Register for a CSMC lecture
Wednesday, 10 July 2024, 2:15 pm – 4:00 pm CEST
Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg, Room 0001 (Pavilion)
Music Manuscripts as Cultural Capital
Musical Public and Class Consciousness in Vienna 1740–1810
Martin Eybl (Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien)
Vienna underwent dynamic social and economic development during the Enlightenment century. A music history that does not focus on composers and their works, but instead on music-related practices, opens the perspective to music consumers – consumers of a rapidly evolving market of scores, instruments, and music education in the second half of the 18th century. Music manuscripts provide an ideal field to observe these developments: They serve as a starting point to identify collections and collectors as such, they are commodities in an expanding market, and objects in a struggle for cultural hegemony.
The upper middle class considerably expanded their activities in economy, politics, and the arts. When they started collecting music to perform it at their homes, they took over a practice that in earlier times aristocracy had used exclusively to accumulate cultural capital. Together with the corresponding convivial practices, collecting music became a strategic means both to maintain the traditional social rank or to gain a higher position. Identifying collectors and their manuscripts, we enter a newly established forum of public discourse about music and a field of competition between first and second society, aristocracy and middle class, a field that was shaped, depending on circumstances, by exclusion and cooperation between the social ranks.
Please register to attend:
Informal Talk: Martin Eybl
- Date: on10.07.2024from2:15 PM until 4:00 PM
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