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This chapter offers a substantial reevaluation of Hanslick's work by situating it at the center of late 19th-century debates about the future of the discipline he helped to found. Hired by the University of Vienna in 1856 to advance an empiricist movement in art-historical study inspired by the work of the philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart, Hanslick veered sharply from the Herbartian path within a decade of his appointment. Giving up his attempts to expand his formalist treatise On the Musically Beautiful into a systematic aesthetics in the 1860s, he determined to dedicate himself to the study of cultural history in the post-Hegelian tradition of August Wilhelm Ambros, as evidenced in his second book, History of Concert Life in Vienna (1869). The chapter concludes by arguing that it was Hanslick's abandonment of Herbartianism, rather than his early formalism, that defined his reputation among university colleagues during the final quarter of the century.

This chapter tries to explain how music and concert life could contribute to the debates over national identity and the public good. It first discusses the uncertain stability that enveloped the early Republic during the 1870s and its political crisis. It introduces the concepts of political legitimacy and civic society, and addresses the challenges of legitimacy and consensus. It also shows how giving people the right to culture helped spread values, build community, and democratize taste, as well as presenting an example of the use of aesthetics and concert life to ideology.

This chapter focuses on Lynden Ellsworth Behymer, who took credit for solely inventing Los Angeles' concert life upon his arrival in the city in 1886. It first looks at Behymer's early years in the city, including the events during and after his competition with F.W. Blanchard, and a few of his “low-end” projects. Next, the chapter examines his later career and presents some examples of the questionable lies he used to maintain his influence. It also tries to explain how Behymer achieved—and later abused—his position as the foremost musical authority in Los Angeles.

The years 1937–53 are generally thought of as stagnant ones for Soviet concert repertoire. This view, however, is predicated on a number of assumptions: first, that the drop in Western modernism in the schedules and its replacement by Soviet works had a stultifying effect on concert life; second, that the era of Socialist Realism was damagingly insular; and third, that cultural exchange ceased and Soviet composers lost touch with what was being composed in the West. This chapter challenges all those assumptions by analysing concert schedules of this period, presenting evidence of semi-formal/informal cultural exchange and considering the notion that Socialist Realism was not an isolated trend but part of a large-scale shift in European and American art whose importance has been side-lined in a still dominant cultural narrative of technical progress and complexity.

Extraordinary musicianship in children and notions of genius are closely entwined, but these concepts need historicizing if we are to understand how such connections came about. This chapter explores child performance in the increasingly competitive concert life of 18th century London, examining how juvenile musicians were presented and themes that characterized their reception. Mozart appeared before London audiences in 1764 and 1765; a cosmopolitan virtuoso from Salzburg, he was coached and promoted by his musician father as “a Prodigy of Nature,” a phrase then unfamiliar in English musical discourse. The chapter shows that while the Mozarts’ campaign in London did much to establish a new archetype of “musical prodigy,” this developed in a particular way, in dialogue with local cultural, musical, and intellectual contexts, audience expectations, and the vagaries of the professional environment.

Grainger's mother's (Rose Aldridge) family history is written by her son in the style of a Nordic saga. The better family characteristics are identified as arising from their rural background, and the strengths such a lineage promoted: a “yeoman's outlook” on life and a “love of beasts”, all of which is buttressed by their physical sturdiness, patience, individuality, blond hair, blue eyes, and “hatred of arithmetic and clerkish skills”, which are identified as “town-dweller” (urban) skills. Rose's father became a hotel keeper in Adelaide, and was known for his anti-semitism as well as his skills as an amateur concert agent. The family enjoyed reading aloud together. Grainger's Auntie Clara, and his mentally impaired uncle, Frank, are described fondly.

Extracts in this chapter describe the birth in England of Grainger's father, John Grainger, and his education. It covers the family tradition of “Graingerising” (keeping an artistic scrapbook) and its influence subsequently on Percy, and John Grainger's attempts to keep Percy “British” using the works of Rudyard Kipling. John Grainger's most notable designs, in Perth, Melbourne, and Adelaide are also listed. The effects of John Grainger's alcoholism on his marriage, and subsequent separation from his wife, are recounted, as is his surprising ability to get on with the Aldridges—his mother's family—better than she could herself. Pride in his young son's achievements, coupled with his inability to understand them are addressed, along with his substantial patience with his son. Consideration is given to the racial characteristics of the Irish and the Scots, John Grainger's “dark-eyed” (not “blue-eyed” and therefore Nordic) background and its implications for subsequent family disaster. Early concert life in colonial Adelaide receives sensitive attention.

This chapter provides an overall chronology of Arnold Schoenberg's life and works, along with a recollection of his childhood and musical education. It also looks at his early years in Vienna and Berlin through the First String Quartet, Op. 7. The rest of the chapter describes Schoenberg's résumé around the year 1944, his home life and musicality among his relatives, his early musical life and friendships, and his beginnings as a composer. It also considers documents dating to 1891–1906 containing Schoenberg's views on essence and appearance, the Bible and the modern world, socialism and aesthetics, nature and stylization, program music, concert life, Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony, and the First String Quartet, Op. 7.

Discussion of why choral and instrumental concerts were only lightly regulated by the state provides a springboard for examining the freedom the French provinces enjoyed and the considerable expansion of concert life that was based on individual and collective initiative. Core institutions such as the orphéon, “concerts populaires” and reconstituted cathedral choir schools (maîtrises—some of them state-subsidized) complemented private clubs and chamber ensembles in a bourgeois musical economy that often displayed a varied mix of high and low genres in comparison with Paris. Local administrative machinery aided a “democratizing” shift from private to public (accessibility). Parisian modes of choral and orchestral concert life are introduced as a prelude to discussion in chapters 3 and 4 of the distinctiveness of provincial centers. Discussion touches on provincial attitudes to touring ensembles from Paris and the increasing extent of soft power exerted by the capital.