06 From Miscellany to Homogeneity in Concert Programming

7/28/2019 06 From Miscellany to Homogeneity in Concert Programming

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POETICSELSEVIER Poetics 29 (2001) 125-134

www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic

From miscellany to homogeneityin concert programmingWilliam Weber

Dept. of Hi story , Cal i forni a Stat e Uni versi ty , Long Beach, USA

AbstractOne of the biggest problems in the study of classical music is the prejudice with which thosebrought up in the tradition view the mores of musical culture prior to around 1800. We haveexpectations about what we term serious music that easily turns us against the manner bywhich music was presented and appreciated two hundred or more years ago. If we sre to under-stand better what musical culture was all about back then, we have to begin questioning our own

presuppositions and looking with a fresh eye at what people did in the pm-modern epoch. Iwould like to suggest some ways by which we might try that here today in regard to concertprograms. In the process I will offer a pair of concepts by which to conceive of the main prin-ciples by which programs were formed then and now: Miscellany versus Homogeneity. Thechange from the one to the other around 1850 constituted a massive, fundamental change in thewhole nature of musical experience. 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

One of the biggest problems in the study of classical music is the prejudice withwhich those brought up in the tradition view the mores of musical culture prior toaround 1800. We have expectations about what we term serious music that easilyturns us against the ways in which music was presented and appreciated two hundredor more years ago. It has become common to question whether people really did lis-ten to music in that epoch, since the manners of their musical contexts did not havethe strict, ideologically defined etiquette implicit in the design of the modern classi-cal-music concert hall. If we are to understand better what musical culture was allabout back then, we have to begin to question our own presuppositions and lookwith a fresh eye at what people did in the pre-modem epoch.I would like to suggest a way by which we can try to do that in studying concertprograms. I will offer a pair of concepts to define how programs were formedbefore and after around 1850: from Miscellany to Homogeneity. The change fromthe one to the other constituted a massive, fundamental change in the whole natureof musical experience. By such concepts we can begin to understand in more subtle0304-422X/01/$ - see front matter 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. AU rights reserved.PII: SO304-422X(01)00031-6


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and sympathetic terms the nature of musical culture prior to the arrival of ourvalues.This paper has grown out of my interest in the little-discussed problem of musical

classics and canon. We tend to take entirely for granted the existence of classics; wehave just begun studying the extraordinary rise of classical music to hegemony in theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Programs offer a crucial means by which to askwhen, how and why that happened. To understand the gulf between classical andpopular music we have to go beyond rehashing Theodor Adomos opinions on thematter and start doing some hard empirical research analyzing programs and thevocabulary of canonic notions. While working on the artifacts of music history wefind in programs and music magazines we must always remember that their mean-ings are intimately linked to deep-rooted assumptions that color everything we sayabout music.First, think for a moment about how you react to a program presented in Londonin 1844 by Jules Benedict, a German who studied with Beethoven, moved to Eng-land, and ended up one of the most important musicians there between 1835 and1880. Here (Program 1, Appendix A) we have an extreme example of what was thencalled a miscellaneous concert. Called by Benedict with a certain honesty a mon-ster concert, it included thirtythree pieces and probably lasted around four hours. Itpresented a mixture of genres and composers that we would not hear together: clas-sical overtures and arias; numbers from opera and oratorio; virtuosic instrumentalworks; and sentimental songs, most on national themes. The composers range fromMozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn to Donizetti and Bellmi, the most popularopera composers of the time, to a young Offenbach, and to a variety of now little-known virtuosos such as Fuzzi.Are we not horrified by all this? We cringe and call something like this just apotpourri, something people went to simply for social reasons, not to listen. Theprogram lacks the just proportions we expect in a concert: a few complete works inwhat we think of as serious genres by Great Composers.Program number 2 in Appendix A suggests the norm to which we are accus-tomed: pieces by Bach, Brahms, Mozart and Beethoven, all central composers in thecanon.It is important to see that these programs predate a fundamental change in Euro-pean musical culture: the rise of separate spheres of classical and popular music.What we are looking at is a quite different musical culture, in which a variety oftastes and groups of listeners coexisted. There was much less differentiation betweenserious and light musical events than in our day. While outdoor concerts hadmore casual etiquette that those indoors, and some songs were thought less artfulthan opera or oratorio arias, both kinds of music were often performed together, andpeople saw nothing wrong with it.

I have collected programs made in London, Paris, Leipzig, and Vienna for a book to be entitled Theinventi on of classical music, 1770-1840-1910. I have written on aspects of this problem as well inWeber (1992, 1997, 1999). See also McVeigh (1994). On Adomo I recommend particularly Witkin(1998).


