Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century

0510433 - ÚDU 2020 RIV GB eng M - Monography Chapter
Bunzel, Anja
Johanna Kinkel's Social Life in Berlin (1836-39): Reflections on Historiographical Sources.
Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2019 - (Bunzel, A.; Loges, N.), s. 13-26. ISBN 978-1-78327-390-4
Institutional support: RVO:68378033
Keywords : Johanna Kinkel * Berlin salons * nineteenth-century * private musical culture * musical historiography * women and music
OECD category: Performing arts studies (Musicology, Theater science, Dramaturgy)

The opening chapter will elaborate on current issues and prospects of salon research, with particular focus on the challenges that the historical materials pose to researchers. The composer, pianist, and music pedagogue Johanna Kinkel (1810–58) will be the basis for a case study. In a letter dated 10 December 1837, Kinkel praises the diverse cultural life of Berlin and mentions that she visited approximately thirty different social gatherings during her residency in Berlin from 1836–39, ‘all of which attracted an almost entirely different circle of guests’. On 10 November 1838, Kinkel writes to the same addressee, her Bonn friend Angela Oppenhoff: 'I have consistently enforced my Rhineland humour in the prudish city of Berlin, so that I can finally do and say whatever I like without punishment. But do not think that this was as easy as it would have been in Bonn, where all attendees of social gatherings know each other, most of the circles which I visit here are the most colourful conglomerations of all social strata and nations'. Although Kinkel voiced her enthusiasm about the Berlin salon landscape several times, she provided very few details about the hosts or locations of these gatherings. This chapter pursues two objectives. Firstly, stimulated by Kaufmann’s biographical sketch of Kinkel and based on the correspondence and memoirs of Kinkel and her contemporaries, it aims to shed light on the reciprocal relationship between Kinkel’s contribution to Berlin social life, and the influence of that Berlin environment on Kinkel’s own socio-cultural standing and self-perception. Secondly, by using the case study of Kinkel as a starting point for a wider discussion of the reliability and objectivity of sources, this chapter will elaborate on such issues as (autobiographical) bias as a result of self-censorship, lack of memory, and historical euphemisms, biography as a means of historiography (Jerome Hamilton Buckley), and research gaps within the fields of biography and salon research (Beatrix Borchard, Sabine Meine, Manuela Schwartz). The chapter is accordingly divided into two sections. Firstly, I will examine who performed Kinkel’s music and whose social gatherings Kinkel visited. I will establish that not even half of the gatherings attended by Kinkel have been located to date, and that Kinkel’s claim that she visited thirty different circles seems exaggerated. In light of this, the second section of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of the reliability and objectivity of primary sources and will conclude with a consideration of the significance of primary sources as posthumous contributions to a composer’s biography. Thus, this chapter will explore the source material related to Kinkel’s time in Berlin and locate them within the wider current methodological challenges of salon research.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0300927