Salon Music

Los Bailes de Salón en Venezuela contribuye a comprender cómo se fueron entretejiendo en el país -a través de una manifestación aparentemente banal y anodina como lo es el baile - los complejos vínculos entre lo público y lo privado, la cultura y el poder, las distinciones de clase y sus modos de representación, el entramado social  y los imaginarios de nación, la circulación de bienes culturales y la economía, etc. Por medio de un examen detallado de su significación social, de usos y costumbres, de su terminología, del desarrollo y evolución de la fiesta donde tiene lugar, de las músicas y coreografías, se describe la importancia que tuvo el baile para los venezolanos de finales del siglo XVIII hasta mediados del XX, hecho al cual la disciplina histórica no le ha prestado hasta ahora prácticamente ninguna atención. Este texto nos muestra la trascendencia del salón burgués como una de las instituciones fundamentales en la constitución de la Venezuela republicana, y cómo contribuyó a construir el país que hoy tenemos. Además, da cuenta de cómo la cultura venezolana es el producto de una intrincada red de relaciones internacionales, de las cuales recibió ingentes influencias, pero a las cuales aportó también sus propias particularidades. El texto está ilustrado  con abundantes grabados, pinturas y fotografías alegóricos  a su contenido, que  complementan la investigación.

This essay sheds light on parlour music from Romania’s southern region, Wallachia. Eight selected pieces exemplify some typical genres: society dances and sentimental ballads, pieces inspired (or not) by the music of “lăutari”, melancholic and languid, specific to south-eastern sensibilities as transitional spaces between “East” and “West”; and arranged arias with satirical overtones, derived from successfully staged comedies. All examples date from the second half of the 19th century, when “salon music” crystallised in Europe as a genre. In addition to short piano pieces of medium difficulty (bagatelles, nocturnes, ballads, barcarolles, waltzes, etc.), the repertoire also covered the promenade concert and the light-music café genre, engendering the notion of “salon orchestra”. As I will show, salon repertoire was of importance in Walachia not only quantity-wise, but occasionally also quality-wise. By its representativity, salon music allows a glimpse into local history, compressed in six “period tableaux”.

https://uknowledge.uky.edu/music_etds/134/ --This dissertation studies the musical activities of the Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreño (1853-1917) during her formative years in Caracas. It examines the sources that pertain to her musical environment, early piano training, and first compositions in the context of the growth in Caracas of the practices of recreational sociability, the increasing influence of virtuosic music, and the tradition of private concert-making sponsored by devoted music amateurs. This study argues that Teresa Carreño’s musical upbringing occurred in a social and cultural context in which Enlightenment-framed ideologies of civilization and social progress, shaped in fundamental ways the perceptions of the value of music and women in society, and their role in the newly-founded republic. This study is aimed at reconstructing Teresa Carreño’s musical activities in Caracas as a means for elucidating the values, aspirations, and contradictions of Caracas’s musical culture and how these were articulated within the broader context of the nation-building process that was shaped and promoted by the progressive intelligentsia since the early nineteenth century.

OF DISSERTATION TERESA CARREÑO’S EARLY YEARS IN CARACAS: CULTURAL INTERSECTIONS OF PIANO VIRTUOSITY, GENDER, AND NATION-BUILDING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY This dissertation studies the musical activities of the Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreño (b. 1853; d. 1917) during her formative years in Caracas. It examines the sources that pertain to her musical environment, early piano training, and first compositions in the context of the growth in Caracas of the practices of recreational sociability, the increasing influence of virtuosic music, and the tradition of private concert-making sponsored by devoted music amateurs. This study argues that Teresa Carreño’s musical upbringing occurred at a time in which Enlightenment-framed ideologies of civilization and social progress influenced in fundamental ways the perceptions of the value of music and women in society, and their role in the newly-founded republic. This study is aimed at reconstructing Teresa Carreño’s musical acti...

