The many faces of everyday musical life: Approaching music history from “below”

Abstract

Is it useful to write history on everyday musical life? And how can we do it? This article introduces a historiographical concept initiated by historians such as Carlo Ginzburg, Alf Lüdtke and Richard van Dülmen already in the 1970s, in an attempt to renew the writing of history. Instead of the reconstruction and interpretation of grand narratives and deep structures in society, economy and culture, these historians offer close descriptions of ‘average citizens’ with their daily musical routines, motivations and preferences, and the result is oft en a cluster of fascinating and wide-ranging insights into different forms of contact with music. Following this general approach, I hope to offer a panorama of everyday musical culture in Hamburg in the early eighteenth century. The sources used for this study include different musical genres such as opera, cantata and instrumental ‘table music’, as well as books, newspaper reports, subscription lists, diaries, behavioural guides and archival documents. This material permits insights into the uses made of musicians such as Johann Mattheson, Georg Philipp Telemann and Reinhard Keiser, as well as into the social lives of the Hamburg citizenship.

Keywords

• everyday life
• music history
• hamburg
• early 18th century
• johann matt heson
• georg philipp telemann
• reinhard keiser