Concert as a bourgeois institution

Abstract

This paper represents a socio-musical analysis of the importance and the role of the concert in 19th-century musical life. I describe characteristics of the concert as a social event, explain social mechanisms that made possible the constitution and existence of the concert, point to the importance of the social changes on the way this institution functioned, and I point to the certain values that were being made through the concert. Special attention is devoted to the analysis of different types of concerts, as well as to the causes and the consequences of those differences among them. Analyzing the concert as a social institution, I show the relations that exist between divergent behavior patterns that were made through the concerts, and I point to the effects the concert had on the cultural life of a certain historical period.

Keywords

• musical life
• concert
• social class
• public