Article,
From miscellany to homogeneity in concert programming
Poetics, (July 2001)
DOI: doi:10.1016/S0304-422X(01)00031-6
Abstract
One of the biggest problems in the study of classical music is the prejudice with which those brought up in the tradition view the mores of musical culture prior to around 1800. We have expectations about what we term 'serious' music that easily turns us against the manner by which music was presented and appreciated two hundred or more years ago. If we are to understand better what musical culture was all about back then, we have to begin questioning our own presuppositions and looking with a fresh eye at what people did in the pre-modern epoch. I would like to suggest some ways by which we might try that here today in regard to concert programs. In the process I will offer a pair of concepts by which to conceive of the main principles by which programs were formed then and now: Miscellany versus Homogeneity. The change from the one to the other around 1850 constituted a massive, fundamental change in the whole nature of musical experience.
