The early nineteenth century, approximately 1800–48, is the focus of this chapter. Through consideration of historical sources, it enters the early nineteenth-century Viennese home, finding out what was played, who was playing, with what skill and why. It examines the centrality of the piano and the string quartet and the identity and status of musical dilettantes.

In an attempt to demonstrate the scale, scope and orientation of Viennese commemorations of its musicians, this chapter examines funerals and graves, anniversary festivities and physical monuments, demonstrating how the city positions itself at the front and centre of commemorative activities. It focuses on Viennese fascination with death, the funerals and reburials of Beethoven, Strauss Sr, Strauss Jr and Schubert, anniversary celebrations for Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and statues erected of the city’s great musicians, often in controversial circumstances.

This chapter theorises the embodiment of timbral gesture in electronic dance music (EDM) as a convergence point between the vexed categories of affect and meaning. It is argued that timbre is inseparable from gesture in the listening experience and that the embodiment of synthesised gestures affords listeners new ways of experiencing their body-minds by exercising their perceptual agency through sonic prosthesis. In social EDM settings, the heightened potential for entrainment to both the music and other co-participants, together with the established role of entrainment in facilitating social bonding, suggests that the timbral gestures of EDM could be key to fostering intersubjectivity among those present. Considering this, the imaginative embodiment of timbral gestures is shown to constitute a necessary first step towards the communal rationalisation of the EDM experience and the social emergence of musical meaning.

In the early seventeenth century, female singers were novelties, objects of obsession to be admired, collected, and displayed. Heard only seldom in opera (until the establishment of Venetian public opera) and forbidden from singing in church, they performed primarily in private and semiprivate settings, inspiring their male admirers to write poems and discourses that variously praised and condemned their alluring voices and bodies. A comparison of Barbara Strozzi’s performances with the Venetian Accademia degli Unisoni with those of her antecedents and contemporaries (such as Adriana Basile or Leonora Baroni) in Papal Rome reveals fundamental differences in attitudes towards virtuose: the political structure in Venice that limited public roles for noblewomen created an environment discouraged the development of conversazioni and veglie – many of which were sponsored by female patrons – that the Roman women enjoyed. Giulio Strozzi’s founding of the Accademia degli Unisoni may well have been inspired by his experiences hearing female singers during his time in Rome.

This chapter evaluates the subject of ethnographic material in Viennese music, recognizing that those who defined the Viennese perspective, composing and performing music in Vienna, were very often men from elsewhere, attracted by the opportunities of the imperial capital. It examines Ottoman operatic subjects and Turkish Janissary style, Viennese ethnography (including as integrated into classical style), folk songs, Hungarian-Roma influences and style, musical nationalism and ethnographic repertory at the Vienna Opera.

This chapter explores the rich yet understudied tradition of salon music making in Vienna around 1800, positioning it as a crucial counterpart to the emerging public concert culture. While historical narratives have emphasized the establishment of the classical canon in public performance spaces, this chapter highlights the private and semiprivate salon gatherings that flourished in response to sociopolitical constraints, including censorship and war. By examining memoirs, publishing catalogues, and iconography, the study reveals how salons sustained an abiding taste for operatic arrangements in intimate settings. Viennese salons, while influenced by French traditions, developed distinct characteristics, particularly in their emphasis on men’s leadership, class exclusivity, and music’s centrality. The chapter also considers gendered performance practices, the impact of sociopolitical shifts post-1815, and the evolution of salon repertoire. By tracing the adaptation of public works for private settings, this study repositions salons as vital spaces of musical engagement and cultural continuity.

Among the Jewish salonnières of post-Napoleonic Berlin, Amalie Beer (1767–1854) was one of the few to remain a committed Jew throughout her life. The home where she regularly entertained her friends and musical celebrities was also host to a popular yet controversial Sabbath service known as the Beer Temple, an early attempt to align Jewish worship more closely with the surrounding German culture. This essay investigates points of contact and exchange between the Beer Temple and the salon of Amalie Beer, placing the aesthetics of the musical salon in conversation with “bourgeois Judaism” and early Jewish reform. Though the organ, choir, and chorales characteristic of the Beer Temple are commonly framed as adaptations of contemporary Lutheran practice, I find that the Temple was equally marked by its parallels with the salon – not only its domestic location, but its visual trappings, sociability, gender politics, and musical functions.

This chapter identifies and analyses five major electronic dance music (EDM) cultures of mainland China: mainstream clubs-based EDM culture, local clubs-based EDM culture, klubbing-based EDM culture, provincial dancing-based EDM culture, and mic-shouting-based EDM culture. The first two cultures are based on the dance club, the third on karaoke venues, and the final two on social media. Chinese EDM cultures and styles are circulated regionally but not globally. Yet, they have been given ample opportunity to grow due to the very large domestic night-time economy. They are locally distinctive and participated in by millions of Chinese clubbers and audiences. Several studies have already identified these local EDM styles, but the local EDM cultures remain unexplored. The discussion helps fill the research gap by analysing major Chinese EDM cultures’ local cultural characteristics and potential social implications.

This chapter examines concert life in Vienna. It describes the creation of a concert tradition between 1770 and 1870, and its subsequent expansions and distortions in the next 150 years, through consideration of the important concert venues that have dominated the Habsburg and Austrian capital.