Until mid-19th century in Serbia only some musical pieces were occasionally published with foreign publishers. The first collections of Serbian folk songs and dances were published in mid-19th century in Vienna by Alojz Kalauz and then by Kornelije Stanković. The widow of the Vienna music publisher Heinrich Friedrich Müller printed salon dances for the piano, while the piano compositions of Kornelije Stanković were published with renowned Vienna publishers Pietro Mechetti and Gustav Albrecht. Until the 1870’s composers mainly published their own works, either by paying for it or by finding patrons. The appearance of “publishing bookshops” brought about a change in placing books on the market. Brothers Kamenko and Pavle Jovanović from Pančevo, as well as brothers Đorđe and Kirilo Popović from Novi Sad and Mita Stajić, who developed his business in Belgrade, greatly contributed to the development of Serbian bookshops and publishing, as well as to printing music sheets. The offer of Serbian publishers of music sheets publicized salon music prominently, which was a consequence of increased demand for note editions intended for home performances. Salon music was published in various forms: single editions, albums, or as musical additions to journals. The influence of the Paris salon style arrived among Serbs via Vienna and it included the visual aspect of music sheets. With some editions special care was taken that the front page was visually attractive. Besides the front page, buyers were strongly influenced by the title of the composition, which was often in French. Foreign lithographers (e.g. J. Eberle from Vienna and Engelmann and Mühlberg from Leipzig) were mostly hired for reproducing and printing front pages of musical editions.

Focal point of this study is ’women’s’ art salons of Anka Obrenović Konstantinović and her friend Meira, wife of the last Belgrade Fortress Ottoman commander, Ali Riza Pasha, in the context of the turbulent events in Belgrade, during the reign of prince Mihailo Obrenovic III, in the sixties of the nineteenth century. Soon after the arrival of Pasha’s wife, Meira, in Belgrade, Anka became close friends with her, and the two often visited each other. In order for Meira to attend her gatherings, Anka organized special "women only" art salons, unlike the so-called "mixed" salons, where guests were members of both sexes. Besides Meira and the prominent women of Belgrade, Anka used to invite the wives of foreign diplomats accredited to the Serbian court, as well as the wives of senior officers from the military garrisons stationed in Zemun, Pančevo, and Petrovaradin. These literary and musical gatherings were special occasions at which works of contemporary, mainly Serbian, French and German, poets and writers, were read, and where principal form of entertainment was piano, guitar, harp, or violin playing, and singing. Such gatherings usually ended with modern European dances, and quite often with Serbian and Oriental, too. On the other hand, in her lavish oriental salons, Pasha’s wife, Meira, organized the women’s art salons, too, which were especially festive during Bayram. Meira cultivated special affection towards French poets and writers whose works she read in the original, although works of German literature could also be heard at her gatherings, too. As for the musical part of the programme, salons of Pasha’s wife Meira, were famous for "girlish“ songs and chochek dances. Meira played the piano, violin and the guitar, and was fond of singing. Gatherings usually ended with chochek dances, but also with the turning European dances. Favourite was the waltz, at which Meira excelled. Both types of women’s art salons were organized primarily for fun and enjoyment of the arts by the elite members of the court and high society circles. On the other hand, thanks to the institution of the salons, the new role of women in the society was constituted, which enabled their entrance into public life, and cutting ties with the traditions of the time in which woman’s role was linked to the family only.

