A volume such as this one would have been unthinkable a generation ago, when disciplinary lines were inscribed far more rigidly than they are now. Today, historical musicologists and ethnomusicologists regularly draw upon methodologies from each other’s disciplines as well as from the fields of cultural history and women’s and gender studies, among many others. This volume brings these disciplines together – and, in individual chapters, many others, including film studies, anthropology, Jewish studies, and more – to present a new history of women and music through the lens of musical salon culture.

Perhaps foremost among the ideas that has enabled this cross-fertilization is the notion of “musicking,” first articulated by ethnomusicologist Christopher Small. Small’s 1988 volume Musicking: The Meanings of Performance and Listening objected to the notion, rooted in the Western tradition of classical music, of music as an object. Instead, Small posits the concept of music as an act – a live event created through performance: “even within a literate musical culture such as the Western classical tradition the exclusive concentration on musical works and the relegation of the act of performance to subordinate status has resulted in a severe misunderstanding of what actually takes place during a performance.”Footnote ¹ Small foregrounds the acts of performing and listening rather than composition, and his radical rethinking of what it means “to musick” has led numerous other scholars to identify additional modes of musicking that come together to foster musical events and broader musical cultures.

The hosting of salons that feature music prominently – what we loosely term “musical salons,” though there is no strict barrier separating “musical salons” from others – is one way in which women in Europe and the Americas have participated in musicking over the past 400 years. A component of musical culture that has long existed away from the public eye, musical salons run counter to most traditional narratives in musicology. Textually oriented musicology – that is, the study and analysis of musical compositions as reflected in their music-textual sources – cannot fully account for musical salons, since, in salons, it is the practice of music and not its texts that assumes center stage. In salons, composers and performers, professionals and amateurs, intellectuals and artists, listeners and critics meet on terms that are (at least on the surface) more informal than those in the concert hall. Musical scores and works are adapted by the performers to meet the social and cultural needs of the moment. Instrumentation is readily altered, and “arrangements” are produced – whether in new performing scores or in off-the-cuff, unnotated versions – to address the primary objective of musical sociability. Within the salon, musical scores facilitate a sociable interaction, which enables the rise of musical practices and personalities that might otherwise have lacked such opportunities. Adaptations of musical works in these settings position performance and cultural practice at the forefront, contributing to the upending of musical history as one dominated by texts. Within musical salons, women play a variety of roles, from composer and performer to patron, convener, coordinator of conversation, and many others.

What is a musical salon? There has never been an easy definition, and this has contributed to the generally haphazard way in which salons have been addressed in the musicological literature. Even the term “salon” as applied to a social institution (as opposed to a room in a house) is of relatively recent usage, and what we now refer to as salons have long been known by a variety of names, including Teetisch, assembly/assemblé, ruelle, tertulia, Akademie/accademia/academy, conversation/conversazione, party, or rout; they could also take the form of regular private concerts or, simply, visits with musical friends. Moreover, salons form an ever-changing space – physically, practically, aesthetically, and ideologically. Part of the purpose of this study is to reflect that changeable nature.

Rather than limiting our study according to strict parameters, we have cast a wide net and sought to account for an array of practices and manifestations of musical salons across a range of times and places. In general, we define “salons” as regular, heterosocial gatherings of people – sometimes in a mixed company of intellectuals and artists, elites, patrons, and professionals – generally presided over by a woman, the salonnière or salon hostess, in which conversation and sociability facilitated the exploration of new ideas and fashions in the arts and letters, philosophy, and other areas of intellectual inquiry and expressive practices. We use the term “musical salon” broadly to refer to salons in which music figured prominently in the proceedings. In some cases, the salon hostess and her guests had a special interest in or talent for music, and the hostess would perform alongside other amateur or professional musicians who frequented her salon and sometimes share original compositions in that context.

Within the history of musical salons, women are not merely incidental figures; rather, they often served as the driving force behind the formation of musical salons and many of its manifestations over centuries and across geographic regions. Long restricted from participation in the public sphere through conventions and cultural norms, women have used the institution of the salon to gain an education, become exposed to new ideas and trends in the worlds of the arts and ideas, and exercise their own agency in shaping their cultural environments. The salon, rooted in the home but existing outside the domestic space, constitutes a liminal space between the public and private spheres.Footnote ² Within salons, women acted as patrons and testers of new ideas; their musicianship and musical tastes helped to shape the practices of professional composers and musicians in their orbit. To be sure, some men organized and hosted musical salons, and our essay collection acknowledges those salons at various points. However, telling the stories of musical salons necessarily places women in the foreground, and women form the central focus of this book.

