Between critic and public

Listening to the musical work in Stockholm during the long 19th century

Abstract

It is widely assumed that the perception of the musical work changed radically around the beginning of the 19^th century. Not only aestheticians and music theorists, but listeners too, started to listen to music as if the sounds heard were the aural signs of autonomous musical works. Works became heard as structurally unified wholes represented by composers in scores—the works, once created, were assumed to exist like Platonic entities after their creators had died, irrespectively of whether they were performed or listened to at any given time. This picture of 19^th century listening can be questioned on many grounds. Here it is done by studying the music criticism of the daily press in Stockholm during the years 1835, -55, -85, and 1905. Although Stockholm can be considered peripheral on both geographical and cultural grounds, as such it may nevertheless give a reasonable idea of what the lay listener of the average audience may have heard. To this end, it is argued, examination of the daily criticism may be a more plausible source of information than the scholarly journals more commonly examined by musicologists and music historians. Should the Stockholm case turn out to be an anomaly among the cities of Europe (a question not answered here), this in itself would call for an explanation. Here the no less challenging question is limited to asking if, and if so by which terms, the Stockholm audience of the 19^th century listened to musical works?