Zoila Lapique Becali (La Habana, 1930) es una suerte de sabia desenfadada de profundo sentido espiritual, que posee el aplomo del conocimiento, conserva el entusiasmo pueril del investigador y, sobre todo, sabe muy bien el valor del tiempo.
Un día me llamó para entregarme uno de sus tesoros: una caja llena de fotografías. Fue en ese cuarto de su casa que me encanta, «el sancta sanctorum», donde guarda todo aquello que ha encontrado en su larga vida y que comparte siempre generosamente, con quien quiera seguir adelante con su trabajo. Zoila no es una coleccionista, es una gestora de conocimientos y portadora de miles de datos y variables, que ninguna computadora en el mundo podría interrelacionar de manera tan precisa.
Se trataba de una investigación que hizo cuando trabajó en la Biblioteca Nacional, a partir de 1960, mientras fungía como subdirectora del Departamento de Música junto a Argeliers León. Su curiosidad innata y una vocación inusual para el estudio, de todo aquello relacionado con el arte de la impresión, la hacían hojear diarios y revistas, una a una, en busca de ilustraciones y piezas de música.
De esta colección ha derivado la publicación de un primer ejemplar —de dos que están previstos— dedicado a la música de salón contenida en las revistas de La Habana (1829-1867), a cargo de un colectivo de autores integrado por la propia Zoila Lapique, Indira Marrero, Claudia Fallarero y la autora de estas letras. Fue ese libro el eje central de las presentaciones del Gabinete de Patrimonio Musical Esteban Salas de la Editorial Boloña y el sello editorial Cidmuc en la 27 Feria Internacional del Libro de La Habana, en febrero de 2018. Precisamente, una serie única de partituras, extraídas de las páginas de La Moda, o Recreo Semanal del Bello Sexo (1829-1830), conforma esta vez la sección «Pentagramas del Pasado».
La prensa, documento relativo a la difusión de la actividad musical, constituye una de las fuentes imprescindibles para el estudio de este arte en su contexto cultural. Sea dedicada a una temática general con referencias a la música o, totalmente especializada en ella, lo cierto es que una parte del conocimiento de nuestro acervo sonoro, depende de los datos que aparecen en esas publicaciones periódicas. Sobre este tema presentamos los resultados de dos trabajos realizados en el marco del Diplomado en Patrimonio Musical Hispano del Colegio Universitario San Gerónimo de La Habana. Se trata del análisis de los contenidos del boletín Música de la Casa de las Américas por Carmen Souto, y el estudio de la revista Guitarra, por Joe Ott.
«Documenta Musicae», reserva su espacio a la iconografía musical, en esta ocasión se centra en el nuevo cuadro que preside el aula Pablo Hernández Balaguer, dedicado a este musicólogo y compositor cubano.
Ha querido el artista Omar González representar, no solo el rostro, sino la idea de continuidad en el estudio y preservación del patrimonio musical cubano, un proyecto que sigue adelante y que cuenta —al cierre de esta edición—con un nuevo reconocimiento de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba: el premio a la labor de Claudia Fallarero en favor del rescate de la música de Juan Paris. Sea este Sincopado Habanero un justo tributo a todos aquellos que nos han precedido.

Espectáculo de música, danza y teatro, basado en textos de escritores costumbristas venezolanos (Fermín Toro, Daniel Mendoza, libreto de Orlando Arocha), en los manuales de danza venezolanos y latinoamericanos del siglo XIX (coreografía de Orlando Orozco) y en la música del Cuaderno de piezas de baile de Pablo Hilario Jiménez (edición de Juan Francisco Sans), con el grupo Decimonónico. 14 y 15 de marzo de 2014, Teatro Municipal de Caracas

Franz Liszt was one of the most prominent pianists and composers of 19th Century Music. His great reputation is essentially due to his concert tours as pianist through all Europe especially during the Glanzperiode (1838-48), his work as editor and his commitment to create the Neu-Weimar-Verein which leads to the foundation of the first national school: the Neudeutsche Schule. A lot of cartoons in the press of the 1830s and 1840s underline the glory of the pianist. His image is very often that of a sulphurous virtuoso and a seducer, playing the piano with an almost diabolical gift (like Paganini for the violin). But apart from this image, the composer has managed to develop his immense network, to form discourses based on new aesthetics and the genius loci of the cities where he lived, and to use fully his intercultural and interdisciplinary experiences to innovate and change his environment. But against all odds, the hero Liszt during the Weimar years (1848-1861) does not appear on the pictures published by Richard Pohl 1855 in the Illustrierte Zeitung. These pictures, which are designed to publicize the Liszt salon, underline its specificity as a fraternal cenacle defending the aims of the Neu-Weimar-Verein, a vision diametrically opposed to Parisian virtuosity salons. This reflects an extensive change in the career of Liszt since his Weimar years.

