Abstract
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the American upper class displayed scant interest in music. Unlike literature or the visual arts, both of whose artistic value had begun to be recognized, music was considered strictly entertainment, a means of recreation but little else. Even within those parameters, the bourgeoisie in each of the three principal urban areas of Federal America—Boston, New York, and Philadelphia—held varying attitudes toward music according to both tradition and to the prevailing social, religious, and ethnic makeup of the different regions. During the course of the nineteenth century, however, the bourgeoisie in each of these cities discovered how music could serve to consolidate their power as well as vindicate their social positions. Befitting the unique situation found in each city, the manner in which this occured was equally different; but by the end of the nineteenth century, certain types of music had achieved a similar position all three urban areas as symbol of status and means of class differentiation.
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Notes
See Michael Broyles, “Music of the Highest Class”: Elitism and Populism in Antebellum Boston (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992) 120–22, 186–88.
Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong, 1836–1875 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) 1:xl.
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The complete list of officers and members is in Louis C. Maderia, Annals of Music in Philadelphia and History of the Musical Fund Society, from its Organization in 1820 to the Year 1858 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1896) 59–61.
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Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973,) 192–93, 201.
Alan Trachtenberg, in discussing the “custodianship of culture,” observed a “hierarchy of values corresponding to a social hierarchy of stations or classes” (Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age [New York: Hill and Wang, 1982], 140–81).
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The exact amount invested is not clear. Karen Ahlquist, Democracy at the Opera (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997) 134–35, states that 200 investors agreed to invest $75 per year for 5 years
Lawrence, Strong on Music 1:454, states that 150 investors ultimately agreed to the $75 plan. According to John Dizikes, Opera in America: A Cultural History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993) 159, 50 stockholders put up $1,000 each to fund the opera.
Home Journal December 11, 1847; quoted in Ahlquist, Democracy at the Opera 137.
Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 247.
John S. Dwight, in Dwight’s Journal of Music, 26, 25 (March 2, 1867) 408 the Academy had 28 proscenium boxes. In addition, the mezzanine consisted of 22 boxes. I want to thank Adrienne Fried Block for pointing out the Dwight citation to me.
For a discussion of Thomas’s career as well as the founding of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, see Ezra Schabas, Theodore Thomas—America’s Conductor and Builder of Orchestras, 1835–1905 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989).
Robert Wiebe, The Opening of American Society: From the Adoption of the Constitution to the Eve of Disunion (New York: Knopf, 1984) 268–74.
According to Barbara Welter, in “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18, 2, part 1 (1966) 161, “Authors who addressed themselves to the subject of women in the mid-nineteenth century used this phrase as frequently as writers on religion mentioned God.”.
Mrs. J. C. (Jeane June) Croly, The History of the Women’s Club Movement in America (New York: Henry G. Allen, 1898).
Linda Whitesitt, “‘The Most Potent Force’ in American Music: The Role of Women’s Music Clubs in American Concert Life,” in The Musical Woman: An International Perspective, Vol 3: 1986–1990 ed. Judith Lang Zaimont et al. (Westport, CT:Greenwood Press, 1991) 664.
Karen J. Blair, The Torchbearers: Women and Their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) 49.
Emanual Rubin, “Jeanette Meyer Thurber (1850–1949) Music for a Democracy,” in Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860 ed. Ralph Locke and Cyrilla Barr (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 135.
For a discussion of musical activities at Hull House, see Derek Vaillant, Sounds of Reform: Progressivism and Music in Chicago, 1873–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003) 91–125.
Adella Prentiss Hughes, Music Is My Life (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1947) 246–62.
Frances Anne Wister, Twenty-Five Years of the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1900–1925 (1925;repr. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970) 13–14.
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© 2010 Sven Beckert and Julia B. Rosenbaum
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Broyles, M. (2010). Bourgeois Appropriation of Music: Challenging Ethnicity, Class, and Gender. In: The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230115569_14
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