Salons assumed characters particular to their time, place, and context. The salons of seventeenth-century France were linked to the ancien régime and relied on the power structures inscribed in it. The French court in the age of Louis XIV represented the gravitational center for much of the social, cultural, and artistic production of the aristocracy during that period. Salons of that era reflected the centrality of the royal court, although, as John Romey’s contribution to this volume shows, some members of the nobility used salons to cultivate their own homes as central cultural spaces.Footnote ³ Moreover, the rigid social structures of seventeenth-century France meant that salons were hosted by the aristocracy and nearly all their participants were born into that class. And yet, other examples of seventeenth-century musical salons suggest that this narrative is too limited. The musical gatherings hosted by Leonora Duarte in seventeenth-century Antwerp reveal that many of the conditions of salons in eighteenth-century France were anticipated in the Low Countries.Footnote ⁴ Duarte’s family existed within a mercantile network that afforded her domestic music making a place of primary importance; here, social and economic influences blended with musical sociability that allowed Duarte to act as composer, performer, and patron within her extensive network of connections. The musical soirées hosted by Barbara Strozzi in Venice have rarely been considered before as an example of “salons,” but rather as an offshoot of the world of Venetian academies. Despite the clear link between Strozzi’s social-musical gatherings and the system of academies in Venice (indeed, her gatherings met under the rubric of the Accademia degli Unisoni), as Wendy Heller explains in her essay in this volume, they overlap with French salons of the Grand Siècle and with French-influenced salons held in Rome at the same time; all these were presided over by a female hostess and featured displays of linguistic wit as well as conversation centered on musical performances.Footnote ⁵ The Jewish salon writer Sarra Copia Sulam likewise hosted a literary salon in seventeenth-century Venice, and Don Harrán argued that she sang her poetry in these gatherings, rather than simply reciting it.Footnote ⁶ The cases of Strozzi and Sulam indeed call into question the Francocentric narrative of musical salons that has long dominated the scholarly literature. Rather than accepting that narrative, we seek to create a broader understanding, accounting both for clear offshoots of the French tradition and for practices of musical sociability that have no obvious connection to it.Footnote ⁷ Elizabeth Weinfield’s contribution to this volume extends the discussion of salons still further by placing them into dialogue with the women-centered structures of power and diplomacy employed in the harem in Constantinople; Weinfield’s chapter explores this idea through a distinctly musical episode from the late sixteenth century.

The relationship of musical salons to the aristocracy and structures of power from the eighteenth century forward requires attention. Jürgen Habermas has argued that, as the ancien régime began to lose its hold in eighteenth-century Europe, the salon arose as a component of the nascent “public sphere.”Footnote ⁸ In this understanding, aristocratic women began to host salons as a new means of gaining access to and shaping the tastes and interests of their aristocratic peers. And yet, as Habermas emphasizes, the salon also held sway over the emerging bourgeois classes. In addition, as Rebecca Cypess has argued, eighteenth-century women in the professional classes began hosting musical salons in emulation of their aristocratic peers. For example, Marie-Emanuelle Bayon, a professional composer and keyboardist who had earlier been among the musicians who frequented the salon of the Comtesse de Genlis, initiated her own musical salon after her marriage.Footnote ⁹ In this context, she could frame her activities as a composer within a component of a social institution in that legitimized women’s agency and authorship. Cypess explores the social implications of Bayon’s choices in one of her chapters in this volume. In the nineteenth century, too, France was a major epicenter of musical salon culture, and Nicole Vilkner’s essay in this volume explicates a genre – the “salon opera” – that was specially created for French spaces.

The dominance of French tastes in Europe meant that the practices of musical salons spread quickly and were grafted onto local traditions of sociability, visiting, and friendship,Footnote ¹⁰ and the expansion of colonial aspirations of European countries in the nineteenth century meant that the institution of the salon spread beyond Europe as well. The French model inspired women to emulate French practices in numerous other locales in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with networks linking Paris to cities from Warsaw (as discussed in Halina Goldberg’s chapter) to Prague (as discussed by Anja Bunzel) to New Orleans (the subject of the chapter by Candace Bailey). This blending of French customs with local traditions can also be seen in the musical salons hosted by Jewish women in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Berlin and other German-speaking locales,Footnote ¹¹ especially in the salons of Sara Levy in Berlin and her sister Fanny von Arnstein in Vienna.Footnote ¹² The reform of German Protestantism by Friedrich Schleiermacher likewise had a significant impact on musical culture through his connection to salons.Footnote ¹³ Samuel Teeple’s chapter builds on our understanding of the interaction between these religious reforms and musical salon culture by exploring how the Beer family in Berlin blended Reform Jewish worship with salon practices. By contrast, Angela Mace’s chapter shows how the concerts that Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel presented in her home deviated from the tradition of salons cultivated by her familial and social circles.