The album “From the Salons of Novi Sad” comprises international salon dances of two composers, Aleksandar Morfidis Nisis and Isidor Bajić, whose artistic work to a great extent defined the musical life of Novi Sad in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. The album also includes salon dances of pianists and composers Julija Velisavljević and Slava Atanasijević. In the year when Aleksandar Morfidis Nisis was born (1803) amateurs from Novi Sad and Petrovaradin organized the first public charity concert and played the works of Joseph Haydn and Ignaz Joseph Pleyel. According to what has been known so far, this is the oldest document on a public concert held in Novi Sad (the Local Theatre in Petrovaradin). From 1838, when he moved from Vienna to Novi Sad, until his death, A. Morfidis Nisis was the spiritus movens of the musical life of the town: as a music teacher in the Serbian Grammar School, a piano teacher to young people from respectable families from Novi Sad, a choir leader, a composer, an organizer of musical life. One of his students was Julija Velisavljević, who was both a pianist and a composer. Only a few months after Nisis’ death, in 1878, Isidor Bajić was born. He would continue Nisis’ mission and enrich the musical life of Novi Sad with newer, more professional impulses. In this “Novi Sad album” Slava Atanasijević is a guest, just like she was a favourite guest at the concerts held in Novi Sad at the end of the 19th century. Thus, an unknown writer stresses: “Punctuality, routine, easiness of coping with all technical difficulties – all of this led us to complete delight”.
Compositions published in this Album have been discovered in musical collections of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad and of the Musicological Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) in Belgrade. Besides the printed editions, manuscripts were used and they will probably be published now for the first time. The order of the compositions in this edition is based on the chronology of making these pieces and simultaneously shows gradual maturity in the stylization of the salon dances for the piano – from biedermeier pieces of simple piano texture, such as the works of Aleksandar Morfidis Nisis and his student Julija Velisavljević, to pianistically more demanding polkas of Slava Atanasijević and Bajić’s compositions, which indicate artistic stylization of dances. Tastefully and seemly equipped editions from the 19th century, as well as the dedications of these compositions, reveal interesting cultural heritage of the Novi Sad citizenry.

The subject of the research monograph: The Social Role of the Salon Music in the Life and the Value System of the Serbian Citizens in the 19th century refers to the salon music culture on the territory of the Serbian countries (the Principality, the Kingdom of Serbia as well as the Serbs on the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy) in the 19th century, more precisely, until the outbreak of the First World War. The chronological frame offered (up to 1914.) matches the standard periodization of the European history (the Long 19th century) and it coincides with the political, social and cultural events of the time. In that period, during the creation of modern civil state, a specific domain of private life, as well as a value system, mostly taken from Central Europe, was constituted. The book contains 5 chapters: The introductory chapter, Music Publishing and Salon Music Production, Salon Music in the Life of the Serbian Citizens, Functions of the Salon Music, The End of the Era of the Salon Music.

In this monograph, salon music was seen as a specific product, medium of a lifestyle and mentality of one particular era. In order to get answers to the questions on place and function of the salon music in a life and value system of one society or social group, it was necessary to step out of the traditional musicology into the field of interdisciplinary research that includes sociology, history of culture, everyday life, and social history.

The Scottish-born William Notman (1826-1891) was one of the leading studio photographers of his time. He immigrated to Canada in 1856, settling in the Montreal, then the largest city in British North America. In the summer of 1860, he gave the visiting Prince of Wales a collection of photographs he had taken, documenting the construction of the Victoria Bridge. The quality of his work led to his being awarded the title “Photographer to the Queen,” an honour that helped to secure the success of his growing company and Notman’s own place among the colonial elite.