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If we look more closely at this program we can see patterns, indeed a great dealof coherence: it offered a limited number of genres that themselves were related inimportant ways. The program alternates between instrumental and vocal numbers,the most basic principle of the miscellaneous program. Vocal and instrumental vir-tuosity were closely related: several of the pieces for pianists and violinists here aremedleys of tunes from the most popular operas, and the style in which the instru-ments were employed was influenced deeply by opera. The first five pieces outlinethe different genres in the program And these pieces were carefully chosen: Bene-dict offered his listeners a choice selection of what was regarded as the bestmoments of a whole variety of operas, done by the best musicians in London. Peo-ple were accustomed to hearing vocal and instrumental idioms up against oneanother; they indeed would have found a program incomplete without that. Suchconcerts were not nearly as miscellaneous, in the negative sense, as we think.Why was the concert so long? That derived from the practice by which peoplewould go to several events in an evening to hear or see specific pieces, sections, orperformers. Benedict had a large number of highly prestigious patrons, and he there-fore gave them full opportunity to get to some part of his annual concert. The com-pact nature of urban centers, and the small size of elites lay behind this practice. Theidea of the great work of art had not yet been established; it was not thought offen-sive to play parts of works that people would hear complete in other contexts. Whilewe may not approve of such etiquette, we have to admit that it grew out of coherentmusical principles.

Indeed, historically the program has considerable homogeneity: the oldest music,by Mozart, was fifty-five years old, and the great majority of the pieces were nomore than fifteen. By contrast, later classical-music concerts, number #2 for exam-ple, usually ranged two to three hundred years, from Johann Sebastian Bach to thepresent, touching base with a great variety of musical periods.

The term miscellaneous originated within poetry. During the late sixteenth cen-tury books of poems set in diverse genres began to be published under the denomi-nation of miscellany. That meant the reader would find a variety of poetic enter-tainment in a single volume. The term served as a way by which an author wouldwelcome readers, suggesting that the volume would please the tastes of differentpeople, or the varied needs of any one person. It thereby made clear that the bookwas not intended for specialists for much the same reason that the titles of magazinesoften included the words general or universal.

By the late seventeenth century musicians began doing much the same in publicconcerts, and for similar reasons. A concert program usually offered a variety ofgenres opera, oratorio, song, solo instrumental numbers, overtures, symphonic worksand would alternate between them in highly patterned ways, alternating betweenvocal and instrumental numbers, and between voices in contrasting ranges. A con-cert was given the title miscellaneous usually when it was an ad hoc event wherethe word recognized reality, that the sponsor was bringing together a variety of musi-cians to play works they had in hand. The prototypical such event was called abenefit concert that was put on by one, perhaps two musicians to his or her ownbenefit.


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But concerts put on by established institutions as series of events also usuallyoffered programs with much the same kind of patterned variety. The PhilharmonicSociety of London followed the principle of miscellany strictly in the sequence often pieces it offered at almost every concert during the first half of the nineteenthcentury. If you look at program 3 in the appendix, you see a program from 1826 thatfollowed the usual order of symphony, opera number, concerto, opera number, andoverture in each half. The Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig had a similar frame-work, though with eight pieces rather than ten.

What all this suggests is that, basically, prior to around 1830 the great majority ofconcerts followed the principle of miscellany. It is vital to see that the term miscel-laneous had a positive connotation in that time, as it does not today. It implied acoherent set of practices that concertgoers knew and enjoyed; it was based upon arhetoric intended to attract the listener.Now, the musician performed a role in what is best called negotiation betweenmusical genres, tastes, and favored performers and composers. It is incorrect to treatany audience as a single public, since in the vast majority of cases a public is com-prised of various groups with different tastes. Moreover, any one person has con-trasting musical needs and preferences. It is up to the sponsoring musician to nego-tiate between these factors as they manifest themselves within musical culture, andto fashion programs that reach some kind of compromise among them. The very rea-son that musicians would call a concert miscellaneous was to assure the public thathe or she had accomplished this central task to satisfy their various needs and tastes.My argument here derives in part from an extremely important article by the musi-cologist Kallberg (1988) that applies the concept of contract to the composersrelationship with the public. Kallberg argues that in the nineteenth century a musi-cian such as Chopin by definition approached the composition of a piece with a mixof social and musical expectations in mind for its genre but had the opportunity torenegotiate this in new ways, permitting him to transform the genre. I add to that theargument that the conventions by which a program offered a sequence of genresformed an integral part of the process of negotiation. All of which shows how skill-ful leading musicians were socially and politically. They were not pandering to thepublic. Rather, in negotiating among different musical needs, tastes and publics, theyplayed a creative role in reshaping musical life in fundamental ways.We can see a less extravagant miscellaneous concert than Benedicts in program4 (Appendix A). Ignaz Moscheles, also a German who moved to London, was theleading young virtuoso pianist in the 1820s; he learned unusually well how to blendBritish with Italian, indigenous with cosmopolitan works, along with German musicthat was beginning to achieve cosmopolitan status. He opened with an overture byMendelssohn, the leading contemporary descendant of the classical tradition whowas highly respected in Britain, then an aria by that countrys main musical icon,Handel (also born in Germany) and in the second half he offered a new setting of apopular British song by an Austrian. He included two Italian arias, not many for aconcert like that; one was unusually old, thirty-five years, not exactly a classic but atleast a work of special repute. He was a good diplomat; he knew how to work eachwith the more popular and the more learned parts of the public and keep them both


