Twenty-first-century Vienna is a city with a living and diverse musical ecosystem. This chapter explores some of this ecosystem, how the ‘city of music’ has evolved and how its contemporary musical culture balances not only past and present but also an increasingly variegated and complex mix of traditions, genres, ethnicities and identities. It examines classical music, jazz, popular music (including indie rock, electronic music and hip-hop) and World Music.

After the armed struggle of the Revolution (1910–20), Mexican cinema, particularly during the época de oro (Golden Age, roughly 1930–52), had a profound impact on Mexican popular culture. One of the most intriguing elements was how the film industry captured Mexican music history, particularly the intimate practice of musical performances conducted within the salon. This essay moves through various points in Mexican history, as told by the film industry, to uncover a practice of representation and interpretation of the roles of women in the salon. Mexican musical history is a rich and vibrant narrative of cosmopolitanism and changing narratives of gender roles that the film industry manipulated and exploited on the big screen. Although functioning as a reinterpretation of historical periods, these films act as significant cultural texts to understanding the industry’s and the culture’s knowledge of women performers in the Mexican salon.

As the early twentieth-century writer Karl Kraus playfully observed, the ‘streets [of Vienna] are surfaced with culture as the streets of other cities are surfaced with asphalt’.1 Long-time centre of the Habsburg Empire and now capital of Austria, Vienna has always lived and breathed music in particular, from the troubadours at the early thirteenth-century Babenberg court, the founding of the Hofmusikkapelle in 1498 and Leopold I’s lavish investment in music in the seventeenth century to the unbroken sequence of masters of the last 250 years from Haydn and Mozart onwards. Beyond the apparently inescapable and regularly self-promotional clichés of Vienna as the musical capital of the world and the most musical city in the world, Vienna has embraced often simultaneously musical continuity and change, conservatism and progressivism, and aesthetic, stylistic and cultural uniformity and diversity. If Vienna is, as Charles Sealsfield explained in 1828, ‘a city of contrasts; here you may find the most abject dissoluteness and undeviating steadiness, a high degree of learning and the grossest ignorance, the most contemptible servility and a noble independent spirit’,2 then music will reflect the contrast-fuelled environment at least to a certain extent.

This chapter explores the roles of women as hostess and musical impresario for domestic gatherings known as “at-home” in the second half of the nineteenth century. Drawing upon the prescriptions of contemporary etiquette books and sources of advice in music journals, belletristic literature, and the daily press, it considers her varied responsibilities as “generous authority” with particular attention to the events’ musical entertainment. We first study the performers and repertoires of musical at-homes and then turn our attention to the expectations for audiences and performers at nonmusical at-homes. From selecting programs for the music-based events to overseeing guests’manners during informal music making, the hostess held absolute sway within the domestic domain. A successful (i.e., pleasurable) at-home assisted the hostess in maintaining – even advancing – her status within the social hierarchy of the time, even as proper behavior at such affairs aided the aspirational ambitions of her guests.

In the mid-nineteenth century, opéra de salon dominated residential entertainment in Parisian salons. As these short, comedic operas were adapted for household receptions, librettists and composers faced a choice: adhere to staging conventions or adapt their works to fit the idiosyncrasies of residential space. Focusing on the salon of Anne Gabrielle Orfila, who was a proponent of opéra de salon and who hosted at least ten unique productions, this study examines how opera was adapted to salon space. It shows how stage action was not always contained by a single room, with scenes often spanning adjacent rooms. This affected audience seating and shaped the dramatic experience. The study also considers the significance of salon décor as it harmonized with or competed with the opera scenery. At a time when spectacle and elaborate designs prevailed at the Paris Opéra, opéra de salon presented a contrasting model that challenged theatrical conventions.

This essay aims to expand the geographic and cultural understanding of jazz history by exploring how the after-hours jam sessions in the homes of Alma Scott, Mary Lou Williams, and Alice Coltrane were vital to the progression of jazz. During the height of the Harlem Renaissance, the home of Scott in Harlem became an important meeting space for a circle of Black musicians, who were significant in shaping the musical language of American musical theater, swing, and the vaudeville blues. In the mid-1940s and early 1950s, Williams’s Hamilton Terrace apartment attracted a collective of young musicians who would create the modern jazz aesthetic. More than two decades later, a basement recording studio in Coltrane’s Dix Hills home played a similar role, providing a space that fostered a new wave of avant-garde jazz in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Downtempo electronic dance music culture (EDMC) genres were popularised from 1989; much like more up-tempo forms they have roots stretching back to the late 1960s and 1970s, with the White Room at Heaven nightclub a particularly important moment. Several variant forms, such as ambient, ambient dub, ambient techno, chill out, downtempo, ambient house, chill hop, and trip hop connect with ecstatic forms of trance; listeners use such music to induce states of relaxation, stillness, meditation, blissful somatic consciousness, euphoria, or to lower tension or stress levels, in various contexts.

