18th century german music
19th century german music
A01=David Gramit
aesthetic debates
art
austrian music
austro german culture
Author_David Gramit
Category=AVLA
Category=AVLP
classical music
composers
concert
cultural activity
cultural practices
cultural studies
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
ethnic others
ethnomusicology
folk music
german music
german music history
german noms
historical discourses
individual musical works
international music
middle class identity
music
music journalism
musical culture
musicology
practice of music
singing instruction
social history
western musical canon
Product details
- ISBN 9780520229709
- Weight: 590g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 02 Jan 2002
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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German and Austrian music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries stands at the heart of the Western musical canon. In this innovative study of various cultural practices (such as music journalism and scholarship, singing instruction, and concerts), David Gramit examines how music became an important part of middle-class identity. He investigates historical discourses around such topics as the aesthetic debates over the social significance of folk music, various comparisons of the musical practices of ethnic 'others' to the German 'norm', and the establishment of the concert as a privileged site of cultural activity. "Cultivating Music" analyzes the ideologies of German musical discourse during its formative period. Claiming music's importance to both social well-being and individual development, proponents of musical culture sought to secure the status of music as an art integral to bourgeois life. They believed that 'music' referred to the autonomous musical work, meaningful in and of itself to those cultivated to experience it properly.
The social limits to that cultivation ensured that boundaries of class, gender, and educational attainment preserved the privileged status of music despite (but also by means of) their claims for the 'universality' of their canon. Departing from the traditional focus on individual musical works, Gramit considers the social history of the practice of music in Austro-German culture. He examines the origins of the privileged position of the Western canon in musicological discourses and argues that we cannot fully understand the role that canon has played without considering the interests that motivated its creators.
David Gramit is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Alberta.