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happy. Still, he placed the focus of the concert upon his own playing and indeed hisown music, as you can see, and he accomplished that with full confidence andauthority.The rise of homogeneous progr amrning began soon after that, around 1850. Itgrew directly out of the emergence of an international canon for music that had itsorigins in eighteenth-century England but was transformed by developments in cen-tral Germany - Saxony and Thuringia chiefly. Integral to the canon was an ideologythat defined its authority upon a high or serious purpose and gradually separatedit out from what was by 1900 commonly called popular music. Basic to the newtaste for classical music - as it was called by 1830 throughout Europe - was thenotion of a homogeneously serious repertory. By the 1840s the proponents of thenew taste ridiculed concerts like Benedicts, arguing that the sentimental songs, Ital-ian operas and virtuoso pieces should not accompany anything by Mozart,Beethoven or Mendelssohn on a program of good music. The first area wherehomogeneous programs developed was chamber music. By 1848 the LeipzigGewandhaus Orchestra was putting on concerts where only quartets, quintets, triosand duo sonatas were performed, and only by a limited range of canonic or highlylearned composers. Orchestras followed suit by the 1860s. Solo performers beganputting on what we call the recital, programs entirely different from the benefitconcert in that they were focused upon a homogeneously canonic repertory, plus afew new works.

At the same time, the miscellaneous concert came into strong disrepute among thecognescenti. Entrepreneurial performers such as Benedict had begun commercializ-ing the benefit concert in aggressive new ways. That seemed to threaten the balancenegotiated in the eighteenth century between learning and popularity in musicaltaste. Idealistic critics such as George Bernard Shaw deprecated such programs as ameans by which to call for a more serious approach to concertgiving, and in so doingthey gave the term miscellaneous a terrible reputation that still exists today. Shawwrote in 1890 that:There are few things more terrible to a seasoned musician than a miscellaneous concert. A ballad con-cert, a symphony concert, a pianoforte recital: all these are welcome when they are not too long; but theoldfashioned grand concert, with an overture here, a scena there, and a ballad or an instrumental soloin between, is insufferable.Besides, it creates a discomfiting atmosphere by assembling a vast crowd of people without definitemusical ideas, loosely strung goodnatured creatures who are attracted solely by the names of the per-formers, and can distinguish between Edward Lloyd and Sims Reeves, but not between a Donizetticavatina and a Bach fugue. (Shaw, 1910: 80)

Here we see a central component of the critique of miscellany and the reverence forclassics: a certain snobbery, a disparaging of publics with less educated ears, peoplewith different tastes. By professional definition, we music historians tend to carry thisprejudice when we approach the subject. By 1900 a set of massive changes had comeabout in concert pro gramming that we music historians have only started to study.What began to govern programs was a principle of homogeneity: a growing sep-aration of vocal from instrumental music, the reduction in the number of works, and


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the exclusion of light music from serious programs. Program 5 by the Britishpianist Harold Bauer illustrates what had happened: seven works for solo piano bycanonic composers, something unheard of in 1830. Unlike Moscheles, Bauer rarelyperformed his own works, though he did tinker with some of the classics he played.Yet since his programs ranged from Bach to Liszt they had much more variety his-torically and stylistically than those of Moscheles.

One could indeed argue that the expansion of historical range in concerts requireda reduction in variety as to idiom. There is, after all, only so much variety an audi-ence can handle. Orchestral concerts became the most prominent kind of homoge-neous concerts. If we look at the program done at the Philharmonic Society onMarch 1, 1911 (Appendix A, program 2), we see a program that offered not onepiece by a living composer. That was not typical of the time, but it was not entirelyunusual either. Even though the program opened with Mendelssohn - an overturewas still a normal beginning - it spells out a musical chronology from Mozart toWagner, Brahms, and Dvoi%k. In so doing the canonic framework of programshomogenized the disparate styles of composers from different epochs. While Wag-ners music had been most controversial during his time, by this point pieces such asthe Faust Overture seemed tame compared to what Claude Debussy or Max Regerwere doing.