This chapter traces the development of EDMC ambient and chill out music, and explores techniques used by musicians composing in such styles, examining how they interact with, for example, deep listening, time, space, flow states, entrainment, and mystical or spiritual traditions. Framed by phenomenology and embodiment, it discusses how specific approaches aim to manipulate the listener’s experiential perception, as well as their mood and state of consciousness. As well as the listener’s experience, the processes of chill out composers are considered, examining the affordances of chill out music.

In 1849–50, Étienne Duverger co-edited La Violette: Revue musicale et littéraire in New Orleans. He published this feuilleton with an aim to instill the idea of the Parisian salon among women in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and he encouraged them to adopt a new repertoire (Chopin) and a new stance (in the public gaze rather than out of it). In other words, he urged them to come out of the shadows (where violets hide) and into a broader light. His efforts, however, failed. This essay argues that while the rising domination of US-American culture (over that of the French) contributed to the breakdown of Duverger’s mission, the data that can be gleaned from this publication provides the most detailed account of salon activities in the South, and possibly the entire nation. Thus, La Violette proves invaluable as a resource for women’s musical culture in this period.

Vienna’s reputation as the ballroom dancing capital of Europe was already secured by the end of the eighteenth century and continues to this day. This chapter examines the rich history of dance in Vienna from the eighteenth century – the period of the first public ballrooms as well as the emergence of ballet as an independent art form – to the present day. It discusses Viennese ball culture and its iconic dance, the waltz, which is the part of Vienna’s history that has been most influential on wider dance culture, and originated the most recognizably and distinctively ‘Viennese’ musical style.

This chapter examines the profound impact of reggae sound system culture on both British and global music scenes, tracing its evolution and influence across racial and geographic boundaries. Initially, it explores the origins and cultural significance of sound systems in Jamaica, focusing on figures like Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd and Duke Reid, and their role in shaping social events through innovative audio technology. It then shifts to the migration of sound system practices to Britain, highlighting the adaptation of these practices within British urban life, with key figures like Dennis Bovell leading the way. Finally, the chapter discusses how sound system culture influenced global music, particularly electronic genres such as dub, jungle, drum and bass, and grime. It emphasises the lasting legacy of sound systems in modern music, despite the decline of traditional systems in Jamaica and the UK, showcasing their ongoing global impact.

This chapter introduces the electronic dance music culture kuduro (‘hard arse’) from Angola. It delineates the diasporically intertwined history of kuduro, introduces the main aesthetic strategies and, finally, focusses on the undervalued microphone practices of animação). Based on ethnographic research, the contribution crystallises the insight that kuduro, as a practice that requires deft skills and stamina, is throughout its history intrinsically tied to electronic dance musics around the globe rather than representing the exotic other to Western EDM. This fine-grained analysis of the material leads to the conclusion that kuduro is best understood within the framework of sound system cultures of the Black Atlantic, throwing the specificity of kuduro into sharper relief while also situating it within the larger context of similar practices.

In order to capture Vienna’s abundant, diverse and socially engaged musical culture between c.1770 and c. 1830, this chapter first examines late eighteenth-century activities through the prism of different interlocutors and communities, including critics, writers and audiences who demonstrate particular admiration for multi-talented performer-composers; publishers, liaising with composers, who produce printed music for general circulation; and musicians who often tetchily compete with one another. It then evaluates the equally heterogeneous and colourful early nineteenth century, primarily through the lens of the Vienna correspondent to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, also explaining how canonic statuses for Viennese composers take root.

