Music and the Middle Class

The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between 1830 and 1848

William Weber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351557559
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Musique

First published in 1975, Music and the Middle Class made a trail-blazing contribution to the social history of music, bringing together sociological and historical methods that have subsequently become accepted as central to the discipline of musicology. Moreover, the major themes of the book are ones which scholars today continue to grapple with: the nature of the middle class(es) and their role in cultural definition; the concept of taste publics distinct from social status; and the establishment of the musical canon. This classic text is reissued here in Ashgate's Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain series, though of course the book ranges beyond its study of London to discuss in detail the contrasting concert life of Paris and Vienna. This edition features a substantial new preface which takes into account the significant work that has been done in this field since the book first appeared, and provides a unique opportunity to assess the impact the book has had on our thinking about the European middle class and its role in musical life.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The ‘Biedermeier’ period, they once called it in Central Europe. The burgeoning economic and political activity of the middle class after the mid-point of the nineteenth century impressed writers so much that they looked back at the two decades prior to the Revolution of 1848 with undisguised scorn. The plain, unpretentious furniture of the period provided them with a handy pejorative term for describing the supposedly passive temper of the times. But historians now see many tendencies of a very different sort among the middle class – dynamic, assertive tendencies which foreshadowed the more open and successful actions of the class after the mid-century. During that time mechanized light industry was initiated in France and Germany and consolidated in Britain; nationalist movements forged many of the intellectual and political tools they were to use later in the century; and the publishing industry emerged in its modern form throughout Europe. The middle class was trying its hand at new things, and even though some of its efforts were fumbling or abortive, they afforded strong evidence of what was to come.

The history of concert life exhibited the intense social energies of the middle class even more dramatically than most such developments. The concert world as we know it now began during the period. The numbers of concerts proliferated throughout Europe, and their customs and design took on characteristically modern forms. With them came a giddying social atmosphere among the middle class and the aristocracy, eager trips to concert halls, ravenous consumption of sheet music and periodicals, passionate support of performers and musical styles, and a shrewd use of all this toward self-advancement. Music fans may have lounged in Biedermeier furniture while talking about these matters, but their behavior certainly did not resemble its stolid tone.

The period of the 1830s and 1840s is therefore ideal for studying both the development of the concert world and the middle class in general. The two problems are so closely intertwined that this book will treat them with equal seriousness. Analysis of social structure in the two areas involves the same sociological factors – social classes, professional groups, taste publics, institutions, men and women, and the family. The term social structure thus does not stand in the title idly, for it provides the key concept through winch we will approach our subject.

There is similar logic and feasibility for studying London, Paris, and Vienna together. As the three most important national capitals of the time, they had great similarities in their social structure which derived from the functions of capital-city life. Indeed, we will argue that because of their political and social roles they resembled each other in significant ways more than other cities in their respective countries. The period of 1830 to 1848 was also chosen for purposes of breadth. Because that era brought so many modernizing tendencies to musical life, it can be used to study the evolution of concerts from its start in the late seventeenth century to its culmination about 1870. While we will concentrate our attention upon the two decades prior to the Revolution of 1848, we will often look before and after that time, especially to the period of consolidation in concert life after mid-century.

The centrality of the period in the development of concert life is revealed through the unusually fine sources available. Many new concert organizations were founded at the time which left many kinds of records: membership lists, minutes of directors’ meetings, and official letters. Most important of all, the membership lists have provided revealing information about the occupations and social status of the societies’ constituents. The expansion of the press and the book industry during the period also furnishes many valuable published works: periodicals, satirical writings, travel guides and letters, memoirs, and multifarious books and pamphlets on city life. Because concerts were such a fad among the middle class, reviewers and columnists talked extensively about the social fabric of the new events and particularly about the status levels of audiences. Travel guides and handbooks on city life likewise always sketched out that hierarchy. The many satirical pieces which appeared in newspapers, magazines, and books provided even more probing commentary upon the role of musical activities in the lives of specific social groups.

Qualitative sources such as these do, of course, present problems of inaccuracy and vague language. Music critics had their own axes to grind and often received payoffs from musicians whose concerts they reviewed. Authors of travel letters or books on city life often over-generalized about currents in musical life. But such errors can be identified with surprising ease. While reviewers felt free to flatter concerts as ‘brilliant’ or ‘dazzling’, they were much more precise in their descriptions of the status of audiences. Few instances are found of flagrantly contradictory estimations of the social background of particular concerts. Furthermore, the great variety of published sources made possible comparison of the relative merits of each one. The most powerful critics indicated most clearly where taste was moving but the information they provided on the composition of audiences was not as deep or concrete as that of less prominent reviewers or non-musical journalists.

The directions in which this study will go emerge clearly from a brief exploration of the prior history of the concert world from its beginnings in the late seventeenth century. The history of concerts in London, Paris, and Vienna falls into five periods: 1) 1680–1750, the scattered appearance of concerts; 2) 1750–90, the growth of frequent events in all three cities; 3) 1790–1813, a hiatus in presentations; 4) 1813–48, the rapid explosion in their number and significance; and 5) 1848–70, the consolidation of the concert world in its modern form.

