In 1895, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a sketch of a man and woman in a horse-drawn carriag... more In 1895, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a sketch of a man and woman in a horse-drawn carriage; in it, the woman drives the vehicle with an assertive posture, her windblown hair suggesting a sporty pace and her male passenger watching her with surprise and intrigue. This image encapsulates the shift in perspective as women emerged as a new class of vehicular drivers at the turn of the century. Around the same time, wagon makers Studebaker Bros. and Austin, Tomlinson, and Webster Co. developed a novel marketing strategy – they routinely mailed their clients parlor-style sheet music with carriage themes, such as 'The Wagon Carol', 'Wait for the Wagon', and the 'Studebaker Grand March'. This paper argues that these musical, advertising campaigns were not only aimed at women but also provide insight into the transitioning role of women during this period. Drawing from newspapers, journals, and other archival material, I examine the public response to female drivers, particularly focusing on Ladies Four-in-Hand Driving Club in the Hamptons. Though an analysis of the sheet music distributed by carriage makers, I consider how the songs and piano music offered women a chance to envision and act out roles outside the domestic realm. Engaging topics in gender and parlor music studies, this study also presents an early example in which music was used as a targeted marketing strategy to promote a product and a lifestyle. Furthermore, it highlights connections between music, recreation and material culture and, ultimately, illuminates a transitional period when women straddled parlor and reins.
Singing and performing on barrel organs, violins, harps, and guitars, the musiciens ambulants, or... more Singing and performing on barrel organs, violins, harps, and guitars, the musiciens ambulants, or itinerant musicians, were inextricably connected to urban street life in nineteenth-century Paris. While they were widely celebrated and romanticized in city culture, they also roused tremendous controversy over their use of street space. Some itinerant musicians blurred boundaries between public and private as they projected their music through residential windows and performed in the front courtyards of large estates. Other musiciens ambulants, who occupied fixed positions in squares, parks, and street corners, gathered crowds and interfered with city circulation. As these performers problematized urban space, they provoked the concern of the bourgeois class and civic administration, who feared the itinerant musicians were involved with crime, dissention, and even espionage. While scholars have attributed these social apprehensions to class prejudice and xenophobia, I assert that the concerns stirred by the musiciens ambulants were compounded by their performance practices and the mediation of the urban environment.
Building upon recent work related to music and space (Born, 2013 and Boutin, 2015), I contend that the urban context shaped the social reception of musiciens ambulants between 1830 and 1880. Drawing from the writings of Édouard Fétis, Victor Fournel, Gustave Droz, as well as police reports, I examine the musical habits of itinerant musicians; this investigation reveals how the performers’ use of city property and their interactions with urban dwellers triggered initiatives to sonically and socially regulate street space. In particular, I analyze Legouix’s vaudeville Les marchands des chansons (1837) and Battmann’s piano quadrille Les musiciens ambulants (1863), pieces that encapsulate the public’s complex response to itinerant performances. Finally, I claim that the musiciens ambulants caused Parisians to interrogate the public use of the urban landscape, particularly as city officials prepared for the International Exposition of 1867. This paper not only presents an enriched portrait of the itinerant musicians’ profession, but it also illustrates how the musiciens ambulants stimulated a vigorous discourse about the use of urban space and, ultimately, propelled the development of street policy in Paris.
Historians have viewed nineteenth-century music salons in Paris as concert-like environments wher... more Historians have viewed nineteenth-century music salons in Paris as concert-like environments where performers and audience gathered in a designated music room. Architectural studies and first-hand accounts, however, show that the music salon incorporated multiple reception rooms, and that guests frequently listened to musical performances from adjoining spaces. While conceptual space has been a subject central to salon studies, this project analyses material space, re-evaluating how the architecture of the salon influenced audience structure, listening modes and compositional practices. This architecture was ultimately central to the development of salon opera, which flourished between 1850 and the 1870s and was epitomized by Gustave Nadaud's Le docteur Vieuxtemps (1854).
