Research

MUSICAL GENRES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONCERT PROGRAMMING

On the Creativity and the City Conference 28-29 October 2016, I will present my master research. Here follows the abstract for my paper:

Musical life in European cities changed dramatically during the nineteenth century. Old exclusive venues and salons had to make place for public concert halls where professional orchestras took over from the once so active dilettante players, the symphonic ‘absolute’ music acquired a unmatched status and romanticism brought along new musical ideas and techniques, filling the minds of music lovers with extraordinary chords, melodies and sounds. Within this changing musical world, a system of ‘genres’ or ‘Gattungen’ was navigating the musical experience, organizing the communication between composer, musician and audience. The historical evolution of this genre-system is running as a common theme through the music history of the nineteenth century, connecting the intrinsic development of music with changes in the accompanying concert practice.

This paper examines the development of musical genres within the repertoire of the famous Felix Meritis concert hall in Amsterdam. By tracing the extinction of old genres and the introduction of new ones, I will show how the popularity of genres influenced concert programming. This approach allows for the historical appreciation of genres that have long been neglected in music history. Moreover, the musical analysis of genre characteristics within this historical repertoire, allows us to identify musical content from a truly historical perspective.

This research is a result of the CREATE pilot project Felix Meritis Concert Programmes Database 1832-1888. The database is used as the principal resource for systematically analysing the relationship between the development of musical genres and the historical evolution of concert programming.