Redefining the status of opera: London and Leipzig, 1800-1848

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 36, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 507-532

  Weber, William ^a  

^a CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33750979308     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219506774929764     Document Type: Review

References (137)

1. Chorley, "Music and the Drama: The Verdi-Mania," Athenaeum, 17 Jan. 1846, 73
2. (quoted in Victoria L. Cooper, House of Novella: Practice and Policy of a Victorian Music Publisher, 1829-66 [Aldershot, 2003], 132).
3. For further discussion of the article, see Victoria L. Cooper idem, "Music and the Drama: The Verdi-Mania," House of Novella: Practice and Policy of a Victorian Music Publisher, 1829-66 ibid., 2 Jan. 1847, 24, 51-52.
4. Robert Bledsoe, Henry Fothergill Chorley: Victorian Journalist (Aldershot, 1998);
5. Weber, "Opera in Concert: Toward Canonic Repertory in Paris, 1850-75," in M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet and Annegret Fauser (eds.), Opera in Paris from the July Revolution to the Dreyfuss Affair (forthcoming).
6. Subscription Concert Programs, Stadtgeschichtliches Museum, Leipzig (henceforth SML). Throughout this article, an asterisk will identify deceased composers on programs.
7. H. C. Ilobbins Landen, Haydn: Chronicle and Works, Haydn in England, 1791-179.5 (Bloomington, 1976), III. 235.
8. Anti-Theatn, 21 March 1720, 1.
9. The point about the beau monde derives from Weber, "Learned and General Musical Taste in Eighteenth-Century France," Past and Present, 89 (1980), 58-85;
10. Weber, idem, "La culture musicale d'une capitale: l'époque du beau monde à Londres, 1700-1800," Revue d'histoire moderne & contemporaine, XLIX (2002), 119-139.
11. Weber, Idem, "Did People Listen in the Eighteenth Century?" Early Music, XV (1997), 678-091.
12. See also Hannah Greig, "Gender, Conduct and the Ton: A Study of the Elite Culture and the Beau Monde in London, c. 1688-1830," unpub. Ph.D. thesis (Royal Holloway College, 2003).
13. Robert Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 (Princeton, 1959-1964), 2v.;
14. Jost Hermand and Michael Niedermeier, Revolutio Germanica: Die Sehnsucht nach der 'alten Freiheit' der Germanen, 1750-1820 (Frankfurt, 2003);
15. Esteban Buch (trans. Richard Miller), Beethoven's Ninth; A Political History (Chicago, 1999);
16. Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, I789-1848 (London, 1962),
17. [09. See also Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution (Berkeley. 1998), 290-297.
18. Ferdinand Stolle, Sachsens Hauptstädte, 1. Das neue Leipzig nebst einer Kreuzthurminspiration über Dresden (Leipzig, 1834), 121-122.
19. Joël-Marie Fauquet. Les sociétés de musique de chambre ̀ Paris de la restauration à 1870 (Paris, 1986);
20. Joseph Kerman, "Beethoven Quartet Audiences: Actual, Potential, Ideal," in Robert Winter and Robert Martin (eds.), The Beethoven Quartet Companion (Berkeley, 1994), 7-28;
21. Winter, "Performing the Beethoven Quartets in their First Century," The Beethoven Quartet Companion ibid., 29-58.
22. Programs entirely of instrumental works did occasionally appear in British musical societies of provincial Britain. See Jenny Burchell, Mite or Commercial Concerts? Concert Management and Orchestral Repertoire in Edinburgh, Bath, Oxford, Manchester, and Newcastle, 1730-1799 (New York, 1996), 79-80.
23. Winter, "Performing the Beethoven Quartets";
24. Charles Guynemer, Essay on Chamber Classical Music (London, 1846).
25. Mark Evan Bonds, "Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century," Journal of the American Musicological Society, L (1997), 392;
26. Giuseppe Mazzini (trans. Martin Kaltenecker), Philosophie de la musique: vers un opéra social (Paris, 2001);
27. Hector Berlioz, "Village of Euphonia, the Musical City: A Tale of the Future,"
28. in Hector Berlioz, idem (trans. Jacques Barzun), Evenings with the Orchestra (Chicago, 1973), 258-297;
29. William Ashton Ellis (ed.), Richard Wagner's Prose Works, I, The Art-Work of the Future (London, 1892; orig. pub. 1849), 23-213;
30. James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley, 1995);
31. Jennifer Hall-Witt, "Fashionable Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780-1880," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Yale Univ., 1996).