Salons in the Netherlands, in Virginia, in Madrid, and in countless other cities and countries in the nineteenth century likewise blended local customs and cultures with the practice of hosting salons, as demonstrated here in chapters by Floris Meens, Virginia Whealton, and Christine Wisch, respectively. Elite women in colonial Latin America took on the practices of salons, including musical salons, and these institutions had a powerful influence on the musical practices in those areas. In Porfirian Mexico at the end of the nineteenth century, the salon served as a space of escape for women who were often confined to the private sphere of the household. In addition, for many single, upper-class women in particular, salons served as a space of courtship and seduction, and these features were also linked to musical practices such as the performance of novel dances or the performance of new music at the piano.Footnote ¹⁴ Mexican composers such as Ricardo Castro and Ernesto Elorduy became leading contributors of salon music, writing European-influenced waltzes and mazurkas, and also character pieces that featured local influences and inspirations such as habaneras, jarabes, and zarzuela arrangements. Their popularity and music expanded past the male-dominated conservatory and became significant fixtures in private salons where musical performances were led by women of excellent social standing. As Ricardo Miranda states, “The musical score … became virtually synonymous with the señorita in nineteenth-century Mexico.”Footnote ¹⁵ Yael Bitrán Goren’s chapter concentrates on women’s identity within the cosmopolitan space of the musical salon, or tertulias, during the nineteenth century. Building on this framework, Jacqueline Avila’s chapter in this volume explores how this image of the señorita was portrayed in film representations through music in Mexico’s época de oro (golden age) of the twentieth century, often moving against the grain of the historical archive. In Colombia during the nineteenth century, musical salons served as locations crucial to the “civilizing project” and as spaces for the construction of masculinity and femininity. Juan Fernando Velásquez’s chapter examines how and why the musical salon became a crucial site of identity construction for urban Colombian elites.

In the British and North American spheres, too, many women took to hosting salons in which music figured prominently. By the mid-eighteenth century, Ann Ford, a composer and performer who specialized in the use of “sentimental” musical instruments, hosted such soirées, where leading professional musicians were joined in music making by members of the elite classes.Footnote ¹⁶ Julia Hamilton-Louey’s chapter in this volume discusses the possible intersection of British musical salons at the turn of the nineteenth century with music making that advocated for abolitionism. James Deaville’s chapter focuses on the conventions and etiquette surrounding musical “at-homes” in the Victorian era.

In the United States of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, salons hosted by affluent women patrons such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Alma Morgenthau Wertheim ensured the performances of works by modernist composers such as Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson.Footnote ¹⁷ These patrons ensured that such new works received an audience and advocated from their homes for new currents in musical composition and music making. Moreover, women composers such as Amy Beach and Clara Kathleen Rogers used the salon as a primary venue to present their own compositions.Footnote ¹⁸ In addition to the North American salons in New Orleans and Virginia mentioned above, this volume offers Sarah Tomasewski’s chapter on the salons of Anne Botta, and Emily C. Hoyler O’Hare discusses women’s musical “clubs” in Chicago as extensions of musical salon culture.

Two chapters address the adoption of musical salon practices by Black women in North America and the implications of those practices for Black women’s agency and world making. In Chicago, Black musicians including Florence Price found a place of communal support and musical training in the salon of Estella Bonds.Footnote ¹⁹ Estella’s daughter, composer Margaret Bonds, forged a musical network in her mother’s salon that affected both her career and her compositions, as discussed by Elizabeth Durrant and Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden in the present volume. From the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance through the avant-garde jazz movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the jazz salon became a crucial space where Black women musicians cultivated an intellectual space that, as Tammy Kernodle explores in her chapter, created new forms of jazz. The music salon culture within the United States provided vibrant and diverse spaces for musical performance and for the exploration of cultural identity politics.

The relationship between musical salons and public concert life is complex and has varied over time. In nineteenth-century Paris, a center of virtuosity in public recitals, musical salons took on some aspects of public concerts. Salon performances were sometimes advertised in advance or reviewed after the fact in publicly circulating journals, and salon hostesses would sometimes charge admission fees, often to raise money for a charitable cause. With Paris and other urban centers attracting musicians from across the European continent, musical salons became important waystations where performers could attract the attention of wealthy and influential patrons or critics. Salons and musical Akademien in Vienna adopted distinctive performance practices that rendered music from the public uniquely suited to semiprivate spaces, as explored in the chapter by Nancy November.

In North Africa, as well, women’s domestic roles expanded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to include the kinds of salon sociability found in Europe. For example, Vanessa Paloma Elbaz has shown how women in Casablanca used musical practices in shared social spaces as a means of articulating and preserving religious and family traditions.Footnote ²⁰ In her contribution to this volume, Paloma Elbaz explores how women of the Sephardic Jewish diaspora used their voices to invoke a portable “salon” – a social network that served to protect them from unwanted advances from those outside their community and that reinscribed communal bonds with one another.