Still, a good deal more contemporary music was performed in London around1910 than we are accustomed to today. What had changed was that the public,indeed most critics, had come to expect a certain homogeneity in terms of canonicrepertory. Any recent work was now regarded with suspicion, whether or not it wasin a modernistic style. During this time composers were developing a new practiceby which an orchestra or a chamber-music group would normally perform one recentwork on a typical program. The London Symphony Orchestra, quickly recognized asLondons leading ensemble after its founding in 1904, almost always had one workusually by a British composer on each program, and only occasionally two, rarelythree. Program 6 shows a typical such instance - a recent piece by Edward Elgar forunaccompanied chorus.By the same token, by 1900 the great pianist Ignaz Paderewski might include aconcerto or symphony of his own on a program, but to get away with that he wouldhave to perform one of the more popular concertos by Beethoven, Schumann orLiszt. A lot had changed in musical life since 1850, hadnt it? Yet at the same timeperformers as well as composers had begun negotiating with the public for inclusionof works by their colleague composers. Musicians were not servile to the public;chamber-music groups, for example have played an important role in introducingnew works to their listeners at a time when such music is not popular.The homogeneous program had far more historical variety - miscellany, wemight call it - than the programs of 1840. One could argue that separating out vocalfrom instrumental music came about in part because audiences can tolerate only somuch variety. If in 1800 they heard a diversity of genres within a limited historicalrange, their successors in 1900 heard the opposite. The historical diversity in place by1900 required less variety in the genres and instruments employed. Yet ultimatelyworks from Bach to Brahms were homogenized by their common ideological identity


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as a canon. The Great Composers were thought to share a common spiritual staturenot found in newer music; a hind of aesthetic and ideological narrative united themin musical as well as historical terms. Bach might have written in a wholly differentstyle from Beethoven, but people saw them as intimate musical relatives.The rise of the new concept of popular music was very much involved here.Musical genres common in programs of the early nineteenth century were separatedout into the two worlds of popular and classical music by World War I. That hap-pened most notably to the ballad, songs we saw in both Benedicts and Moschelessprograms. You can fimd them occasionally in the programs of the main Londonchamber music series that began in 1859, a series called the Popular Concertsbecause at that time the word did not distinguish it from classical. By World WarI ballads had become devalued aesthetically, dropped from classical-music concerts,

and performed at what was called ballad concerts. The same happened to the pot-pourri or opera paraphrase, medleys or variations of tunes from a famous show.While such pieces had often been done at the Philharmonic Society in the 183Os, bythe 1890s they were heard only in informal concerts offered by theaters or bands.Much the same happened to the best-known excerpts from operas by Donizetti,Bellini, and Meyerbeer. A great deal of miscellany remained in band concerts, suchas did not in classical-music programs. You would often hear overtures and individ-ual symphonic movements, played by fit-rate instrumentalists, along with marchesand potpourris, but classical-music concerts no longer reciprocated such exchange.All of which should lead us to rethink our attitudes toward the musical culture ofthe eighteenth century. Thanks to the transformation of taste after 1850 we gained insome respects, acquiring a sheltered world of concerts that elicited an unusual man-ner of attentiveness from audiences. But we lost seriously in other respects. In theprocess classical-music life became isolated from contemporary music and from theearthier aspects of musical experience. That is why I would quite like to hear a pro-gram such as Benedict or Moscheles put on, done with the mores of the time, sinceI suspect I would like it a lot.

Appendix A: From miscellany to homogeneity in concert programming - Pro-grams from the Library, Royal College of Music1. Jules Benedict s Annual Morning ConcertGreat Concert Room of Her Majestys Theatre, June 14,1844, I:30Mozart, Sent0 oh die, from Cosi fan Tutte, quintetPuzzi, horn soloDonizetti, duet, Senza tani complimentiSivori, Variations for violin with piano on Lucia di LummermoorAuber, Air, Que viens-je dentendre, from L AmbassadriceAlvars, harp solo, La dame des feesRicci, Trio, Scaramuccia, La scene e uu mar isablieMonpou, Air, Adieu, mon beau navire, from L+esDeux ReinesVerdi, Romanza, Ciel pietoso, Uberto Conte di San Bonifazio