In this paper, I explore connections between music and wealth through photographic images produced by Notman between the year of Canadian Confederation, 1867, and the early 1880s. Among the thousands of photographs in the McCord Museum’s collections are numerous images of musicians who resided in or passed through Montreal during these years. Most were Europeans by birth – from Italy, Germany, France, and elsewhere. Their patrons were the largely British bourgeoisie that formed Notman’s main clientele. In addition to taking their portraits in his studio, he photographed their increasingly lavish homes. His success enabled him to acquire a mansion of his own on the edge of the ‘golden square mile,’ where he too played host to an artistic salon. While focusing on the Notman’s photographic images, the paper situates them in their historical context: exploring a society closely linked to the cultural practices of Britain and ideas of empire, while falling increasingly under the influence of the United States.

http://webtv.picardie.fr/video6750

Analyse de deux illustrations du salon de Liszt dans l'Altenburg à Weimar, publiées dans un article de Richard Pohl paru dans le le plus ancien journal illustré allemand, l'"Illustrirte Zeitung", Ces illustrations incarnent davantage que le miroir du salon qu'elles représentent, et contribuent à la construction de tout un monde autour de l'esthétique du cénacle de Liszt.

Música original para piano a cuatro manos de autores latinoamericanos del siglo XIX:  autores de Brasil (Carlos de Mesquita), Costa Rica (Alejandro Monestel y José Joaquín Vargas Calvo), Colombia (Julio Quevedo y Diego Fallon), Puerto Rico (José Morel Campos), Cuba (Ignacio Cervantes), Estados Unidos (Louis Moreau Gottschalk) y  Venezuela (Pablo Hilario Jiménez y José Ángel Montero).  Auditorio de la Corporación Andina de Fomento, febrero de 2015

This paper deals with some early instances of salon music in late
18th-century Istanbul, as attested in the Greek literature of the time.
The indication “early” has been preferred here because, in the European
context, this music genre is said to have been “officially” launched in the early
19th century, its heyday being reached in mid-century. However, musical
performances are known (and well-documented) to have taken place since the
18th century in Parisian and other western-European salons.
In fact, Parisian salons had appeared a century earlier, to counteract the court
culture, although the nobility also participated along the rising middle-class. Nevertheless, in this early stage, such events were mainly literary gatherings, in the sense that music was part of a broader cultural activity that encompassed other performative events, such as book reading, recitation of poetry, theatre acting, etc. Music was often performed  by way of airs, those originally being vocal compositions taken from larger works (operas, cantatas, oratorios) but gradually turned to pieces for instrumental ensembles.

The genre of potpourri as we know it — if we have heard of the genre at all —  is essentially a medley of tunes taken from a single opera, described by the current Grove as “hackwork for the amateur or impoverished musician.” But when the potpourri first appeared in France around the turn of the nineteenth century, it was understood in thoroughly different terms. In its original form, the potpourri was a vehicle for witty musical commentary through the borrowing and juxtaposition of passages from diverse musical genres. This type of potpourri was made illegal by Napoleonic copyright law: using excerpts from multiple works at a time was banned. The potpourri was more than a string of copied phrases, however. The relationships between the chosen passages and their adjacent and nearby neighbors were layered and nuanced, drawing on a web of instrumental and staged works for a complex musical game. While each potpourri and its badinage were individual, most of them made some remark on one central topic — musical resemblance — thereby creating a body of commentary on originality in music.