32. On the higher order of musical life, see Leanne Langley, "The English Musical Journal in the Early Nineteenth Century," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1983).
33. David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of Gentian Musical Culture, 1770-1848 (Berkeley, 2002), 128-143;
34. Imogen Fellinger, "Die Begriffe Salon und Salonmusik in der Musikanschauung des 19. Jahrhunderts," in Carl Dahlhaus (ed.), Studien zur Trivialmusik des 19. Jahrhunderts (Regensburg, 1967), 131-142;
35. Nicholas Temperley, "Ball-room and Drawing-Room Music, in idem (ed.), Music in Britain: The Romantic Age, 1800-1914 (London, 1981), 109-134.
36. The tendency is to see a comprehensive canonic repertory not arriving until 1900, or even later. See John Rosselli, "Italy, The Decline of a Tradition." in Jim Samson (ed.), The Late Romantic Era from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to World War One (London, 1991), 126-150;
37. Matthew L. Ringel, "Opera in 'The Donizettian Dark Ages': Management, Competition and Artistic Policy in London, 1861-70,'' unpub. Ph.D. thesis (King's College, Univ. of London, 1996).
38. Michael Tusa, "Cosmopolitanism and National Opera: The Case of Weber's Der Freischütz."
39. Hall-Witt, "Fashionable Acts ";
40. Simon McVeigh, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (New York, 1993):
41. Weber, Music and the Middle Class; Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris & Vimna, 1830-48 (Burlington, Vt., 2003; orig. pub. 1975).
42. Thomas Barnes, Examiner, 9 May 1813,
43. quoted in Theodore Fenner, Leigh Hunt and Opera Criticism (Lawrence, 1972). 175;
44. "Vocal Concert," Spectator, 23 March 1833, 15
45. John Danvers Worgan, The Musical Reformer (London. 1829), 12.
46. John Danvers Worgan, The Musical Reformer Ibid., 25.
47. McVeigh, "The Society of British Musicians (1834-1865), and the Campaign for Native Talent," in Christina Bashford and Leanne Langley (eds.), Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich (New York, 2000), 151.
48. Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven, 1997). 64, 81, 111;
49. Peter Mandler, idem, Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Wings and Liberals, 1130-1852 (Oxford, 1990).
50. See also Dror Wahrman. Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780-1840 (New York, 1995);
51. Hall-Witt, "Fashionable Acts";
52. Weber, Music and the Middle Class, particularly the preface to the ad edition (xi-xxxiv).
53. Fenner, Leigh Hunt and Opera Criticism, 46-50;
54. "Madame Pasta: An objection to concerts and oratorios," The Companion, 6 Feb. 1828, 36-37.
55. "Leign Hunt," Musical Examiner, 25 Nov. 1843, 327.
56. King's Theatre Programs, Center for Performance History, Royal College of Music, London (henceforth CPU). For the later history of such programs, see McVeigh, "The Benefit Concert in Nineteenth-Century London: From 'tax on the nobility' to 'monstrous nuisance,'" in Bennett Zon (ed.), Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies (Aldershot, 1999), I, 242-260.
57. "Concerts," Musical Examiner, 6 May 1843, 193;
58. Ian Taylor, "'A period of Orchestral Destitution'? Symphonic Performance in London, 1795-1813," Nineteenth-Century Music Review, II (2005), 139-168.
59. "Concerts," Musical Examiner, 10 Dec. 1842, 31.
60. "Concerts: London," Hannonicon, May 1833, 108;
61. Chorley, Music and Manners in France and Germany: A Series of Traveling Sketches of Art. and Society (London, 1841), I, 264-265, 272.
62. "A Sketch of the State of Music in London," Quarterly Music Magazine and Review, 10 (1828), 89;
63. "The Past Concert Season," 1 Aug. 1845, The Connoisseur: A Journal of Music & the Fine Arts, 49;
64. "The Musical Union." Musical Record, 11 March 1845, 2. A "rotten borough" was a parliamentary constituency with a much-decreased population that still elected a member to the House of Commons.
65. Chamber-Music Programs, CPH.
66. J. Palgrove Simpson, Carl Maria wn Weber. The Life of an Artist, from the German of his Son Baron Max Maria von Weber (New York, 1969; orig. pub. London, 1865), 1, 401;
67. Bashford, "The Late Beethoven Quartets and the London Press, 1836-ca. 1850," Musical Quarterly, LXXXIV (2000), 90;
68. Bashford, idem, "Learning to Listen: Audiences for Chamber Music in Early Vic torian London," Journal of Victorian Culture, IV (1999), 25-51;
69. "Concerti da Camera," Morning Chronicle, 9 Nov. 1835,
70. quoted in Bashford, Morning Chronicle, ibid., 1, 45.