Postal horns have been associated traditionally with bucolic topics in music. From Mozart to Mahl... more Postal horns have been associated traditionally with bucolic topics in music. From Mozart to Mahler, the instrument appears in orchestral textures and songs to signify nostalgia for preindustrial rural life. The history of the coach horn, originally the standard postal instrument used on the British Royal Mail fleets, branched unexpectedly away from this paradigm when it was adopted for recreational use by socialites in urban areas in England, France, and other metropolitan hubs during the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to performing the traditional
road signals, driving enthusiasts expanded the musical vocabulary of the coach horn to include elaborate fanfares and stylized ensemble music. Tracing the undocumented recreational history of the coach horn, this article interrogates coach horn manuals, compositions, and essays on coaching that overturn traditional assumptions about the instrument. These sources illustrate how coach horn signals helped reframe driving from a service activity to a healthful sport. Examining the rhetoric surrounding the coach horn during the period of its revival, this study shows how the new signals reflected promenade and salon culture by mimicking polite dialogue. The ensemble repertory written for coach horns also catered to urban popular taste and was cultivated to enhance metropolitan social events. Analysis further illustrates how revivalist fanfares aurally articulated social status in the outdoor urban arena. This
case study ultimately traces the cultural evolution of an instrument, a complex process through which old and new musical expectations were negotiated through composition and practice.
In the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnib... more In the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnibuses onto the streets of Paris. These public transportation vehicles were named and fashioned after Boieldieu's opéra comique La dame blanche (1825): their rear doors were decorated with scenes of Scotland, their flanks painted with gesturing opera characters, and their mechanical horns trumpeted fanfares through the streets. The omnibuses offered one of the first mass transportation systems in the world and were an innovation that transformed urban circulation. During their thirty years of circulation, the omnibuses also had a profound effect on the reception history of Boieldieu's opera. When the omnibuses improved the quality of working- and middle-class life, bourgeois Parisians applauded the vehicles’ egalitarian business model, and Boieldieu's opera became unexpectedly entwined in the populist rhetoric surrounding the omnibus. Viewing opera through the lens of the Dames Blanches, Parisians conflated the sounds of opera and street, as demonstrated by Charles Valentin Alkan’s piano piece Les omnibus, Op. 2 (1829), which combines operatic idioms and horn calls. Through these examples and others, this study examines the complex ways that material culture affects the dissemination and reception of a musical work.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv TABLE OF CONTENTS vii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x LIST O... more ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv TABLE OF CONTENTS vii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x LIST OF TABLES xi CHAPTERS
In 1895, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a sketch of a man and woman in a horse-drawn carriag... more In 1895, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a sketch of a man and woman in a horse-drawn carriage; in it, the woman drives the vehicle with an assertive posture, her windblown hair suggesting a sporty pace and her male passenger watching her with surprise and intrigue. This image encapsulates the shift in perspective as women emerged as a new class of vehicular drivers at the turn of the century. Around the same time, wagon makers Studebaker Bros. and Austin, Tomlinson, and Webster Co. developed a novel marketing strategy – they routinely mailed their clients parlor-style sheet music with carriage themes, such as 'The Wagon Carol', 'Wait for the Wagon', and the 'Studebaker Grand March'. This paper argues that these musical, advertising campaigns were not only aimed at women but also provide insight into the transitioning role of women during this period. Drawing from newspapers, journals, and other archival material, I examine the public response to female drivers, particularly focusing on Ladies Four-in-Hand Driving Club in the Hamptons. Though an analysis of the sheet music distributed by carriage makers, I consider how the songs and piano music offered women a chance to envision and act out roles outside the domestic realm. Engaging topics in gender and parlor music studies, this study also presents an early example in which music was used as a targeted marketing strategy to promote a product and a lifestyle. Furthermore, it highlights connections between music, recreation and material culture and, ultimately, illuminates a transitional period when women straddled parlor and reins.
Singing and performing on barrel organs, violins, harps, and guitars, the musiciens ambulants, or... more Singing and performing on barrel organs, violins, harps, and guitars, the musiciens ambulants, or itinerant musicians, were inextricably connected to urban street life in nineteenth-century Paris. While they were widely celebrated and romanticized in city culture, they also roused tremendous controversy over their use of street space. Some itinerant musicians blurred boundaries between public and private as they projected their music through residential windows and performed in the front courtyards of large estates. Other musiciens ambulants, who occupied fixed positions in squares, parks, and street corners, gathered crowds and interfered with city circulation. As these performers problematized urban space, they provoked the concern of the bourgeois class and civic administration, who feared the itinerant musicians were involved with crime, dissention, and even espionage. While scholars have attributed these social apprehensions to class prejudice and xenophobia, I assert that the concerns stirred by the musiciens ambulants were compounded by their performance practices and the mediation of the urban environment.