The study of musical salon culture brings into focus other themes in music history and cultural history more broadly, and these themes, too, emerge in the pages of this volume. Among these are cosmopolitanism and nationalism. Musical salons have always relied upon and enabled the travel of people and ideas. Musical salons exist in dialogue with one another, as travelers experience an array of institutions and practices. Eighteenth-century cosmopolitans such as Charles Burney and Hester Lynch Piozzi chronicled (albeit in very general terms) their experiences in musical salons across Europe. Benjamin Franklin, a strong advocate of women’s education, visited salons in London and Paris, and he encouraged their growth in the United States.Footnote ²¹ Franklin’s experiences in these salons shaped his ideas about musical instruments and musical styles, and he contributed his own innovations to musical salon culture, including the introduction of the glass armonica, which became a staple of salon performances for decades. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, salons in Europe and the Americas saw performers and repertoire traveling through homes and traversing geographic borders. Related themes that emerge from the study of musical salons include consumerism, popular culture, and musical performance practices. Public performance of genres such as opera and symphonies came to be “consumed” in the salons of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy in the form of piano–vocal scores and arrangements.Footnote ²²

Nationalism became central to salons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Germaine de Staël, who had grown up attending the salon of her mother, Suzanne Necker, articulated such ideas in her descriptions of salons and music in her essays and novels.Footnote ²³ Vienna in the nineteenth century was home to a dizzying calendar of musical salons, and these represented a point of pride for natives of the city, who boasted (albeit naively) that music and salon performances effected the dissolution of class distinctions.Footnote ²⁴ Fryderyk Chopin used the salon and other domestic spaces as his primary sites of performance; there he embodied the French ideals of cosmopolitanism even as he gave voice to the sounds of Polish nationalism.Footnote ²⁵ The New Orleans-born nineteenth-century composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk established himself as a cosmopolitan, being the first US American composer to travel through the Caribbean and Latin America. His infusion of musical elements from his travels into his character pieces and performances allowed listeners in the salon to imagine their escape to the “exotic” locales whose sounds he attempted to capture.

The musical salon as a cosmopolitan meeting point of differing cultures took on a new dimension during the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020–22. Musical salons operating on web-based platforms such as Zoom enabled the musical sociability of performers and listeners across the globe, allowing for the travel of sound, ideas, and collaboration even when physical travel was impossible. Rebecca Cypess’s chapter on the present-day salon of Andrea Clearfield – based in Philadelphia but truly international in its reach and participation – explores the notion of space in the musical sociability of the Zoom age.

While musical salons have been addressed sporadically in musicological literature for years, the study of musical salons per se remains somewhat haphazard. To some extent, this is to be expected, since salons have existed in so many different times and places and have been shaped by the distinctive priorities, values, and ideals of their hostesses. And yet, the time is now right for a volume that brings these differing themes and ideas together. Four Hundred Years of Women’s Musical Salons: A Cross-Cultural History seeks both to provide a point of entry into the field as it currently stands and, crucially, to raise new questions that will generate further study moving in new directions. We bring together expert scholars who have worked on musical salons across a wide range of historical and geographic situations. In curating these perspectives and reflecting on their similarities and differences, this volume establishes new parameters for understanding musical salons throughout history and in contemporary practice. We hope that this study will be of interest to scholars within musicology, history, cultural studies, and women’s and gender studies. Furthermore, in focusing on a topic in which women have long played a foundational role, our volume offers a timely contribution to the study of women in music. In attending to questions that include musical repertoire, musical practices, intellectual traditions, and sociability, this volume meets the women at the center of the field on their own terms. Rather than judging salon music and musical practices as “frivolous” or only ancillary to compositional history or the history of public concert life, this book attends to musical salons as a central – and long-neglected – aspect of musical life.

The chapters in this volume are arranged more or less chronologically, with a few caveats. In some cases, a clear chronological ordering has been impossible; while some chapters address salons that took place within a well-defined span of years, others address trends that emerged slowly and continued over several decades. The one instance in which a chapter appears “out of order” is Chapter 3, Elizabeth Weinfield’s study of musical diplomacy in the harem of Constantinople. Although the episode it describes predates the salons discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 (by Wendy Heller and John Romey, respectively), readers moving through the chapters in order should read Heller’s and Romey’s works first, in order to gain an understanding of musical salon culture before turning to Weinfield’s comparative analysis.

That said, the chapters throughout this volume are designed to be read either in order or independently of one another, and each chapter exists in dialogue with the literature pertaining to the time and place of the salons or salon culture that it considers.

Finally, while the title of this book indicates that it contains a “cross-cultural history,” we do not pretend that that history is comprehensive. Indeed, musical salon culture has been so varied and of such long duration that a “complete” history is virtually impossible. What we present here, then, is a series of case studies that will shed new light on the musical, cultural, social, religious, political, and intellectual pursuits of the women at their center. It is our hope that this collection of essays will lead to further study of the remarkable and vital cultures of musical salons over the centuries.