IV.A. Specific objectives and working programme
The principal research of the proposed programme will be carried out by five groups of scholars working in the following subject areas, already described briefly in the first section of this proposal.
1. Italian Opera in Central Europe, 1614 - ca. 1780
By Central Europe we mean the Holy Roman Empire plus Hungary, Switzerland and Poland. Italian opera in Denmark and the Netherlands is so rare, and so dependent on influences from the Empire, that these countries may also be considered under this heading.
The subject of this thematic group is itself defined in terms of circulation, in this case an epochal transfer of music, musicians, institutions and representations. The institutional network which might be called ‘European opera’ in the 17th and 18th centuries came into being through circulation (the first Italian opera performance north of the Alps took place in Salzburg in 1614); its further development remained relevant to circulation, as it depended on it and stimulated it. In the first and decisive phase of this process, the most active and socio-politically most diverse area was Central Europe. This period ends ca. 1780, when Italian hegemony in opera began to diminish. The interdependence of migration and the history of the genre will be clarified by research into the typology of opera forms and the patterns of its cultivation, including financial models and social stratification, during this entire period.
With regard to the institutional basis, questions such as the following will be asked:
- Which of the motives for the introduction, abolition, reintroduction of opera might be related to migration (e.g., to what extent is the establishment of Count Sporck’s opera in Bohemia a result of Italian impresario movements)?
- What patterns of interaction existed between the social groups involved in opera (courts, opera personnel, public) with respect to migration?
- To what extent did the change of an individual component (e.g., the establishment of a new dynasty) lead to other changes?
- How did opera interrelate with musical circulation as a whole (e.g., by spearheading the fame of composers whose works were then printed and sold across Europe), or with the forces involved in orchestra and concert performances?
- How did migration in opera develop and transform the canons and representations of its public in the various countries?
The study of circulation considers musical works, musicians and other opera personnel (e.g., stage painters, librettists), but also patrons, the public, non-musical ingredients of the works (texts, scenographies) and ideas. The thematic groups on opera orchestras, concerts and the circulation of music again offer points of overlap: the patterns of migration among individual musicians, patrons, etc., in the 17th century are already quite similar to those in the 18th, whereas the patterns of diffusion of works and texts undergo important changes with the sharp increase in the circulation of printed and manuscript music as well as books. Significant questions will include:
- travel to and from Italy and their repercussions in the native localities;
- competition between musicians, repertoire types and works (e.g., between serious and comic opera, imported from Italy and from France);
- statistical evidence of the performances with regard to repertorial expectations and conflicts;
- different alternatives to Italian opera arising in different regions (masque, villancico, Singspiel).
A cultural transfer - in this case from antiquity - is at the basis of the art form of opera itself, and migration has often been a theme in it (e.g., in operas on the wandering Ulysses): this subject matter is therefore itself part of the representational world which Italian opera has unlocked. To investigate the connection between migration and representation systematically, the phenomenon of opera is categorised into components such as literary text, music, subject matter and production, and their individual mobility is then documented. Typically, it will be asked to what extent these components travelled together or why they did not, what was achieved by their isolation from other components or their combination with new contexts. The documentation will include not only performance and production statistics but also, for example, documented critical reactions to the same opera or libretto in different places. The migratory paths of persons, products and ideas can be followed over relatively long periods, yielding information on the cultural situations encountered along the way. The formation of repertoires (cumulation) and general aspects of the change will be monitored by comparing synchronic cross-sections of operatic activity over the whole geographic area, for instance by comparing operatic activity in ‘1683’ with that in ‘1714’.
Representations and canons relating to group prejudices and aspirations are particularly significant in opera. For example, the discussion about national characteristics in music around 1700 was conducted mainly in the field of opera, although nationality was still largely measured by external and technical criteria such as language, costume, singing technique, and so on. The conceptualisation of styles that took place in the 18th century was influenced, in opera, by forms of artistic alienation such as ceremony, festival, masquerade and pastoral which presupposed the European diffusion of ideas and images.
2. Opera Orchestras in 18th- and 19th-Century Europe
This working group deals with a type of musical institution, the permanent orchestra of the European opera house, which is often characterised by the presence of migrating personnel from every country in Europe (Italian players in Germany, France, Russia or England, English players in Germany, etc.). This also implies the circulation of instruments, performance practices and musical culture as well as a popularisation of the official and also the elite repertoire (e.g., orchestra players also playing in popular bands).