As this periodization suggests, the concert is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon. Prior to the late seventeenth century there had existed virtually no formal and independent settings whose central purpose was the performance of music. Musical activities had been attached to many other institutions and social locales – courts, taverns, the Church, markets, and families – and for the most part served their social and cultural needs. The rise of concerts, the opera, and musical societies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries therefore constituted a fundamental reordering of the social structure of musical life. From that time on the pursuit of music evolved into a world of its own, with purposes, etiquette, and social organization specific to it. Opera developed the most rapidly, for by the early eighteenth century there were large, highly formalized companies in all parts of Europe. Concerts grew more sporadically. During the late seventeenth century a few occurred in London, and after the turn of the century they began in Paris. But their number was not considerable until after 1750.¹

It was only during the eighteenth – and in some respects not until well into the nineteenth – century that the new musical world acquired anything more than a rough approximation of the stable, tightly organized institutions and customs of the contemporary era. Concerts especially remained tied to other social spheres and continued to be subordinate to their activities. Held in taverns, theaters, parks, and homes, they did not differ greatly in their social manners from the other kinds of socializing and entertainment which took place in those locales. Their programmes had a miscellaneous mix of symphonies, dance music, opera selections, operetta songs, sacred choral pieces, serious chamber music, virtuosic numbers, and even poetry readings. The demeanor of their audiences was also quite free. As the heroine of Fanny Burney’s late eighteenth-century novel Evelina remarked, ‘indeed I am quite astonished to find how little music is attended to in silence; for though everybody seems to admire, hardly anybody listens.’²

The growth of concerts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries differed in the three cities in ways that influenced later development significantly. In London the events grew earlier and more numerously than in Paris or Vienna. The initial concerts held during the 1680s were presentations by the clientele of taverns, probably members of the lower middle class.³ By the 1720s these events had largely disappeared, and concerts for the nobility and upper-middle class had replaced them. Between 1750 and 1790 their number increased greatly, producing the closest parallels to the professional recitals and orchestral concerts of the nineteenth century. Concert-going became a central part of the aristocracy’s high social season, for musicians planned their concerts with the assistance of their aristocratic patrons. One series, the Concerts of Ancient Music, was directed (and to some extent performed) by the highest noblemen, and became so prestigious that the king often attended. Some wealthy members of the middle class went to the concerts but had no leadership role within them. Several private middle-class performing clubs appeared, but they had little prominence in the city’s social life.⁴ During the crisis of the 1790s concerts disappeared almost completely.⁵ But despite their collapse, the intense activities of the preceding decades laid down social precedents which greatly affected the revival of concerts in the next century. The nobility had established itself as the controlling class in the new concert world.

In Paris, concerts had a promising but frustrated development during the eighteenth century. In 1725 began the ‘Concert Spirituel’, programs of instrumental and sacred works held in the Palace of the Tuileries on the thirty-five holy days when religious law prohibited operatic performances. Established under a privilege granted by the Opéra, the series was directed by court musicians and soon became the capital’s main showcase for players and singers, including symphonies and Italian opera. It is probable that it had a public similar to that at the Opéra, that is, a combination of aristocrats, wealthy bourgeois, and high-level professionals.⁶ During the second half of the century a few professional musicians began putting on concerts, but the government restricted their frequency severely, to protect the opera and to prevent an independent musical world from emerging. Several groups of wealthy amateurs and hired musicians conducted private performances, but the state denied them licenses for public concerts. Had the government not restricted the numbers of events, Paris would certainly have had a concert world almost as active as that in London. The revolutionary regime ended the Concerts Spirituels in 1791, and concerts tended henceforth to be less strictly regulated than was true under the privileges of the old regime.⁷

The differences in the development of concerts in London and Paris were governed by the contrasting relationships which were emerging between the nobility and the state in the two countries. The rise of centralized monarchy in the seventeenth century forced the nobility to accept new kinds of public responsibility, but in each country the class took a different path in solving the problem.⁸ In England it acknowledged the central authority of the state with no major qualifications and involved itself extensively in the state’s affairs. In return the Crown granted the nobility autonomy in its cultural life and interfered only when governmental controls were profitable for both parties. The class accordingly shifted its main social life from its estates to London during the spring and developed wide-ranging artistic activities to accompany it. Concert life flourished in this setting, for it provided a casual kind of social intercourse which was ideal for the needs of the season.

In France the state and the aristocracy failed to establish such a working relationship. Bitter infighting continued between the government and the nobility and within the class itself until the Revolution. The Royal House maintained tight controls over all artistic institutions as a means of limiting the power of the aristocracy. While in some fields, such as publishing and the opera, state controls weakened considerably during the second half of the century, in concert life there was no such change. Even though noblemen supported musicians for performances in their homes, they were not able to develop patronal or dilettante activities within public concerts such as occurred in London. These differences in the roles of the nobility in public concert life in the two cities were to have powerful effects upon the structure of the new concert world of the next century.

In Vienna concerts developed later than in the other two cities and with the greatest involvement of the middle class. Formal concerts first appeared during the 1750s but did not become frequent until the 1780s. They did not decrease much between 1790 and 1813, in contrast to the situation in London and Paris. Concerts developed late because the city had become a major capital only during the middle of the century. The nobility had not yet built up the same large capital-city social life that the English and French aristocracies had maintained since the late seventeenth century, and while its families lived in Vienna part of the year for political reasons, they did not sponsor public concerts or even attend them more than sporadically. Since the middle class was less wealthy and sophisticated than in London or Paris, most of the city’s concerts were small-scale affairs staffed by middle-class amateurs, resembling the events of most provincial cities. For the middle class as well as the aristocracy the central setting of musical life remained informal private gatherings.⁹

Despite the differences in the roles of the two leading classes in eighteenth-century concert life in the three capitals, one can still make certain generalizations about the influence and leadership of the middle class. The reckoning must be almost entirely negative. In the first place, the class had minimal formal authority over concerts. Only in Vienna did it control more than a few minor concerts, and there they were unstable and insignificant c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• General Editor’s Series Preface
• General Editor’s Foreword: Second Edition
• Preface: Second Edition
• Preface
• Abbreviations of Periodical Titles
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Cultural Explosion: An Overview
• 3 The High-Status Popular-Music Public
• 4 The High-Status Classical-Music Public
• 5 The Low-Status Concert Public
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix: The Size of the Middle Class
• Bibliography
• Tables
• Index