71. Myles Birket Foster, History of the Philharmonic Society of London, 1813-1912 (London, 1912), 4;
72. Ehrlich, First Philharmonic: A History of the Royal Philharmonic Society (Oxford, 1995), 2-7.
73. Ehrlich, First Philharmonic, 21, 29.
74. Ehrlich, First Philharmonic, Ibid., 139;
75. "Philharmonic Society," Musical World, 27 March 1836, 26.
76. "Philharmonic Society," Harmonicon, 5 (1827), 145-146.
77. Arnold Schering and Rudolf Wustmann, Musikgeschichte Leipzigs (Leipzig, 1926-1941);
78. Hans-Joachim Nösselt, Das Gewandhausorchester: Entstehung und Entwicklung eines Orchesters (Leipzig, 1943);
79. Gustav Wustmann, "Die Gewandhausconcerte," Aus Leipzig Vergangenheit: Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig, 1898; orig. pub. 1894), II, 458-488;
80. Friedrich Schmidt, Das Musikleben der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft Leipzigs im Vormärz, 1815-48 (Langensalza, 1912).
81. I am indebted to Conrad Barrett for this translation of Seneca, which avoids the word "serious" and its special implications within present-day musical values. See Wilhelm Seidel, "'Res severa venim gaudium': Uber den Wahlspruch des Gewandhauses in Leipzig," Musikforschung, L (1997), 1-9;
82. Michael P. Steinberg, "Schumann's Homelessness," in R. Larry Todd (ed.), Schumann and His World (Princeton, 1994), 47-49;
83. Steffen Sammler, "Protestkultur und politischer Wandel in Leipzig im 19. Jahrhundert," in Thomas Höpel and idem (eds.), Kulturpolitik und Stadtkultur in Leipzig und Lyon (18.-20, Jahrhundert) (Leipzig, 2004), 55-08.
84. Margaret Menninger, "Kulturelle Eliten und kollektives Mäzenatentum in Leipzig," in Höpel and Sammler (eds.), Kulturpolitik und Stadtkultur, 83-102.
85. Briefe eines reisenden Franzonsen über die Deutschen, ihre Verfassung, Sitten & Geraüche: nebst Berichtugnen & Bemerkungen von einem Deutschen (Leipzig, 1796), 174.
86. For another satirist, see Detlev Prasch [Degenhard Pott], Vertraute Briefe uber den politischen und moralischen Zustand von Leipzig (London, 1787).
87. Extra-Concert Programs, 1820-24, SML.
88. "Abhandlung: Ueber das jetzt gewöhnliche Aufführen einzelner Opernscenen in Konzerten," AmZ, 1 May 1799,481;
89. Gramit, Cultivating Music, 129;
90. Bernd Sponheuer, "Beethoven vs. Rossini, eine paradigmatische Konstellation der Muskästhetik des 19. Jahrhunderts," Musik als Kunst und Nicht-Kunst (Kassel, 1987), 9-36.
91. Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual & Ideology (Oxford, 1992);
92. Weber, idem, "La musique ancienne in the Waning of the AncienRégime," Journal of Modern History, LVI (1984), 58-88;
93. Christoph Helmut Mahling,"Zum 'Musikbetrib' Berlins und seinen Institutionen in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts," Dahlhaus (ed.), Studien zur Musikgeschichte Berlins im früen 19. Jahrhundert (Regensburg, 1980), 27-284;
94. John Mangum. "Apollo and the German Muses: Opera and the Articulation of Class, Politics and Society in Prussia, 1740-1806," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 2002).
95. Einladung zu den Abonnement-Concerten im Winter 1844 bis 1845, included in Subscription Concert Programs, SML;
96. Stolle, Das neue Leipzig, 122.
97. See also Ganz Leipzig für acht Groschen: Neuer und vollständiger Wegweiser durch Leipzig für Fremde und Einheimische (Leipzig, 1838), 56;
98. [Gottfried Wilhelm Becker], Ein Blick of das Jahr 1832 in Beziehung auf Leipzig (Leipzig, 1833), 33-37, which mentions the Gewandhaus only in regard to its visiting soloists;
99. "Tagebuch: Aus Leipzig," Die Grenzboten, I, no. 8 (1848), 380.