On the other hand, the strongly institutional nature of opera orchestras in 18th- and 19th- century Europe, deriving from the parallel strongly institutional nature achieved by opera houses in the same period, cannot be ignored. Here the orchestra was characterised by the function of a permanent professional entity, which was more and more to be identified as an inseparable part of the theatre in which it operated. As a permanent professional organism the opera orchestra was bound to the theatre, to its life and activity, by contracts and rules; this was already the situation at many 18th-century theatres such as the Neapolitan San Carlo or the Viennese Hoftheater, but became increasingly general and common during the 19th century for court, civic, public and state theatres all over Europe.
From both these points of view - the opera orchestra as both a permanent European musical institution and a social organism characterised by a migratory personnel - the opera orchestra appears as a subject which played a central yet still indeterminate role in 19th-century European opera production and consumption, composition and performance, and dissemination and reception all over Europe.
Our research will focus on the social and financial aspects of 19th-century opera orchestras in Europe, including the migration of musicians, the circulation of instruments and instrumental practices, also the possible transfer of elite and popular music practices, teaching, costs, internal organisation and legislation, and recruiting rules; our aim will be to link them with the artistic problems of composing, producing and performing an opera. This will be accomplished using comparative criteria, by studying selected cases and trying to define a canon relating to the 19th-century European opera orchestra, its origins and its influence on the public’s attitude towards opera as well as on the composer’s attitude towards the orchestral component of opera composition.
Our research programme will consider four critical moments in which the organisation and practice of opera orchestras present different stages of development and increasing institutionalisation: the Viennese period from 1740 onward, the years of the Revolution and Restoration, the period of grand opera and the period of Wagnerian reception. The geographic areas to be treated, including Vienna, Parma, Milan, Naples, Florence, Paris, Munich, Berlin, Mannheim, London, Scandinavia, Prague, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona, have been chosen to cover not only the principal cities of Europe during this period but also the different types of opera house: court theatre, state theatre and simple civic theatre.
The musical sources to be considered have been selected with the purpose of relating the material history of opera orchestras to the concrete musical side of opera productions. Three case studies have been chosen (the reception of Don Giovanni, the reception of Meyerbeer and Donizetti, the reception of Lohengrin, Tannhäuser and Aida) in order to provide a further opportunity to study the interrelations between orchestras and operas by analysing either what happens to an opera (to its original scoring, to its reception) when played by orchestras substantially different from that for which the opera had been conceived, or what happens to an orchestra (to its internal structure) under the impact of operas written with an outstandingly new, large or uncommon instrumentation (the European role of leading operas and orchestras).
3. The Concert and Its Public in Europe, 1700-1900
The theme of the concert is at the heart of the problems of the programme and represents a good way to observe institutions and study the forms of the circulation of music and musicians. As an institution, the concert was a vehicle for norms and behaviour, serving to crystallise them; but the concert itself was also shaped by practices that tended to redefine and transform it on a regular basis. Moreover, the concert refers to various aspects of the concept of the institution as a genre, as a structure for musical activity and as a social structure, indeed as an institution that guaranteed the principle of migration. If the concert allows the investigation of questions of migration and diffusion in their various dimensions, whether spatial or symbolic, study of it leads to the larger question of the consumption of culture. This problem, when applied to the reconstruction of musical life, also means that it is no longer possible to confine oneself to the field of the cultural elite, but implies the involvement of a wider public as well.
Thus conceived, the project links together a body of more general research on cultural practices and seeks to go beyond the notion that music is above all regarded as a social phenomenon. A new form of public emerged at the same time that new ways of being in music, new behavioural patterns, a different way of listening were developing. The project is dedicated to studying these musical practices and the forms of musical suitability underlying them, following their development up to the beginning of the 20th century.
The project will maintain a resolutely comparative approach, taking as its framework of research France, Belgium, the German-speaking countries and central Europe, as well as the United Kingdom and Italy. This comparative approach will endeavour to go farther than convergence, characteristics and discrepancies in timing and evolution, and will seek better to grasp the links that exist _ links on the one hand between the process of internationalisation in the development of the musical ‘market’ touching on modes of production as forms of consumption and, on the other, the tendency towards nationalisation which appeared in the 19th century in musical discourse and the aesthetic choices made. Emphasis will also be placed on different phenomena linked to interaction and transfer resulting from the exchange of musicians and musical works. This will cover not only how forms and works from other countries were received, but also what new significance these foreign adaptations took on in other cultural reference systems. The project will attach great importance to case studies in a comparative perspective in order to allow generalisations to be made concerning these developments and the institutions under study.
Our project hinges on three main points: (1) the producers and organisers of musical life (the organisation of concerts, choice of programmes, development of music criticism); (2) the social and spatial anchors of music (different social locations, the integration of the history of music in the history of urban planning, the internal structure of musical locations); (3) the social uses of music (reception and consumption of music, the social make-up of audiences).