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Costa, Terzetto, Vanne a colei the adoroMercadante, Or la sull onda, II GiuramentoGucco, Duetto, Oh guardate, La ProvaDonizetti, Regnava nel Silenzio, LuciaThalberg, Etude in A minorBenedict, Cavatina, La FideltaErnst, Variations on the March in Otello for ViolinPersiani, Polacca, Ah non e ver, 11FantasmaBeethoven, AdelaideMozart, Duet, Sull[aria], Le Nozze di FigaroChopin, Nocturne and Valse brillante, 3 performers, two pianosJohn Parry, New Song, Mon dejeuner a la fourchette__--Rossini, Un segreto, La CenerentolaAuber, Voyez-vous la-bas, La Sir&eBenedict, Rage thou angry storm, The Gipsy s WarningAlary, Duetto, Vieni bellangiolOffenbach, Musette, Air de DameBenedict, Ballad, By the sad sea wavesBellini, Duet, Prendi lanel ti donoMendelssohn, ReiseliedBalfe, Trio, Through the world, The Bohemian Gir lBenedict, Ballad, Scenes of my youth, The Gipsys WarningRicci, Romanza, Corrado dAltamburaCimarosa, Trio, Le faccio un inchino, I1Matrimonio SegretoBenedict, At mom upon the beach, The Br ides of VeniceDonizetti, Lamor sue, Roberto DevereuxMazel, Ballade FranGaise, Jeanne dHarvilliers, la SorciereRossini, Duo, Mira la bianca hmaMartini, Finale, Vadasi via di qua2. Phil harmonic Society, March 1, 1911Wagner, Faust OvertureMozart, Mentre li lascio, FigaroBrahms, Violin ConcertoDvoiak, Symphony No. 43. Phil harmonic Society, London, May 1,1826Haydn, Symphony in E flatWeigl, Vocal quartet, StupefattoFiirstenau, Concerto for FluteRossini, Trio, 0 nume benefice, La Gazza LudraWeber, Overture, Oberon____Beethoven, Symphony in C minorZingarelli, Recitative and aria Romeo e GiulettaRode and De Beriot, Concerto for Violin


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Mozart, Duet, 0 Statua gentilissimia, Don GiovanniA. Romberg, Overture in D4. I gnaz Moscheles Morning Concert, May 8,1834Mendelssohn, Overture, MelusinaHandel, From the Mighty Kings, from Judas MuccabueusMoscheles, Concerto FantastiqueDonizetti, Cavatina, Non ve squardo, Anna Bolena (1830)Fioravanti, Terzetto from La Cantatrice Villane (1799)Mendelssohn, Rondo Brillant, piano and orchestraVan Bree, Dutch Ballad, MarinMoscheles, Mayseder and Giuliani, Les Adieux des Troubadours, concertante for voice,piano, violin and guitar____Herz, Grand Concerto on a Theme in Wil li am TellPanseron, New French Romance, Tyrole ma vue m&eChevalier Neukomm, Our own British Oak, first performanceGhys, New Swiss AirsMoscheles, Extemporaneous performance5. Harold Bauer, Aeolian Hall, London, November I , I901J. S. Bach, Italian ConcertoMendelssohn Prelude & Fugue in E minorBeethoven, Sonata in C minor, Op. 13Schumann, FantasiaSchubert Impromptu in BChopin, Nocturne; PolonaiseLiszt, Mephisto Waltz6. London Symphony Orchestra and the Shefield Musical Un ion, London, February 14,191OMozart Symphony in B flat, K. 319 (1779)J. S. Bach Motet for Double Chorus, Sing ye to the Lord (1727)Elgar (1857 1934): Go Song of Mine, unaccompanied chorus (1909)____Beethoven Mass in D, Op. 123 (1823)The London programs cited here are held in the Department of Portraits, Programs andManuscripts in the Royal College of Music. The Gewandhaus programs are found in theStadtgeschichtliches Museum, Leipzig. I am greatly indebted to the staff of the twoarchives.

ReferencesKallberg, Jeffrey, 1988. The rhetoric of gem: Chopins Nocturne in G Minor. 19th Century Music 11,

238-261.


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McVeigh, Simon, 1994. London concert life from Mozart to Haydn. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.Shaw, George Bernard, 1910. Music in London. Vol. 1. London: St. Martins.

Weber, William, 1992. The rise of musical classics in eighteenth century England: A study in canon, rit-ual & ideology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Weber, William, 1997. Did people listen in the eighteenth century? Early Music 25, 678-691 (specialissue, Listening Practice).Weber, William, 1999. The history of musical canons. In: Mark Everist and Nicholas Cook (eds.),Rethinking music, 340-359. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Witkin, Robert, 1998. Adomo on Music. London: Routledge.

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06 From Miscellany to Homogeneity in Concert Programming

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