100. Subscription Concert Programs, SML;
101. August Eberhard Müller, Rise up, rejoice! (Gerechte, frohlocket!), given on New Year's Day, ibid.;
102. Friedrich Rochlitz was author of the text. On such cantatas, see Buch, Beethoven's Ninth, 45-86.
103. Subscription Concert Programs, SML. Despite the trend, on January 14, 1847, a program without a deceased or classical composer occurred.
104. "Nachrichten," AmZ, 18 April 1847, 768-769;
105. Subscription Concert Programs, SML. Performed by David, the violin piece seems to have been added at the last minute, since the printed program does not cite it. On revival of Bach's music in public, see Michael Heinemann and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsen (eds.). Bach un die Nachwelt. 1. 1750-1850 (Laaber, 1997);
106. Celia Applegate. Bach in Berlin: A Cultural History of Mendelssohn's Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Ithaca, forthcoming).
107. The proportion of works by dead composers was compiled from Albert Doerffel, "Statistik der Concerte im Saale des Gewandhauses zu Leipzig," Geschichte der Gewandhausconcerte zu Leipzig (1881-1884), II.
108. Foster, History of the Philharmonic Society;
109. Subscription Concert Programs, SML.
110. Martin Kreisig (ed.), Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker (Leipzig, 1914), II, 168;
111. François Liszt (trans.), Conseils aux jeunes musicians (New York, 1878),
112. originally in his Album für die Jugend, Op. 68 (1848).
113. Páli Björnsson, "Zwischen Ausflügen und Barrikadenkampf: Die Konstituierung des liberal-nationalem Netzwerkes in Leipig, 1843-49," Leipziger Kalender 2001 (Leipzig, 2001), 73-87;
114. Robert Beachey, "Local Protest and Territorial Reform; Public Debt and Constitutionalism in Early-Nineteenth-Century Saxony," German History, XVII (1999), 471-488;
115. Stolle, Sachcns Hauptstädte. II. Die sächsische Revolution oder Dresden und Leipzig in den Jahren 1830 und 1831, im Verein mehrer Freunde (Leipzig, 1835), vii.
116. Schering, "Aus den Jugendjahren der musikalischen Neuromantik," Peters Jahrbuch, XXIV (1917), 45-63;
117. Wustmann, "Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Schumannischen Zeitschrift für Musik," Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, VIII (1907), 396-403;
118. Leon B. Plantinga, Schumann as Critic (New Haven, 1967), 109-110;
119. Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Building a National Literature; The Case of Germany, 1830-1870 (Ithaca, 1989), 104-122, 175-176, 274;
120. Jost Hermand (ed.), Das Junge Deutschland: Texte und Documenta (Stuttgart, 1966);
121. Joseph A. Kruse and Bernd Kortländer (eds.), Das Junge Deutschland: Kolloquium zum 150, Jahrestag des Verbots vom 10, Dezember 1833 (Hamburg, 1987);
122. Wolfgang Bunzel, Peter Stein, and Florian Vassen (eds.), Romantik und Vormärz: Zur Archäologie literarischer Kommunikation in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Bielefeld, 2003);
123. James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770-1866 (New York, 1989), 572-587;
124. "Intelligenz-Blatt der Planet," Unser Planet: Blätter fur Unterhaltung, Zeitgeschichte, Literatur, Kunst und Theater, 24 June 1834, 598;
125. "Aphorisme," Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 12 May 1835, 153;
126. John Daverio, "Einheit - Freiheit - Vaterland: Intimations of Utopia in Robert Schumann's Late Choral Music," in Applegate and Potter (eds.), Music and German National Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 59-77;
127. Anthony Newcomb, "Schumann and the Marketplace: From Butterflies to Hausmusik," in Todd (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Piano Music (New York, 1990), 258-315.
128. "Neuestes Leben und Treiben auf unserem Planeten," Unser Planet, 21 Aug. 1834, 820;
129. "Galläpfel" (Oak-apple), Unser Planet, 14 July 1834, 664;
130. Unser Planet, 11 Aug. 1834, 772.
131. Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848-51 (New York, 1994), 239-259:
132. Körner (ed.), 1848: European Revolution: International Ideas and National Memories of 1848 (Basingstoke, 2000);
133. Katherine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834-1880 (New York, 1995). 126.
134. Programs of Mme. Puzzi, St. James's Hall, and Ballad Concerts, CPU;
135. G arden Concerts and programs at Hotel de Saxe and Krystal Palace, SML;
136. Weber, "Opera in Concert: Toward Canonic Repertory in Paris, 1850-75."
137. Sydney Grew, "English and Modern Ideas of Music," Musical Opinion and Music Trade Review, 1 Nov. 1909, no. 386, 89.