4. The Circulation of Music: From Elite to Mass Production
When studying the topic of musical migration in Europe during the 17th to the 19th centuries, it is impossible not to study the circulation of music. In fact, all of the thematic projects within the proposal are concerned in one way or another with the circulation of music or the transportation of musical works in some fashion.
During the 17th century, music publishing was primarily a local, regional or, at most, a national affair. Both the repertoires of the publishers and the buying public came mainly from the publishers’ home region. But in the period around 1700 everything changed. Music publishing became an international affair. Publishers obtained their repertoire from everywhere in Europe and sold their editions all over Europe. Of course, this was linked with the internationalisation of European musical life that took place in the 18th century, in contrast to the 17th, when musical Europe was a Europe of national styles and local cultures with limited opportunities for exchange. During the 18th century there was an ever-increasing ease of exchange of ideas, people and goods among European countries. Italian musical style became standard all over Europe, eventually leading towards the Classical style after 1750. Of course, in this whole process the enormous amount of travel and migration of musicians played an important, if not a decisive role.
When we compare the 19th century with the 18th, we see an increased intensity and density of exchange patterns not to be found earlier. Of special importance now is the role of the press (especially journals of a general rather than specifically musical content), both in announcing and reviewing new musical trends in general and new musical works in particular. Thus, information about what happened musically in St. Petersburg became known within a short time in Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna and vice versa. Music publishers increasingly played the role of institutions mediating between composers and public. At this time as well the methods of purposeful market research were developed and optimised. The development in the circulation of music from the 17th to the 19th century may be summarised by three trends: the internationalisation of the musical market, the commercialisation of music, and the increasing distribution to a broader public of everything to do with the production, selling and dissemination of music.
The process of the circulation of music as a whole comprises a number of specific sub-processes, each of which has to do with a certain kind of musical transport, for example the contacts between composers and printers, the output of music-copying workshops, the selection of repertoire at the publishers’ desks, cataloguing and advertising policies, and agencies, not to mention relations between music publishers and music dealers, between music dealers and the public, between the publishing business and musical institutions and so forth. Manuscripts also participate in musical commerce in a most important way, so that any study of the sale of music automatically includes the transmission of manuscripts.
Numerous points of contact with the other working groups result, among other things, in connection with the publications of libretti by travelling opera companies, reports about operas and publication of libretti abroad; opera scores, extracts and arrangements as they were produced locally; how opera scores were printed in relation to the means of performance; the relationship between concert life and music publishing, including the selling of tickets by music dealers; and publication as one of the main tools for bringing cultural representations into the outside world and especially to other parts of Europe.
5. National Representation of Music: Conservatoires, Musical Discourse (1770-1900)
National images played an important role in the circulation of music and musicians, either in a negative manner, preventing or hindering acceptance of exogenous styles, or in a positive one, by functioning as carriers for different influences and transfers. In other words, in addition to economic factors and institutional centres of attention, room should be left for theoretical, ideological and phantasmagorical representations - to be observed, for example, in the change of attitude in France towards Italian opera, from arrogant rejection at the end of Louis XIV’s reign to enthusiastic acceptance on the part of Stendhal.
The goal of this project is not to study the question of nationalism in music. Rather the objective is to re-create collective representations, starting out from those which accompanied musical transfers and observing whether such transfers were furthered or thwarted as the case may be.
The period concerned, 1770-1900, allows the consideration of this question to be organised around a number of coherent and convergent events: the foundation of a new type of teaching institution (taking the Paris Conservatoire as a model), the beginnings of modern musical historiography, the increasingly historical approach to musical theory, the assertion of Germany as the bearer of a benchmark style in the same way that Italy and France had been, and an increased circulation of music and musicians, eventually including the emergence of a musical canon, varying according to country but leading towards unification at a European level.
The subjects of our study fall into two main categories: (1) A type of institution - the conservatoire - within which the exchanges between different European countries may be observed, whether professors, pupils or treatises on composition. In this connection, F.-J. Fétis appears as a central personality - with respect both to his theoretical writings and to his function as director of a conservatoire, critic and promoter of old music - whose ideas were widespread throughout the whole of Europe. (2) Texts about music (musical discourse) using selected, representative reviews as an example permitting a multiple perspective (Beethoven as seen by a Parisian critic, but also Schindler’s view of Parisian critics; or again, Weber criticising French opéra comique, then Parisian reviews of Der Freischütz). Another example is that of historiography and the influence of various lexicographers on one another (Rousseau, Laborde, Gerber, Koch, Choron-Fayolle, Momigny, Lichtenthal, Burney, Forkel, Fétis, Brendel).
In this working group in particular, interdisciplinary co-operation between historians, art historians and specialists in literary studies will be of great importance, especially as regards our research on ‘national images’. And also within musicology, all individual fields of the discipline will be touched upon.