Building upon recent work related to music and space (Born, 2013 and Boutin, 2015), I contend that the urban context shaped the social reception of musiciens ambulants between 1830 and 1880. Drawing from the writings of Édouard Fétis, Victor Fournel, Gustave Droz, as well as police reports, I examine the musical habits of itinerant musicians; this investigation reveals how the performers’ use of city property and their interactions with urban dwellers triggered initiatives to sonically and socially regulate street space. In particular, I analyze Legouix’s vaudeville Les marchands des chansons (1837) and Battmann’s piano quadrille Les musiciens ambulants (1863), pieces that encapsulate the public’s complex response to itinerant performances. Finally, I claim that the musiciens ambulants caused Parisians to interrogate the public use of the urban landscape, particularly as city officials prepared for the International Exposition of 1867. This paper not only presents an enriched portrait of the itinerant musicians’ profession, but it also illustrates how the musiciens ambulants stimulated a vigorous discourse about the use of urban space and, ultimately, propelled the development of street policy in Paris.
Historians have viewed nineteenth-century music salons in Paris as concert-like environments wher... more Historians have viewed nineteenth-century music salons in Paris as concert-like environments where performers and audience gathered in a designated music room. Architectural studies and first-hand accounts, however, show that the music salon incorporated multiple reception rooms, and that guests frequently listened to musical performances from adjoining spaces. While conceptual space has been a subject central to salon studies, this project analyses material space, re-evaluating how the architecture of the salon influenced audience structure, listening modes and compositional practices. This architecture was ultimately central to the development of salon opera, which flourished between 1850 and the 1870s and was epitomized by Gustave Nadaud's Le docteur Vieuxtemps (1854).
Postal horns have been associated traditionally with bucolic topics in music. From Mozart to Mahl... more Postal horns have been associated traditionally with bucolic topics in music. From Mozart to Mahler, the instrument appears in orchestral textures and songs to signify nostalgia for preindustrial rural life. The history of the coach horn, originally the standard postal instrument used on the British Royal Mail fleets, branched unexpectedly away from this paradigm when it was adopted for recreational use by socialites in urban areas in England, France, and other metropolitan hubs during the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to performing the traditional
road signals, driving enthusiasts expanded the musical vocabulary of the coach horn to include elaborate fanfares and stylized ensemble music. Tracing the undocumented recreational history of the coach horn, this article interrogates coach horn manuals, compositions, and essays on coaching that overturn traditional assumptions about the instrument. These sources illustrate how coach horn signals helped reframe driving from a service activity to a healthful sport. Examining the rhetoric surrounding the coach horn during the period of its revival, this study shows how the new signals reflected promenade and salon culture by mimicking polite dialogue. The ensemble repertory written for coach horns also catered to urban popular taste and was cultivated to enhance metropolitan social events. Analysis further illustrates how revivalist fanfares aurally articulated social status in the outdoor urban arena. This
case study ultimately traces the cultural evolution of an instrument, a complex process through which old and new musical expectations were negotiated through composition and practice.