        Musical similarity was so central to the potpourri that one critic, reminiscing about the genre after it had been banned, explained that the potpourri had been “especially useful for denouncing plagiarists” because one could group together pieces that were harmonically or melodically analogous. But the strength of the charge was more variable than the critic remembered. Potpourris highlighted musical resemblance to differing ends and showed a wide range of feelings about authorial rights and originality in music: from shameful in one extreme to playful in the other. These unpredictable conclusions about creation reflect a tension between a culture of musical imitation and the burgeoning cult of genius at a moment when concepts about originality and the legal rights afforded to it were unsettled. By examining the piano potpourris of Louis Jadin (1768–1853), Hyacinthe Jadin (1776–1800), Daniel Steibelt (1765–1823), and Sébastien Demar (1763–1832), this paper examines concepts of musical authenticity, borrowing, and plagiarism in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century France. The way that these potpourris deconstruct, reconstruct, and play with preexisting music shows how French musicians found originality by toying with resemblance in a genre that was, ironically, banned for the plagiarism that it sought to highlight.

Capítulo incluido en "Made in Latin America. Studies in Popular Music." El libro consiste en una antología de ensayos sobre la música popular latinoamericana contemporánea desde la perspectiva de las escenas musicales, editado por Julio Mendivil y Christian Spencer.  Los ensayos están organizados por ejes temáticos: aspectos teóricos, escenas transnacionales, escenas locales y nacionales, clases sociales, identidad y política, y cuestiones de género, escritos por distinguidos especialistas del área, abordando personajes, estilos, géneros y problemas relevantes de la música popular en América Latina, y proveyendo de un marco social e histórico para comprender la realidad actual de la música latinoamericana.

https://uknowledge.uky.edu/music_etds/134/ --This dissertation studies the musical activities of the Venezuelan pianist and composer Teresa Carreño (1853-1917) during her formative years in Caracas. It examines the sources that pertain to her musical environment, early piano training, and first compositions in the context of the growth in Caracas of the practices of recreational sociability, the increasing influence of virtuosic music, and the tradition of private concert-making sponsored by devoted music amateurs. This study argues that Teresa Carreño’s musical upbringing occurred in a social and cultural context in which Enlightenment-framed ideologies of civilization and social progress, shaped in fundamental ways the perceptions of the value of music and women in society, and their role in the newly-founded republic. This study is aimed at reconstructing Teresa Carreño’s musical activities in Caracas as a means for elucidating the values, aspirations, and contradictions of Carac...

Im Jahr 1904, als der Zenit der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft bereits überschritten war, meldete die Freiburger Firma Welte & Söhne ein Patent für ihr Reproduktionsklavier an, das als Welte-Mignon-Reproduktionsklavier ab 1905 Einzug in die bürgerlichen Salons halten sollte. Die technischen Mittel der Freiburger Erfindung ermöglichten es, die Interpretationen der bezeichnenden Werke des langen, bürgerlichen 19. Jahrhunderts durch die Créme-de-la-Créme des zeitgenössischen Musikschaffens zu den Hörern zu bringen. KomponistInnen wie Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, Alexander Skrjabin und Max Reger hatten mit ihren Einspielungen eigener und fremder Werke großen Anteil an der Popularität des Welte-Mignon-Klaviers, das bis in die 1930er Jahre von Vielen dem Grammofon vorgezogen wurde. Der umfangreiche Nachlass der Firma im Augustinermuseum in Freiburg im Breisgau stellt den Ausgangspunkt für die Betrachtungen zur zeitgenössischen Rezeption und zum Einfluss des Repetitionsklaviers auf den bürgerlichen Salon dar. Darüber hinaus sind die Klavierrollen auch für die heutige Forschung ein beinahe unerschöpflicher Fundus. Man denke an die Interpretations- und Performanceforschung, wie sie vor allem in Großbritannien durch Nicholas Cook und seine KollegInnen betrieben wird. Seltsamerweise werden die Welte-Rollen bisher außer Acht gelassen, so dass sich dieser Beitrag auch als kritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Material versteht und prüfen will, inwiefern die Klavierrollen einer „Interpretationsgeschichte“, die bis weit in das 19. Jahrhundert zurückreichen soll, dienlich sein kann.