The Musician as Entrepreneur and Opportunist, 1600–1900

A conference arranged by

William Weber,
California State University, Long Beach

June 1-2, 2001

 

at the Clark Library

The musician in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries played a special role as a cultural entrepreneur, indeed as an opportunist. Success in that profession required certain social skills, which allowed individual musicians to identify and exploit opportunities to play, teach, or present music within the context of customary forms of patronage. Entrepreneurialism in musical life added remarkable elements of individualism and personal mobility to a chiefly corporatist society, and it established an important mode of petty capitalist activity. From the late eighteenth century on, musicians applied these social skills to larger-scale projects and increasingly independent ends. Rather than serve a few elite families, they turned to the public, building new audiences to support concert life. Some of the more ambitious attempted to reshape authority within the world of music to make composers its primary architects, those defining the very forms of music and performance. However daring, these attempts at innovation were rooted in ancien régime practices of musical entrepreneurship: musicians found opportunities to give their art prominent new public roles by utilizing their forebears’ tradition of self-aggrandizement. Conference participants, both musicologists and historians, will consider the practices and social assumptions that musicians as individuals used to take advantage of patrons, publics, and markets.  

Conference Program

Friday, June 1
9:30 a.m.   •  coffee

10:00 a.m.   •  Session 1: 1600–1750
moderated by Susan McClary, UCLA

Suzanne G. Cusick, University of Virginia
Before the Beginning: Artisan Musicians and Opportunism in Seventeenth-Century Florence

Tanya Kevorkian, Millersville University
Changing Times, Changing Music: “New Church” Music and Musicians in Leipzig, 1700–1750

12:00 noon   •  lunch

1:30 p.m.   •  Session 2: Eighteenth-Century Germany
moderated by William Weber, California State University, Long Beach

David Gramit, University of Alberta
Selling the Serious: The Commodification of Music and Resistance in Germany, ca. 1800

Tia DeNora, University of Exeter
Embodiment and Opportunity: Bodily Capital, Reputation, and Social Difference in Beethoven’s Vienna

Anne J. MacLachlan, University of California, Berkeley
Commentary

4:30 p.m.   •  reception

Saturday, June 2
9:30 a.m.   •  coffee

10:00 a.m.   •  Session 3: Nineteenth-Century France
moderated by Debora Silverman, UCLA

Laure Schnapper, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Ullman-Herz: An Example of Financial and Artistic Partnership

Richard Leppert, University of Minnesota
The Musician of the Imagination

Jann Pasler, University of California, San Diego
Countess Greffulhe, the “Queen of Music,” and Concerts as a Form of Diplomacy

1:00 p.m.   •  lunch

2:00 p.m.   •  Session 4: Nineteenth-Century Britain and America
moderated by Philippa Levine, University of Southern California

Paula Gillett, San Jose State University
Entrepreneurial Women Musicians in England and North America: Late Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries

Simon McVeigh, Goldsmiths College, University of London
“An audience for high-class music”: The Musician as Entrepreneur in Late-Nineteenth-Century London

Hans Erich Bödeker, Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen
Commentary


Registration Information

Registration deadline:     May 25, 2001 Please note that space is limited and registration closes when capacity is reached.
To register, please fill out the form below and mail it to the Center address.


Registration fees:             UC Faculty & staff: $15; students: free of charge; others: $25

Fees include the cost of lunches and other refreshments.


Address all inquiries to the Center:

Phone: 310-206-8552
E-mail:
Please call a week ahead to arrange for wheelchair access.

Registration Form

The Musician as Entrepreneur and Opportunist, 1600-1900

Registration deadline:     May 25, 2001
            Please note that space is limited and registration closes when capacity is reached.
Registration Fees:            UC Faculty & staff: $15; students: free of charge; others: $25 Fees include the cost of lunches and other refreshments.


Name ______________________________________________________________________

Address ____________________________________________________________________

Phone number ________________________________________________________________

Email Address ________________________________________________________________

UC status, UC department _______________________________________________________

Number of persons ____________ Total enclosed ____________

Mail this form and your check (payable to UC Regents) to

 
Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies
310 Royce Hall, UCLA
Box 951404
Los Angeles, California 90095-1404
Campus Mail Code:  140403


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