In the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnib... more In the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnibuses onto the streets of Paris. These public transportation vehicles were named and fashioned after Boieldieu's opéra comique La dame blanche (1825): their rear doors were decorated with scenes of Scotland, their flanks painted with gesturing opera characters, and their mechanical horns trumpeted fanfares through the streets. The omnibuses offered one of the first mass transportation systems in the world and were an innovation that transformed urban circulation. During their thirty years of circulation, the omnibuses also had a profound effect on the reception history of Boieldieu's opera. When the omnibuses improved the quality of working- and middle-class life, bourgeois Parisians applauded the vehicles’ egalitarian business model, and Boieldieu's opera became unexpectedly entwined in the populist rhetoric surrounding the omnibus. Viewing opera through the lens of the Dames Blanches, Parisians conflated the sounds of opera and street, as demonstrated by Charles Valentin Alkan’s piano piece Les omnibus, Op. 2 (1829), which combines operatic idioms and horn calls. Through these examples and others, this study examines the complex ways that material culture affects the dissemination and reception of a musical work.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv TABLE OF CONTENTS vii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x LIST O... more ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv TABLE OF CONTENTS vii LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x LIST OF TABLES xi CHAPTERS
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Talks by Nicole Vilkner
Building upon recent work related to music and space (Born, 2013 and Boutin, 2015), I contend that the urban context shaped the social reception of musiciens ambulants between 1830 and 1880. Drawing from the writings of Édouard Fétis, Victor Fournel, Gustave Droz, as well as police reports, I examine the musical habits of itinerant musicians; this investigation reveals how the performers’ use of city property and their interactions with urban dwellers triggered initiatives to sonically and socially regulate street space. In particular, I analyze Legouix’s vaudeville Les marchands des chansons (1837) and Battmann’s piano quadrille Les musiciens ambulants (1863), pieces that encapsulate the public’s complex response to itinerant performances. Finally, I claim that the musiciens ambulants caused Parisians to interrogate the public use of the urban landscape, particularly as city officials prepared for the International Exposition of 1867. This paper not only presents an enriched portrait of the itinerant musicians’ profession, but it also illustrates how the musiciens ambulants stimulated a vigorous discourse about the use of urban space and, ultimately, propelled the development of street policy in Paris.
Papers by Nicole Vilkner
road signals, driving enthusiasts expanded the musical vocabulary of the coach horn to include elaborate fanfares and stylized ensemble music. Tracing the undocumented recreational history of the coach horn, this article interrogates coach horn manuals, compositions, and essays on coaching that overturn traditional assumptions about the instrument. These sources illustrate how coach horn signals helped reframe driving from a service activity to a healthful sport. Examining the rhetoric surrounding the coach horn during the period of its revival, this study shows how the new signals reflected promenade and salon culture by mimicking polite dialogue. The ensemble repertory written for coach horns also catered to urban popular taste and was cultivated to enhance metropolitan social events. Analysis further illustrates how revivalist fanfares aurally articulated social status in the outdoor urban arena. This
case study ultimately traces the cultural evolution of an instrument, a complex process through which old and new musical expectations were negotiated through composition and practice.
Building upon recent work related to music and space (Born, 2013 and Boutin, 2015), I contend that the urban context shaped the social reception of musiciens ambulants between 1830 and 1880. Drawing from the writings of Édouard Fétis, Victor Fournel, Gustave Droz, as well as police reports, I examine the musical habits of itinerant musicians; this investigation reveals how the performers’ use of city property and their interactions with urban dwellers triggered initiatives to sonically and socially regulate street space. In particular, I analyze Legouix’s vaudeville Les marchands des chansons (1837) and Battmann’s piano quadrille Les musiciens ambulants (1863), pieces that encapsulate the public’s complex response to itinerant performances. Finally, I claim that the musiciens ambulants caused Parisians to interrogate the public use of the urban landscape, particularly as city officials prepared for the International Exposition of 1867. This paper not only presents an enriched portrait of the itinerant musicians’ profession, but it also illustrates how the musiciens ambulants stimulated a vigorous discourse about the use of urban space and, ultimately, propelled the development of street policy in Paris.
road signals, driving enthusiasts expanded the musical vocabulary of the coach horn to include elaborate fanfares and stylized ensemble music. Tracing the undocumented recreational history of the coach horn, this article interrogates coach horn manuals, compositions, and essays on coaching that overturn traditional assumptions about the instrument. These sources illustrate how coach horn signals helped reframe driving from a service activity to a healthful sport. Examining the rhetoric surrounding the coach horn during the period of its revival, this study shows how the new signals reflected promenade and salon culture by mimicking polite dialogue. The ensemble repertory written for coach horns also catered to urban popular taste and was cultivated to enhance metropolitan social events. Analysis further illustrates how revivalist fanfares aurally articulated social status in the outdoor urban arena. This
case study ultimately traces the cultural evolution of an instrument, a complex process through which old and new musical expectations were negotiated through composition and practice.