This chapter investigates the ‘bass music’ genres of dubstep and trap at massive North American festivals in the 2010s, an era in which DJ sets were characterised by a sensationalised moment known as ‘the drop’. It begins by demonstrating that the sense of rupture delivered by the drop is emmeshed with social and musical disputes (especially in online festival groups). The chapter then examines the gendered dimensions of the bass music drop. It ends by considering bass music’s #MeToo moment of reckoning regarding alleged sexual misconduct by the dubstep producer-DJ Datsik. In doing so, the chapter suggests that despite previous and ongoing associations with unity, transcendence, and escapism, EDM is sometimes unable to escape the divisions and ills of the world as it is. Rather than ignoring the dark sides of EDM culture through affirmative scholarship, our field would benefit from a critical turn and methodological innovation.

This chapter seeks to define the broad contours of the Viennese music publishing landscape and the conditions that informed its development, notably the symbiotic relationship between printing technologies, markets and repertories and their varying calibrations in different periods, and the impact of emerging ideas of intellectual property and performing rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It pays particular attention to the activities of Artaria and other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century publishers, as well as to developments among Viennese publishers in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Industry figures show that whilst most attendees at electronic dance music events are young adults, older people are also participating. The changing demographic destabilises conventional readings of a culture hitherto associated with youth and reveals the shifting priorities and expectations of older people in relation to (sub)cultural participation. This chapter investigates the impact of this emerging trend and examines the role clubbing plays in the lives of older people. Drawing on the perspectives of participants over forty, it highlights the contradictory attitudes that circulate around the topic of club culture and ageing. Whilst the reported benefits of participation are significant, older people’s presence provokes polarised views and notions of belonging in the scene can be undermined by concerns about fitting in, appearance and feeling ‘othered’. The discussion foregrounds these tensions and explore the ways in which older people’s participation in club culture is provoking change.

Although most salonnières of the eighteenth century were members of the elite European classes, this was not always the case. In some instances, professional artists became salon hostesses themselves. This chapter discusses one such story – that of Marie-Emanuelle Bayon (1746–1825), a professional composer and keyboardist who went from being a salon habituée and participant to assuming the role of hostess herself. While the surviving evidence about Bayon’s life and career is scant, it seems that Bayon may have used the institution of the salon as part of a strategy to navigate the complexities of being a woman artist. On the one hand, she needed to make a living through her artistry, and for this, she attained the patronage of her wealthy contemporaries, as well as taking up opportunities for teaching and publication. On the other, she needed to balance displays of her creativity and talent with the strictures that were increasingly placed on women around public performance and participation in the public sphere. Thus, even as some women sought opportunities to perform at venues such as the Concert Spirituel, there is no record that Bayon ever performed publicly. This chapter suggests that this may have been a deliberate decision to avoid exposing herself to the scrutiny and criticism that sometimes resulted from such public activities. She appears to have used the institution of the salon, first as habituée and later as salonnière, to navigate these social constraints.

This chapter highlights the prominence of Polish women in salon culture as hostesses, audiences, patrons, and artists, focusing on the salon’s role in the process of professionalization of music for women. I have selected three Polish salonnières connected to Chopin’s Varsovian and Parisian circles: Maria Szymanowska, Maria Kalergis-Muchanoff, and Marcelina Czartoryska. These women’s combined lives span almost the entire nineteenth century, and their salon activities traverse Europe – from Warsaw and Kraków to St. Petersburg, Vienna, Baden-Baden, Paris, London, and beyond. All three were first-rate pianists who performed in public, but each shaped her role in the musical world differently to promote various artistic, cultural, and social agendas. While these salonnières were active in fostering Polish national and patriotic cultures, the geography of their endeavors also underscores the transnational nature of the salon, reminding us that artists and their hosts traveled internationally and cultivated cosmopolitan artistic and social networks.

Based on ethnographic research in Berlin and further research into early rave cultures, this chapter addresses the commercialisation of the techno rave in Berlin as part of wider transformational processes, and as a source for protests movements that promoted alternative visions, economies, and practices of rave such as free parties, teknivals, and parades. That Berlin was ‘poor but sexy’ became the city’s leitmotif from 2003 onwards, when Berlin was still cheap and grimy. Rich with creative potential, it was just starting to attract foreign investors. In the aftermath, Berlin was embedded in a global tourism industry to market its urban identity, also through its electronic dance music cultures. The discussion shows how music and culture are entangled with political-economic processes of neoliberal capitalism and how these are contested through counter cultural practices linked with electronic dance music. Gentrification and commodification of culture continue to be pressing topics in urban Europe at large and reverberate in the musical genres at stake.