Morning Post, 21 March 1821.

16. Morning Post, 19 April 1855. Cf. The Daily News, 20 April 1855.

17. Cf. Müller and Toelle, ed., Bühnen der Politik; Leppert, Music and Image, 1–9.

18. Haude und Spenersche Zeitung, 5 Aug. 1820.

19. Bereson, The Operatic State, 178–85.

20. Haude und Spenersche Zeitung, 30. March 1827. Cf. Vossische Zeitung (M), 6 June 1905; Fulcher, The Nation's Image.

21. Crucial for the concept of musical performances as an establishment of social relations is Small, Musicking, 39–49. Cf. van Leeuwen, Speech, Music, Sound.

22. As early as 1961 Jürgen Habermas stated with regard to concert performances that they themselves created a new type of middle-class audience. The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, 50 ff. Cf. Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class. The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840.

23. Cf. Johnson, Listening in Paris, 9–34. The debate about the methodological and empirical impact of Johnson's book is continuing. Quite a few scholars complain that Johnson's focus is directed on Paris only and demand an international comparison. Cf. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes; Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste. The book by Lawson and Stowell, The Historical Performance of Music, offers an overview of historical performance, surveying the various current issues (including the influence of recording) and examines the impact of the period performer's myriad primary source materials.

24. Illustrirte Zeitung, 28 March 1901, 471–4.

25. Bourdieu, Distinction; Cf. Supicic, Music in Society, 141–68.

26. Cf. Sennet, The Fall of the Public Man; Senet, The Conscience of the Eye. The Design and Social Life of Cities.

27. Cf. Braun and Gugerli, Macht des Tanzes – Tanz der Mächtigen. Hoffeste und Herrschaftszeremoniell 1550–1914, 166–202.

28. B[ritish] L[ibrary], RPS/MS/279, 155, 11 Feb. 1821. Cf. Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England, 143–67.

29. BL RPS/MS/338, 11, 8. Feb. 1821. Cf. Ehrlich, Royal Philharmonic. A History of the Royal Philharmonic Society.

30. Vossische Zeitung, 21 Dec. 1844. Cf. Haude und Spenersche Zeitung, 30 Dec. 1844.

31. Vossische Zeitung, 3 Dec. 1846.

32. Cf. Bennett, Theatre Audiences, 133–47; Small, Musicking, 19–29.

33. Cf. The Morning Post, 8 June 1844.

34. Her Majesty's Theatre , A List of the Subscribers for the Season 1845. Cf. Hall-Witt, Fashionable Acts, Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780–1880; Weber, ‘Redefining the Status of Opera. London and Leipzig, 1800-1848.’

35. Morning Post, 1 May 1850.

36. BL, Haymarket Theatre (HM) Cuttings from Newspapers, 1807–29, Bl. Th.Cts. 43, 8 June 1829.

37. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class.

38. Cf. the lists in the BL: Lee, The Plan of the Boxes at the King's Theater, Haymarket. With an alphabetical List of the Subscribers for the Season 1807; Her Majesty's Theatre, A List of the Subscribers for the Season 1845.

39. Cf. Gramit, Cultivating Music, 21 ff., 162–3.

40. Hall-Witt, Fashionable Acts, 185–226.

41. Cf. Heister, Das Konzert. Theorie einer Kulturform, 1: 117–33; Applegate, Bach, 135–41.

42. Cf. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes; Johnson, Listening in Paris; Hall-Witt, ‘Representing the Audiences in the Age of Reform’ 121–44; Huebner, ‘Opera Audiences in Paris 1830–1870,’ 206–25; Weber, ‘Did people listen in the 18^th century?’; Bashford, ‘Learning to Listen: audiences for chamber music in early-Victorian London,’ 25–51; Müller, ‘Hörverhalten als europäischer Kulturtransfer. Zur Veränderung der Musikrezeption im 19. Jahrhundert.’

43. Cf. Sponheuer, Musik als Kunst und Nicht-Kunst; Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 45–79; Botstein, ‘Listening through Reading’; Botstein, Music and its Public. Habits of Listening and the Crisis of Musical Modernism in Vienna 1870–1914.

44. Morning Post, 21 Feb. 1910.

45. Haude- und Spenersche Zeitung, 21 March 1818.

46. Elias, The Civilising Process. Cf. Sennet, Fall of Public Man.

47. Vossische Zeitung, 17 Dec. 1844.

48. Vossische Zeitung, 20 Dec. 1844.

49. Cf. Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste; Müller, ed., Die Oper im Wandel der Gesellschaft. Kulturtransfers und Netzwerke des Musiktheaters in Europa (2010); Müller, ‘A musical clash of civilisations’?; Sposato, ‘Saint Elsewhere: German and English Reactions to Mendelssohn's Paulus.’

50. Cf. Meyer, ‘Taste Formation in Pluralistic Societies. The Role of Rhetorics and Institutions;’ Gebesmair, Grundzüge einer Soziologie des Musikgeschmacks.

51. That's the argument of Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow.

52. Vossische Zeitung, 16 Jan. 1859; Haude und Spenersche Zeitung, 18 Jan. 1859.

53. Haude und Spenersche Zeitung, 16 Jan. 1859, 18 Jan. 1859.

54. The Musical World, 23 June 1877, 431.

55. Morning Post, 6 May 1882.

56. Illustrated London News, 18 June 1892, 747.

57. Cf. Schmitt, Revolution im Konzertsaal; Bauer, Wie Beethoven auf den Sockel kam. Die Entstehung eines musikalischen Mythos; Johnson, Listening in Paris, esp. 257–69.

58. Cf. Large and Weber, eds., Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics; Veltzke, Der Mythos des Erlösers.

59. Cf. Leppert, ‘The Social Discipline of Listening;’ Johnson, Listening in Paris, 22–38; Balet and Gerhard, Die Verbürgerlichung der deutschen Kunst, Literatur und Musik im 18. Jahrhundert, 334–94, 468–81; Daniel, Hoftheater, 126–57.

60. Cf. Hall-Witt, ‘Reforming the Aristocracy: Opera and Elite Culture, 1780–1860.’

61. Cf. Luhmann, Die Politik der Gesellschaft, esp. 274–318; Schorn-Schütte, Historische Politikforschung; Stollberg-Rilinger, Einleitung in Vormoderne politische Verfahren, 9–24.

62. Cf. Arblaster, Viva la Liberta! Politics in Opera; Bermbach, Wo Macht ganz auf Verbrechen ruht. Politik und Gesellschaft in der Oper; Bernd Frevel, ed., Musik und Politik; Bokina, Opera and Politics; Danuser and Münkler, eds, Deutsche Meister – böse Geister?; Sheryl Kroen, Politics and Theatre; Hall-Witt, ‘Representing the Audiences in the Age of Reform,’ 122–31.

63. Cf. Gebesmair, Grundzüge einer Soziologie des Musikgeschmacks, 55–63.

64. The Musical World, 30 April 1840, 274.

65. The Figaro in London, 9 March 1833, 38–40. Cf. ibid. 20 April 1833, 64.

66. The Athenaeum, 12 May 1838, 395–96.

67. The Harmonicon, May 1824, 100. Cf. ibid., July 1824, 141.

68. The Spectator, 8 May 1841, 445.

69. The Spectator, 2 Feb. 1833, 106.

70. Morning Post, 7 June 1833, 3; Cf. ibid., 2. May 1844, 5.

71. Cf Fulcher, The Nation's Image; Corbin, ‘Agitation in Provincial theatres under the Restoration.’