Salon Music in Nineteenth-Century London and Bucharest
Salon Music in Nineteenth-Century London and Bucharest

Summary/Abstract: A study of nineteenth-century salon music in Bucharest and London proves as interesting for the similarities that it reveals as much as for the differences. Both cities felt on the margins of ernste Musik, which was something they imported rather than created with any international success. I compare salon music in London and Bucharest alongside the broad social topics of class, gender and identity. I focus, first, on dance music and analyze how traditional airs are used in two quadrilles: Ciprian Porumbescu’s Coloane Române, Op. 7 (c. 1875), and the anonymous The Caledonian Quadrilles (c. 1880). Then, I discuss the contribution of women to salon music-making, looking at the rise of English women composers of drawing-room ballads and, in Romania, the salon compositions of Esmeralda Athanasiu-Gardeev (including a brief analysis of her Rumänisches Charakterstück, Op. 44, composed around 1861). Without a knowledge of salon music, understanding nineteenth-century musical life in Britain and Romania is inadequate. In London and Bucharest, the salon was uniquely placed to allow the public and private aspects of music-making to be observed: public, because the music was published and publicly marketed, and private, because the salon, although open to guests, was part of a domestic space.

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