The poetical concert community. Taste and performance of the middle class concert audience 1815-1848

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Wolfram Pyta
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262790338

In the course of the first half of the 19th century the audience in opera and classical concerts has fundamentally changed its taste as well as its attitude and behaviour (performance) towards music. Particularly the middle class established a silent audience and a new aesthetic paradigm in musical life. Relating to theoretic considerations and the realization of ideal requirements given by the musical art, which is formed by the romantic aesthetics of music that writers and critics have enunciated since 1800, the study intends to focus on the audience itself in order to analyse its original taste as well as its attitude and behaviour towards music. Taste is considered as an aesthetic distinction. Therefore, the study wants to analyse how music becomes a central category of taste, and by what middle class constitutes itself as an idiosyncratic community. The sources consist of comments given by professional performers like e.g. conductors, artists, organizers and critics. Thus, above all, the study has to examine ego documents and self-testimonies. The study focuses on papers from the most important German-speaking musical centres such as Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Munich, and Vienna from 1815 to 1848.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants