Music business and image promotion among virtuosos in Paris, 1830–1848

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Summarize

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

Music Business and Image Promotion
among Virtuosos in Paris, 1830–1848

Meagan Mason

A dissertation presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
University of Southern California

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Historical Musicology

December 2018

© 2018
MEAGAN MASON
All Rights Reserved
iii

Abstract

Music Business and Image Promotion
among Virtuosos in Paris, 1830–1848

by

Meagan Mason

From 1830 to 1848 was the height of the virtuoso craze in Europe, and Paris audiences were
particularly consumed with desire for spectacle. The scene was inundated with talent and
competition: Liszt, Chopin, Clara Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Paganini, Wagner,
Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and others lived or toured in Paris in these years. In the midst of this
competition, many musicians wondered how they would make their own way. As a matter of
course, virtuoso performances had to be unabashedly showy and executed with scintillating
precision. But these musicians also needed to book performance venues and supporting
musicians, advertise, and entice press coverage. Methods of gaining publicity ranged from the
ordinary—posting concert flyers and selling sheet-music—to the tabloid-worthy—spreading
salacious gossip about themselves in newspapers. This dissertation studies techniques of
promotion musicians used in this setting.
Scholars have already studied the public personas of such musicians as Liszt, Paganini,
and other violinists and pianists, but a survey of self-promotion practices among performing
musicians in Paris remained to be written. By using press, correspondence, memoirs, fiction,
and iconography, I address executant musicians’ advertising in the public media, their
promotion through salons, their harnessing of the popular pseudo-medical trends of
phrenology and physiognomy to influence public opinion, and the ways in which conductors
took on characteristics of the “new virtuoso.”
iv

Résumé
De 1830 à 1848, l’engouement pour les virtuoses en Europe était à son apogée et le public
parisien était particulièrement avide de spectacles. Liszt, Chopin, Clara Schumann, Saint-
Saëns, Franck, Paganini, Wagner, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, et d’autres ont vécu ou se sont produits
à Paris pendant ces années. La scène musicale était inondée de talents en concurrence. Au
milieu de ces concours, de nombreux musiciens se demandaient comment ils feraient leur
propre chemin. Il va de soi que les performances des virtuoses devaient être des spectacles
sans fard et exécutés avec une précision scintillante. Mais ces musiciens avaient aussi besoin
de réserver des salles de spectacle, d’entretenir d’autres musiciens, de faire de la publicité et
d’attirer l’attention de la presse. Leurs moyens d’obtenir de la publicité allaient de l’affichage
ordinaire des dépliants de concert à la vente de partitions, en passant par la diffusion de
potins sur eux-mêmes dans les journaux. Cette étude présente les techniques utilisées par les
musiciens pour se promouvoir dans ce contexte.
Des chercheurs ont déjà étudié les personnalités publiques que sont les musiciens
comme Liszt, Paganini et d’autres, violonistes ou pianistes, mais il reste à examiner les
pratiques d’autopromotion parmi les musiciens parisiens. En utilisant la presse, leur
correspondance, leurs mémoires, la littérature de fiction et l’iconographie, cette étude aborde
la publicité des musiciens intervenant dans les médias publics, leur promotion dans les salons,
leur exploitation des tendances pseudo-médicales populaires de la phrénologie et de la
physiognomonie pour influencer l’opinion publique, et la façon dont les chefs d’orchestre se
sont approprié les caractéristiques de la “nouvelle virtuosité.”

v

Acknowledgements

My overflowing gratitude goes to the people who helped me along the way in this project:
Bruce Brown, I have been honored to have an advisor so attentive and influentially
brilliant. Thank you for your assiduous eye as you have read every iota of this document. Leah
Morrison, for your infectious enthusiasm for the Romantic period and for your teacherly care
as I went through the program, I am grateful. You have been a warm spot in my experience.
Lisa Vest, thank you for everything you poured into my work. Your energy and insight are a
model for me.
Clare Siviter at the University of Bristol and Anaïs Pedron at the Queen Mary
University of London, Charles Stratford at Brandeis University, and Alexandros Charkiolakis
at the Istanbul Technical University Centre for Advanced Music Studies—thank you for
providing opportunities for presenting and publishing my work, and for investing significant
time in helping me hone content that appears in this dissertation. Thanks also to the France:
Musiques et Cultures network, which organized conferences that have informed my work and
gave me camaraderie with likeminded scholars. Special thanks to Mark Everist at the
University of Southampton for reading my work, giving advice and friendship, and for
connecting me with Laure Schnapper at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
Laure, thank you for the seemingly endless letters of support you provided for my research in
Paris. Mina Yang, thank you for your pivotal role in teaching the course that inspired this
dissertation and for guiding me to the topic. And I of course have immense gratitude to USC’s
Graduate School for funding two years of research through Endowed Research Fellowships.
I am indebted to my classmates in Leah Morrison’s reading group who helped me
revise my ideas: William Rowley, Neda St. Clair, Jim Delorey, Malachi Brandy, and especially
vi

Eric Davis for sharing your expertise throughout the program. Not least to Alison Maggart—
together we have been through much more than just the PhD. To Tristan Paré-Morin for
reading parts of this dissertation and for musicological companionship in Paris. To Parmer
Fuller for helping me find solutions to my problems with chronic pain; this statement looks
small when put into words, but you have changed my life. To Shiwon Song for moral support
and encouragement to press through. To Jennifer Eklund for your faithful cheerleading,
friendship, and business partnership throughout these years.
My undergraduate advisors at Emory University, Stephen Crist and Kevin Karnes—
you have been major forces in my interest in music history; thank you for your mentorship
and for seeing potential in me. We all need people like you who encourage us to step up to the
next level.
My parents, Brent and Maggie: you cleared all obstacles so that I could find a passion
and follow it. You put no limits on what your children could do in their professions, and you
have supported us and been proud through it all. This is a priceless gift.
Finally, Ben Mason, this work is dedicated to you. It was you who urged me to get a
doctorate and even to research in France—things I was afraid to reach for myself. This work is
at its core inspired by you; you crossed the country, from little Peachtree City, Georgia, to Los
Angeles, to receive more training and recognition for your work as a composer and performer.
I watched as you worked day in and out, not only composing and rehearsing, but networking,
experimenting with social media, producing your work, presenting it, deciding how much it
was worth, and choosing what jobs to take. You made me curious to know how careers had
been managed by great musicians in the past, and the first result of that curiosity is this
document. Thank you for that. I admire your drive, accomplishments, and dreams, and I wish
you the best of success.
vii

Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................... iii
Résumé ................................................................................................................................................................ iv
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................... v
List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................................... x

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 1
Organization ............................................................................................................................. 8
Limitations .............................................................................................................................. 10

Chapter I The Paris Music Scene ....................................................................................................... 12
1830 to 1848, Paris ................................................................................................................... 12
Fame and virtuosity ............................................................................................................. 20
The growing popularity of instrumental music ........................................................... 29
The popularity of public concerts .................................................................................... 33
Early romanticism and the presentation of self ........................................................... 36
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 41

Chapter II Unknown Names on Satin Placards with Arabesques of Gold ........................... 42
The concerts soloists played .............................................................................................. 43
Preparing the city ................................................................................................................. 48
Newspaper advertisements ................................................................................................ 51
Concert posters ..................................................................................................................... 64
Tasteful negligence ............................................................................................................... 72
Press reviews ........................................................................................................................... 74
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 77

Chapter III Salon Networks: An Introduction .................................................................................. 79
Nineteenth-century salon renovations ........................................................................... 83
Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 91

Chapter IV Hosts of Parisian Music Salons ....................................................................................... 93
Salon logistics ........................................................................................................................ 94
Countess Marie d’Agoult .................................................................................................... 95
viii

Juliette Récamier .................................................................................................................. 99
Princess Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso .......................................................................... 103
Pierre-Joseph Zimmermann ............................................................................................ 109
Mathieu and Anne-Gabrielle Orfila ............................................................................... 114
Baron and Madame James de Rothschild ..................................................................... 121
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 134

Chapter V Salon Networks and Musicians’ Incentives .............................................................. 135
Networking ............................................................................................................................ 136
Expectations for payment ................................................................................................. 147
Chopin, salon performer archetype ............................................................................... 155
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 165

Chapter VI The Rising Status of the Musician in Salons ............................................................ 166
The uneasy mixing of musicians and aristocrats ....................................................... 166
An aristocracy of talent ....................................................................................................... 171
Conscientious effort to rise: a brief history .................................................................. 174
Still apart ................................................................................................................................. 177
Liszt’s social program and musicians’ assertions of inspiration ............................. 181
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 184

Chapter VII Paris’s Favorite Virtuosos and Their Phrenological Publicity .......................... 187
A trend for social understanding .................................................................................... 189
Phrenology and physiognomy .......................................................................................... 191
Phreno-physiognomy and music .................................................................................... 198
Analyses of the musical departed ................................................................................... 201
Liszt’s ideal ........................................................................................................................... 208
Paganini, the evil genius .................................................................................................... 216
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 230

Chapter VIII Conductors: A New Kind of Virtuoso ......................................................................... 231
Virtuosic conducting .......................................................................................................... 234
Conducting in pre-1830s France ...................................................................................... 239
François-Antoine Habeneck ........................................................................................... 240
Philippe Musard .................................................................................................................. 251
Louis-Antoine Jullien ........................................................................................................ 262
Hector Berlioz ....................................................................................................................... 273
The continuation ................................................................................................................ 282
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 283

ix

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................... 286
Suggestions for future research ...................................................................................... 293
Application ............................................................................................................................ 295

Appendices ....................................................................................................................................................... 297
A: Concert Fees ................................................................................................................... 298
B: Sample Benefit Concert Programs ............................................................................ 301

Works Cited .................................................................................................................................................... 308
x

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Adolphe Sax’s instrument factory .................................................................................... 14
Figure 1.2 Camille Saint-Saëns in L’Illustration (1846) .................................................................... 18
Figure 1.3 Musicians’ portraits in the popular newspaper L’Illustration ....................................... 24
Figure 1.4 Advertised portraits and biographies of celebrated violinists and pianists in the
Gazette musicale ....................................................................................................................... 25

Figure 2.1 Louis Jansenne, caricature bust by Jean-Pierre Dantan (1836) ................................. 45
Figure 2.2 Sigismund Thalberg, portrait by Achille Devéria (ca. 1836) ..................................... 48
Figure 2.3 Graphically diverse general advertisements from La Presse in 1842 ....................... 54
Figure 2.4 Advertisements of sheet music and the violinist Pierre Baillot’s portrait ............. 55
Figure 2.5 Standard concert announcement, from Le Miroir de Paris in 1835 ........................... 56
Figure 2.6 More prominent concert advertisement, from Le Miroir de Paris in 1835 ............... 57
Figure 2.7 Benefit concert announcements in La France musicale ............................................... 58
Figure 2.8 A billposter in the eighteenth century, from Edmé Bouchardon, Etudes prises
dans le bas peuple, ou les Cris de Paris ................................................................................. 66
Figure 2.9 A billposter in the July Monarchy, by Auguste Bouquet (1832) .............................. 68
Figure 2.10 Hector Berlioz’s letter to François Réty requesting concert tickets for the press
(1838) .......................................................................................................................................... 75

Figure 3.1 Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano, by Josef Danhauser (1840) ................................ 80
Figure 3.2 Liszt in a salon, by Josef Kriehuber (1846) ...................................................................... 81

Figure 4.1 Marie d’Agoult, by Henri Lehmann (for the Salon of 1843) ..................................... 99
Figure 4.2 Juliette Récamier, by François-Louis Dejuinne (1826) .............................................. 101
Figure 4.3 Cristina Belgiojoso, by Francesco Hayez (1832) .......................................................... 105
Figure 4.4 Belgiojoso’s Erard piano today ........................................................................................ 108
Figure 4.5 Zimmermann in his salon, by Prosper Lafaye (ca. 1839) ........................................... 111
Figure 4.6 Mathieu Orfila, portrait (ca. 1835) ..................................................................................... 116
xi

Figure 4.7 Betty de Rothschild, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1848) .......................... 123
Figure 4.8 Rossini’s “Petit Souvenir” for Charlotte de Rothschild (1843) ................................ 126
Figure 4.9 “A Rothschild’s Generosity,” story in The Marlborough Express (1894) .................. 131

Figure 5.1 Jean-Jacques Grandville, “Artistic tea seasoned with great men” (1845) ............. 146
Figure 5.2 Chopin on His Deathbed, by Teofil Kwiatkowski (1849) .............................................. 164

Figure 7.1 The phrenological organs of the brain (Claude-Étienne Bourdin, 1847) ............. 192
Figure 7.2 The phrenological organs of the brain (cont.) ............................................................ 193
Figure 7.3 The phrenologist, by Jean-Pierre Dantan (1833) ......................................................... 197
Figure 7.4 Title page of “Des bosses musicales” in Albert Cler, Physiologie du musicien .... 200
Figure 7.5 Illustration of the musical bump, from Cler’s Physiologie du musicien ................ 200
Figure 7.6 Bust of Bellini, by Dantan (1835) ..................................................................................... 202
Figure 7.7 Luigi Cherubini, portrait after Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres ........................ 204
Figure 7.8 Liszt, sculpted bust by Lorenzo Bartolini (1838–39). ................................................. 209
Figure 7.9 Portrait of the Young Franz Liszt, by Henri Lehmann (1839) ...................................... 212
Figure 7.10 Paganini, caricature sculpture by Dantan reproduced in engraving ................... 218
Figure 7.11 Paganini, bronze bust by David d’Angers (1830–33) .................................................. 223
Figure 7.12 Paganini in Théodore Poupin, Esquisses phrénologiques et physiognomoniques des
contemporains les plus célèbres (1837) ................................................................................. 227

Figure 8.1 Concert hall on the Rue de la Victoire, Paris, 1843 (unknown conductor) .......... 235
Figure 8.2 Habeneck and a solo violinist at the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire ... 242
Figure 8.3 Caricature of Habeneck, Liszt, and Luigi Lablache, by Henri Lehmann ........... 244
Figure 8.4 François-Antoine Habeneck, portrait by P. C. Van Geel (1835) .............................. 245
Figure 8.5 Program for an all-Beethoven concert conducted by Habeneck at the Société
des Concerts (1828) .............................................................................................................. 247
Figure 8.6 Poster for the Société des Concerts benefit for those injured in the February
1848 revolution, conducted by Habeneck .................................................................... 250
Figure 8.7 Outdoor ball at the Champs-Elysées, image in L’Illustration (1846) ...................... 253
xii

Figure 8.8 Opéra ball, image in L’Illustration (1846) ....................................................................... 253
Figure 8.9 Frontispiece for an arrangement of a Musard quadrille performed at the Opéra
balls (1843) .............................................................................................................................. 254
Figure 8.10 Musard carried in triumph at the Opéra ball, by Charles Vernier (1846) ........... 258
Figure 8.11 Musard’s aggression, caricature by Cham (1850) ....................................................... 259
Figure 8.12 Musard as Napoleon, caricature by Cham (1851) ........................................................ 259
Figure 8.13 Musard at home, caricature by Cham (1850) .............................................................. 260
Figure 8.14 Jullien’s concert poster at Drury Lane Theatre (1841) ............................................... 265
Figure 8.15 Jullien, portrait by Charles Baugniet (1846) ................................................................ 269
Figure 8.16 Jullien and his chair, Covent Garden (1846) ............................................................... 270
Figure 8.17 Caricature of Berlioz in concert, engraving after Jean-Jacques Grandville (1846)
................................................................................................................................................... 281

Figure B.1 Chopin’s program for January 15, 1832 ........................................................................... 301
Figure B.2 Theodor Dœhler, lithograph by Josef Von Kriehuber (1842) ................................ 302
Figure B.3 Frontispiece for a piano arrangement of quadrilles performed by Fessy’s
orchestra ................................................................................................................................ 305
Figure B.4 Thérésa Milanollo in La France Musicale (1841) .......................................................... 306

1

I. Introduction

There sits the virtuoso in the concert-hall, and entrances purely for himself: here runs,
there jumps; he melts, he pines, he paws and glides, and the audience is fettered to his
fingers. Go and watch the strange Sabbath of such a soirée, and try to learn how you
should make yourselves presentable for this assembly; you will find that, of all that
passes before your eyes and ears, you understand about as much as probably the
Witches’ master there of what goes on within your soul when music wakes in you and
drives you to produce.
—Richard Wagner, “The Virtuoso and the Artist,” Paris, 1840
1

Between 1830 and 1848, in Paris, audiences were hungry to witness mystifying feats of skill,
theatrics, and the pouring-out of souls on stage from virtuoso soloists. The young Richard
Wagner, a composer, was one of the hundreds of musicians who came to Paris, hoped to
receive this crowd’s recognition, and failed. The formula for success was—for him and many
others—mysterious and elusive.
Wagner came to the city in 1838, urged by a desire to produce an opera in Europe’s
center for grand opera, but he found instead only hack work arranging opera tunes for
popular consumption. He voraciously followed every available path to find work. He sent his
scenario for Rienzi to Paris’s leading librettist Eugène Scribe. Scribe expressed no interest.
2
He
begged Scribe’s collaborator, Giacomo Meyerbeer, who had composed the immensely
popular operas Robert le diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836), to introduce him to other
important music industry leaders, and Meyerbeer graciously agreed. Meyerbeer arranged

1
Richard Wagner, “The Virtuoso and the Artist” (1840), Paris and Dresden: Richard Wagner’s Prose Works Vol. VII,
trans. William Ashton Ellis (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1898), 112.
2
Rienzi would eventually premiere in Dresden in 1842.

2
meetings with the heads of the Paris Opéra and Europe’s foremost orchestra, the Société des
Concerts du Conservatoire, and with the powerful head of a publishing firm and editor of the
Gazette musicale, Maurice Schlesinger. Wagner asked these people to appraise his work; he
also shopped his songs and arias around to well-known singers hoping that someone would
perform one of them in a concert. None of his efforts were fruitful. Wagner was disillusioned
and soon found himself fantasizing about moving to South America, where he believed no
one had heard of opera and where he could quietly take up “industry” and live out his days in
peaceful anonymity.
3
After two and a half years in Paris, he left discouraged and
impoverished. But before going, he published several writings that expressed his frustrations
and dreams for a better musical future. In the novella A Pilgrimage to Beethoven (1839–40), he
takes solace in his fantasy of Beethoven’s appointment of him as the next great composer
despite his lack of recognition thus far. In the essay “The Virtuoso and the Artist” (1840), he
describes the frustrating relationship—that he himself surely experienced—between the
vanities of the virtuosos who inundated Europe and composers’ having to capitulate to writing
for them in order to bring their work to the public. And in the cynical short story “An End in
Paris” (1841), he follows a musician seeking fame from his arrival in Paris to his destitution and
death. This last piece of writing provides a compelling entrance into the world explored in this
dissertation.
“An End in Paris” was published over three issues of the Gazette musicale: January 31
and February 7 and 11, 1841.
4
It follows the downfall of a bright-eyed young German

3
Richard Wagner, My Life, vol. 1 (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1911), 224.
4
It was titled “Un Musicien étranger à Paris.” It also appeared in German in the Abend-Zeitung, 6 to 11 August 1841,
with the title “Das Ende zu Paris (Aus der Feder eines in Wahrheit noch lebenden Notenstechers)”—which
translates in English to “The End at Paris (From the pen of an in reality still living music-engraver)” (n. 1 in
Richard Wagner, “An End in Paris,” trans. William Ashton Ellis, in Paris and Dresden: Richard Wagner’s Prose
Works, 46).

3
composer—a clear stand-in for Wagner’s younger self —as he seeks a name in Paris.
5
At the
beginning of the story, the young composer breathlessly gushes to the narrating character his
reasons for coming to Paris:
I couldn’t resist the temptation of tearing myself from the squalor of the
German provinces, and . . . throwing myself straight upon the centre of the
world, where the arts of every nation stream together to one focus; where the
artists of each race find recognition; and where I hope for satisfaction of the
tiny morsel of ambition that Heaven—apparently in inadvertence—has set in
my own breast. . . . I have been told that I have talent;—was I to choose Tunis as
the place for pushing it? No; I have come to Paris! Here I shall soon find out if
folk deceived me when they credited me with talent, or if I really own any . . . . I
shall get my talent more speedily and better paid in Paris, than anywhere else
in the world.

Wagner’s narrating character, wizened by several years in Paris, asks him: “But tell me:
by what means will you make your talent noticed? What are your plans? Let me hear them.”
6

This pragmatic question is key. The young composer brushes him off and assumes that his
skill will be automatically recognized and appreciated. But the narrator warns him,
meaningfully, that having musical talent will not be enough: “It is not the contest of talents, in
which you will have to engage, but the contest of reputations and personal interests. . . . It will
be no question of commending your work or talent, but what will be considered is the name
you bear.”
7
His advice is for the young composer to associate himself with powerful people
and to have a concrete plan for becoming known, rather than expecting that the natural
course of events will awaken the public’s admiration. The young composer storms off,

5
A give-away that this young German composer is Wagner himself is that he comes to Paris with his well-loved
and beautiful dog, which gets stolen, which is the same story Wagner tells of himself in Paris in his
autobiography (My Life, 217–18).
6
Wagner, “Un Musicien étranger à Paris,” Revue et gazette musicale (31 January 1841), 66: “Mais dis-moi
maintenant, quels moyens comptes-tu employer pour mettre ton talent en évidence? Quels sont tes projets?
Voyons, fait-moi part de tout cela.”
7
Wagner, “An End in Paris,” 47.

4
convinced that the older musician does not understand his potential and is trying to deflate
him. Though the older musician periodically searches through concert announcements
hoping to see the young musician’s name, he does not cross him again until about two years
later when he finds him on his death bed—obscure, impoverished, starved, and driven insane
by his feverish search for recognition.

Wagner’s own biography and his pessimistic perspective in “An End in Paris” demonstrate
that he, and likely many others, recognized the importance of having a strategy while pushing
through Paris’s competitive music industry. He wrote “An End in Paris” as a warning to
musicians who wished to go there to find fame and fortune. Paris is overrun by
commercialism, he warns, and employs a system of favors and favorites; moreover, valued
musicians are not those who have talent, but those who please the right people and know how
to make names for themselves. Those who are successful are aware that marketing plans are
imperative.
This is the subject of this dissertation: musicians’ self-conscious self-promotion in
early-Romantic Paris. The term marketing, which I have just used, is anachronistic, but its
anachronism has not dissuaded scholars from employing it to describe musicians’ activities
during this period.
8
No French equivalent for the word marketing existed in the virtuoso era,
but the concept clearly existed in practice. For example, in the story above, Wagner asks the
young musician what his plans are for having his talent recognized; in William Ashton Ellis’s

8
For example, Nicholas Vazsonyi, “Beethoven Instrumentalized: Richard Wagner’s Self-Marketing and Media
Image,” Music & Letters 89, no. 2 (May 2008): 195.

5
translation of this passage, the young musician is asked how he will bring his talent “to
market.”
9

As demonstrated in this dissertation, many promotional practices that popular
musicians use today—including advertising, managing publicity, and fueling talk through
outrageous behavior—have a long history of use. Two musicians from the period under
consideration in this dissertation, Franz Liszt and Niccolò Paganini, have been called the “rock
stars” of the nineteenth century; they achieved international fame not simply because people
appreciated their music, but also because these musicians caused frenzies among their
listeners, because they became larger than life through images and portraits reproduced
throughout Europe, and because their performances and personal lives were swathed in
legends. These two musicians far outshined their counterparts, but musicians who are lesser
known today were also shrewdly managing their businesses and public face.
This dissertation illuminates the means by which musicians became famous in the
early Romantic period, as well as their means of endurance in the classical canon. Curious
students in Music History 101 often wonder how we chose these particular musicians as the
ones we would study and whose music we would continue to play; perhaps other composers
were also talented but never received the attention they deserved. These wonderings are
encouraged by popular lore that perpetuates stories such as Bach’s near miss at being known
today—that his music sunk into obscurity after his death and was only rediscovered decades

9
See the original French text in footnote 6. Ellis’ translation is “But tell me: by what means are you going to make
your talent noticed? What are your plans? how are you going to bring your talent to market? What plans have
you made?” (Wagner, “An End in Paris,” 47).

6
later, on paper used to wrap meat in a butchery or to line rose beds.
10
How many other works
by musical geniuses have been accidentally lost or left undiscovered?
This dissertation argues that the music that survives in our canon is the product of
conscientious effort and that little about their endurance was accidental. Liszt, Paganini,
Chopin, Wagner, and Berlioz actively promoted their works and, in many cases, created
stories about themselves in order to sell a persona as well as their music, forming a strong
presence in public consciousness. Much in line with Tia DeNora’s goal in her book Beethoven
and the Construction of Genius (1995), I explore the idea that talent and genius are largely social
achievements: they require the recognition of others in order to be cultivated.
11
There is a
virtuous cycle between an artists’ development and his recognition.
12
One does not grow
without the other. Therefore, it has always been difficult, if not impossible, for a genius to
develop his or her talents if he or she is not already recognized and given a venue and
resources for further development.
The musicians we remember today tailored their talents for the venues that were
opening to them. Chopin, for example, soon after arriving in Paris, realized that he was not
becoming recognized for his compositions as much as for his performances. He decided he
would not pursue his previous aims of writing operas or large serious works, but instead focus
on piano. He wrote to his teacher Joseph Elsner in Warsaw,
But today, seeing all my hopes in that direction dashed, I am forced to think of
making my way in the world as a pianist, postponing only to a later period the
loftier artistic aims which you rightly put before me in your letter. To be a great

10
The butcher paper story is retold, for example, in Jim Whiting, The Life and Times of Johann Sebastian Bach
(Hockessin, Delaware: Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2004), 45. This story is legend and has no factual basis.
11
Tia DeNora, Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792–1803 (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), xiii.
12
Ibid., 7–8.

7
composer requires enormous experience which, as you yourself taught me, can
be acquired by hearing not only other men’s works but one’s own.

He cited the stiff competition in Paris among composers. As Wagner and so many
others would do, he wondered what was needed to establish a career and respected
artistic reputation in this city, and noted that sitting idly would not do:
Nearly a score of gifted young men, pupils of the Paris Conservatoire, are sitting
waiting with folded hands for someone to produce their operas, symphonies or
cantatas, which no one but Cherubini and Lesueur have seen in manuscript. (I
say nothing of the small theatres which it is so difficult to force one’s way into;
and even when one has done so, like Thomas Nidecki at Leopoldstadt, great
merit may lead to very little artistic reputation.)

As Wagner would do, Chopin also chose Meyerbeer as his model of success:

Meyerbeer, who for ten years enjoyed a magnificent reputation as an operatic
composer, had to work three years, pay his way and remain in Paris before
finally (when they had had enough of Auber) managing to stage his Robert le
diable, which was a sensation. In my view, so far as making a name in the
musical world is concerned, he is a lucky man who can be both composer and
executant at the same time. I am already known here and there in Germany as a
pianist; a few musical papers have mentioned my concertos and have expressed
the hope that I shall shortly be seen taking my place among the leading
exponents of my instrument—which is as good as saying: Work hard, lad, and
we’ll make a gentleman out of you. Today I have before me a unique
opportunity of realizing the promise that is within me: why should I not profit
by it?
13

Chopin’s observations in this letter are representative of what many musicians grappled with
as they attempted to earn notoriety for their achievements and stability in their careers.
The mechanisms behind widespread recognition have recently interested many
scholars: Dana Gooley, in The Virtuoso Liszt (2004), describes Liszt’s various public personas
and his careful efforts to craft and perpetuate them. William Weber, in The Musician as

13
Chopin to Elsner, Paris, 14 December 1831, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, ed. Bronislaw Edward
Sydow and Arthur Hedley (London: Heinemann, 1962), 103.

8
Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans and Idealists (2004), discusses the pragmatic
requirements for being a self-sustaining musician outside patronage. Alicia Cannon Levin
explores pianists’ virtuosic image promotion in her dissertation “Seducing Paris:
Pianos Virtuosos and Artistic Identity, 1820 –48” (2009). Nicholas Vazsonyi, in Richard Wagner:
Self-Promotion and the Making of a Brand (2010), points out the calculated moves that Wagner
made to create his empire and celebrity. All of these authors claim that musicians
intentionally formed and achieved their identities and successes, or exploited them if they
were generated by publicists or audiences rather than the artists themselves.
Various avenues musicians used to attract the public’s attention and gain support for
their careers—to enter the “contest of reputations and personal interests,” as Wagner would
call it—are considered in this dissertation. I present four broad avenues through which
musicians enticed attention: advertising concerts, networking in salons, reviewing musicians
through the popular fads of phrenology and physiognomy, and framing orchestral conductors
as virtuosic soloists. None of these concepts are unheard of among historians of this period;
they have been briefly and incompletely brought up in analyses of specific musicians’ careers.
I treat these topics broadly rather than in the contexts of individual musicians. This has
allowed me to tell a fuller story about these issues and how they were manifested across many
musicians’ experiences. In addition, talking about them in one document has allowed me to
present a more complete picture of musicians’ overall image promotion concerns and the
diverse ways in which they could be addressed.

Organization
In Chapter One, “The Paris Music Scene,” I describe the Parisian culture of self-promotion,
competition, and fascination with celebrity and virtuosity during the period of 1830 to 1848.

9
This chapter contextualizes the dissertation and describes why this period and place were
significant for European musical production and what opportunities musicians had there for
entrepreneurship and performance.
In Chapter Two, “Advertising Soloists’ Concerts through Newspapers and Posters,” I
describe the advertising of benefit concerts, from the preparation in advance of the musician’s
arrival to the gaining of reviews after performance. The focus of this chapter is on the print
advertising of concerts in newspapers and posters.
In Chapters Three through Five, I describe musical salons in Paris, how they benefited
musicians, and how musicians conscientiously engaged with their salon hosts and
connections to form a network that advanced their careers. I use contemporaneous press,
memoirs, and fiction; current scholarship; and the examples of Maria Malibran, Pauline
Viardot, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Jacques Offenbach to look more deeply into the
ways musicians used salons to promote their careers. Chapter Six presents a postlude to the
discussion of salons by analyzing how salons were a space in which musicians fought for
social respect and equality with the upper classes.
The dissertation then moves from issues of music business to specific concerns that
musicians faced when promoting a public image. Chapter Seven, “Paris’s Favorite Virtuosos
and Their Phrenological Publicity,” demonstrates that phrenology and physiognomy were
referred to throughout analyses of musicians’ performances and personality in this period.
These philosophies, which taught that human nature and skill are apparent in the
construction of the physical body, provided not just interesting, supposedly scientific
information about musicians’ talents, but also were supposed to give insight into celebrity
musicians’ true personalities so that their public could have the impression of knowing them.

10
Liszt, Paganini, and Cherubini were the musicians to be presented most overtly to the public
through these perspectives.
Chapter Eight, “Conductors: A New Kind of Virtuoso,” demonstrates that the nascent
conductor—whose profession was just beginning to become standardized in this period—
stepped into the limelight by adopting characteristics of spectacle-driven performance that
soloists used. Conductors began to seek attention for themselves and be seen as figures of
power and an attraction for audiences apart from the repertoire they performed.

Limitations
This dissertation does not directly address vocal virtuosity, though vocal virtuosos are referred
to as a point of comparison or interest within a discussion that is mostly dedicated to
composers and instrumental virtuosos. For practical concerns, the main subjects are
constrained to instrumentalists and composers in order to place a limit on the vast number of
resources available for consideration, as well as to avoid overlapping and overcomplicating
the discussion with that of the very different theater world.
14
However, in my research, I was
surprised to not cross any studies that address vocal virtuosity outside of operatic literature.
Highly skilled and well-known vocalists such as Adolphe Nourrit, Gilbert-Louis Duprez, Luigi
Lablache, Maria Malibran, and Pauline Viardot, though all opera singers, also performed as
concert soloists in Paris from 1830 to 1848. In addition, numerous lesser-known soloists also
appeared on benefit concert programs and in salons. In newspapers and other primary
sources, it is clear that vocalists were celebrated, discussed, and tracked on their tours around

14
Kimberly White’s dissertation is an excellent study of music business practices happening among female
singers in the opera scene: “The Cantatrice and the Profession of Singing at the Paris Opéra and Opéra Comique,
1830–1848” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2012).

11
Europe to the same extent as instrumental performers or perhaps even more. Vocal music
formed an extremely important and well-loved part of the repertoire, well beyond
instrumental music, in fact. But scholars have focused on instrumental virtuosos likely
because instrumentalists composed pieces that endure in the repertoire today, while singers,
much more often than not, performed works that they did not write and did not retain the
same long-term fame. Therefore, no study of vocal virtuosos exists that is comparable to the
in-depth studies of the celebrity personas of Liszt and Paganini by Dana Gooley and Mai
Kawabata, or the studies on the reception of piano and violin virtuosos in Paris by Alicia Levin
and Kristen Strandberg.
15
This topic holds promise for future scholarship.
I chose to limit my study to Paris because, though London, Vienna, and Berlin were
important scenes for music as well, Paris was one of the most important stations on the
European concert circuit. Moreover, a variety of cultural factors converged and culminated in
this time and place to make the study of musicians’ image promotion particularly salient.
These factors are elaborated in the following chapter.

15
Dana Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Mai Kawabata, Paganini: The
“Demonic” Virtuoso (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013); Alicia Cannon Levin, “Seducing Paris: Piano Virtuosos and
Artistic Identity, 1820–48” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009); Kristen Strandberg, “Art
or Artifice?: Violin Virtuosity and Aesthetics in Parisian Criticism, 1831–1848” (PhD diss., Indiana University,
2014).

12

I. The Parisian Music Scene
Our age is the golden age of virtuosos; fifty years ago was the time of the great
composers. In that brilliant epoch Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Gluck, Bach, Weber,
etc., showed themselves through their immortal works. In our days, virtuosos on every
kind of instrument surge everywhere, and enchant our ears and our money. In six
weeks these happy mortals make themselves a reputation that erases itself just as
quickly when a new name comes. As long as they sojourn in the city where they make
themselves heard, their talent is the subject of all conversations, at the café as well as in
the salon; as soon as they turn their heels, they are forgotten and the crowd carries
their praises to the feet of another idol.
—Correspondent for the Revue et gazette musicale, 1841
1

1830 to 1848, Paris
The dates for this study, 1830 to 1848, are the dates that the nineteenth-century music critic
Eduard Hanslick called the “virtuoso era.”
2
Soloists across Europe were attaining new levels of
skill and displaying them before audiences. Composers, also, put themselves in the public eye
in ways that were more publicity-seeking than ever before. A center for this type of behavior
was Paris. It was the second largest city in Europe, after London, with a population of one
million in 1843.
3
Artists and intellectuals from all over the continent came to seek community

1
“Correspondance étrangère,” Revue et gazette musicale (4 April 1841): 214: “Notre siècle est l’âge d’or des virtuoses;
il y a cinquante ans c’était le temps des grands compositeurs. A cette époque brillaient Mozart, Beethoven,
Haendel, Gluck, Bach, Weber, etc., qui s’illustraient par des ouvrages immortels. De nos jours, les virtuoses sur
toute espèce d’instrument surgissent de toutes parts, et enchantent nos oreilles et nos bourses. Ces heureux
mortels se font en six semaines une réputation qui s’efface tout aussi rapidement devant un nom nouveau. Tant
qu’ils séjournent dans la ville où ils se sont fait entendre, leur talent est le sujet de toutes les conversations, au
café comme au salon; à peine ont-ils tourné les talons, qu’ils sont oubliés, et que la foule court porter ses
hommages aux pieds d’une autre idole.” Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.
2
Dana Gooley, “The Battle against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Franz Liszt and
His World, ed. Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 75.
3
Haejeong Hazel Hahn, “Street Picturesque: Advertising in Paris, 1830–1914” (PhD diss., University of California,
Berkeley, 1997), 21. London’s population was nearly double that of Paris. St. Petersburg’s was significantly less
than 500,000 (William L. Blackwell, Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800–1860 [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968], 97). Berlin in 1840 had a population of about 332,000 (Michael Saffle, Liszt in Germany,

13

with other like-minded people and individual recognition. Because of this inundation of
talent, self-promotion and business-mindedness among musicians were particularly visible
and particularly necessary.
Paris was, according to historian Paul Metzner, “the Continent’s high-fashion and fine
arts capital.”
4
It led Europe in many areas of musical creativity. In 1795 it was the first city to
establish a music conservatory that was not for charitable purposes (Milan was the next city to
follow twelve years later, in 1807, then Vienna in 1817 and London in 1822).
5
Historian William
Weber has called Paris the commercial capital of Europe, the Los Angeles of its time, because
of its leadership in the music industries of entertainment, instrument manufacture, and
publishing.
6
The technology of instrument making was greatly expanding through the work of
the Pleyel, Erard, and Herz piano manufacturers, Adolphe Sax, who invented the saxophone
in 1846 (see Figure 1.1), and the prolific luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, who had won a silver
medal for his stringed instruments at the 1827 Paris Universal Exposition and who established
his shop in Paris the next year. At the national exposition of 1839, instrument makers made up
only 4% of the exhibitors, but took home 49% of the prizes.
7

1840–1845: A Study in Sources, Documents, and the History of Reception [Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1994], 8).
Vienna’s population reached 444,000 and Leipzig’s 63,000 by 1850 (B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics,
1750–1970 [London: MacMillan Press, 1975], 77–78).
4
Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 129.
5
Ibid.
6
William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between
1830 and 1848 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), xxxii.
7
Malou Haine, “La Participation des facteurs d’instruments de musique aux expositions nationales de 1834 et
1839,” in Music in Paris in the 1830s, ed. Peter Bloom (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987), 385.

14

Figure 1.1: Adolphe Sax’s instrument factory. Source: “Fabrique d’instruments de musique de M.
Sax—Vue de l’atelier du second étage,” L’Illustration (5 February 1848): 357.

Erard and Pleyel were arguably the two best piano manufacturers in Europe.
8
Each
manufacturer had its own salle, or concert hall, where its pianos were featured, and they vied
with each other to sponsor the best touring pianists who came to Paris: Erard backed Franz
Liszt and Sigismund Thalberg, and Pleyel supported Frédéric Chopin, Friedrich Kalkbrenner
and, of course, Marie Pleyel (the wife of Camille Pleyel, the owner of the company).
9
Music
publishing was extremely active: at least 156 publishing houses operated in the city between
1830 and 1848, though not all at the same time.
10
Several music and arts journals were

8
Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 130.
9
Ibid.
10
I came to this number based on the list of publishers given in Cecil Hopkinson, A Dictionary of Parisian Music
Publishers: 1700–1950 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977).

15

inaugurated along with the great newspaper boom of this era.
11
The Almanach des spectacles
started in 1822, the Revue musicale and L’Abeille musicale in 1827, L’Artiste in 1831, Le Ménestrel in
1833, Gazette musicale de Paris in 1834, the Gazette des salons: Journal des modes et de musique in
1835, and the Omnium musicale and France musicale in 1838. The demand for music was high as
the middle class grew and more people had leisure time and money for diversion.
12
In
addition, instruments were more affordable, and private teachers abounded. Consumption of
music reached a new high.
In addition, the dates of this study, 1830 to 1848, were the dates of the reign of the king
of France, Louis-Philippe (1773–1850), capped on both ends by revolutions. Louis-Philippe
became king through a bloody, three-day revolution in late July 1830, hence the name “July
Monarchy.” The people’s satisfaction under his rule was short-lived, and he became more and
more authoritarian and restrictive of political discussion in the press.
13
His reign ended with
another revolution in 1848. But throughout his reign, politics were volatile throughout Europe
and not only in France. A Polish uprising against Russia occurred in 1830–31, and Hungary and
Italy had their own unrest, also culminating in revolutions in 1848 against Austria. During the
relative peace of Louis-Philippe’s reign, France attracted a considerable number of
immigrants from other European states. For some artists and aristocrats (such as the music

11
The number of daily newspapers doubled between 1828 and 1841, from 14 to 28 (Emmanuel Reibel, L’écriture de
la critique musicale au temps de Berlioz, 24–25, cited in Kimberly White, “The Cantatrice and the Profession of
Singing at the Paris Opéra and Opéra Comique, 1830–1848” [PhD diss., McGill University, 2012], 17). See also H.
Robert Cohen, “The Nineteenth-Century French Press and the Music Historian: Archival Sources and
Bibliographical Resources,” 19th-Century Music 7, no. 2, Special Issue: French Archives (Autumn 1983): 136.
12
Constance Himelfarb, “Un Salon de la Nouvelle-Athènes en 1839–1840: L’album musical inconnu de Juliette
Zimmerman,” Revue De Musicologie 87, no. 1 (2001): 34.
13
For instance, after an assassination attempt on the king, new censorship laws were created in August 1835: no
attacks, direct or indirect, blame, or censure were allowed against the king. All drawings for sale or public
exhibition had to be screened by the Minister of the Interior or by a provincial prefect (Judith Wechsler, A
Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris [Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1982], 80).

16

patron Princess Cristina Belgiojoso), Paris was a refuge from the turmoil in their own
countries. Chopin, for example, had been motivated to leave Warsaw in part because he
sensed his opportunities there shrinking; he suspected he was on the government’s blacklist
because he associated with friends who were members of radical groups, for though he was an
extremely popular local pianist, he was not asked to perform during the Russian czar’s visit
and his request for a performance grant from the government had been rejected.
14
Thus,
political asylum was used as an excuse to get him permanent residency in France after he first
arrived in 1831.
In her memoirs, the countess, salonnière, and historian Marie d’Agoult wrote that after
the July Revolution, “a large movement occurred in the arts and letters. Many talents arose,
gathered, made a procession, and illuminated each other in splendid light.”
15
An enormous
number of foreigners who came to Paris to live or pass through on tours. Paris was the goal of
the best European musicians: the violinist Niccolò Paganini; the pianists Liszt, Chopin,
Thalberg, Henri Herz, Franz Hünten, Johann Peter Pixis, and Stephen Heller; and composers
Ferdinand Hiller, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi,
and Richard Wagner.
16
Liszt moved to Paris in 1827. The violinist Charles de Bériot came from
Belgium to live for a year Paris in 1830.
17
Felix Mendelssohn came in December 1831 and stayed
until April 1832, catching cholera in the epidemic (and surviving). Chopin spent nearly his

14
William G. Atwood, Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 34.
15
Comtesse d’Agoult (pseud. Daniel Stern), Mémoires: 1833–1854 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1927), 19: “Un grand
mouvement s’était produit dans les arts et dans les lettres. De nombreux talents surgissaient; ils se groupaient, se
faisaient cortège, s’éclaireraient l’un l’autre d’une lumière splendide.” She says this happened toward the end of
the third year after the July Revolution, specifically.
16
Peter Bloom, “A Review of Fétis’s Revue Musicale,” in Music in Paris in the 1830s, 79.
17
Edward Heron-Allen, A Contribution towards an Accurate Biography of Charles Auguste de Beriot and Maria
Malibran: Extracted from the Correspondence of the Former (Kensington [London]: J. W. Wakeham, 1894), 5.

17

entire adult career there, from age twenty-one to his death. The young Clara Wieck (later
Schumann) had tours in 1832 and 1839. Ole Bull was there from Norway from 1831 to 1833,
bringing along his Hardanger fiddle and receiving little attention; he attracted more when he
returned in 1835 and gave three concerts at the Opéra before he left the next year (he was the
only violinist other than Paganini to star in a concert there).
18
This period also saw the
performances of children later well known as composers; César Franck, aged twelve, moved to
Paris with his family in 1835 and had his first public piano performances in the following two
years—pushed hard by his father to become a virtuoso like Liszt and Thalberg.
19
Camille
Saint-Saëns (see Figure 1.2) gave public piano performances as a child prodigy at ages five and
ten before he entered the Paris Conservatoire at age thirteen in 1848. At age ten at the Salle
Pleyel, he astounded music critics with skills that scholars now think to have been more
advanced than the child Mozart’s.
20

18
Einar Haugen and Camilla Cai, Ole Bull: Norway’s Romantic Musician and Cosmopolitan Patriot (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 20–25, and 37–40.
19
Vincent d’Indy, César Frank (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1906), 8ff; Norman Demuth, César Franck (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1949), 23–24.
20
Stephen Studd, Saint-Saëns: A Critical Biography (London: Cygnus Arts, 1999), 6. A common anecdote is that he
played his entire program from memory (Mozart’s B-flat Concerto [K. 450], a Handel theme and variations, a
Handel fugue, a Kalkbrenner toccata, a Hummel sonata, a Bach prelude and fugue, and Beethoven’s C-minor
Concerto), and then offered to play as an encore any of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas from memory as
well (James Harding, Saint-Saëns and His Circle [London: Chapman & Hall, 1965], 27). This is a commonly told
narrative, as a Google search will prove. However, this part about the Beethoven sonatas in not mentioned in
early sources: not original concert reviews, a fifty-year retrospective on his debut (Réné Lara, “Le Cinquantenaire
du premiere concert du Saint-Saëns,” Le Figaro [2 June 1896]: 3–4), or Saint-Saëns’ memoirs.

18

Figure 1.2: Camille Saint-Saëns in 1846, reproduced from an engraving in L’Illustration. Source:
Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg, NIM34858, accessed 12 August 2018 through
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10219798k.

It is noticeable that pianists were especially abundant, and practically all of them
offered lessons in addition to performing. In 1832, eighteen hundred piano teachers were
registered in the city.
21
In the words of the self-exiled Heinrich Heine (1797–1856):
The piano virtuosos come to Paris every winter like swarms of locusts, less to
gain money than to make a name for themselves here, which will help them all
the more to a rich pecuniary harvest in other countries. Paris serves them as a
kind of billboard on which their fame may be read in enormous letters. I say

21
Boris Schwartz, French Instrumental Music between the Revolutions (1789–1830) (New York: Da Capo, 1987), 223,
cited in Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 129.

19

their fame may be read here, for it is the Paris press that proclaims it to the
world.
22

Indeed, many articles published in Parisian press were translated for newspapers in Germany,
England, and the United States.
Many of the musicians came because they were looking for more exposure than was
offered in their current cities. Chopin, for example, wished for greater experiences than what
he found in Warsaw. Wagner, Rossini, Bellini, and Verdi wished to be in the capital of grand-
opera production. Clara Weick considered Paris the last on the list of European cities to
conquer before London: “One important point is that one only goes to London after having
been in Paris, and I am still too little known in Paris (to be able to go on to London just yet),”
she wrote to her fiancé Robert in 18391, a month and a half into her stay in Paris.
23

London was twice the size of Paris, and if any city rivaled Paris in terms of the number
of virtuosic performances, this was it. However, musicians who performed in both cities found
Paris to be an easier place to succeed and find more appreciative audiences. The public
concert scene was smaller and more exclusive in London, musicians were more dependent on
support from aristocrats to gain entry to this circle, and they could only become well-known
after performing in concerts and salons for several seasons.
24
Moreover, upper-class British
audiences were more emotionally restrained and self-possessed; they were a less effusive
audience. In contrast, news spread quickly in Paris, and Parisians had a taste for the newest
and most sensational. A Parisian musician wrote of London, “Rarely does the public of

22
Quoted in Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1954), 377.
23
Berthold Litzmann, Clara Schumann: An Artist’s Life: Based on Material Found in Diaries and Letters, vol. 1, trans.
Grace E. Hadow (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979), 212.
24
Revue et gazette musicale (12 July 1846): 221; Revue et gazette musicale (11 August 1839): 297 (Berlioz) and (4 July 1843):
218; Harmonicon (November 1829): 297 (article by Fétis); cited in Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 54.

20

London let itself go with prompt and spontaneous manifestations of its feelings. In general it
needs time to prepare and scrutinize its sensations.”
25
The case was the opposite for Parisians.
Liszt wryly offered his theory about why France was the most personality- and promotion-
obsessed place in Europe:
A Frenchman is not sure of having experienced an emotion or a pleasure until
he has communicated it to his neighbor and the latter has either shared it or
envied it. It is easy to see that this instinct for propagation helps considerably in the
publicizing of a name; and if one adds to it the charlatanism that has truly been
brought to the pinnacle of perfection in France, the multiplicity of newspapers,
the ostentatiousness of public announcements, and the graceful facility for
exaggeration that the French language possesses, one can well imagine how in
a short space of time reputations become colossal and universal in a country whose
idiom is spoken in the four corners of the earth.
26

Liszt touches on a number of themes present in this dissertation: the “instinct for propagation”
among Parisians, a criticism of overblown publicity, and the building of enormous reputations
through the media.

Fame and virtuosity
In our time, the historian Paul Metzner has confirmed Paris as “the place in Europe most
favorable to musical celebrity in the first half of the nineteenth century.”
27
Metzner has
described this period as one made ripe for the self-promotion and hero worship that were
necessary for virtuoso careers. As he describes in his book Crescendo of the Virtuoso, Parisian
culture had over the past century developed public spaces, multiplied its newspapers and
increased its use of publicity, espoused doctrines of self-love and personal entitlement (taught

25
Revue et gazette musicale (12 July 1846): 221, translated in ibid.
26
Liszt [and Marie d’Agoult], “Revue Critique. M. Thalberg,” Revue et gazette musicale (8 January 1837): 18,
translated in Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 130–31. My emphasis added.
27
Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 129.

21

in the writings of Rousseau and the example of Napoleon), and adopted a belief in the
limitless capabilities of the human machine. All these new ideas and cultural changes in
French society popularized socially acceptable forms of exhibitionism and self-
aggrandizement and, above all, engendered a cultural fascination with virtuosic spectacle.
The concept of virtuosity had a long history rooted in the idea of virtue (Latin virtus
and French vertu), or good behavior. A virtuose displayed an ability to conceive of and master
the good.
28
People who had knowledge in many subjects, particularly science and the arts,
were called virtuoses.
29
The term kept an association with ethical behavior through the
seventeenth century, eventually being applied to people who achieved high-level technical
skill. It was only in the nineteenth century that virtuosity came to be especially associated with
musical ability.
30
By the 1840s, it was associated with brilliant display of this skill.
31

In Metzner’s estimation, virtuosos in Paris came to be taken to be “people who exhibit
their talents in front of an audience, who possess as their principal talent a high degree of
technical skill, and who aggrandize themselves in reputation and fortune, principally through
the exhibition of their skill.”
32
Fascination with virtuosity became ubiquitous across multiple
fields, including chess, cooking, and crime solving, in addition to music. Parisians, in other
words, were primed to feed musical celebrity through a general craze for virtuosity.

28
Cécile Reynaud, “Présentation—Misère et accomplissement de l’art dans la virtuosité romantique,”
Romanticisme 2, no. 128 (2005): 3–17, paragraphs 1–2, accessed 11 August 2018, https://www.cairn.info/revue-
romantisme-2005-2-page-3.htm.
29
“Virtuose, subst.” Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (2012), accessed 11 August 2018,
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/virtuose.
30
Reynaud, “Présentation—Misère et accomplissement,” paragraphs 1–3.
31
"Virtuosity, n.," OED Online, June 2018, Oxford University Press,
http://www.oed.com.libproxy1.usc.edu/view/Entry/223847?redirectedFrom=virtuosity (accessed August 12, 2018).
32
Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 1.

22

Musicians in the 1830s and 40s experienced the apex of the nineteenth-century
cultural infatuation with famous musicians. During this period, musicians did not only
experience mere recognition and social glory for achievements, but a type of recognition that
went beyond fame into celebrity: audiences were obsessed, desiring to know about not only
the person’s achievements, but about him or her as a person aside from these achievements.
33

Private lives became objects of public interest. Liszt, in his open letter to the celebrated writer
George Sand in 1837, wrote that the public now wants to know the most personal details about
the famous people they follow, down to the design of their bathroom and the cut of their
dressing gown.
34
When in Berlin in 1842, he wrote that he would receive about fifty guests
before lunchtime, who all wanted to write a newspaper story about him or to simply say they
had met him. A friend joked that the center of Berlin was less crowded than Liszt’s
apartment.
35
Throughout his virtuoso career, Liszt was overwhelmed with ovations, flowers,
serenades, and accolades repeated a thousand times.
36
Paganini, on his first trip to Paris, wrote
that he found portraits of himself “carpeting” the walls of the city.
37
About Paganini’s first

33
See definitions of celebrity in Antoine Lilti, Figures publiques: L’invention de la célébrité, 1750–1850 (Fayard, 2014),
particularly page 10.
34
Franz Liszt, letter to George Sand, January 1837, in An Artist’s Journey: Lettres d’un bachelier ès musique, 1835–1841,
trans. Charles Sutton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 14.
35
Saffle, Liszt in Germany, 1840–1845, 131: “I get up every day at about nine o’clock. From nine to one or two o’clock
about fifty people come and go in my [hotel] room. [One of my friends] was telling me the other day that
whenever he happens to take a stroll on the Linden (it’s the center of Berlin) after leaving my room, the Linden
strikes him as deserted. What do all of these people want of me? Most of them, money; some of them (especially
the young people) just to see me in any way, shape, or form; others to be able to say that they have seen me and
that they visit me; still others (and especially the scoundrels) in order to be able to write newspaper articles.
While chatting and smoking I dictate to Lefèvre [sic] (for writing tires me terribly), or to Schober, or Villers, the
indispensable replies to the hundreds of letters which I receive; I arrange my programs, sort out my music and,
now and then, when an idea strikes me, scribble down notes.”
36
Albert Cler, Physiologie du musicien, illustr. by Daumier, Gavarni, Janet-Lange, and Valentin (Paris: Aubert;
Lavigne, 1841), 27.
37
Paganini, open letter to Fétis, 21 April 1831, Revue musicale (23 April 1831): 94.

23

concert, the journalist Ludwig Bœrne (1786–1837) rapturously reported, “It was a divine,
diabolical enthusiasm unlike I have ever seen or heard in my whole life. Everyone has gone
mad.”
38

Musicians of the July Monarchy had the opportunity for widespread celebrity, in part
because the technologies and commercialism were there to support it. Lithography came to
France in 1815 and allowed the mass production of illustrations (see Figure 1.3); portraits of
famous people could now be printed easily, giving anyone access to them and not only the
wealthy.
39
These images were sold in shops and newspapers, individually or in collections,
and sometimes given away as gifts to newspaper subscribers (see Figures 1.4 and 2.4).

38
Ludwig Bœrne, “Einundvierzigster Brief, Paris, Freitag, den 11. März 1831,” Briefe aus Paris, 1831–1832 (Herisau:
Literatur-Comptoire, 1835), 85–86: “Es war eine göttliche, es war eine diabolische Begeisterung. Ich habe so etwas
in meinem Leben nicht gesehen noch gehört. Dieses Volk ist verrückt.”
39
Nathalie Jakobowicz, “Les pratiques d’affichage dans l’espace public à Paris en 1830,” Revue d’histoire du XIXe
siècle 39 (2009): 32.

24

Figure 1.3: Musicians’ portraits in the popular newspaper L’Illustration (18 May 1844): 188. Pictured clockwise
starting from top left: the pianists Emile Prudent and Theodor Dœhler, the conductor François-Antoine
Habeneck, and the composer Hector Berlioz. Liszt, at center, is posed as a hero of Greek or Roman antiquity.

25

Figure 1.4: Advertised portraits and biographies of celebrated violinists and pianists in the Gazette musicale. The
notices state that subscribers to the paper can pick up their free copies at the newspaper’s office. Sources: Revue et
gazette musicale (25 July 1841): 249, and (1 January 1843): 1.

As one of the best known and most recognizable musicians of his time, Liszt thought quite a
bit about celebrity. He had realized as a teenager that a musician’s name was more important
for evoking a public response than the quality of the music he played. He experimented with
performing the same piece for audiences and at different times saying that it was by himself,

26

Carl Czerny, or Beethoven, and each time he would get a different response. Audiences were
of course most impressed when they thought it was a piece by Beethoven. But when he played
a piece by Beethoven and said it was his own, the genius of the piece was lost on them; he was
politely encouraged and told, “Really, that wasn’t too bad for your age!”
40
In this exercise, it
became clear that a composition’s quality was much less important than its composer’s
reputation. Building his own name to make the same effect as Beethoven’s became a life goal.
Liszt was, according to the critic and writer Heine, a master showman: “No one in the
world knows as perfectly as our Franz Liszt how to organize his successes, or rather how to
stage them.”
41
A popular newspaper reported,
M. Liszt is not only a pianist, he is above all an actor. . . . Everything he plays is
reflected on his face; one sees depicted in his physiognomy everything that his
music expresses and even everything he thinks it expresses. He makes
movements appropriate to each piece; he has postures, gestures, and glances
for every phrase; he smiles at the graceful passages, and furrows his brow
whenever he hits a diminished seventh. All of this is obviously lost for those of
his listeners facing his back, so that it is out of a sense of justice and so as not to
be unfair to anyone that he employs alternately two pianos facing in opposite
directions.

Thus, when attending a Liszt concert, one not only heard a performance but saw one.
42

Though a master at commanding attention, Liszt also observed with frustration how
easily receptive the public was to almost anyone’s efforts to impress. He felt an exasperation at
the Parisian public’s “mania for hyperbole”: the public had a “rage to BRONZE and
WEATHERIZE everyone and place laurel wreaths on the most fleeting brows, the flattest

40
Liszt, letter to George Sand, April 1837, in An Artist’s Journey, 31.
41
Heine, “Saison musicale, Paris, 25 avril 1844,” in Lutèce, 223–24, translated in Metzner, “Mounting Spectacles,” in
Crescendo of the Virtuoso (UC Press E-books Collection), accessed 3 May 2018,
https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft438nb2b6&chunk.id=ch6&toc.depth=1&toc.id=ch6&bra
nd=ucpress.
42
L’Illustration (18 May 1844): 187–88, translated in ibid.

27

heads,” he wrote.
43
In other words, Parisians were compelled to cast everyone in statues and
medallions and to heap honor on the most—in phrenological terms—insignificant and stupid
people.
By 1848 Liszt had tired of the attention he was receiving and wished to distance himself
from the kind of cheap celebrity he was generating (and that was being given to so many
others, from whom he wanted to distinguish himself). Because he felt enslaved to an
audience’s petty wishes rather than to his art, he stopped concertizing and took a conducting
post in Weimar. He began turning down markers of popularity. He responded to a sculptor
who wanted to produce yet another likeness of him:
The confidence which you place in me, most esteemed Herr Baron, is naturally
very flattering [. . . ] It would of course be very gratifying to me to possess one of
your valued works; yet I cannot help taking this opportunity of remarking that,
in view of the far too many busts, medallions, statuettes, caricatures, medals,
and portraits of all kinds existing of my humble self, I long ago resolved not to
give occasion to any further multiplication of them.
44

Though Liszt remained famous throughout his life—to the point that by the time of his
death, his face was said to be the best known in Europe
45
—he was exiting his virtuoso
period and eschewing the symbols of fame. He wished to distance himself from the
commercialism and perceived shallowness of that musical lifestyle and turn to a new
career.
46

The years 1848 and 1849 were the end of the virtuoso period, corresponding with not
only the 1848 Revolution, when Louis-Philippe was forced from the throne, but also the deaths

43
Liszt, letter to George Sand, January 1837, in An Artist’s Journey, 19.
44
Letter 53. Liszt, Weimar, 6 March 1848, to Baron von Dornis, Jena, in Letters from Liszt: Volume 1 Paris to Rome,
trans. La Mara (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 87.
45
Antoine Lilti, The Invention of Celebrity (Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017), 236–37.
46
See Dana Gooley, “The Battle against Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century.”

28

and relocation of several staple Parisian performers. Chopin and the influential conductor
François-Antoine Habeneck both died in 1849. Liszt ended his piano career in 1848 and moved
to Weimar, where he focused on publishing serious compositions, writing orchestral works,
conducting, and realizing his grand vision to revitalize the cultural life of the city.
47

For a long time already, critics of the virtuoso fad had been wondering when Parisians
would bore of virtuoso performances.
48
Even in 1841, the satirist Albert Cler complained that
after everything Parisian audiences had seen, it would require a tour de force to excite jaded
curiosity again; prodigies would have to engage in gymnastic feats capable of frightening
humanity: they would have to play solos on a tightrope, play violin over their head, or play
piano wearing handcuffs and balancing a bullet on each little finger.
49
Cler cynically predicted
that—in the never-ending invasion of public concerts, salon concerts, family music, prodigies,
pianos, clarinets, cornets à piston—the musical cacophony would cause depopulation and
emigration from Paris. The excitement was no longer sustainable: “Some people are eager to
leave this town which is prey to this terrible epidemic sickness we will call the musica-
morbus.”
50
With the general boredom, the loss of Paris’s greatest performers, and a revolution,
the spirit changed. Countess d’Agoult wrote, “In 1848, the old nobility and the haute

47
Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 11.
48
Dana Gooley has written an account of the criticisms against virtuosity (using mostly German and British
examples) in “The Battle against Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century.” More details about its attack in
Paris appear in William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to
Brahms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 103–4, and Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-
Century France: La Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris, 1834–80, 142ff.
49
Cler, Physiologie du musicien, 117–18.
50
Ibid., 125–26: “Oui, il est à craindre que la cacophonie musicale ne soit pour Paris une cause déterminante de
dépopulation et d’émigration, et que tous les gens paisibles et nerveux s’empressent de s’éloigner d’une ville en
proie à cette terrible maladie épidémique que nous appellerons le musica-morbus.”

29

bourgeoisie, surprised by the same storm . . . took no more pleasure in the elegant life.”
51
And so
the principal audience for virtuoso performances was lost along with its most charismatic
performers.

The growing popularity of instrumental music
That instrumentalists were able to achieve reputations of the magnitude described above was
a development new to this era. Up to this point, the musicians who reached celebrity were
generally opera singers. The castrato Farinelli (Carlo Broschi, 1705–1782), who had charmed,
and provoked, Italy and England, is an obvious example.
52
His voice had made people swoon
and had turned him into a sexual attraction for both men and women, stirring sensation
wherever he performed. Vocalists such as Farinelli had more easily interested audiences
because vocal music was the dominant form of music being performed from the eighteenth
century into the early nineteenth. Audiences wanted to know what music was “about” and
thus generally preferred vocal music. In the contemporary imagination, music’s main value
lay in its ability to evoke and imitate extra-musical ideas; music that did not do so (for
example, sonatas and symphonies) often perplexed listeners. As Bernard le Bovier de
Fontenelle (1657–1757), whom Voltaire called the most universal mind from the Louis XIV era,
famously asked, “Sonate, que me veux-tu?” (“Sonata, what do you want of me?”).
53
When

51
Daniel Stern (pseud. for Marie d’Agoult), Mes Souvenirs, 1806–1833 (Paris: 1988), 252, translated in Meg Freeman
Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace: The Nineteenth-Century Music Salon,” Women of Note Quarterly 3,
no. 4 (November 1995): 24.
52
Lilti, The Invention of Celebrity, 32–33.
53
Mark Evan Bonds, Absolute Music: The History of an Idea (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 74–78;
Beverly Jerold, “Fontenelle’s Famous Question and Performance Standards of the Day,” College Music Symposium
43 (2003): 150. See other examples of theorists who wished for objective meaning in music in James H. Johnson,
Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 36.

30

symphonies or other instrumental pieces were appreciated, it was because listeners found it
easy to uncover emotions and images portrayed in them. Haydn’s symphonies, for example,
were particularly well received in Paris for this reason (especially the “Paris Symphonies,”
written during 1785 and 1786).
54

As late as the 1820s, critics still complained that instrumental music was difficult to
listen to.
55
As Stendhal, for example, wrote in 1824, “It is my considered opinion that music can
only appeal to the spirit of man by conjuring up a pattern of imaginative imagery, which in
some way corresponds to the passions by which the listener is already swayed. . . . I think it
will be universally acknowledged that music can achieve no effect at all save by appealing to
the imagination.”
56
However, Stendhal also remarked that a revolution was happening in
music, thanks to the works of Gioachino Rossini, the prolific Italian opera composer who was
enticed to Paris in 1824 to compose operas for France.
57
Stendhal believed that Rossini’s music
was opening up a greater appreciation of music without reference, because his work was
understandable without needing the interpretation of words.
58
Stendhal made such a

54
Ibid., 208ff.
55
Ibid., 208.
56
Stendhal, “Introduction: Of Certain Differences between German and Italian Music,” in Life of Rossini, trans.
Richard N. Coe (New York: Criterion Books, 1957), iBooks edition.
57
It is no coincidence that Rossini’s arrival in Paris and Stendhal's publication of La Vie de Rossini, in which
Stendhal’s quotation appears, occurred in the same year. This provided advantages for both: Stendhal could
profit (in book sales) from the celebrity’s much publicized arrival, and Rossini could grow an even larger
reputation among the Parisian public.
Rossini came to Paris on an attractive lifetime annuity from the French government. However, he composed
thirty-four of his thirty-nine operas before he arrived. His unrivalled motivation to produce significantly declined
after receiving the lifetime pension. He composed for only five years before he retired with his final opera
Guillaume Tell in 1829. In his retirement, he stayed in Paris on and off and from 1855 until his death in 1868.
58
Stendhal, “Introduction: Of Certain Differences between German and Italian Music” and “Chapter 5:
Conscription and Envy,” in Life of Rossini. As the historian James H. Johnson later summarized, Rossini’s music
“did more than anything else in France to break the perceived bond between musical meaning and determinate
content” (Listening in Paris, 219).

31

statement in the daily paper Le Miroir in response to an attack on Rossini’s music as musically
inferior, filled with “empty note patterns, the ‘arabesques’ which rely on their appeal to
physical sensation, stripped of ‘moral’ content.”
59
Stendhal began by affirming the
contemporary preference that music be referential, but then explained that Rossini
transcended that:
Music is an art whose technical resources are narrow and limited; music is used
to interpret words, but words also help to interpret music; and if you rob music
of the assistance of words, you will transform it into a sort of hieroglyphic
idiom, decipherable by a small circle of initiated adepts, but totally
unintelligible to the vast majority of the audience. Now, he who succeeds, by
the use of particular combinations of those sound-symbols which are the
alphabet of music, in achieving a degree of expressiveness which, more closely
than any other, corresponds to that of the normal spoken language, will have
achieved, as a composer, not merely the highest dramatic quality, but the
nearest approach to truth. And this achievement is precisely that which Rossini
has accomplished. Among all known composers, he is the one who is least
dependent upon his librettist; he has, as far as it lies within the nature of his
medium to do so, liberated his art from the inglorious fetters of a necessity
which left it shorn of half its glory. He is like some delightful foreigner who is
intelligent enough to make himself understood without the need of an
interpreter; he is like an instinctive writer of genius, who has learned to
triumph over the obscurities of the language in which he is writing, and who
can be read and understood by normally educated people without invariably
requiring the notes and glosses of a commentator.

When comparing Rossini with the great opera composers of the past (Mozart, Giovanni
Battista Pergolesi [1710–1736], and Antonio Sacchini [1730–1786]), Stendhal found that “neither I
nor the general public is . . . necessarily wrong to conclude that Rossini speaks more clearly to
our understanding, that he holds the key to the innermost secrets of our delight and
sensibility.”
60
Rossini’s popular music was playing an important part in the growing

59
Benjamin Walton, Rossini in Restoration Paris: The Sound of Modern Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), 55.
60
Stendhal, “Chapter 5: Conscription and Envy.”

32

acceptance of non-referential music and was found to convey an inner truth apart from the
words of the opera.
Other issues were also leading to listeners’ gradual acclimation to abstract music, not
least, the growing Romantic sensibilities of valuing individual experience, subjectivity, and
abstract ideas. As E. T. A. Hoffmann had proclaimed in his famous 1810 review of Beethoven’s
Fifth Symphony, instrumental music was the most romantic art, “since its only subject-matter
is infinity.”
61
The Romantic wanted to exceed the bounds of words and reach into the
ineffable. Musical expression could give this sense of Romantic individualism to the musician
and listener. Through breaking with all other structures and restrictions of determinate
meaning (such as words, shapes, or images), a composer or performer could express his own
independence.
62
Instrumental music, thus, took on new significance.
The promising future for concerts based in instrumental music became clear when the
violinist Pierre Baillot (1771–1842) began his weekly public chamber music concerts in 1814 and
found continued growth in attendance; the concerts began in his home, then moved to
successively larger venues including the showroom hall of the piano maker Duport, then the
studio of a rugmaker, then in 1839 to the Salle Herz that seated 400.
63
This was a sizeable
audience to sustain for weekly performances of chamber music. Another major step occurred
in 1828 when the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire was inaugurated, which eventually

61
E. T. A. Hoffman, “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music,” in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The
Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 96.
62
As Jim Samson explains in the Grove Music Online entry on Romanticism, after the French Revolution, “as
music (like art in general) disengaged itself increasingly from existing social institutions, composers were
inclined – if not always able – to ‘make their own statement.’” (Grove Music Online [2001], accessed 20 August
2018).
63
Joël-Marie Fauquet, “La Musique de chambre à Paris dans les années 1830s,” in Music in Paris in the 1830s, 325–
26.

33

became one of the most respected orchestras in Europe; it continued to perform until 1967
when it was reformed as the Orchestre de Paris. Its hall seated nearly 1,000, and subscriptions
for tickets were sold out for years in advance; families, in fact, passed down their subscriptions
in their wills so as not to lose them.
64

Virtuosity also played a role in the growing inclination toward instrumental music.
According to the musicologist of the Romantic era Jim Samson, virtuosity took two paths: One
type of virtuosity served the meaning of the music by highlighting its expression; this was the
more traditional use of virtuosity, and, I might add, the one fitting with the concept’s roots in
“right” behavior. In another, newer path, virtuosity was used independently of the music’s
meaning, for its own sake. This latter was “virtuosity as an agent divorcing music from the
rhetoric of the text, and thus from meaning and idea.”
65
Virtuosity turned music into
something that was interesting of itself, without fixed meaning behind it. In impressive feats
of dexterity, listeners found appreciation for the execution of the music and became less
concerned to discern what the music was about. That was not all; listeners also found
inspiration in the virtuoso’s struggle and conquest, discussed more toward the end of this
chapter.

The popularity of public concerts
Samson, in fact, finds the rise of the virtuoso tied to the rise of the public concert.
66
The
number of public concerts in Paris grew enormously during the first half of the century.
Overall, the number of public concerts announced increased 491% between the concert

64
Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 81–82.
65
Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work, 69, 74.
66
Samson, “Romanticism,” Grove Music Online.

34

seasons of 1826–27 and 1845–46.
67
Albert Cler envisioned public concerts as a scourge, plague,
and epidemic in Paris, particularly after the year 1830.
68
This setting creates fertile ground for
the study of soloists’ promotion.
These public concerts belonged to three main types: benefits, events given by
permanent organizations of professionals (such as the Société des Concerts and the Opéra),
and events given by amateur organizations.
69
In the 1845–46 season, 45 to 66% of all publicized
concerts were benefits.
70
This is to say that nearly half to two-thirds of the advertised public
concerts featured soloists as the main attraction. Moreover, soloists were side attractions in
many other performances, as the Société des Concerts and other groups included soloists on
every program as well.
The inauguration of the solo recital particularly confirmed that instrumental music
was accepted and enjoyed by listeners. The pianist Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) is likely the
first to have performed a solo concert. Moscheles’ wife, Charlotte, the author of his biography
of 1873, records that he gave several pianoforte recitals at his soirées in England in 1837:
“Hitherto there had been no recitals for pianoforte music, and these were introduced by
Moscheles.”
71
When Moscheles announced his plan to appear in several concerts alone, his
friends and newspaper journalists thought the idea was daring and perhaps would be boring;

67
Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 19.
68
Cler, Physiologie du musicien, 115.
69
Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 21–22.
70
Ibid., 21.
71
Charlotte Moscheles, Life of Moscheles, with Selections from His Diaries and Correspondence (London: Hurst and
Blackett, 1873), 22.

35

however, the series was a resounding success.
72
However, these recitals were not purely solo
recitals; Charlotte records that Moscheles included a few vocal pieces on his program as a
caution against boredom; yet she also notes that the newspaper became thoroughly convinced
by his idea to perform alone and criticized this choice to add singers, which was “the one blot
in an otherwise perfect entertainment.”
73
The date of his first true solo recital is unfortunately
unknown.
However, Liszt receives more credit for inaugurating the solo recital.
74
He announced it
with more style and framed it as a choice for convenience, ego, and aesthetics. On his tour in
Rome in 1839, Liszt wrote, “Wearied with warfare [with other musicians], not being able to
compose a programme which could have common sense, I have ventured to give a series of
concerts all by myself, affecting the Louis XIV style, and saying cavalierly to the public, ‘The
concert is—myself.’”
75
His first recitals were private performances, but the official first public
solo “recital” (called so on the program) was June 9, 1840 in the Hanover Square Rooms in
London.
76

Thus, this period was distinguished by a marked shift in taste. The soloist and
instrumental music were linked with and enabled by each other.

72
Mark Kroll, Ignaz Moscheles and the Changing World of Musical Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2014), 285.
73
Moscheles, Life of Moscheles, 23.
74
William Weber, “Recital,” Grove Music Online: Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press), accessed April 22,
2017.
75
Liszt in Albano, to Cristina Belgiojoso, Paris, 4 June 1839, Letters from Liszt: Volume 1, cited in ibid.
76
Kroll, Ignaz Moscheles, 284–85. The word “recital” had been applied to music performances before, but its more
common use in reference to recitations of words: poetry, narratives, facts, or legal descriptions (“Recital, n.,” OED
Online, June 2018, Oxford University Press, accessed 11 August 2018).

36

Early romanticism and the presentation of self
A final crucial consideration about the Paris music scene is the new awareness of self and of
dramatic presentation that was present among artists of this time. The year 1830 has been
called the victory of Romanticism.
77
It saw the premiere of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a
turning point for music that was hyper-evocative of inner emotional turmoil. It was also the
year that Victor Hugo produced his drama Hernani, in which an outlaw becomes the hero. In
the “battle of Hernani” bohemian romantics won out over classicists as the two groups
cheered and hissed, respectively, at the premiere of this avant-garde play. Hundreds of Hugo’s
supporters queued up for the show, dressed in their most eye-catching and anti-bourgeois
beards, long hair, and ironically worn historical clothing.
78
Not only was the scene visually
flamboyant, it also exemplified the Romantic ethics of rebellion, transgressed standards, and
lives lived as if they were art pieces.
It is widely perceived that the ascension of the individual in France became possible
during the July Monarchy.
79
The individual valued making his or her own choices, forming
subjective and personal tastes, having private thoughts and experiences, and remaining
separate from society if he or she desired. One application of this among musicians is that it
became less important what master a musician studied with—more admired was that he took
time to study by himself and developed a technique and sound that was his own.
80
A number

77
Jacques Barzun, “Introduction,” in Music in Paris in the 1830s, 4.
78
Mary Gluck, Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2005), 27–28.
79
Laure Schnapper, Henri Herz, magnat du piano: La vie musicale en France au XIXe siècle (1815–1870) (Paris: EHESS
Editions, 2011), 18.
80
Alicia Cannon Levin, “Seducing Paris: Piano Virtuosos and Artistic Identity, 1820–48” (PhD diss., University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009), 227.

37

of performers cultivated the narrative of training and then retreating from the world for
private formation in seclusion, including Liszt, Prudent, Pleyel, Paganini, Berlioz, and the
singer Maria Malibran.
81
A soloist performing alone onstage became a symbol of subjective
expression and feeling, as well as extreme talent, mastery, and difficulty overcome. Jim
Samson has described the individualism that Liszt and Paganini expressed onstage and their
public declamations of their wish to remain singular and uncontrolled by other forces,
including even the musical score.
82

According to the musicologist Richard Leppert, the virtuoso became “the literal
embodiment of extreme individuality.” Moreover, “music was the sonorous sign of inner life,
and inner life was the sign of the . . . much heralded, newly invented, and highly idealized
‘individual.’”
83
Through the virtuoso, audiences played out their own imagined ideals. Taking
Liszt as an example, Leppert describes,
Men who admired Liszt found in him a mirror of their idealized selves: extreme
accomplishment, individual—indeed unique—talent, and more
problematically, worship by women. Women responded to attributes that they
were rather less likely to find in their men: the qualities just mentioned, but
also more. These included especially an artistic temperament, demonstrated in
sound and spectacle, and marked by emotions otherwise culturally suppressed,
the same emotions that the other arts—poetry, novels, paintings, and the like—
commonly described and often lionized.
84

81
Ibid., 224.
82
Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work, 75–77.
83
Richard Leppert and Stephen Zank, “The Concert and the Virtuoso,” in Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years with
the Piano, ed. James Parakilas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 253, cited in Žarko Cvejić, The Virtuoso as
Subject: The Reception of Instrumental Virtuosity, c. 1815–c. 1850 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2016), 10–11.
84
Leppert, “The Concert and the Virtuoso,” 222.

38

Thus, the virtuoso was a stand-in for the fantasies of both genders. They were all the more
appealing at this time when audiences were particularly receptive to the ideals of
independence, power, and personal expression.
Musicians of course highlighted their eccentricities to meet the expectation of the
public that artists led a “separate existence.”
85
They increased their onstage drama and
peppered their performances with odd behaviors, such as waiting as long as possible to come
out on stage so as to heighten the crowd’s anticipation.
86
Paganini at times wore blue tinted
glasses and let his long black hair dangle in his face so as to make a cadaverous effect in the
light of the gas lamps.
87
He also staged a performance at the Opéra starring himself with an
orchestra, male chorus, and staging depicted an eerie landscape of oak trees and shadowy
countryside with clanging bells and chanting monks.
88
Dramaticism was key. The conductor
Philippe Musard shocked audiences by throwing objects around the stage in an inflamed
passion, and Liszt played so violently that spare pianos had to be kept on the side of the stage
for when he broke strings or hammers.
89
On the other side of the spectrum was pristine

85
Cler, Physiologie du musicien, 49.
86
In regard to Paganini doing this, see Ole Bull, “Violin Notes,” in Sarah C. Bull, Ole Bull: A Memoir (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1893), 374–76, as well as Harrys, Paganini in seinem Reisewagen und Zimmer, 54;
Sugden, Niccolo [sic] Paganini: Supreme Violinist or Devil’s Fiddler?, sketch on p. 79. Referred to in Metzner, “Staging
Spectacles,” n. 34.
87
Ole Bull, “Violin Notes,” 376.
88
Kristen Strandberg, “Napoleonic Narrative and Visual Media in Paganini’s Spectacle for Paris,” Journal of
Musicological Research 35, no. 4 (2016): 324–49.
89
Friedrich Wieck, the father of Clara Schumann, wrote about seeing performance by Liszt: “After he
annihilated Thalberg’s Erard in the first piece, he played the fantasy on a C. Graf, broke two brass strings, fetched
himself the second walnut C. Graf from the corner and played his etude, after which he, having once again
broken two strings, said aloud to the public that it [the etude] had not succeeded and he would like to play it
again. As he entered, he vehemently threw his gloves and handkerchief on the ground in front of the piano . . . It
was the strangest concert of our life” (Briefe aus den Jahren 1830–1838, ed. Käthe Walch-Schumann [Cologne, 1968],
93–94, translated in Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 108). See more
analysis of his violent treatment of pianos in Leppert, “The Concert and the Virtuoso,” 219–21.

39

dandyism, such as that displayed by the delicate Chopin and the handsome conductor Louis-
Antoine Jullien, who both dressed in beautifully tailored waistcoats and white gloves and
devoted considerable time to their perfectly arranged hair. The superficial “looks” that
musicians cultivated were so common that Cler joked that many young artists thought that
the most important thing to achieving public notice and getting performances was not talent
but looking the part: “Some young virtuosos also imagine today that, in order to perform in
public, the essential thing is not to have talent, but a coat in the latest fashion, lustrous and
pampered hair. The day of their concert, they don’t practice their pieces, but press their pants
and boots.”
90
As this historian Mary Gluck points out,
In contrast with the older generation of Romanticists, the artists of the 1830s
were identified for the first time not by what they did, but by how they lived
and what they looked like. They performed their identities through outrageous
gestures, eccentric clothes, and subversive lifestyles that came to be associated
with a distinctive phenomenon: the artist’s life.
91

These subversive and eccentric actions were directed to seduce the public. Artists used them
to catch attention and remain interesting.
Other expressions of “the artist’s life” can be found the ways in which artists played up
their tragic romanticism. Cler generalized that musicians of old times were threadbare,
miserable, hated, repelled, having neither fire nor roof, and ate crusts of bread found floating
in the river, but they were happy, singing about laughing, games, wine, love, and follies.
Musicians of his present era, on the contrary, had well-filled strongboxes, beautiful lodgings,
good meals, and champagne, but generally looked like weeping willows. From the titles of the
pieces they wrote—Une Larme (A Tear), Un Sanglot (Sobbing), Un Désespoir (Despair), Un Salut

90
Cler, Physiologie du musicien, 116.
91
Gluck, Popular Bohemia, 27.

40

à la tombe (Salute to the Grave)—they seemed to wallow in dramatic anguish.
92
A public
melodrama was indeed present in the behavior of many great performers and composers of
this period. For instance, Liszt stayed up all night vamping on Dies irae.
93
Berlioz wrote to a
group of friends that he sat in on a funeral of a mother and child whom he did not know and
who had died in childbirth; he followed their bodies to the morgue, held the mother’s hand,
would have kissed her if no one else had been there.
94
Chopin wrote of his hallucinations and
how he felt himself always on the edge of death.
95
An obsession with morbidity was part of
artists’ suffering and countercultural behavior.
Sociologist Richard Sennett has beautifully described the sway that nineteenth-
century virtuosos could hold through eccentricity and apartness:
Virtuosity had a social consequence: it was a means of gaining mastery over
those who will never understand what one feels or suffers or dreams. Virtuosity
was taking charge of that unworthy mob (whose praise one may crave, but this
was a shameful secret); just as it is a physical seizing of the medium which is so
ungiving, it compels the audience to feel by focusing them on the artist’s
physical struggle.
96

That struggle that musicians put into their work and lives was recognized over and over
throughout the period. This struggle is what Liszt referred to when he wrote of Paganini,
“What a man! What a fiddler, what an artist! Heavens! What suffering and misery, what
tortures dwell in those four strings!”
97
Importantly, communicating that one’s experiences as

92
Cler, Physiologie du musicien, 29.
93
Ibid., 30.
94
Hector Berlioz, Letter to Gounet, Girard, Hiller, Desmarest, Richard, and Sichel, from Nice, 6 May 1831, in Life
and Letters of Berlioz, vol. 1, trans. H. Mainwaring Dunstan (London: Remington and Co., 1882), 94–95.
95
See Ewelina Boczkowska, “Chopin’s Ghosts,” 19th-Century Music 35, no. 3, Chopin’s Subjects (Spring 2012): 204–23.
96
Richard Sennett, Fall of Public Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 203.
97
Liszt, letter to Pierre Wolff, 2 May 1832, Paris, in Letters from Liszt, 8–9.

41

an artist were incommunicable to others was part of mystifying the audience. Paganini, Liszt,
and others discussed in this work including Musard, Jullien, Berlioz, Wagner, and Chopin
took on this melodrama of being misunderstood, sometimes intentionally and sometimes
because they genuinely felt misconceived and unappreciated. In both cases, the artist’s
struggle was performed and an integral part of most virtuosos’ projected experiences.

Conclusion
It was a self-conscious era, and the musicians who rose to the top and became lasting figures
in our canon did so by the constant framing of themselves, networking, and hustling to
achieve recognition. Cultural factors, including the rise of instrumental music, increased
communication, high-level talent, and ethics of self-interest, self-promotion, and drama
combined to feed Parisians’ widespread interest in musicians as celebrated figures. The
following chapters explore a few of the many routes that musicians took as they tried to
navigate Paris and achieve or hone their fame.
42

II. Unknown Names on Satin Placards with Arabesques of Gold

In the midst of the cholera epidemic of 1832, a journalist for L’Artiste observed, “This contrast
between pleasure and death is everywhere: you cannot escape it, it pursues you: morning,
evening, day and night. Conversations, newspapers, streets, walls, everything is plastered with
music and plague.”
1
As seven thousand Parisians fell ill and died within two weeks, their
bodies were no doubt carted past walls plastered with concert advertisements. Music publicity
seemed to spread along with the illness. Diversion soothed spirits in the midst of terrible
shock and fear.
Newspaper commentators gloated and moaned over the glut of musical performances,
which continued well after the plague. At least one reviewer watched foreign musicians enter
Paris in constant stream and wondered at how so many could attract audiences at the same
time.
2
It soon became clear that precise musical technique and imposing stage presence were
not enough to fuel a career: effective performers also had to be strategic, organized, well-
connected, and aggressive about keeping themselves in the public eye. They filled the seats in
their concert halls through calling in favors, spreading information among people they knew,
posting concert flyers and other forms of publicity, and instigating gossip through their dress,
behavior, or the bold opinions they published in newspapers.

1
L’Artiste (1832) translated in Vivienne Suvini-Hand, “‘It isn’t he!’: Ingres’s Paganini and Delacroix’s Parody,”
Journal of Romance Studies 11, no. 2 (September 2011): 55–56.
2
“Des Artistes étrangers à Paris,” Revue et gazette musicale (22 May 1836): 172–74. See also Chapter One, the
quotation from Heinrich Heine about pianists swarming to Paris every winter like locusts.
43
Concurrent with all this effort to earn attention, a new, commercialized sense of the
French word publicité came into use. In this chapter, I discuss this changing sense of
advertising, the Parisian public’s interest in the new publicity techniques, and how the music
of serious musicians was advertised in a way to gain maximum attendance at concerts while
maintaining a dignified front. I first briefly define the types of concerts for which soloists
would advertise and how foreign musicians coming to Paris would prepare the city for their
arrival. I then describe how concerts were advertised through newspaper advertisements and
posters.

The concerts soloists played
The concerts for which artists were most motivated to advertise were those put on for their
own benefit. After these concerts, they kept all profit from the ticket receipts after expenses.
3

The featured musician performed typically three pieces on the program; the rest was filled
with performances by associates: instrumentalists and singers in solos, duets, chamber music,
and at the more extravagant concerts, orchestral music (see sample programs in Appendix B).
Between January and the end of May 1838, the concerts announced in La France musicale had

3
Expenses would include the cost of the hall (if it were not given freely), payment to supporting musicians (if
they did not volunteer, which most did), payment for the hall’s support staff, lighting, and heating, and the
obligatory tax on concerts. Brief examples of these fees are presented in Appendix A. The process for booking
concert spaces is a topic that requires more research. It seems that halls were frequently provided to artists for
free; this was the case for Chopin with the Salle Pleyel and Servais with the Salon Pape (Malou Haine, “Musicien,
mécène et imprésario: Les concerts du violoncelliste Adrien-François Servais et leur promotion par Jules Lardin,”
in Le Concert et son public: Mutations de la vie musicale en Europe de 1780 à 1914 [France, Allemagne, Angleterre], ed.
Hans Erich Bödeker, Patrice Veit, Michael Werner [Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2002]:
paragraph 16, accessed online 23 May 2018, http://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/6763). In addition, the
Conservatoire was government-owned, and thus its hall was always free (“De l’impot prélevé sur la musique,”
Revue et gazette musicale [14 December 1834]: 401).

44
an average of seven performers per concert, usually evenly split between singers and
instrumentalists.
Until Liszt declared “The concert is—myself” when he gave his first solo performances
in Italy in 1839 (see Appendix B, Example 4), musicians never performed ticketed events
alone.
4
Even after Liszt’s bold act, no one immediately imitated him; they continued to
perform in large group concerts. Having many performers on the program was an
administrative headache (that was Liszt’s main reason given for dispensing with it), but having
many performers offered a commercial advantage in that it provided a diverse program that
would interest a larger audience. More tickets would be bought by the supporters of each
performer added to the program.
The assisting musicians would sometimes donate their time, knowing that the favor
would be returned at their own benefits. Others were paid a fee: the singer Louis Jansenne
(1809–?; see Figure 2.1), for example, earned 40 francs when he performed two songs at the
benefit of the virtuoso cellist Adrien-François Servais (1807–1866) in 1833.
5
Jansenne frequently
appeared on benefit programs as a supporting musician, to positive reviews (he was
announced in La France musicale for six concerts in early 1838; he likely performed at more, as
well as in salons). Jansenne was well-known enough to be worthy of a caricature portrait-
charge by Jean-Pierre Dantan.

4
Liszt, letter to Princess Belgiojoso, 4 June 1839, in Letters from Liszt: Volume 1 Paris to Rome: Years of Travel as a
Virtuoso, ed. La Mara, trans. Constance Bache (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 30–32.
5
Haine, “Musicien, mécène et imprésario,” paragraph 16.
45

Figure 2.1: Louis Jansenne, caricature bust by Jean-Pierre Dantan (1836). Source: “Portrait-charge de
Louis Jansenne [1809–?], chanteur lyrique. Rôle de George Brown dans la ‘Dame Blanche,’” Musée
Carnavalet, Paris, inventory number S122, accessed online 10 July 2018,
http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/portrait-charge-de-louis-jansenne-
1809-chanteur-lyrique-role-de-george#infos-principales.
By tradition, musicians could put on a concert for their own benefit just once per year.
But they performed much more often: on other artists’ programs, in benefits for other causes
(such as for victims of natural disasters, war, or poverty), in salons, and in concert tours to
other cities. Those who wanted to be known as concert artists performed often.
46
The pianist Sigismund Thalberg (1812–1871; see Figure 2.2) provides a case study.
Thalberg and Liszt had a much publicized piano “duel” in 1837 and an extended rivalry over
several years of their careers.
6
It was not clear at the time who was the better pianist: Thalberg
was known for his more refined and restrained expression and impeccable technique; Liszt,
on the other hand, was explosive and dramatic.
7
Thalberg, arriving in Paris on February 17,
1838, and leaving in late April, gave five public performances that were reported in La France
musicale, the music journal with the largest readership in Paris. Reports also appeared, in less
completeness, in the Revue et gazette musicale (RGM) and La Presse, a daily paper with general
readership. The press attention Thalberg received (or likely planted) in advance of these
concerts illuminates traveling virtuosos’ advertising methods, as well as the number and types
of concerts they might appear in:
- February 18: Thalberg is announced to be arriving in a few days (however, by the time
the announcement was posted, he had in fact arrived the day before); it is hoped that
there will be a concert.
- March 4: A concert will be given, near March 20.
- March 11: The concert date is set for March 21.
- March 18: Thalberg’s biography is featured in a front-page article.
- March 17: Thalberg plays a surprise performance at a benefit for the cellist Alexandre
Batta at the Salle Erard. According to the RGM review, the program mysteriously
announced piece number 7 as a Fantaisie pour piano without giving a composer or

6
A full chronicle of this rivalry is presented in Dana Gooley, “Liszt, Thalberg, and the Parisian Publics,” in The
Virtuoso Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 18–77 (see in particular his summary in the table on
page 20).
7
Revue et gazette musicale (4 February 1838): 53.
47
performer. Thalberg appeared on the stage unannounced, to the surprised joy of the
audience.
8
This concert is reviewed in the RGM on March 25 and in La France musicale
on April 1.
- March 21: Thalberg plays a concert for his own benefit at the Salle Erard (likely seating
capacity of 300 to 500).
9
This concert is reviewed in the following week’s issue of La
France musicale, on March 25.
- April 10: Thalberg plays a benefit for the singer Mademoiselle Bertuccat, again at the
Salle Erard.
- April 14: Thalberg plays a benefit for the poor that raised 12,000 francs, held at the
Salle Ventadour (seating capacity of 1,100 or 1,200).
10
This concert is advertised as the
last time to see Thalberg perform in Paris.
- April 17: Thalberg plays a benefit for the pianist and his friend Theodor Dœhler, again
at the Ventadour.
Of particular note is the timing of press coverage for Thalberg’s arrival in Paris and his
performances. Announcements of his arrival began appearing in papers a month before he
first performed, and from that point until he left Paris, every issue of La France musicale
contained an announcement, review, or article about him.

8
Revue et gazette musicale (25 March 1838): 134.
9
The official seating capacity of the Salle Erard is unknown. My estimate of 300 to 500 is based on images such as
this one: http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/image/memoire/0307/sap01_67p00452_p.jpg (accessed 12 July 2018).
10
This is an example of how much money a premier virtuoso instrumentalist could raise in a single concert.
Singers from the Opéra, on the other hand, could earn much more at their own benefits. See Table 4.1 on page 181
of Kimberly White’s dissertation, “The Cantatrice and the Profession of Singing at the Paris Opéra and Opéra
Comique, 1830–1848” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2012).
48

Figure 2.2: Sigismund Thalberg, portrait by Achille Devéria (Paris: Maurice Schlesinger, ca. 1836).
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, Est.ThalbergS.007,
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84252582.

Preparing the city
In advance of coming to Paris, soloists enlisted their networks of connections to help them
find performances spaces, supporting musicians for their concerts, and concert promoters and
editors who could get them advertising in newspapers. For musicians coming from out of
49
town, preparing a reception in the city was crucial. They requested letters of recommendation
from people who could vouch for their abilities and facilitate meetings.
Frédéric Chopin, while in Vienna en route between Warsaw and Paris, won the
attention of the personal physician of the Austrian emperor, Johann Malfatti. Malfatti praised
him in letters to Louis-Philippe’s court music director, Ferdinando Paër. Paër in turn became
one of Chopin’s most important advocates. Most importantly, we have him to thank for
Chopin’s long stay in Paris; he petitioned for Chopin’s residency status, as his Russian
passport only allowed him to remain in France while “in passage” to London, a destination
which he did not reach until nearly twenty years later. Paër also helped Chopin organize his
first concert and introduced him to Pierre Baillot, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, and Gioachino
Rossini.
11
Chopin wrote that without these men, he would never be able to organize his
concert in time.
12
He had originally advertised a concert date two months after his arrival in
Paris, but ultimately, the performance took place three months after his arrival, after having
been delayed twice. Problems hinged on his inability to find singers—who were notoriously
difficult to book because of their contracts at theaters, which limited outside engagements—
and because his supporting artist Friedrich Kalkbrenner was ill.
Like Chopin, any musician newly arrived in Paris tried to immediately meet as many
influential people as possible. Richard Wagner secured letters of introduction ahead of
coming to Paris through the help of his sister’s fiancé, who was living in Paris. In particular, he
met with Giacomo Meyerbeer, whose career he aspired to emulate, and the directors of the
opera, Conservatoire, and prominent music journals. Twelve-year-old Clara Wieck,

11
William G. Atwood, Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 55; Tad
Szulc, Chopin in Paris (New York: Scribner, 1998), 69.
12
Chopin to Joseph Elsner, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, ed. Bronislaw Edward Sydow and Arthur
Hedley (London: Heinemann, 1962), 104.
50
accompanied by her father on her first trip to Paris in 1832, arrived in time to see Chopin’s
debut on February 25 at the Salle Pleyel, where Liszt was an attendee and Felix Mendelssohn,
Kalkbrenner, and Baillot were participants.
13
Clara’s stepmother’s brother, the painter Eduard
Fechner, was well-established in Paris and introduced her to others. Pierre Erard (of the Erard
piano firm) and the music critic and concert organizer Franz Stœpel helped her get a
composition published in Paris and organized a soirée for her, at which she performed.
14

Events in Paris were scheduled quickly, once the right people were met and all the
right pieces (or at least most of them!) were in place. It was usual for halls to be booked, and
therefore concert dates set, as little as two to three weeks in advance of a concert. Liszt, for
example, for his Paris debut at the Salle Louvois (the hall of the Théâtre-Italien) on March 8,
1824, received word on February 11 that the hall was granted to him.
15

13
This date had been thought to have been February 26, until the discovery of Chopin’s concert program for the
date of February 25, as explained in Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, “Documents inconnus concernant le premier
concert de Chopin à Paris (25 février 1832),” Revue de Musicologie 94, no. 2 (2008): 575–76.
14
Brigitte François-Sappey, Clara Schumann: ou l’œuvre et l’amour d’une femme (Drize: Papillon, 2001), 18.
15
The cost was that he perform without fee at the Concert Spirituel later (letter from the Administration of the
Royal Theaters, to Habeneck, Paris, 11 February 1824, translated in Alan Walker, “Paris and the First World
Tours,” in Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983], iBook version).
It is also worth noting that while significant preparation was required to successfully tour in a large city,
performances could be almost spontaneous in smaller towns. When the young tenor Gilbert Duprez was
traveling in 1825, for example, his carriage stopped for an overnight stay in Lausanne. There, he saw a poster for a
concert that very evening. He was able to track down the organizer and convince him to admit him as a last-
minute addition to the program (Gilbert Duprez, Souvenirs d’un chanteur [Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1880], 32–33). Liszt,
the same year, gave a semi-impromptu concert while on vacation in the seaside town of Boulogne. When other
guests at the casino where Liszt and his father ate dinner realized that the prodigy Liszt was in their midst, they
requested a concert on the piano that sat in the middle of the room. Adam Liszt chose an evening and charged
each guest entry. The total receipts reimbursed the cost of their vacation and 600 francs extra (Walker, “Paris and
the First World Tours”).
51
Newspaper advertisements
Concerts were commonly publicized through newspaper advertisements and posters.
Interestingly, until the 1830s, the French language had no standard equivalent for the English
term “advertising.”
16
The French used the words annonce (a short announcement or
advertisement for a product), réclame (an advertisement praising a product), and affiche
(poster).
17
They had used publicité also, but only referring to items put forward for public
knowledge, with no implication of commercialism. It was only during the 1830s that publicité
began to take on the money-making objectives of the announce, réclame, and affiche. It started
to encompass the ideas of manipulation and “producing a psychological public effect for
commercial purposes.”
18

This shift in meaning was naturally connected with the quickly growing newspaper
industry and changing motivations behind the dissemination of information during the July
Monarchy. Newspaper readership nearly quadrupled in two decades: in 1824, there were in
total 55,600 subscribers to the Parisian press. By 1846 there were 200,000.
19
Reasons for this
increase included advancements in printing technologies: by 1830, presses used rollers rather
than stamps, and they had better inks and improved methods for manufacturing large sheets
of paper. These changes increased the speed and cost-efficiency of printing.
20
In addition,

16
Haejeong Hazel Hahn, “Street Picturesque: Advertising in Paris, 1830–1914” (PhD diss., University of California,
Berkeley, 1997), 23.
17
Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 232; Hahn, “Street Picturesque,” 23.
18
Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso, 232.
19
Maria Adamowicz-Hariasz, “From Opinion to Information: The Roman-Feuilleton and the Transformation of
the Nineteenth-Century Press,” in Making the News: Modernity & the Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France, ed.
by Dean De la Motte, Jeannene M. Przyblyski (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 161.
20
Ibid.
52
literacy increased after the Guizot Law was passed in 1833, giving male children the right to an
elementary education. The 987,667 students counted in 1817–1820 grew significantly to
3,228,250 in 1841–1850.
21
A voracity for reading sprang up within the now more literate
population. The number of public reading rooms, where newspapers could be read, increased
nearly tenfold: from 23 in 1819 to 207 in 1843.
22

With this rise in newspaper reading, commercialism also increased. In particular, the
government encouraged the press to publish commercial content in order to distract people
from their dissatisfaction with Louis-Philippe. Laws were created banning political criticism of
the king and his policies; this made newspapers shy away from political discussion and move
toward commercial interests.
23
Frivolity and entertainment masked the public unrest.
A number of weekly papers carried concert advertisements, generally on the last page
or two of each issue: In 1846 La France musicale (1837–1870) was the most popular music journal,
with average print runs of 1,662 copies per issue; the Revue et gazette musicale (1834–1880) had
print runs of 875; Le Monde musical (1840–1848), 765; and Le Ménestrel (1833–1940), 500.
24
Other,
non-music-specific periodicals also carried music advertisements, such as La Presse (started in
1836), the first commercial daily. La Presse charged half the subscription price of other dailies
(40 francs instead of 80) and funded itself principally through advertisements. As a result of

21
Ibid., 161–62.
22
Ibid., 162.
23
Ibid.; Hahn, “Street Picturesque,” 12. Ironically, Louis-Philippe’s censorship of the press was one thing people
were unhappy about that was creating unrest. Another was that he was guarding the power of the upper classes
rather than spreading it to the lower.
24
Katharine Ellis, Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, 1834–80
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1. It is likely that more people read it than these numbers,
because periodicals were available in public reading rooms, as well as to individual subscribers. For example, in
1856, the Gazette printed a list of eighty-eight public places where readers could find their journal (Revue et gazette
musicale [11 May 1856]: 155, cited in ibid.).
53
the low price and its widely appealing content, La Presse had an enormous subscriber base:
10,000 in 1836 and 22,409 in 1845.
25

Music advertisements in these newspapers were, at first glance, rather disappointingly
simple. They employed neither the energy nor the attention-grabbing ploys of commercial
product ads. A comparison of music advertisements with general ads for medical products,
clothing, and housing, for instance, immediately reveals how pared-down concert
advertisements were. The following image (Figure 2.3) is the last page of an issue of La Presse,
illustrating the graphic techniques used for commercial advertising sections in general
newspapers:

25
Charles Ledré, La presse à l’assaut de la monarchie, 1814–1848 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1960), 244, cited in
Adamowicz-Hariasz, “From Opinion to Information,” 182, n. 13.
54

Figure 2.3: Graphically diverse general advertisements from La Presse (5 September 1842).

The advertisements are graphically diversified and compartmentalized in a variety of fonts,
with highlights and borders. Images are scattered throughout, including small, printed hands
that point to certain features, such as in the bottom left column.
55
In contrast, advertisements for commercial musical products—sheet music, portraits,
and books—rarely contained images, descriptions other than the bare facts, or any attention-
getting devices other than font sizes and rules. The following back page of La France musicale
(Figure 2.4) from the same year provides comparison with the typesetting for commercial
music products:

Figure 2.4: Advertisements of sheet music and the violinist Pierre Baillot’s portrait in La France
Musicale (18 September 1842): 330. (Grand papier jésus, mentioned in Baillot’s portrait advertisement, is a
standard paper size measuring 56 by 76 centimeters.)
56

Various fonts are used, but the layout is simple with no illustrations. Music advertisements
would remain like this throughout the period.
Concert announcements appeared in a separate section from merchandise
advertisements and were even more basic and understated. They appeared in a preceding
section called nouvelles, which contained brief, bulleted, plain-text announcements of where
musicians were traveling, how they were received, who was ill or had recovered, what
important concerts had taken place the week previously, and of course upcoming concerts. A
typically succinct announcement reads, “Tomorrow, Thursday, a concert by M. Litz [recte:
Liszt] will take place at the Hôtel-de-ville for the benefit of an unfortunate family” (Figure
2.5).
26

Figure 2.5: Standard concert announcement. Source: Le Miroir de Paris (8 April 1835): n.p.

Announcements at a minimum gave the name of the principal artist or artists and date and
location of the performance. If the date were soon, announcements would sometimes include
the supporting performers and the program.
Typesetting embellishment of concert announcements was rare. Very occasionally
advertisers paid for announcements that stood out from the rest of the page, such as the
following for a concert organized by François-Joseph Fétis (Figure 2.6).

26
Le Miroir de Paris [8 April 1835]: np: “Demain jeudi aura lieu à l’Hôtel-de-ville le concert de M. Litz au profit
d’une famille malheureuse.”
57

Figure 2.6: More prominent concert advertisement. Source: Miroir de Paris (11 April 1835), n.p.

The title, place, and organizer are set off from the rest of the text in a larger, italic font, and the
notice is separated from regular announcements by a horizontal rule. It happened rarely that
musical performances were advertised even with this minimal level of graphical distinction.
Most performers did not announce their concert more than once, unless they were
fairly well-known. In the early 1838 benefit season, for example, of the fifty-three benefits
announced in La France musicale, only six received multiple announcements: the cellist
François George-Hainl (who would become conductor of the Société des Concerts du
Conservatoire in 1863), the piano–violin duo Henri Herz and Charles Philippe Lafont, the
singer Mademoiselle Bertuccat, and the pianist Clara Loveday (twice) placed two ads in
advance of their concerts. Sigismond Thalberg, who was by far the most famous of these
performers and who, unlike the others, was not a resident of Paris, placed four.
Announcements of concerts would appear anytime between the day of the concert to one
month before. Announcements a month in advance, however, did not yet give an exact date or
location for the concert and would thus be announced again after those details were settled.
58
These advertisements did not usually contain any elaborative language. In a column of
six announcements that appeared in La France musicale, all but one give only objective facts
about the events they advertise (see Figure 2.7 and the following transcription and
translation). The fifth announcement alone adds adjectives intended to sway readers’ interest:
“[Henri] Herz announces a very handsome concert,” to which several other musicians “will lend
their beautiful talents” (my emphasis).
27
There was an expectation that artists needed to be
careful not to overplay their appeal, however. If an artist were to describe his or her concert in
glowing language, he or she had to meet the resulting expectations.

Figure 2.7: Benefit concert announcements in La France musicale (20 February 1842): 80.

27
La France musicale (20 February 1842): 80: “M. Henri Herz annonce un très beau concert pour le mercredi 2
mars, à huit heures du soir. On y entendra, pour la première fois à Paris, mademoiselle Dabedeilhe, jeune et belle
espagnole, qui a rempli les rôles de prima donna sur les théâtres d’Italie; M. et madame Balfe, ainsi que MM.
Géraldy, Gallay et Franchomme, prêteront le concours de leurs beaux talens à M. H. Herz . . . .”
59
Transcription and translation for concert announcements in Figure 2.7:

60
Adherence to simple factuality was certainly deliberate. Being factual rather than
embellished conveyed that music was less commercial than other domains. The literary
historian John Strachan has described how writers in England resisted their booksellers’
methods of advertising that mimicked the sensationalized advertisements of medicines and
boot blacking. Writers felt that it reduced their work to trade status, when they viewed it as a
more respectable discipline, a nearly spiritual vocation.
28
Similarly, musicians wished to
portray themselves as purveyors of a distinguished art, rather than as product pushers.
Though the short advertisements in newspapers seemed to relay only impartial facts,
they were not, in fact, objective reporting. The information presented in them was not usually
sought out and selected by newspaper editors; instead announcements were submitted and
paid for by the musicians themselves. The costs were printed clearly on each papers’
masthead: in La France musicale, advertisements were 50 centimes per line.
29
Le Miroir de Paris,
which was published only briefly in 1835, sold announcements more cheaply at 25 and later 40
centimes per line. The Revue et gazette musicale, in business since 1834, began specifying its
advertisement rate only in November 1838, set at 1 franc per line.
30
Before this point, instead of
printing the price of advertisements next to the issue’s masthead, the RGM indicated in small
type under the masthead: “We receive réclamations from persons who have grievances to

28
John Strachan, Advertising and Satirical Culture in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 253–54.
29
These rates fluctuated and became more specific over time. For example, La France musicale originally
advertised prices of 50 centimes per line (15 July 1838), then 50 centimes per line of 28 to 30 letters small text (7
January 1844). By 1848 it was 75 centimes per line of 75 letters.
30
Le Miroir de Paris (30 July 1835): 1; (11 April 1835): 1; Revue et gazette musicale (15 November 1838): 457. In 1840, they
lowered their price to 50 centimes per line of 28 letters; however, 28 letters was half of the length of the previous
lines of 55 letters charged at 1 franc (3 January 1839). Eventually lower prices were offered for serial postings: 50
centimes per line of 28 letters appearing one time, 30 c. for three times, 20 c. for six times (January 1848).
61
expose and opinions related to music that might interest the public.”
31
It was left unclear
whether the journal required payment for these announcements or not.
Paid advertisements in these periodicals were not limited to the back-page nouvelles
sections. Practically any part of a French newspaper or journal was available for purchase
(depending on the editor). Historian Hazel Hahn has found that nineteenth-century French
newspapers were shorter and seemed to contain fewer advertisements than British or
American papers, but this was only because their advertisements were more covert. The
standard form of a newspaper was four pages, or multiples thereof. The fourth section (the
last page or two, depending on the newspaper’s size) carried short announcements and overt
advertisements; the third contained longer réclames that were clearly publicity as well.
Réclames were usually a paragraph or two in length and could be purchased at a rate of 60%
more per line than an announcement. The first half of the newspaper featured articles and
editorials providing what seemed to be fact, opinion, or historical information, but in reality
these spaces could be purchased as well, at rates 30% higher than the réclames.
32

It is unknown to what extent these last types of transactions took place in reputable
and supposedly non-commercial music journals.
33
At least officially, the RGM condemned the
buying of press. An anonymous writer for the RGM in 1839 complained that musicians were
unfairly buying space to advertise themselves in La Presse—thus implying that musicians

31
Revue et gazette musicale (9 January 1834): 18: “On reçoit les réclamations des personnes qui ont des griefs à
exposer, et les avis relatifs à la musique qui peuvent intéresser le public.”
32
Hahn, “Street Picturesque,” 24.
33
It is certain that these transactions did take place in some musical situations, at least in informal ways. To give
two examples: Meyerbeer is known to have invited journalists to lavish dinners at his expense to earn their favor.
In addition, there is evidence that the composer François-Adrien Boieldieu bribed an editor for favorable
reviews. See Mark Everist, “Introduction: Trading in the Unthinkable,” in Perspectives on the French Musical Press
in the Long Nineteenth Century, ed. Mark Everist, Lucca Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini (MCN
Studies, 1), x–xiii, accessed online 15 July 2018, https://www.music-criticism.com/trading-in-the-unthinkable/.
62
could not do this in RGM. The particular targets for criticism were the virtuoso pianist Henri
Herz (regular quarry for the RGM’s editor Maurice Schlesinger) and the music publisher
Eugène-Théodore Troupenas.
34
La Presse had recently printed an article that praised Henri
and Jacques Herz’s school of piano study and another that labeled Troupenas as the highest-
ranked music publisher in Paris who chose “the best works of music” to publish.
35
These
articles were in fact paid advertisements. The RGM complained that Henri Herz, with his 1
franc 50 centimes per line paid to La Presse, could make it look as if Liszt, Thalberg, Chopin,
Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, and Marie Pleyel could hardly play the piano compared to him. The
unfairness was compounded because the advertising rate was quite high in La Presse: not
everyone could afford to pay 1 franc 50 centimes.
36
The articles in La Presse about the Herz and
Troupenas enterprises, each at around sixty lines long, cost at least 90 francs or as much as 144
francs, according to Hahn’s finding that réclames were regularly 60% more costly than
announcements. Rates such as these would only be within reach of the most profitable
musicians. This access further widened the gap between them and their competition.
Troupenas seems to have invested substantial money in advertising in La Presse, in
articles such as the one that the RGM criticizes, in sheet-music ads, and in partnering with
performers who announced concerts. For instance, in Thalberg’s concert announcements in
La Presse and La France musicale, Troupenas is named as the store where tickets could be
bought, even though tickets were also available at other stores, which were left unmentioned.

34
“Le Puff musical,” Revue et gazette musicale (1 December 1839): 509. See also Shaena Weitz, “Henri Herz and the
Gazette musicale: On Propaganda and the ‘Truthiness’ of Deceit,” conference paper given at France: Musiques et
Cultures, Paris, 7 July 2018.
35
“Progrès de la musique en France: Ecole spécial de piano de MM. Herz frères,” La Presse (28 November 1839):
np; “De la musique,” La Presse (27 November 1839): np.
36
“Le Puff musical,” Revue et gazette musicale (1 December 1839): 509.
63
It is likely that Troupenas partnered with Thalberg to pay a part of the costs of the La Presse
advertisements and so that he could profit from Thalberg’s tour through Paris and gain traffic
to his store.
The article in the RGM criticizing Herz’s and Troupenas’ publicity in La Presse was
called “Le Puff musicale.” This word, puff, was another new addition to the French
vocabulary. It had been taken from English and described advertisements that attracted
attention in an exaggerated and perhaps misleading way, particularly for making easy
money.
37
The RGM also considered it a puff, for instance, when the comic opera in London
advertised that attendees would receive an ice cream or glass of punch during the
performance.
38
As was so perfectly illustrated in a stage revue called Le Puff at the Théâtre des
Variétés in 1839, a puff occurs when the two characters the blague [joke] and the réclame
marry.
39
The Herz and Troupenas réclames were accused of being puffs because they were

37
Eugène Scribe wrote that the puff is “made available to everyone and circulates freely for the needs of society
and industry” (“mis à la portée de tout le monde, et circulant librement pour les besoins de la société et de
l’industrie”) (Le Puff, ou Mensonge et vérité [1848], I: 2, in Œuvres illustrées d’Eugène Scribe [Paris: Vialat et Maresq,
1854], 114, quoted in Guillaume Bordry, “Grand Opéra, Réclame et produits dérivés: Le Prophète de Meyerbeer et
le nonciorama,” in Meyerbeer and Grand Opéra from the July Monarchy to the Present, ed. Mark Everist [Turnhout,
Belgium: Brepols, 2016], 177). Horace Smith defined it thus: “PUFFING—a species of cozenage and trickery much
resorted to by the vendors of quack medicines, blacking, novels, and other trash, for the purpose of gulling the
public and cajoling them into a purchase of their wares” (The Tin Trumpet [1836], reproduced in Strachan,
Advertising and Satirical Culture, 253).
38
Revue et gazette musicale (19 July 1835): 238.
39
L’Artiste (1839): 115–16. On the difference between the réclame and puff:
The réclame has a superlative that has been used for twenty years in Parisian parlance. It’s the
word puff, which our friends the English gave us. The puff brings with it the idea of lying, which
is not in the réclame. The réclame can and should be honest; it’s rare that the puff is ever honest.
The réclame proclaims the truth, adorning it little. The puff brazenly launches its lie, and
launches it with full lungs. It’s a gigantic sales pitch, sustained by a million trumpets of
publicity.
[Réclame a un superlative qui s’est introduit depuis une vingtaine d’années dans la langue
parisienne. C’est le mot puff, que nous ont donné nos amis les Anglais. Le puff emporte avec lui
une idée de mensonge qui n’est pas dans la réclame. La réclame peut et doit être honnête; il est
bien rare que le puff le soit jamais. La réclame crie la vérité, en l’ornant un peu. Le puff lance
effrontément le mensonge, et le lance à plein poumons. C’est un gigantesque boniment soutenu
des mille trompettes de la publicité.] (Francisque Sarcey, “Réclame—puff et puffistes,” in Le Mot
64
written, or at least commissioned, by Herz and Troupenas themselves, and thus the public
had no certainty that any objective evaluation was backing their claims. These advertisements
were simply Herz’s and Troupenas’ own opinions of themselves, disguised as reporting.
Because of tactics like this, skepticism of advertising was repeatedly voiced in the media.

Concert posters
Skepticism is particularly easy to remark in responses to the concert poster. Parisians found
that the commercial interests behind posters made their credibility dubious—a sentiment that
paralleled their similar opinions about the virtuoso artist himself). Nonetheless, they were
fascinated by posters, which became under the July Monarchy a noticeable part of musicians’
public presence as their need grew to gain public exposure and attract more concert
attendees.
40

Parisians watched with interest as the technology of the poster developed. The RGM
periodically described new poster fashions: posters the size of cathedral doors being used to
advertise sheet-music publications, and red posters to announce when a singer at an opera
was unable to perform.
41
In 1834 the RGM announced a new fashion in which sixteen posters

et la chose [Paris: Michel Lévy, 1863], 226; quoted in Bordry, “Grand Opéra, Réclame et produits
dérivés,” 174.)
40
Posters had already existed for a long time; archeologists, for example, have unearthed millennia-old posters
that advertised gladiatorial combats and lost slaves. See a brief history of advertising in Raymond Williams,
“Advertising: The Magic System,” in Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980), 320–36.
A word on the practical matters of posters: Posters were placed on outdoor walls and in shop windows. Servais’
posters for his benefit concert in 1833 were posted on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday (the day of the concert), a
hundred copies each time (Haine, “Musicien, mécène et imprésario,” paragraph 5). Reports on the costs of
printing these posters vary. Servais paid 74 francs for three hundred copies (or 24 centimes for each copy; ibid.,
paragraph 16). The RGM says that a foreign artist visiting Paris should budget about double that, around 150
francs, for the printing of both posters and tickets (“De l’impot prélevé sur la musique,” Revue et gazette musicale
[14 December 1834]: 401).
41
Revue et gazette musicale (21 December 1834): 412; (24 June 1838): 263.
65
were shrunk down to fit on one sheet and each of the fields was distinguished by a different
color. This was considered both eye-catching and economic.
42
In a public letter to George
Sand in the Gazette musicale in 1835, Liszt wrote with amusement about the response in Geneva
to his poster for a benefit concert for the poor and refugees by himself and the singer Prince
Emilio Belgiojoso:
You would have laughed at seeing our two names appear in large characters on
monstrous posters of a brilliant yellow, which attracted for several days many
groups of onlookers, eager to know in what capacity and by virtue of which
they came impertinently to ask them the sum of five francs, while from time
immemorial they procured at the rate of three francs.
43

The posters took on a kind of entertainment value themselves: journalists described
people going each day to watch posters for performances being put up. The flaneur (a type of
person who walked the streets simply to observe, a cultural phenomenon of nineteenth-
century Paris) was reported as going to see the posters each day and knowing by heart what
shows would happen each night.
44
The main character in Berlioz’s short story “Suicide by
Enthusiasm” (published in the Gazette musicale on August 3, 1834) is a music enthusiast who
goes each morning to the corner of Rue Richelieu to see what was advertised for that day,
waiting for his favorite opera, Spontini’s La Vestale (1805), to return to the opera. He would
watch the billposter on his ladder as he unrolled and pasted the posters from each theater: the

42
“Nouvelles,” Revue et gazette musicale (30 November 1830): 388.
43
Franz Liszt, “Lettre d’un voyageur à M. George Sand,” Revue et gazette musicale (6 December 1835): 399: “Vous
eussiez ri de voir nos deux noms figurer en gros caractère sur de monstrueuses affiches d’un jaune éclatant, qui
attirèrent pendant plusieurs jours de nombreux groupes de badauds, empressés de savoir à quel titre et en vertu
de quoi on venait impertinemment leur demander la somme de cinq francs, tandis que de temps immémorial on
se procurait à raison de trois francs . . . .”
44
“Les Affiches (Deuxième article),” Le Figaro (4 November 1834): 2.
66
Vaudeville, the Opéra-Comique, the Italian Theater, the Porte-Saint-Martin, and the Opéra.
45

Depictions of billposters can be seen in Figures 2.8 and 2.9.

Figure 2.8: A billposter in the eighteenth century. Source: Edmé Bouchardon, “L’Afficheur,” in Etudes
prises dans le bas peuple, ou les Cris de Paris (Paris: Joullain Quay de la Megisserie, 1737–1746),
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, 4-OA-132;
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105087672/f43.item.r=afficheurBouchardon%20Bouchardon.

45
Hector Berlioz, “Death by Enthusiasm,” in Evenings with the Orchestra, trans. Jacques Barzun (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1999), 147–48.
67

Posters had become so abundant in Paris, even before 1830, that they created traffic
jams and defaced the buildings and monuments. They grew to be such a problem that in 1829,
laws were instated so that billposters had to register with the city and receive permission for
each affiche.
46
The disruption continued nonetheless. A caricature in Le Charivari in 1836
entitled Affichomanie (postermania) depicted a huge insurance poster covering a building’s
face; people are gathered around as tenants cut through the poster in order to let light into
their apartments.
47

The following image of a billposter from 1832 (Figure 2.9) is a satire: instead of
attaching the poster to the wall with glue, the billposter uses the muck of the streets. A
representation of Louis-Philippe is present in the graffiti of a pear on the wall to the left of the
billposter. In the middle-ground on the right, a newspaper salesman calls out. The image
comments on how publicity was an omnipresent and defining part of the Paris cityscape.

46
Hahn, “Street Picturesque,” 12, citing the Law of 28 November 1829, Police Ordinances, APP Usuel;
Nathalie Jakobowicz, “Les pratiques d’affichage dans l’espace public à Paris en 1830,” Revue d’histoire du XIXe
siècle [En ligne] 39 (2009), posted 15 December 2012, consulted 27 April 2018,
http://journals.openedition.org/rh19/3912, paragraph 11.
47
Jules-Joseph-Guillaume Bourdet, L’Affichomanie, in Le Charivari 14 (September 1836), discussed in Hahn, “Street
Picturesque,” 48, and Sara Thornton, Advertising, Subjectivity and the Nineteenth-Century Novel: Dickens, Balzac and
the Language of the Walls (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 122.
68

Figure 2.9: A billposter in the July Monarchy. Source: Auguste Bouquet, “L’Afficheur,” lithography
(Paris: Aubert, 1832), Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie,
RESERVE QB-370 (95)-FT4; http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b530062270/f1.item.zoom.
Plenty of people criticized this ever-more-present form of advertisement, as they saw it
as serving purposes contrary to the true values of music. The superficial matters of advertising
were seeming to gain importance over the quality of the music itself. The critic Edouard
Monnais, in an article called “Théorie de l’affiche” published in the RGM in 1843, complained
that directors put too much importance on the design of posters. It took hours or days to
decide how to order performers’ names on the poster and in what font sizes. These posters
often required several revisions before all the artists were content.
48
Then when a

48
Paul Smith (Edouard Monnais), “Théorie de l’affiche,” Revue et gazette musicale (29 January 1843): 35–36. (H.
Robert Cohen says Paul Smith and Edouard Monnais are the same: “The Nineteenth-Century French Press and
the Music Historian: Archival Sources and Bibliographical Resources,” 19th-Century Music 7, no. 2, Special Issue:
French Archives [Autumn 1983]: 142).
69
performance was full, rather than saying “I made money because my show was charming, or
my troupe was excellent,” a director would say, “I made money because my affiche was
good”—or when the hall was half empty, the fault was that “I mistargeted my affiche.”
49
This is
but another example demonstrating that the musical establishment, and even those running
the press, resisted the new importance publicity was gaining and considered it misguided.
While posters might use eye-catching colored paper, text was best kept relatively
simple, as in newspaper announcements. Parisian newspapers mocked the overly ornamented
and effusive posters of the provinces and other countries. For instance, the RGM poked fun at
Italian posters for all the adulatory adjectives they added.
50
Le Figaro described the funny
(drôle) practice that provincial posters had of putting a word of praise after each title and
person: for instance, “Malvina, pièce sentimentale, par M. Scribe, auteur plein de moyens.”
51

In 1842, one violinist’s pompous poster incited the chastisement of the music critic
Henri Blanchard. L. Coraly—whose first name and dates are unknown—posted what
Blanchard calls a “glittering” (mirobolante) poster that proclaimed he would demonstrate a
new school of violin-playing in his upcoming concert. Blanchard described the poster in
mocking excitement as a “Grrrrand matinée musicale” that Coraly would give in four days’
time. The poster dubbed Coraly a “romantic violinist”; he would play a dramatic solo in three
strophes portraying “the last goodbyes of Napoleon to Saint Hélène,” the “return to Paris” on
two strings, and the “apotheosis” on four strings. He would also play masterworks by Haydn,
Viotti, Mozart, and Beethoven. Blanchard was cynical about the quality of the music that

49
Monnais, “Théorie de l’affiche,” 35–36. Chopin for his debut in 1832 chose to simply print and post the program,
bypassing these decisions by listing all artists’ names in the order that they would perform.
50
Revue et gazette musicale (2 February 1834): 37. This roughly translates to “Malvina, sentimental piece by the
gifted author, M. Scribe.”
51
“Les Affiches (Deuxième article),” Le Figaro (4 November 1834): 2, my emphasis.
70
would be performed. His parting words: “In the end, we will see and indeed hear whether this
event proves to belong to the school of progress or of puff.”
52

Coraly read Blanchard’s cynical review of his poster and was so offended that he
threatened to challenge Blanchard to a duel. Blanchard, nonetheless, was not deterred from
writing a second review. As Blanchard saw it, by putting up his poster, Coraly had submitted it
to public criticism and should be able to hear its evaluation. Though Coraly threatened a duel,
he
didn’t insist that we not discuss his concert, indignant as he was, we were told,
that we made a bit of fun (without prejudging his talent on the violin) of the
writing of the poster that he had rendered public, and which, therefore, had
entered the field of criticism. Coraly is a brave man from the time of the empire,
from that time when the press was a small thing and sabre was everything. By a
fairly natural progression of the social order, the press now has become
important and the sabre became small; the sabre does not discern right from
wrong or prove anything, except that brutality is not an argument. Even though
the legislation on the duel provoked by M. Dupin at the Court of Cassation [a
case three years earlier in the highest court in France; the outcome resulted in
the interdiction of duels] would not be there to calm M. Coraly’s anger toward
his critics, it would not prevent us from freely expressing our opinion on his
talent.
53

Now that Blanchard had heard Coraly’s concert, his subsequent critique was unfavorable but
balanced: Coraly was no Paganini; his intonation was normally sharp, and he often ran out of
bow. But he had great sensitivity, his elegy for Napoleon was touching, and his staccato and

52
Henri Blanchard, Revue et gazette musicale (20 February 1842): 71: “Enfin nous verrons et surtout nous
entendrons bien si cela tient à l’école du progrès ou du puff.”
53
Blanchard, Revue et gazette musicale (27 February 1842): 84: “Il n’a pas tenu à lui que nous nous abstenions de
parler de son concert, indigné qu’il était, nous a-t-on dit, que nous nous soyons quelque peu égayés sans rien
préjuger de son talent sur le violon, de la rédaction d’une affiche qu’il livrait à la publicité, et qui, par conséquent,
était entrée dans le domaine de la critique. Coraly est un brave du temps de l’empire, de cette époque où la presse
était peu de chose et le sabre tout. Par une progression assez naturelle d’ordre social, la presse est devenue
importante et le sabre peu de chose; il ne tranche rien, ne prouve rien, si ce n’est que la brutalité n’est pas un
argument. Quand bien même la législation sur le duel provoquée par M. Dupin à la cour de cassation ne serait
point là pour calmer la colère de M. Coraly envers ses critiques, cela ne nous empêcherait point de manifester
librement notre opinion sur son talent.”
71
sautillé bowings were brilliant. Blanchard, though, could not restrain himself from ending the
review with one final sting: “We will no longer try to discern whether the loud applause for
Coraly from the audience . . . came from enthusiasm or irony.”
54
In sum, Blanchard had been
made suspicious by Coraly’s exaggerated and self-important poster; he had observed and
found Coraly’s playing to fall short of its reputation; and he wrote his review to warn other
musicians to think twice before boasting about what they could not deliver.
Liszt also noted that even the most insignificant performers tried to make themselves
appear important through advertising. He, who easily drummed up publicity for himself but
who was always skeptical of it when it pertained to others (likely because he wanted to seem
above such commercial motivations), wrote in 1835:
The people of the world and artists are equally tired, tired of this multitude of
one-eyed, discordant concerts, given out of speculation and pitifully put
together of I don’t know which collection of common and flat pieces,
performed by more common and even flatter musicians, who, despite two
hundred posters, green, yellow, red or blue, tirelessly proclaim their fame in the
two hundred corners of Paris, are nevertheless condemned to remain
anonymous forever.
55

Similarly, Albert Cler quipped in his Physiologie du musicien (1841), “There is no violinist or
guitarist today who does not display his unknown name on moiré and satin placards with
arabesques of gold.”
56
Publicity was being used to such an extent that people could no longer

54
“Et maintenant, nous ne rechercherons point si les bravi bruyants adressés à M. Coraly par l’auditoire tout
masculin venu pour l’entendre étaient dictés par l’enthousiasme ou l’ironie.”
55
Liszt, “De le situation des artistes et de leur condition dans la société,” Gazette musicale (30 August 1835): 290:
“Les gens du monde et les artistes sont également fatigués, excédés de cette multitude de concerts borgnes,
discordans, donnés par spéculation et piteusement composés de je ne sais quel ramassis de morceaux communs
et plats, exécutés par des musiciens plus communs et plus plats encore, qui, eu dépit de deux cents affiches,
vertes, jaunes, rouges ou bleues proclament infatigablement leur célébrité aux deux cent coins de Paris, sont
néanmoins condamnés à garder à tout jamais l’anonyme.”
56
Albert Cler, Physiologie du musicien, vignettes de Daumier, Gavarni, Janet-Lange, Valentin (Paris: Aubert:
Lavigne, 1841), 115: “Il n’est si mince fredonneur de romances, si piètre joueur de violon ou racleur de guitare qui,
72
tell whether a performer was worth hearing or not. And a general attitude was growing that
musicians and ticket buyers were losing sight of true talent as superficial commercialism took
the foreground.

Tasteful negligence
Advertising too much came to be seen as cheapening a performance. The most respectable
musical events did not need any publicity beyond an elegant minimum. After a sold-out
matinée for the Société des Concerts in 1844, a reviewer called attention to how the Société’s
music stood for itself:
In that case, no preliminary announcements, no réclames; absolutely no journal
talks about the musical solemnity that will make all Paris run [to it]. One simple
poster, small and insignificant, suffices to assemble the great number of faithful
attendees who come to hear the sublime revelations of the great prophets of
music, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, and Weber.
57

That the Société des Concerts was among the foremost orchestras in Europe also made
advertising less necessary. Its reputation and prestige alone could fill seats.
Chopin as well had the kind of reputation that allowed him to do away with
advertising. Because his understated performance style was not well received in settings that
were heavily publicized, he eschewed every means of publicity he could. George Sand joked
in a letter to Pauline Viardot about Chopin’s preparations for a concert that he was giving in

aujourd’hui, ne prétende donner son concert, et n’étale son nom inconnu sure des pancartes moirées, satinées,
arabesquées d’or.”
57
Stephen Heller, “Société des Concerts première matinée,” Revue et gazette musicale (21 January 1844): 20: “Là,
point d’annonces préliminaires, point de réclames; aucun journal ne parle de la solennité musicale qui fera courir
tout Paris. Une simple affiche, petite et mesquine, suffit pour rassembler le grand nombre des fidèles qui viennent
entendre les sublimes révélations de Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Gluck et Weber, ces grands prophètes de la
musique.”
73
1841, nine years after his arrival in Paris. His plans were falling into place much more easily
this time than they did for his first concert in Paris:
A great, astounding piece of news is the little Chip-Chip is going to give a
Grrrrand Concert. His friends have plagued him so much that he has given
way. However, he imagined that it would be so difficult to arrange that he
would have to give it up. But things moved more quickly than he bargained for.
Scarcely had he uttered the fatal Yes than everything was settled as if by a
miracle. Three quarters of the tickets had gone before any announcement was
made. Then he woke up as if from a dream; and there is no more amusing sight
than our meticulous and irresolute Chip-Chip compelled to keep his
promise.…. This Chopinesque nightmare will take place at Pleyel’s rooms on
the 26th. He will have nothing to do with posters or programmes and does not
want a large audience. He wants to have the affair kept quiet. So many things
alarm him that I suggest that he should play without candles or audience and
on a dumb keyboard . . . .
58

Again, for his last concert in Paris, at the Salle Pleyel on February 16, 1848, Chopin chose not to
advertise through posters; still, word of mouth spread, and the concert was sold out two weeks
in advance, even at the lofty rate of 30 francs per ticket.
59

Having no or minimal publicity was at the time viewed as a sign of a true artist’s
quality. But eschewing publicity was not a practical solution for most musicians, many of
whom were artistically talented though they did not have the reputations of Chopin and the
Société des Concerts. Promoting their concerts was not optional, but careful balance had to be
maintained between targeting their announcements to attract a maximum number of ticket
buyers, yet not making their announcements so extravagant as to seem to cheapen their work
or make their ads seem mere manipulation.

58
George Sand to Pauline Viardot in London, from Paris 18 April [1841], Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin,
193.
59
“Chopin Biography: Year 1848,” The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, accessed 4 June 2018,
http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/life/calendar/year/1848.
74
Press reviews
Having one’s concert reviewed was a last step of securing standard newspaper publicity. If an
artist was already famous, he or she did not have to try to get reviews: the press wanted to
cover the most important performances. For example, when Liszt performed his debut at the
Salle Louvois (a concert earning him 4,711 francs), fourteen journalists “competed with one
another to write about the talent of my son,” Adam Liszt wrote.
60
And when Paganini gave his
fourth concert in Paris in 1831, a journalist complained that the venue (the Opéra) had
neglected to forewarn journalists about the concert; tickets sold out quickly and it had been
impossible to get a seat. He therefore could only report secondhand information he had
gathered from others who had attended.
61

Musicians typically reserved tickets for the press. Berlioz, for his concert on November
25, 1838, asked the archivist-cashier of the Conservatoire five days in advance to send him
twenty-two tickets to give to journalists (the letter below is translated from Figure 2.10):
Tuesday morning, November 20
My dear M. Réty,
Please send me for the journals the tickets hereafter designated. I cannot
go out yet because my doctor wants me to stay in my room until the rehearsal
on Friday, otherwise I would come see you myself.
4 second loges 20
4 main floor loges 20
6 orchestra stalls 6
6 gallery stalls 6
Plus the [illegible] two loges in front of the stage 12
62

A thousand best wishes and pardon for your trouble,

60
Walker, “Paris and the First World Tours.”
61
Troisième concert de Paganini,” Revue musicale (26 March 1831): 60.
62
I am uncertain what the numbers mean at the end of each ticket description. Perhaps these were the prices,
though they do not match the Conservatoire’s standard seat pricings listed in Antoine Elwart, Histoire de la Société
des concerts du Conservatoire impérial de musique (Paris: S. Castel, 1860), 115–17.
75
H. Berlioz
63

Figure 2.10: Hector Berlioz’s letter to François Réty requesting concert tickets for the press, 20
November 1838. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, NLA-277 (33 A 40),
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b53032611z/f1.image.

63
Mon cher M. Réty,
Veuillez m’envoyer pour les journaux les billets ci-après désignés. Je ne puis pas encore sortir,
mon médecin ne veut pas que je quitter ma chambre avant vendredi matin pour ma répétition, sauf
quoi je serais allé vous voir moi même.
4 second loges 20
4 rez de chaussée 20
6 stalles de orchestre 6
6 stalles de gallérie 6
Plus les deux [illegible] loges d’avant scène. 12
Mille amitiés et pardons de votre peine,
H. Berlioz

76

While journalists might have lined up to attend the concerts of artists with great
reputations, it was more difficult for lesser-known musicians to entice press coverage. In an
article titled “On Foreign Musicians in Paris,” a journalist sympathetically wrote about how
the process of getting reviewed could be utterly disparaging, particularly for foreigners:
[After the concert,] it is now a question of monitoring the insertion of the
famous article, which must bear the glorious name of the virtuoso, to the ends
of the world. So he goes, full of a secret fear, to make a morning visit to the
famous critic, for whom his prince, his princess, his grand duke or his elector
had given him a letter of recommendation. [. . .] He is introduced; the man of
letters is still in bed, and from the top of that throne barely looks at him: “What
is it? . . . Ah! It’s you, sir! I always forget your name! . . . Oh! Yes, yes; it’s for your
concert; so when is it, I will try to attend it.”
“It took place yesterday, I thought you would have done me the honor of
accepting the tickets I sent you; they were delivered to your home three days
ago.”
“Ah! That’s right, there they are! But how the hell do you want us to
remember a concert after three days? Besides, there are so many. You know
that yours is the thirty-second I’ve been asked to announce in three weeks?”
“So, sir, it won’t be in your paper, since you haven’t been there?”
“I wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to please your protector, the
Princess *****ska; she’s a delicious woman, I waltzed with her last winter. So
send me a little article that you have one of your friends make, and I’ll pass it
on.”
64

64
“Des artistes étrangers à Paris,” 173–74: “Il s’agit maintenant de surveiller l’insertion du fameux article qui doit
porter le nom glorieux du virtuose, jusqu’aux extrémités du monde. Il va donc, plein d’un secret effroi, faire une
visite matinale au critique célèbre, pour lequel son prince, sa princes, son grand-duc ou son électeur lui avait
donné une lettre de recommandation. Il sonne tout tremblant. On l’introduit; l’homme de lettres est encore au lit,
et du haut de ce trône le regardant à peine: ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est?… Ah! c’est vous, monsieur! j’oublie toujours
votre nom!… Au! Oui, oui; c’est pour votre concert; quand donc a-t-il lieu, je tâcherai d’y assister.—Il a eu lieu
hier, je croyais que vous m’auriez fait l’honneur d’accepter les billets que je vous ai envoyés; ils ont été remis chez
vous il y a trois jours.—Ah! parbleu c’est vrai, les voilà! mais comment diable voulez-vous qu’on se souvienne
d’un concert au bout de trois jours. D’ailleurs il y en a tant. Savez-vous que le vôtre est le trente-deuxième qu’on
me prie d’annoncer depuis trois semaines.—Alors, monsieur, il n’en sera pas question dans votre journal,
puisque vous n’y avez pas assisté?—Ce n’est pas une raison, je serais bien fâché de manquer l’occasion d’être
agréable à votre protectrice, la princesse *****ska; c’est une femme délicieuse, j’ai valsé avec elle l’hiver dernier.
Ainsi envoyez-moi un petit article que vous ferez faire par un de vos amis, je le ferai passer.’”
77
The virtuoso leaves the interview, finds a friend capable of writing an article in French,
submits the manuscript to the critic, who makes corrections, and sends it to the editor for
publication. By the time the article finally appears, half deleted, the name of the virtuoso and
the memory of his concert have already long since disappeared.
65

Ultimately, having a review required the recommendation of someone with a
connection to the newspaper and the musician’s perseverance and resourcefulness to do most
of the work him or herself, particularly when a newspaper’s readership had no great demand
to learn the outcome of the concert. It was a forbidding process, and explains why paying for
publication space or courting the favor of critics was so necessary.

Conclusion
A musician’s practical advertising concerns included making sure that his or her name
appeared in papers as often as possible: before coming to a city, before the concert, and after
the concert in reviews. Concert tickets, bribes, and cajoling were directed at journalists to
motivate reviews. Announcements and sometimes articles were crafted as objective reporting
though they were actually purchased. Posters were carefully designed and posted. Despite the
huge amount of advertising activity in Paris, musical advertisements were forced to remain
conservative. Posters and newspaper advertisements were relatively plain and unassuming
compared with other forms of advertisements, as audiences could be quite skeptical when an
announcement broke the pattern. Few musicians could get away with exaggeration without
being subjected to mockery. The most accomplished performers were sometimes the most

65
“Des artistes étrangers à Paris,” 174.
78
understated in their publicity. Critics were concerned to maintain the value of art and
seriousness, and to not cheapen it by conveying commercial motive.

This discussion of public media is just one piece of a larger context of soloists’ self-promotion.
The next chapters address the more traditional method of advertising through face-to-face
networking in salons.

79

III. Salon Networks: An Introduction

A significant part of composers’ and soloists’ advertising occurred not in the public forums of
newspapers and posters, but through face-to-face contact. Much as in the previous century,
musicians visited and performed for the wealthy and influential in hopes of receiving their
support. These interactions would result in endorsements of their talents, broader name
recognition as people saw them perform and spoke about them to others in their personal
networks, and perhaps employment or financial protectors. A main difference in the
nineteenth century was that musicians now found many patrons rather than only one.
However, though it is widely taken for granted that nineteenth-century salons were places of
networking for musicians, the general impression of the music salon is a romanticized one.
Nineteenth-century music salons are often nostalgically posited as tight circles of
artistic camaraderie all but lost today, where musicians such as Liszt and Chopin played for
the culturally elite in a mutually edifying environment of rich artistic creativity. We base this
perception on artist’s images portraying Liszt:

80

Figure 3.1: Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano, by Josef Danhauser (1840). Pictured (left to right) are
Alexandre Dumas (pe ̀re), Victor Hugo, George Sand, Paganini, Rossini, Liszt, Marie d’Agoult, with a
statue of Joan of Arc, portrait of Lord Byron, and bust of Beethoven in the background. Source: James
Huneker, Franz Liszt (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1911).

81

Figure 3.2: Liszt in a salon, by Josef Kriehuber (1846). Pictured (left to right): Kriehuber, Hector Berlioz,
Carl Czerny, Franz Liszt, Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. Source: “Franz Liszt,” Lithograph, New York Public
Library Digital Collections, Music Division, accessed 20 May 2018,
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-0846-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.
In the first image, a painting by Josef Danhauser, Liszt is surrounded by a rapt Alexandre
Dumas, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Paganini, Rossini, and Marie D’Agoult, as well as by
representations of Beethoven, Lord Byron, and Joan of Arc. Liszt seems to be paying homage
to—even channeling—Beethoven.
1
In the lithograph by Josef Kriehuber, Liszt basks in the
attention of Kriehuber, Hector Berlioz, Carl Czerny, and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. In each of
these portraits, Liszt unites an artistic community; intellectuals, writers, and musicians all turn

1
Richard Leppert has given a wonderful analysis of the gender dynamics at play in this image in Stephen Zank
and Richard Leppert, “The Concert and the Virtuoso,” in Piano Roles: A New History of the Piano (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2002), ed. James Parakilas, 204–5.

82
admiringly toward him. However, these images are portraits in contrived settings—not
documentary evidence of reality. They have a clear agenda: to elevate Liszt by posing him at
the center of other luminaries of his time and with heroic and pioneering historical figures.
These images also have the agenda of elevating Conrad Graf’s (1782–1851) pianos, which
appear in each portrait. It is known that Graf commissioned the Danhauser painting as a
thank-you to Liszt for concerts he gave in Vienna in late 1839 to raise money for a Beethoven
monument in Bonn.
2
Considering this context, we cannot uncritically accept these images as
representative of salon culture. Both scenes are imaginary. This is not to say that nothing like
them ever happened, but further inquiry into the typical salon settings of the July Monarchy
reveal that these images are not representative of what musicians’ experiences were normally
like.
Salons were a French tradition of aristocratic home gatherings for discussing political,
artistic, or literary interests and sharing entertainment. Playing or listening to music was often
part of the program, and indeed gained prominence in the nineteenth century. Sometimes
these events were indeed cozy, intimate gatherings of friends around a piano. Other times,
musicians performed for hundreds of guests in the mansions of the sparkling elite. Whether a
musician would mix socially with the guests or not depended on the event. Salons, moreover,
were not necessarily pleasurable evenings for the musicians, but events that they engaged in
conscientiously in order to network and find supporters, performance opportunities, and
enhanced reputation.
Though musicians’ networking in salons has been taken for granted, no scholarship
specifically addresses it. Previous literature on salons has focused on female leadership,

2
Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2008),
207.

83
whether salons were artistically significant spaces for music making, whether these were
private or public spaces, and how musicians’ identities were tied to salons (most notably,
Frédéric Chopin’s). Otherwise, salons are only mentioned in biographies and scholarly works
on other topics, usually to call attention to musicians’ prestigious social connections and, by
extension, their importance and success in Paris. The more basic issues—why and how
musicians participated in salons, what business exchanges in these spaces looked like, and
musicians’ attitudes toward these events—are unaddressed.
In this chapter, I introduce the nineteenth-century salon: how it differed from the
previous century’s salons, the role of music in them, and the types of music performed. In
Chapter Four, I describe six salons who were the most influential for musicians: those run by
Marie d’Agoult, Cristina Belgiojoso, and four others less familiar to musicologists—Juliette
Récamier, the Rothschilds, Pierre-Joseph Zimmermann, and Mathieu Orfila. In Chapter Five,
I turn to the musicians’ interests: the roles musicians could take in salons, the kinds of
compensation they received, and the kinds of careers their performances led to. And in
Chapter Six, I address musicians’ efforts to integrate with the elite they entertained.

Nineteenth-century salon renovations
The word salon has several applications in both musical and nonmusical contexts. As the
historian Jolanta Pekacz has pointed out, scholars have frequently used the term in a “‘you-
know-what-I-mean’ manner, as though no explanation of its substance was necessary”; this
has created ambiguity about what is being discussed.
3
And as Meg Freeman Whalen has
pointed out, the salon was an ambiguous space, difficult to characterize: it could be private or

3
Jolanta Pekacz, “Chopin and the Discourse on Salons,” in Chopin in Paris: The 1830s (Warsaw: Narodowy Instytut
Fryderyka Chopina, 2007), 299.

84
public (or somewhere in between), noble or bourgeois, male- or female- dominated, and in a
musical sense, professional or amateur, interactive or an un-interactive, formal concert.
4
Salon,
in its most basic sense, is the French word for the room in a home used for social gatherings
and relaxation—the living room, as we call it in American households. This sense, in fact,
remained the principal use of the term during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
words more commonly used to describe the gatherings we now think of as salons were dîners,
soupers, sociétés particulières (“specific company” gatherings), and bureaux d’esprit (“mind
offices,” charmingly).
5
It was in the early nineteenth century that salon became more widely
used to name the events held in that space. Additionally, salon became attached to small
concert halls, such as the Salon Pleyel associated with the Pleyel piano manufacturer, and the
same for the Erard, Herz, and Pape piano manufacturers.
6

Salons did not necessarily have music. The general expectation was that a salon was a
gathering to discuss political and artistic ideas, language, and manners, or to share
entertainment together, including games, puzzles, and readings.
7
Music was frequently a part
of these evenings, performed either by the family and guests or by professional musicians. Up
through the eighteenth century, it was most common that a wealthy house’s full-time
musicians provided the concerts or background music, but in the nineteenth century, wealthy

4
Meg Freeman Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace: The Nineteenth-Century Music Salon,” Women of
Note Quarterly 3, no. 4 (November 1995): 17.
5
Pekacz, “Chopin and the Discourse on Salons,” 300. In Italy, a term for these social events was conversazione.
Conversation also had this connotation in the first Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (1694) (cited on the website
Dictionnaires d’autrefois: Dictionnaires des 17ème, 18ème, 19ème et 20ème siècles, accessed 15 March 2018,
http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/dico1look.pl?strippedhw=conversation).
6
Andreas Ballstaedt, “Chopin as a ‘Salon Composer’ in Nineteenth-Century German Criticism,” in Chopin Studies
II, ed. John Rink and Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 20.
7
Nancy Jane Shumate Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire: A French Cultural Institution in
Historical Perspective” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Dallas, 1982), vi.

85
families more commonly contracted independent professionals to perform for just one event
at a time. This allowed for lower financial commitment from the hosts, many of whom had
lost wealth after the 1789 Revolution and could no longer afford salaries for full-time
musicians or orchestras.
8
This arrangement also gave musicians independence to work for
multiple families, to own the rights to their compositions (when in many cases their
employers had owned them before), and to have achieve broader reputations than was
possible while working in just one home.
While some scholars have seen salons after the French Revolution as having lost some
of their brilliance and being only a pale vestige of their previous glory, there is much evidence
that the salon came into its full richness as a space for music making in the nineteenth
century.
9
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century salons had been held only in wealthy
aristocratic homes, where the women who ran them created centers of political power and
planning. Accruing political power had been the main aim of many of these salons, such as
that of the famous Madame de Staël (1766–1817). However, salons after the Revolution were
much less political, in part because the laws on women’s rights had become more restrictive,
as salonnières has been blamed for the nation’s political instability and corruption.
Additionally, the explosion of the press had moved political conversation out of private

8
Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace,” 18.
9
Elaine Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition: Its Cultural and Historical Significance in
Parisian Musical Society,” (DMA thesis, The Juilliard School, 1996), 198.

86
meetings and into the media.
10
The gap left by the exchange of political news and ideas
allowed room for music to take a more prominent role.
11

According to a Parisian journalist, “Conversation had died as the salon’s main
activity . . . because the gatherings were too large and their mood too tense—‘in default of the
old dialogue a bond is needed, and that bond is music.’”
12
Music had become a key to unifying
the classes and those of differing political persuasions. A music critic in the 1842 Revue générale
de musique wrote, “Music has become a respectable and indeed a distinguished juste milieu, as
an art of reconciliation between all classes of society. When one listens, no discussions, no
disputes, are possible. Music stimulates goodwill.”
13

10
Sophie Gay, Salons célèbres (Paris: Michel-Lévy frères, 1837), 7; Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon
Tradition,” 219. In response to the perception of women’s influence of the social and political corruption leading
to the Revolution, the Napoleonic Code of 1804 strengthened male leadership. It reduced women’s rights to being
on par with those of children: they had no ability to vote or to buy or transfer property (Leung-Wolf, “Women,
Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 218). Divorce laws were also sharply skewed in favor of men: while an
adulterous wife could be divorced under any conditions (at which point she would serve a three-month to two-
year jail sentence), a woman could divorce an adulterous husband only if his mistress were living in their home
(he would serve no jail time) (Code civil des Français [Paris: A. Commaille, 1807], art. 229, 230, and 298). A sign of the
increased domestication of women is that between 1840 and 1900, the childbirth rate rose from five to seven
children per household (Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 220, citing Michelle Perrot, “Roles and
Characters,” in A History of Private Life, Volume IV: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great Wars, ed. Michelle
Perrot, trans. Arthur Goldhammer [Boston: Harvard University Press, 1994], 191).
Marie d’Agoult lamented the lost influence of women in general, and salonnières particularly, when she wrote
that the new France honored wives and mothers but turned them into “subalterns in their own homes” (Steven
D. Kale, “Women’s Intellectual Agency in the History of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century French Salons,” in
Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women, ed. Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, Paul Gibbard, Karen Green [Burlington:
Ashgate, 2013], 123–38, 137, quoting Marie d’Agoult, Mémoires, souvenirs et journaux de la comtesse d’Agoult, ed. C. F.
Dupêchez [Paris: n.p., 1990], 278). However, d’Agoult believed that despite women’s loss of autonomy in the new
France, women who hosted salons could still “‘exercise a serious influence outside of private life’ by capturing
people’s imaginations, stimulating their minds, and encouraging them to reexamine received opinions” (Steven
D. Kale, “Women, Salons, and the State in the Aftermath of the French Revolution,” Journal of Women’s History 13,
no. 4 [Winter 2002]: 70, citing Mémoires, souvenirs et journaux de la Comtesse d’Agoult [Daniel Stern] [Paris: Mercure
de France, 1990], 30). The strong leadership, presence, and charisma of hostess remained essential to salons’ tone
and identity.
11
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 197–98, citing Amelia Gere Mason, The Women of
French Salons (New York: The Century Co., 1891), 285–86.
12
Ibid., 205, quoting William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris,
and Vienna (London: Biddles Ltd., 1975), 32, quoting an unidentified source.
13
Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace,” 18, citing Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 40.

87
Moreover, high-quality music became more widespread as the rising middle class
gained more financial clout and could also afford to hire musicians. Having in-home musical
performances was a way that the middle class could to exhibit their improved status.
According to the historian William Weber, “Through sponsorship of salons and support of
virtuosi they could display their wealth and exemplify themselves as bastions of the elite
world’s musical life.’”
14
Salons, therefore, were a more flexible way of employing musicians
and were less exclusive and elitist, and more mainstream than they had been previously.
15

The myriad of musicians in Paris met the increased demand for music. In 1845, one
newspaper estimated that during the 1844 season, about 850 salon gatherings in Paris had
heard enough music to be considered home concerts.
16
The abundance of professional
musicians also increased the quality of music heard in salons. The salonnière Sophie Gay (1776–
1852) wrote that while music had normally been provided by the host’s children singing or
playing the piano, the 1830s were a markedly different era, in which salon guests heard full
arias and virtuosic piano pieces.
17

Scholarship on salons was for a long time limited also because scholars had assumed
that the repertoire performed in salons was, in general, artistically shallow and insignificant.
18

14
William Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 57.
15
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 197.
16
Ibid., 207, citing Jeffrey Cooper, The Rise of Instrumental Music and Concert Series in Paris, 1828–1871, Studies in
Musicology, ed. George Buelow, no. 65 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983), 87: In 1845, “about 850 salons had
substantial enough musical interludes that they could be called private concerts.”
17
Gay, Salons célèbres, 233–34, quoted in Weber, Music and the Middle Class, 38.
18
Maria Anna Harley, Susan Marie Praeder, and Louis Pomey, for instance, state that “by the end of the century,
the salon became synonymous with lack of proper musical values, with the artificial and inauthentic. Salons,
inhabited by women who could not have public careers as professionals and were limited to the domain of the
home, became symbols of all that is superficial and kitsch” (“Chopin and Women Composers: Collaborations,
Imitations, Inspirations,” The Polish Review 45, no. 1 [2000]: 46).

88
However, it has become clear that all kinds of music were performed. Marie d’Agoult
described the music played in her own salon:
In Paris and in the country, too, we had good music; the new compositions of
musical romanticism were played there: Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique,
arranged for the piano by Liszt; the mazurkas of Chopin, Hiller’s etudes,
Schubert’s lieder, Berlioz’s “The Captive” was sung.
19
There was a mix of
compositions that were lesser, but much in vogue: Niedermeyer’s Le Lac, even
more insignificant romances, harp or guitar solos, etc., because it is the right of
society to welcome equally anything that can be used for their amusement:
beautiful or mediocre, bad or worst.
20

The music that society had the “right to welcome” included the popular but musically
insignificant morceaux and valses de salon that were advertised to amateur piano players in the
weekly papers, Chopin’s and Liszt’s stunning works, and the classics of Bach, Beethoven, and
Mozart.
21
The first followings of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s music in France were, in fact, in
salons, such as the concerts the violinist and chamber musician Pierre Baillot hosted in his
home on Sundays. Salons, therefore, had the potential to be on the cutting edge of musical
taste. Following the tradition of the previous centuries, the most elite way to listen to music
was in aristocratic homes, as it had always been, and it remained an important facet of
musicians’ careers. The musicologist Carl Dahlhaus rightfully recognized the salon in the first
half of the nineteenth century as “on par with the opera house and the concert hall as a crucial

19
“The Captive” is a song with piano and cello accompaniment.
20
D’Agoult, Mémoires, souvenirs et journaux, ed. Charles F. Dupêchez (Paris: Mercure de France, 2007), 269: "On
faisait aussi chez moi, à Paris et à la compagne, de bonne musique; on y jouait les compositions nouvelles du
romantisme musical: la Symphonie fantastique de Berlioz, arrangée pour le piano par Liszt; les Mazourques de
Chopin, les Etudes de Hiller. On chantait les Lieder de Schubert, la Captive de Berlioz. On y mêlait des
compositions moindres, mais fort en vogue: le Lac de Niedermayer, des romances plus insignifiantes encore, des
soli de harpe ou de guitare, etc., car le propre des gens du monde c’est d’accueillir également bien tout ce qui peut
servir à l’amusement: le beau et le médiocre, le mauvais et le pire."
21
The singer Pauline Viardot was among the pioneers of Bach’s music. She was an early subscriber to the
complete edition of Bach’s complete works (the Bach-Gesellschaft edition, 1850) and performed them in her salon
(Mark Everist, Mozart’s Ghosts [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012], 184, n. 84; Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music,
and the Salon Tradition,” 265).

89
venue for the history of music.”
22
Moreover, in the increased commercialism of the July
Monarchy, it was more likely that great music would be performed in intimate settings rather
than in public concert halls that relied on ticket sales to large audiences. Chopin’s output is, of
course, the primary example of artful music designed for the salon and unsuited for concert
halls. In addition, certain salons (such as those by Zimmermann and Orfila, discussed in the
next chapter) were designed specifically to cater to musical connoisseurs. All this to simply
say that all levels of musical quality were represented in salons and performances could be of
the highest professionalism and artistry.
While the types of music performed varied, there was a marked preference for vocal
performers and operatic numbers. A few salon chroniclers remarked that guests sometimes
grew bored during instrumental music. Napoleon, for instance, unnerved attendees of a salon
around 1800 when he suddenly smacked the piano after an instrumentalist performed and
demanded that his favorite singer, Pierre-Jean Garat (1762–1823), take his place.
23
The writer
François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was known to fall asleep during instrumental
music.
24
More telling, though, is the sheer number of accounts that name singers attending
and performing in salons. One favorite was the passionate and energetic Maria Malibran
(1808–1836), who, with little regard for the effects on her magnificent voice, was known to
perform at the Opéra, stay up all night at a salon, and then go horseback riding in the

22
Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1989), 147–48, cited in Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace,” 16.
23
Amélie Lenormant, Souvenirs et correspondance tirés des papiers de Mme Récamier, tome premier (Paris: Michel-
Lévy frères, 1859), 38. This event occurred sometime between 1799, when Napoleon became first consul (which is
how he is referred to in Lenormant’s telling of the story), and 1803, when he forced this particular salon to close
for political reasons. Garat was known for singing Gluck and had been jailed after the Revolution for writing a
song against the royal family (perhaps a reason Napoleon liked him).
24
Mme la comtesse de Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois: souvenirs intimes. Nouvelle édition. 2e série (Paris: J.
Victorion, n.d.), 143.

90
morning. Malibran's sister, Pauline Viardot (1821–1910), who had a successful singing career
touring Europe, eventually hosted her own salon. Others included the international opera star
and “the greatest dramatic singer of his time” Luigi Lablache (1794–1858), who amassed a huge
repertoire by his willingness to take on smaller roles as well as starring ones; Adolphe Nourrit
(1802–1839), the powerful tenor who worked with Rossini to create all the starring roles of his
operas; and the handsome tenor Gilbert Duprez (1806–1896), who was known as the first to
sing a high C in a chest voice rather than head voice.
25
All these singers were employed at the
Paris Opéra or Théâtre Italien, but performed in salons when allowed to by their managers
and contracts. (Performing at soirées without permission resulted in heavy fines: for example,
two singers at the Opéra were fined 300 and 500 francs for doing so.
26
)
Despite salon attendees’ preference for vocal music, there were also enough
instrumentalists who performed that the influential music critic, journal editor, and historian
François-Joseph Fétis around 1827 believed that salons were shifting taste toward instrumental
virtuosos and influencing what was performed in public concerts.
27
In salons, the virtuosity of
the soloists kept listeners’ interest despite the lack of extra-musical reference. Listeners were
developing more of a demand for instrumental music. Soon after, however, Fétis complained

25
Albert Cler, Physiologie du musicien, illustr. by Daumier, Gavarni, Janet-Lange, and Valentin (Paris: Aubert;
Lavigne, 1841), 57; the manager of Her Majesty’s Theater in London, quoted in Philip E. J. Robinson and Elizabeth
Forbes, “Lablache, Luigi,” Grove Music Online (19 March 2018); Gregory W. Bloch, “The Pathological Voice of
Gilbert-Louis Duprez,” Cambridge Opera Journal 19, no. 1, The Divo and the Danseur: On the Nineteenth-Century
Male Opera and Ballet Performer (March 2007): 11–31.
26
Kimberly White, “The Cantatrice and the Profession of Singing at the Paris Opéra and Opéra Comique, 1830–
1848” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2012), 158.
27
He wrote that the “development of the musical salons contributed to the replacement of orchestral and
chamber music by piano solos and instrumental or vocal solos with piano accompaniment” (Leung-Wolf,
“Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 255, citing Cooper, The Rise of Instrumental Music, 140).

91
that piano-dominated soirées had decreased the interest in orchestral concerts.
28
Audiences
apparently preferred the salon’s relaxed setting and lighter music over the more formal
setting and more difficult music of Beethoven, Haydn, and Berlioz performed at the Société
des concerts du Conservatoire.
However, salons should not be considered spaces of lesser importance than concert
halls. They were an appreciated alternative to concerts, because of their more relaxed format.
The Countess Merlin (María de las Mercedes Santa Cruz y Montalvo, 1789–1852), a Spanish-
Cuban émigrée and another important salonnière, writer, and amateur singer in Paris, wrote
that salons were popular because “men of letters were bored by concerts and recitals, which
prevented them from discussing ideas and shining before an audience.”
29
Salons gave a
welcome balance of contemplative listening and social interaction. In addition, they could
expose as many listeners to performers’ and composers’ music as public concerts, as hundreds
of attendees that could be at some salons, comparable with the number of seats in many
recital halls. Moreover, salons could be incredibly formative in musicians’ development and
success—as much as the concert stage, I would argue—because of the benefits musicians
could receive from participating in them.

Conclusion
In summary, musicians became a more important part of salon culture than they had been in
previous centuries. Their participation was used as a symbol of cultural capital by the
multiple classes that now hired them, and their performances were seen as a glue for bringing

28
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 246, referring to Fétis, “Nouvelles de Paris: Ecole
Royale de Musique: Société des Concerts,” Revue musicale (1828–29): 516.
29
Translated in Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution
of 1848 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 144.

92
together people of various classes and political persuasions. All types of music making
occurred in salons and even set trends that would affect public concerts.

93

IV. Hosts of Parisian Music Salons

When asked to name music salon hosts from the July Monarchy, musicologists might first
respond with Countess Marie d’Agoult (Franz Liszt’s lover), George Sand (Chopin’s lover),
and Princess Cristina Belgiojoso, who hosted the famous piano duel between Liszt and
Sigismund Thalberg. These were the muses and charming socialites connected with our
favorite piano virtuosos, but their salons were by far not the only salons in Paris to feature
music, nor even were d’Agoult’s or Sand’s very significant in terms of the number of guests
they drew or publicity they attracted. More fashionable were those of Juliette Récamier,
hostess of what her compatriots considered the most fashionable gatherings in Paris.
Musicians often performed at her salons, and her surviving correspondence provides a rare
glimpse into the behind-the-scenes organization of salon concerts. In addition, the famous
Rothschild banking family, the celebrated medical doctor and poison expert Mathieu Orfila,
and the Conservatoire piano professor Pierre-Joseph Zimmermann all took particular interest
in featuring music in their homes and in furthering the careers of musicians.
1

1
Salon hosts were not always women; male hosts were less common, but not rare. Another male-hosted salon
that easily comes to mind is Gioachino Rossini’s. But though he was living in Paris between 1831 and 1836—dining
and socializing more than composing—his regular samedi salons did not begin until December 1858, a few years
after his return to Paris in 1855 (Richard Osborne, Rossini: His Life and Works [New York: Oxford University Press,
2007], 153). Eduard Hanslick described the atmosphere of these popular events: “Rossini’s house . . . is far from
possessing the amenities necessary to such an innumerable quantity of guests. The heat is sometimes intolerable
and the crowd so thick that when a fair singer. . . has to approach the piano to sing, she is literally forced to fight
her way to it. Rows of ladies glittering with jewels occupy the whole of the music room; the men stand, so
jammed against one another that they cannot move” (Mina Curtiss, Bizet and His World [New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1958], 45–46, cited in Elaine Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition: Its Cultural and
Historical Significance in Parisian Musical Society” [DMA thesis, The Juilliard School, 1996], 263).

94
What follows provides a window into each of these salons.
2
I begin by describing how
hosts—or more often, hostesses—generally structured their salons; then I describe the
interests that each of the six salon hosts and hostesses took in music, the atmospheres they
created, and how they served as patrons or protectors to musicians.

Salon logistics
Salon hosts would invite guests for either matinées held, paradoxically, not the morning
(matin) but in the afternoon, or soirées held in the evening.
3
Mornings were spent sleeping or
preparing the house, and lunches were not open to company as they had been in the previous
century.
4
Some households, such as the Rothschilds’, held both matinées and soirées.
Matinées were generally smaller, open to perhaps ten or so guests—usually close friends if the
household was hosting both a matinée and soirée; soirées were open to perhaps dozens or
sometimes hundreds.
5

Matinée salons centered around domestic visiting hours, explaining why women were
commonly the hostesses. During the July Monarchy, it was customary for women to choose
one afternoon per week to receive guests, between 2 and 7 o’clock.
6
An etiquette book from
1842 recommends that husbands not be present for their wives’ visiting hours, but instead visit

2
For descriptions of many others, I direct the reader to Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition.”
3
Anne Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante ou la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 121.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid., 120–21.
6
Ibid., 121.

95
other homes.
7
The salonnière Sophie Gay similarly believed that salons had the best chance of
succeeding if the man of the house were either absent or politely kept to the background.
8

This was a domain where women were allowed more independence and leadership.
9

Many women who established their own salons did so on the impetus of separation
from their husbands. This was the case for Marie d’Agoult and George Sand when they
sought social circles apart from their husbands’; both eventually separated from their
husbands after founding their artistic social circles. Cristina Belgiojoso established her salon
in Paris after leaving her husband and her home in Milan. Juliette Récamier eventually moved
alone to her own apartment where she entertained guests, as her unconsummated marriage
had been one of convenience rather than love. Likely, the strength of personality and desire
for independent control needed to undertake a separation at that time revealed some of the
characteristics necessary to lead a salon. These women craved a voice, influence, and
likeminded company. To attract and manage influential and talented people required
strength of personality, intelligence, and wit. Salonnières who stood out as charismatic and
brilliant naturally attracted intellectual elites.

Countess Marie d’Agoult (1805–1876)
D’Agoult is exemplary in this way. As a young woman, she spent time in the salons of others
and in these circles developed a reputation as a femme supérieure. She wrote in her memoir
about how she was urged to start her own meetings:

7
Ibid., 122, citing Marie-Bénigne-Esther Letissier, La Société parisienne, esquisses de moeurs, par un jeune provincial
(Paris: Amyot, 1842).
8
Sophie Gay, Salons célèbres (Paris: Michel-Lévy frères, 1837), 8.
9
In actuality, however, the valuing of women’s autonomy had been more real in the eighteenth century than it
was in the nineteenth. See footnote 10 in the previous chapter for more information.

96
In spite of the qualities and defects which, in my case, hardly accorded to this
role, [people] persisted in bringing me into it. They obsessed about it constantly
everywhere. At all times, in all countries, in all circumstances, without seeking
it out, without pretending to fill the role, despite myself . . . I saw myself the
center of a chosen circle, a salon.
10

This chosen circle was one of artists—she did not care much about her station and
found her social surroundings with her husband “of convenience” Count Charles d’Agoult
shallow and prejudiced. After he purchased their second home, a château at Croissy eighteen
miles outside Paris, she began to form her own social circle there and invited artistically
minded guests for concerts and amateur theatricals. Her salon was still a joint undertaking
with her husband at this point, until their separation in 1834. Count d’Agoult in his memoir
mentions this salon briefly in a moment when he writes that one early salon would have fallen
to pieces if he had not asked for Rossini’s help in visiting and persuading the singer Maria
Malibran to reach an agreement on the evening’s program.
11

D’Agoult became known for the excellence of her musical soirées, where Malibran,
Chopin, Liszt, Rossini, the violinist Paganini, the opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, and
the singers Giuditta Pasta, Henriette Sontag, Adolphe Nourrit, and Pauline Viardot
performed.
12
D’Agoult herself also sang and played piano.
13
Nonmusical guests included the
literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, writer Alfred de Vigny, philosopher and

10
Marie d’Agoult, Mémoires, souvenirs et journaux de la comtesse d’Agoult: Présentation et notes de Charles F. Dupêchez
(Paris: Mercure de France, 2007), 271 : “En dépit des qualités et des défauts qui, chez moi, ne s’accordaient guère à
ce rôle, on s’obstina à m’y faire entrer. On s’y est obstiné constamment partout. En tout temps, en tous pays, en
toutes circonstances, sans le chercher, sans y prétendre, malgré moi . . . je me suis vue le centre d’un cercle choisi,
d’un salon.”
11
Colonel comte Charles d’Agoult, Mémoires, quoted in Marie de Flavigny, comtesse d’Agoult: Correspondance
générale: Tome I: 1821–1836, ed. Charles F. Dupêchez (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), 40.
12
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 259.
13
See Letters 25[31] and 26[32], 30 August 1833 and 2 September 1833, in Correspondence of Franz Liszt and the
Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, translated by Michael Short (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2013), 18–19.

97
playwright Baron Ferdinand d’Eckstein, novelist and librettist Eugène Sue, writer and music
critic Heinrich Heine, the painter and violinist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, the poet
Georges Herwegh, the poet Adam Mickiewicz, the painter Henri Lehmann, the historian
Louis de Viel-Castel, the novelists Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac, the writer and critic
Théophile Gautier, and the director of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ferdinand Denis.
14

Her aristocratic peers were conspicuously lacking.
After her forty years of experience as a hostess, she had perfected the art of uniting
intelligence and talent, as well as serving as a mentor to other salonnières. She wrote down the
qualities a successful hostess should have:
Happiness comes only from abnegation and wisdom. To gather round one a
group of men and some intelligent women, one must present a serene and
happy appearance.
One must simplify one’s life, letting no complications appear to the eye, even
though life be troubled.
To keep friends round one it is necessary to create an impersonal and peaceful
atmosphere, which gives repose.
Consult the first members of a salon before admitting others, that there may be
founders, or some who believe themselves so.
Avoid the exchange of confidences, which creates too great an intimacy and
compels advice which at some time you will be reproached with.
Be modest without effacing yourself; combine simplicity and elegance. Inspire
confidence in the strength of your opinions, that you may appear at once
immovable and tolerant.
The first duty of she who would hold a salon is to keep up the interest of those
whom she has gathered around her.
To impress upon them that she is more taken up with them than with herself.
15

14
Nancy Jane Shumate Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire: A French Cultural Institution in
Historical Perspective” (PhD diss., University of Texas, 1982), 206.
15
Mme. Edmond Adam (Juliette Lamber), My Literary Life (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1904), 540–41, cited in
ibid., 213. D’Agoult likely wrote this advice well after the July Monarchy.

98
She also considered that “you need twenty men friends and five women to found a salon.”
16

Being a hostess required graciously providing a welcoming atmosphere and diplomatically
acknowledging various guests’ interests without being given to favoritism. A hostess needed to
encourage equal participation and responsibility among the guests. A chosen group of people
would be present on a regular basis, protect the groups’ exclusivity, and be conscientiousness
of the others before inviting visitors. These guidelines likely regulated the salons of Sand,
Récamier, Belgiojoso, and Zimmermann as well. (In contrast, the Rothschilds’ and Orfilas’
salons were not as intimate and regularly included at least sixty and as many as five hundred
guests.
17
It is likely that newcomers and visitors from out of town were often present, and that
the gatherings were less democratic regarding who would be invited.)
Most music-historical accounts introduce d’Agoult simply as Liszt’s mistress and a
writer, but this abbreviated portrayal underestimates her. She had diverse interests and was a
prolific author of twenty novels and political tomes. Her three-volume Histoire de la révolution
de 1848 became the authoritative work on the subject that was often cited by historians who
came after her.
18
She also served as Liszt’s ghostwriter and publicity agent (as discussed in the
following chapter). Apart from her assistance to Liszt, she and her salon seem to have not
done anything specific to advance the careers of musicians.

16
Adam, My Literary Life, 542.
17
This is not a phenomenon limited to Paris. Fanny von Arnstein’s salon in Vienna and Fanny Hensel’s in Berlin
had attendances well over 100 each week (Meg Freeman Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace: The
Nineteenth-Century Music Salon,” Women of Note Quarterly 3, no. 4 [November 1995]: 22).
18
Emile Haraszti and John A. Gutman, “Franz Liszt—Author Despite Himself: The History of a Mystification,”
The Musical Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1947): 500.

99

Figure 4.1: Marie d’Agoult, by Henri Lehmann (for the Salon of 1843). Source: Musée Carnavalet, Paris,
Photo source: The Art Tribute, accessed 22 May 2018,
http://www.thearttribune.com/spip.php?page=docbig&id_document=233.

Juliette Récamier (1777–1849)
The charismatic, beautiful, and ever-young Madame Récamier had been a close friend of
Madame de Staël (1766–1817), the most influential salonnière of the Revolutionary era, and

100
eventually succeeded her as the most elite salonnière in Paris.
19
Historians have not taken
significant notice of her connections with music, but she was an accomplished performer
herself and featured music often in her salons, earning the respect of many musicians for her
generosity to the arts.
Her interest began when as a girl she learned singing, piano, and harp. She eventually
took voice lessons with the composer François-Adrien Boïeldieu (1775–1834) and harp lessons
with the virtuoso and music critic Léon Gatayes (1805–1877), who performed many duets with
her at her apartment in the Abbaye-aux-Bois convent not far from the Jardin du
Luxembourg.
20
Surviving correspondence indicates that she tried to help Boïeldieu in his
career: In a letter, Boïeldieu reveals that she was trying to set up a meeting between him and
an influential art critic and philanthropist whom she thought could be useful. In addition she
wanted to organize a collaboration between him and Chateaubriand for setting choral music
to Chateaubriand’s tragedy Moïse, but this project was never realized.
21
Récamier played
keyboard until the end of her life, writing her own music and playing the organ.
22
Her niece,
adopted daughter, and biographer Amélie Lenormant observed her playing with tears in her

19
Alexandre Dumas met her when she was upwards of 55 and found that she gave the impression of being only 25
because of her smooth hands, beautiful eyes, and youthful voice (Alexandre Dumas, “La Juive,” in Gazette
musicale de Paris 2, no. 18 [5 May 1835]: 153). See also Paul Triaire, Récamier et ses contemporains, 1774–1852, étude
d’histoire de la médecine aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1899), 422.
20
Amélie Lenormant, Souvenirs et correspondance tirés des papiers de Mme Récamier, vol. 1 (Paris: Michel-Lévy frères,
1859), 7; Malou Haine, 400 lettres de musiciens au Musée royal de Mariemont (Liège: Editions Mardaga, 1995), 379. I
have seen nothing by Juliette to substantiate this.
21
Letter from Boïeldieu to Récamier, Paris, 8 January 1829, in Haine, 400 lettres de musiciens, 173.
22
Lenormant, Souvenirs et correspondance, 8, 180; Hugh Noel Williams, Madame Récamier and Her Friends (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 276; Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 201.

101
eyes and being so transported when other musicians played that she hardly thought of the
guests who filled the salons.
23

Figure 4.2: Juliette Récamier, by François-Louis Dejuinne (1826). This portrait shows her seated on her
furniture of choice, the recamier, which was named after her. It also features her library, harp, and
square piano. Source: © RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi., R.F. 2004-6,
accessed 21 May 2018, http://cartelfr.louvre.fr/cartelfr/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=27532.
Music lovers sought out her salon based on her reputation of having excellent musical
taste and ability.
24
Meyerbeer once attended a soirée hosted by Lenormant only because he
hoped to meet her famous aunt; she eventually introduced him to her at another time and he

23
Lenormant, Souvenirs et correspondance, 8, 38.
24
For example, Count Adam Albert de Neipperg (1775–1829), an Austrian general and statesman and a
“consummate musician himself” (Lenormant, Souvenirs et correspondance, 250).

102
several more times attended her soirées and at-homes.
25
Performers there included the singers
Pauline Viardot, Manuel Garcia, Giovanni Battista Rubini, and Lablache, pianist Cathinka
Mackenzie de Dietz, and harpist Edmond Larivière. Other guests included the aristocratic
elite, such artists as Eugène Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David, and most prominently, the
celebrity writer François-René de Chateaubriand, who famously visited her at three o’clock
every afternoon.
26

Récamier’s salon was principally a literary salon in support of Chateaubriand’s work.
D’Agoult described the long readings of Chateaubriand’s works as tedious: appearing
amusing, she related, but not actually being so.
27
Princess Belgiojoso also found Récamier’s
evenings dull on occasion, but praised them on others.
28
Princess Belgiojoso wrote in her
“Memories in Exile” (1850) that the salon of Récamier was “one of those dwellings between the
court and the academy, where great men and women acted like poets, where one chatted as
much as one disputed, where if someone dared to coin a new word, those words would enter
straightaway into the dictionary of the Académie.”
29

From Récamier’s correspondence we learn about the process for planning a salon
concert. Madame Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, a singer turned writer of children’s tales and
sad poems, writes on her behalf to Madame Edouard Duprez, on the subject of her brother-in-

25
The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Volume 1: 1791–1839, trans. and ed. Robert Ignatius Letellier (London:
Associated University Presses, 1999), 394, 401, 406, 437–38.
26
M. le Baron de Gerando, Lettres inédites et souvenirs biographiques de Mme Récamier et de Mme de Stael (Paris: Ve
Jules Renouard, 1868), 25–26; Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 201–2.
27
See d’Agoult, Mémoires, souvenirs et journaux (2007), 265.
28
Monica Chiyoung Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso: Her Passion for Music and Politics” (DMA
diss., University of Washington, 2014), 66.
29
Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso, Ricordi nell’esilio, ed. Maria Francesca Davì (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2001), 94;
originally published in Le National (5 Sept. to 12 Oct. 1850), translated in Mary Ann Smart, “Parlor Games: Italian
Music and Italian Politics in the Parisian Salon,” 19th-Century Music 34, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 51.

103
law, and the opera star Gilbert Duprez’s agreement to appear in a concert at her apartment
the weekend of February 4, 1841. Desbordes-Valmore writes that M. Duprez’s great talent will
surely attract a crowd; Récamier would like Madame Duprez to sell the tickets and secure
supporting musicians for him. Valmore herself reserves a 20-franc ticket in advance.
30
Though
the concert was canceled for unknown reasons, the letter demonstrates that
1) several people would be enlisted in putting these events together;
2) they worked quickly: this letter was written on February 2, only two or three days
before the event, giving little time to organize multiple musicians; and
3) guests could be expected to buy tickets to hear a famous musician in a salon, similarly
as they would at a concert hall. On that same weekend Récamier was hosting a benefit
for the victims of a flood in her hometown of Lyon. It is not clear if the proceeds from
this concert were meant to be a part of that benefit, or if they would help pay the
musicians.
Récamier’s salon exemplified the archetypal Parisian salon, with its regular visiting
hours and fashionable reputation among the elite. It also demonstrates how musicians were
invited and what a hostess might do to connect musicians with other people who could be
useful to them.

Princess Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso (1808–1871)
Princess Cristina Belgiojoso was one of the most curious and ostentatious figures of the July
Monarchy. She was acclaimed for her intelligence, dramatic flair, and work for reunification

30
Letter from Mme. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore to Mme. Edouard Duprez, Paris, 2 February 1841, in Haine,
400 lettres de musiciens, 240.

104
in her Italian homeland.
31
Her writings advocated for education for women and the lower
classes, a free press, and Saint-Simonianism.
32
Balzac used her as a model for some of his
literary heroines, and Heine, Alfred de Musset, and the American and July Revolutions hero
General Gilbert du Motier Lafayette fell in love with her (in his seventies).
33
Her salon—
strikingly decorated with black velvet, silver star-studded wall hangings and furniture and
crucifixes, skulls, daggers, and holy water
34
—was at its peak during the 1830s and 40s and was
a center for Italian art and thought in Paris.
35
It gathered many artistic and aristocratic elites,
sometimes attracting as many as 500 guests.
36

31
Emile Le Senne, “Le Salon de la princesse Belgiojoso,” Bulletin de la Société historique et archéologique des VIIIe et
XVIIe arrondissements de Paris 9 (January–June 1907): 56.
32
Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire,” 218.
33
Ibid., 216.
34
Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso,” 21, 65; Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire,” 218,
citing Anny Latour, Uncrowned Queens, trans. A. A. Dent (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1970), 127.
35
Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire,” 217.
36
Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso,” 64.

105

Figure 4.3: Cristina Belgiojoso, by Francesco Hayez (1832), private collection, Florence. Source:
Accessed 22 May 2018, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Francesco_Hayez_034.jpg.
Supporting the arts was one of her most primary goals. She had a charisma for
attracting creative intelligence and a good sense for detecting talent. She supported Heine
before his works were translated into French and Liszt before he became famous.
37
Many
musicians were regular attendees of her salons: Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg, Meyerbeer, Rossini,
Bellini, Pasta, Viardot, Giulia Grisi (an opera singer), Giuseppe Verdi, Jacques Offenbach (an

37
Ibid., 70.

106
operetta composer), and Belgiojoso’s estranged husband, Prince Emilio di Belgiojoso.
38
The
prince had a sonorous voice and warm personality. He collaborated in concerts with Liszt, and
when he came to her salons, often to perform with Bellini or Rossini on piano, she treated him
no differently than she did her other guests.
39
Other regular guests included Lafayette, Balzac,
Heine, Musset, Stendhal, Sand, Delacroix, Théophile Gautier, Alexandre Dumas (père),
diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville, historians Augustin Thierry and François
Mignet, and philosopher Victor Cousin.
Her salons made use of musicians for the dancing that regularly closed her soirées and
for her concerts spirituels that replaced dancing and conversation during Lent.
40
Her most
famous employment of musicians was for a grandiose three-day charity bazaar for Italian
refugees, held in her salon from March 29 to 31, 1837.
41
She enlisted politicians to auction their
autographs and over a dozen artists and art collectors to donate paintings. Victor Mercier, the
sculptor, donated medallions of Liszt and Sand. Meyerbeer contributed a new romance.
42
The
pianists Chopin, Liszt, and Sigismund Thalberg, the violinist Massart, the cellist Batta, and
several singers including Madame Merlin and Prince Belgiojoso performed on the last day of

38
Ibid., 34, and Le Senne, Le Salon de la princesse Belgiojoso, 64.
39
Le Senne, Le Salon de la princesse Belgiojoso, 58, 63; Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire,” 216; Yoon,
“Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso,” 12–13; Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 261,
citing Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace,” 20. The princess had married him at age sixteen, but
separated barely four years later because of his philandering and gambling. He later followed her to Paris and
lived in a comfortable apartment that she provided for him behind her home (Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio
di Belgiojoso,” 23).
40
Le Senne, Le Salon de la princesse Belgiojoso, 63.
41
These were refugees from Italy’s armed struggle for independence from the Austrian Empire.
42
Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso,” 77, citing Victor Brombert, La Prison romantique: Essai sur
l’imaginaire (Paris: J. Corti, 1975), 336–37, citing Le Journal des débats (21 March 1837). Which romance this was, or
whether it survived, is unknown.

107
the bazaar.
43
The princess had also commissioned Liszt, Thalberg, Chopin, Johann Peter Pixis,
Henri Herz, and Carl Czerny to write the Hexameron variations on Bellini’s popular opera I
Puritani (1835) for this same occasion, but the piece was not finished in time to be performed.
44

Belgiojoso is said to have specifically defended Italian expatriate musicians, including
Rossini, Bellini, and Paganini.
45
Unfortunately, little to no details about these efforts survive,
aside from some hints regarding Bellini, whom she both befriended and financially
supported. She had known him as a child when he visited her parents’ house. When she came
to Paris, her mother requested that she support him as soon as she was financially able. Her
mother also advised: “Possibly he will stay some time in Paris. Do what you can to make the
critics favorably disposed towards him.” A year later her mother happily reported, “Bellini is
enchanted with you. He writes that you are the only person in whom he can confide.”
46

Belgiojoso devoted several paragraphs to Bellini in her “Memories in Exile,” still mourning his
death sixteen years after the fact (Bellini died in 1834 at the young age of 33). Her touching
description shows that she deeply cared for him:
Often the songs of Bellini find themselves on my lips, and I savor walking my
fingers over the piano’s keys . . . to help me render my musical thoughts. I often
think with sadness of the premature death of the great composer, not in an
egotistical sentiment that would make me regret masterpieces carried into the
tomb, but because death was an object full of terror for him. Perhaps he had
finished at the right time; neither his character nor his talents were made to
pass through the epochs of political turmoil, and the state of society would
have made him truly unhappy.
47

43
Ibid., 71; Le Journal des débats (21 March 1837).
44
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 262.
45
Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire,” 218; Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso,” 21.
46
Ibid., 68, quoting Charles Neilson Gattey, A Bird of Curious Plumage: Princess Cristina Di Belgiojoso, 1808–1871
(London: Constable & Company Ltd., 1971), 30–32.
47
Christine Trivulce de Belgiojoso, Souvenirs dans l’exil (Paris : Prost, 1850), 19: “…souvent les cantilènes de Bellini
se trouvent sur mes lèvres, et je promène avec plaisir mes doigts sur un piano qui, tout mauvais qu’il est, me vient
en aide pour rendre ma pensée musicale. Je songe souvent avec tristesse à la mort prématurée du grand
compositeur, non dans un sentiment égoïste qui me ferait regretter quelques chef-d’œuvre emportées dans la

108

The princess developed a close relationship with Liszt as well. In 1834, he purportedly
helped her choose a piano from the Erard showrooms—a rosewood grand with sumptuous
gothic carvings.
48

Figure 4.4: Belgiojoso’s Erard piano today, serial number 13317. Source: “Erard Grand Franz
Liszt/Princess Christina Trivulzio Belgiojoso of Italy 1834,” Palace Pianos, posted 12 October 2016,
http://www.palacepianos.com/wpc/?p=2887.

tombe, mais parce que la mort était pour lui un objet plein d’effroi. Peut-être a-t’il fini à temps: ni son caractère ni
son talent n’étaient faits pour traverser les époques de tourmente politique, et l’état de la société l’eût rendu
réellement malheureux.”
48
Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso,” 108, citing Georg Predota, “Franz Liszt Versus Sigismond
Thalberg,” Interlude, posted 26 June 2012, http://www.interlude.hk/front/franz-liszt-versus-sigismond-thalberg/.
This author gives as evidence Liszt’s name alongside Belgiojoso’s in Erard’s sales book. His name is indeed listed
in the column for the buyer’s piano instructor or recommender, but that does not necessarily mean that he went
to the showroom with her or helped her choose it (“Erard: register de fabrication - Années 1830 à 1839 - N° inv.
E.2009.5.45,” 14 Mai 1835 [Element 32 of 145], accessed 17 July 2018,
http://archivesmusee.citedelamusique.fr/exploitation/Infodoc/digitalcollections/viewerpopup.aspx?seid=E_2009_
5_45_P0001).

109
He also confided in her about his distress over leaving Marie d’Agoult on one of his long tours
and asked her to check in on her while he was away.
49

No record survives of her aiding him financially, but he considered her an important
connection for his career. He made efforts to keep in touch with her while he was away from
Paris on tour. His letter to her in 1839 reveals a friendly ease, and respect for her position. He
tells her of his solo recitals in Italy, which he hopes to bring to Paris. It is she to whom he
cavalierly proclaims, “The concert—is myself,” boasting at his own audacity to give a concert
alone. He explains that he will return to Paris in nine months and counts “always on your
friendly and indulgent kindness.”
50
This correspondence is an obvious effort to prepare his
reception to her salons again on his return.

Pierre-Joseph Zimmermann (1786–1853)
Pierre-Joseph Zimmermann, a piano and composition professor at the Conservatoire from
1816 to 1848, held a weekly salon during the 1830s and 40s that catered only to musicians. It was
not a high-class affair with the sumptuous décor or artistic diversity and nobility of
Belgiojoso’s salon, but the music critic Henri Blanchard wrote that it was the first of all salons
in importance.
51
It was the meeting place of the most illustrious musicians of the time, the

49
Belgiojoso, Souvenirs dans l’exil, 23–25.
50
Liszt, letter to Princess Begiojoso, 4 June 1839, in Letters from Liszt: Volume 1 Paris to Rome: Years of Travel as a
Virtuoso, ed. La Mara, trans. Constance Bache (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 30–32.
51
Henri Blanchard, “Soirée musicale chez M. Zimmermann,” Revue et gazette musicale (6 December 1840): 595,
quoted in Constance Himelfarb, “Un Salon de la Nouvelle-Athènes en 1839–1840: L’album musical inconnu de
Juliette Zimmerman,” Revue de Musicologie 87, no. 1 (2001): 44.

110
place to hear premieres of the best new music and the debuts of rising talent.
52
Entrance to
this salon was the envy of any musician hoping to get a foot in the door in Paris.
53

Zimmermann—a past student of Boïeldieu and Cherubini and the teacher of Charles-
Valentin Alkan, César Franck, Georges Bizet, and Charles Gounod—was well-liked and well-
connected in the musical world. His salon began partly to promote the German piano virtuoso
Johann Baptist Cramer (1771–1858), who moved to Paris after a career in London. Pierre Baillot,
Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Camille Pleyel, Alexandre-Pierre-François Boëly, Pierre Rode, and
Rodolphe Kreutzer banded with him and became his original musical salon.
54
They met
irregularly before the July Monarchy. Their meetings began as rather poor and raucous
bohemian affairs, with an impressive guest list nonetheless. Zimmermann cleared the
furniture from the single room he inhabited to make space for the guests. One time
Cherubini, distinguished director of the Conservatoire, started burning paper on his plate to
keep warm, and so everyone else did as well. One guest made crêpes, while another drunkenly
danced on the table, breaking the plates one by one, and Cramer sat drunkenly under that
table talking as if he were still in London. Baillot, Boïeldieu, the composer Etienne Méhul, and
violinist François-Antoine Habeneck (eventual conductor of the Société des Concerts at the
Conservatoire) were also present during this revelry.
55

52
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 267.
53
“La maison du professeur Zimmermann est le rendez-vous de toutes les illustrations de l’époque, et que le
choix exquis des morceaux de musique qu’on y exécute font désirer a tout artiste qui veut se lancer à Paris d’y
paraître dans tout l’éclat de son talent” (“Zimmermann,” in Encyclopédie pittoresque de la musique, vol. 1, ed.
Adolphe Ledhey and Henri Bertini [Paris: Delloye: 1835], 154).
54
Himelfarb, “Un Salon de la Nouvelle-Athènes,” 36–37, citing Zimmermann’s private, unedited notes, the start of
an autobiography, which are in a unidentified private collection in France.
55
Ibid., 38.

111
The salon eventually matured into something more dignified after Zimmermann
moved in 1832 to a house on the Square d’Orléans, the illustrious enclave where Sand, Chopin,
Dumas, Viardot, and Alkan also lived. Zimmermann bought the same house that the
composer Daniel Auber’s father had owned, and where as a boy of fourteen Zimmermann
had experienced his first salon.
56
Assisted by his wife, Zimmermann carried on Auber’s
tradition.

Figure 4.5: Zimmermann in his salon, by Prosper Lafaye (ca. 1839). Source: Pierre-Joseph Zimmermann
dans son appartement du Square d’Orléans, Collections of the Château de Versailles, MV 7687, accessed 22
May 2018, http://collections.chateauversailles.fr/#27ae8946-4129-4bac-9404-74ed7f8783b7.

56
Auber had hosted the meetings of a music society. Zimmermann wrote, “Mr. Auber grand amateur de musique
réunissait chez lui tous les dimanches, les notabilités de l’époque, l’figuraient, Cherubini, Mehul, Boïeldieu,
Catel, Garat, Mme Barbier Walborne, parmi les auditeurs très peu nombreux brillait la belle Mme Tallien”
(Zimmermann’s notes, cited in Ibid., 36).

112
Antoine Marmontel, a student of Zimmermann and a chronicler of musical events,
wrote that his salons included poetry recitations, games, charades, rebuses, puzzles,
improvisations by Liszt or Chopin, and performances by guests.
57
Summaries of the meetings
in Zimmermann’s salons sometimes appeared in the Gazette et revue musicale, indicating that
these salons were important in the city’s “who’s who.”
Late in his life, Zimmermann began an autobiography, which he never completed, in
which he called his salon the place where foreign musicians came to receive their
metaphorical “letters of naturalization” as professional musicians.
58
The journalist and
playwright Edouard Monnais made the same analogy, pointing out also that entrance to the
salon was exclusive to those with real talent:
Not everyone who wants can go to Zimmermann’s; neither gold nor rank opens
its door to anyone; but from whatever corner of the world one comes, whatever
instrument one plays, or whatever language in which one sings, if one has
nothing more than a sufficiently justified capacity for music, one goes there and
finds a well-prepared music stand, a well-prepared audience, and bravos eager
to reward ripened merit as well as merit on the rise. To have achieved success at
Zimmermann’s is to have claimed a letter of nobility and the right to present
oneself anywhere in Europe.
59

Pekacz has questioned whether performing in Zimmermann’s salon was the ticket to
professional success that it claimed to be and by extension whether it was really an important

57
Antoine Marmontel, Les pianistes célèbres. Silhouettes et médaillons (Paris: A. Chaix et Cie., 1878), 205, cited
in Jolanta Pekacz, “Chopin and the Discourse on Salons,” in Chopin in Paris: The 1830s, ed. Artur Szklener, John
Comber, and Magdalena Chylińska (Warsaw: Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, 2007), 309.
58
Himelfarb, “Un Salon de la Nouvelle-Athènes,” 38.
59
Edouard Monnais, “Une soirée chez Zimmerman,” Revue et Gazette (14 February 1839): 53; reproduced in ibid.,
44: “N’entre pas qui veut chez Zimmermann; ni l’or ni le rang n’ouvrent sa porte à personne; mais de quelque
coin du monde que l’on arrive, de quelque instrument que l’on joue, dans quelque langue que l’on chante, pour
peu que l’on possède une capacité musicale suffisamment justifiée, on y trouve un pupitre tout dressé, un
auditoire tout préparé, des bravos empressés à récompenser le mérite fort, de même qu’à encourager le mérite
qui grandit et s’élève. Avoir obtenu un grand succès chez Zimmermann, c’est avoir conquis ses lettres de
noblesse, le droit de se présenter partout dans l’Europe tête levée.”

113
part of working the Parisian music network.
60
She believes that Zimmermann used the salon
not so much to boost the careers of rising musicians as to enhance his own reputation through
association with famous names.
61
She cites the lack of evidence that early appearances at
Zimmermann’s salon had any influence on the careers of Chopin or any other musicians, or
led to connections with high society or patrons.
62

Real evidence that appearing in Zimmermann’s salon was a pass to professional
success does not exist (or at least has not yet been uncovered), but for my purposes it is
enough to register that the musical press and musicians in Paris believed Zimmermann’s salon
acted this way. Clara Wieck, for instance, spoke positively about her experience performing
there in March 1839: “I played at [Maurice] Schlesinger’s matinée, and in the evening at
Zimmermann’s, and created a great sensation, especially in the evening where there were
many connoisseurs present. They called me the second Liszt.”
63
She considered this
experience as being part of the progress she was making to become known in Paris as she
prepared for her final destination: London.
In considering a more complete picture of Zimmermann’s character, it is difficult to
picture him manipulating others for his own gains. A year after his death, a short biography
honored him for the kindness of his heart (“la bonté de son cœur”) and noble character (“la

60
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 268, quoting Jeffrey Cooper, The Rise of Instrumental
Music and Concert Series in Paris, 1828–1871, Studies in Musicology, ed. George Buelow, no. 65 (Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1983), 277. Pekacz, “Chopin and the Discourse on Salons,” 310.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
63
Berthold Litzmann, Clara Schumann: An Artist’s Life: Based on Material Found in Diaries and Letters, vol. 1, trans.
Grace E. Hadow (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979), 211.

114
noblesse de son caractère”).
64
It called him “the Patron” of his brothers, and emphasized his
generosity and self-effacement.
65
Upon his death, he left the Association des Artistes
Musiciens 1,200 francs per year.
66
It would appear that, by these acts he was quite the opposite
of what Pekacz describes. Finally, the number of musicians who participated in his salons—
particularly ones at the pinnacle of their professional success, such as Liszt and Chopin—
would imply that they viewed the salon as an important one.
Zimmermann’s salon stands apart from the rest as behaving something more like a
trade organization, a place of camaraderie and testing, for musicians only. No matter what the
salon actually gave to its participants, the prevalent idea was that participation in the salon
was a mark of achievement and that Zimmermann was generously supportive of the
musicians in whom he saw promise.

Mathieu and Anne-Gabrielle Orfila (1787–1853 and 1797/98–?
67
)
Another salon which focused on music, but was open to guests of all kinds, was the salon of
Mathieu and Anne-Gabrielle Orfila. Mathieu Orfila was the dean of the Paris Medical School,
and he and his wife were both accomplished singers.
68
The drama critic Jules Janin

64
Jean-Baptiste Labat, “Zimmermann et l’école française de piano” (Montauban: impr. de Forestié neveu, 1865),
15. This fifteen-page biography was read at the meeting of the Société des sciences de Tarn-et-Garonne, 2 April
1864, and published in 1865.
65
Ibid., 12.
66
Ibid.
67
Her birth was either in 1797 or 1798, based on the fact that she married Mathieu on July 1, 1815 at age eighteen
(Henri Pellier, Bon écolier et grand savant [Paris: Larousse, 1937], 25).
68
“Orfila,” Biographie universelle et portative des contemporains, ou, Dictionnaire historique des hommes vivant et des
hommes morts, tome V, ed. Alphonse Rabbe, Claude Augustin Vieilh de Boisjolin, Sainte-Preuve (Paris: Au Bureau
de la biographie, 1836), 519.

115
proclaimed their home the best place in Paris for music.
69
Like Zimmermann’s salon, it was
also known as one of the most important places for musicians to debut in Paris and
performance there was considered a mark of competency.
70

Orfila was something of a celebrity in Paris. At age thirty-three, he was the youngest
member of the seventy-member Académie Royale de Médecine.
71
He appeared as one of six
doctors featured in Célébrités médicales et chirurgicales contemporaines, par un docteur inconnu
(1841), and he appeared in the Galerie des célébrités contemporaines (1852).
72
The public was
intrigued by his expertise in poisons; part of his job was to examine graves and corpses in
order to determine causes of death and solve crimes. He carried himself well, had a high
forehead (in the ideas of the time, this signified intelligence) and a clear gaze commanding
respect, spoke easily, and had a magnificent quality of his voice—“qualities that united
themselves to open salon doors to him,” giving him access to Paris’s best social scene.
73
His
talent and the respect people had for him led him to become a wealthy man (necessary for
playing host in frequent and well-attended salons). One portrait shows him in an ermine-
trimmed coat decorated in medals and rich embroidery, as sumptuous as a king.
74
The year he

69
Frédéric Chauvaud, “‘Cet homme si multiple et si divers’: Orfila et la chimie du crime au XIXe siècle,” Sociétés et
Représentations 22, no. 2 (2006): 172, https://www.cairn.info/revue-societes-et-representations-2006-2-page-171.htm,
citing Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 317.
70
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 267; Mme la comtesse de Bassanville, Les salons
d’autrefois: souvenirs intimes, Nouvelle édition, 4e série (Paris: J. Victorion, n.d.), 155.
71
Amédée Fayol, La Vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930), 130.
72
Charles Pajot, Célébrités médicales et chirurgicales contemporaines, par un docteur inconnu (Paris: Desloges, 1841);
Claude-François Michéa, Galerie des célébrités contemporaines (Paris: Moquet, 1852).
73
He possessed “une stature élégante et un noble maintien, des gestes harmonieux, une physionomie douce et
fine, un front haut, un regard clair commandant le respect, une parole aisée, un magnifique timbre de voix, il
réunissait tous ces avantages qui font s’ouvrir d’elles-mêmes les portes d’un salon” (Fayol, La Vie et l’œuvre
d’Orfila, 130).
74
“Mathieu-Joseph-Bonaventure Orfila (Mateu-Josep-Bonaventura Orfila i Rotger),” Portraits de Médecins,
accessed 15 March 2018, http://medarus.org/Medecins/MedecinsTextes/orfila.html.

116
died, he left 121,000 francs to the state to be used for a Musée Orfila (which closed only in
2005) and several medical and pharmaceutical organizations.
75

Figure 4.6: Mathieu Orfila, portrait (ca. 1835). Source: “Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body:
Biographies: Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila (1787–1853),” U.S. National Library of Medicine;
National Institutes of Health, accessed 31 May 2018,
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/biographies/orfila.html.

75
Mathieu-Joseph-Bonaventure Orfila, Don d’une somme de 121,000 francs fait à divers établissements publics, en 1853
(Paris: Impr. de Rignoux, 1853).

117
His salon was held year-round on Sundays, “a perpetual concert” “lit by candles and a
thousand gracious faces.”
76
It began in the reign of Charles X and lasted into the reign of
Louis-Napoléon (Napoléon III; thus, at least from 1829 through 1852).
77
It met in his home on
the rue de Condé until that space became too small. The gathering then moved to an old-style
hotel with grand staircases and huge courtyard.
78
The quality of the music performed there
was high: one journalist complained that he was unable to stay for a whole evening, but was
forced to go somewhere else and hear cheap dance numbers, quadrilles, and polkas by
Rossini, Bellini, Philippe Musard, and Johann Strauss.
79

The Orfilas’ interest in hosting a musical salon was certainly based on their own
musical talents. Monsieur Orfila’s voice was a product of salon culture itself. He wrote to his
father that when he was fairly new to Paris, he went to Princess de Vaudemont’s house twice
per week and sang only there (she held a twice-per-week aristocratic salon at which many
musicians performed).
80
He had a naturally good voice, but continued to work on it until he
believed himself to possess the best voice in Paris.
81

76
“Un Salon inamovible,” Le Ménestrel (15 February 1832): 1.
77
Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois, 4e série, 155.
78
“Un Salon inamovible,” 1.
79
Ibid.
80
Louise de Montmorency-Logny (1763–1832/3). The singers who performed at her salon concerts included Pasta,
Garcia, Violante Camporesi, Felice Pellegrini, Rubini, Lablache, Antonio Tamburini, and “les meilleurs amateurs
de l’époque” (Fayol, La Vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila, 137). The princess treated Orfila almost as a son (132). When she died
suddenly in her sleep, her salon moved to the home of Countess de Rumford, who kept the tradition of meeting
two times per week (138).
81
Ibid., 132. Others also attest that he had the voice of a professional: for example, Pellier, Bon écolier et grand
savant, 25; Revue et Gazette Musicale no. 44 (2 November 1845), page number illegible.

118
He soon was in demand to sing at other salons.
82
He met his wife at the salon of her
father (a sculptor).
83
Together they sang at Princess de Vaudemont’s and Countess Merlin’s
soirées.
84
Their motto: “Can one live a day without singing?”
85
Eventually aristocrats began
coming to the Orfilas’ own apartments to hear them sing and see the other singers, dancers,
pianists, and violinists.
86
The salon soon became a craze (“une vraie toquade”) among high
society, as a prolific salon chronicler from the time describes.
87

Attendance at first leaned aristocratic.
88
The Orfila house was in the faubourg Saint-
Germain, a district where most of the royal court lived, and thus drew this crowd.
89
However,
after Madame Orfila did not mourn Charles X when he died in exile in late 1836, many
aristocrats in the neighborhood denounced her and stopped visiting.
90
When society
withdrew, the Orfilas threw themselves more than ever into the company of musicians.
91

Prince Belgiojoso, a regular participant, began directing other musicians to come.
92
Many of
the guests were singers: Duprez, Lablache, Sontag, Mario (Giovanni Matteo De Candia), Grisi,

82
Pellier, Bon écolier et grand savant, 24.
83
Ibid., 25.
84
Benoît Florin, La Princesse de Vaudemont (1762–1833): La grande amie de Talleyrand (Aix en Provence: Editions
memoire & documents, 2012), 209; Chauvaud, “‘Cet homme si multiple et si divers,’” 172.
85
“Un Salon inamovible,” 1: “Sans chanter, peut-on vivre un jour?”
86
See testimony in the Journal du Dr. P. Ménière (1799–1862), publiée par son fils de Dr E. Ménière (Paris: Plon, 1902),
cited in Fayol, La Vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila, 140–41.
87
Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois, 4e série, 156.
88
Ibid.
89
Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 127.
90
Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois, 4e série, 157.
91
Ibid., 158.
92
Ibid., 161, 166.

119
Ida Bertrand.
93
Malibran sometimes dropped by on Wednesdays for more intimate soirées,
where she and Madame Récamier shared dinner with the Orfilas and medical doctors from
the Faculté.
94

Among the instrumentalists, the child prodigy violinists Teresa and Maria Milanollo
made their debuts there, to the warmest bravos.
95
The violinist Charles de Bériot “electrified
the assembly” with a trio with his son on cello and an unknown pianist.
96
Meyerbeer
conducted an orchestra while the popular opera composer Fromental Halévy turned pages for
Rossini playing the piano.
97
Offenbach performed often, and actually got his start there before
he began hosting his own vendredis de Jacques at his home on Rue Lafitte, where composers
Bizet, Léo Delibes, and Halévy, the painter Gustave Doré, and the caricaturist and early
photographer Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) would come.
98
Liszt was at the Orfila salon
frequently.
99
On one evening, he showcased some of his most flashy pieces for the king of
Prussia, who offered to give him a ring. The king had unintentionally left the price tag on, and
Liszt, on seeing the gift’s great value, refused it. The king took it back without insult,
continuing to praise him as strongly as he had before.
100

93
Duprez is mentioned in Gilbert Duprez, Souvenirs d’un chanteur (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1880), 27; Lablache in
Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois, 4e série, 216; Sontag in ibid., 222; Mario and Grisi in the Revue et Gazette Musicale
(2 November 1845): page number illegible; Bertrand and de Sparre in “Un Salon inamovible,” 1.
94
Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois, 4e série, 181.
95
Ibid., 202.
96
“Un Salon inamovible,” 1.
97
Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, np, n. 835.
98
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 267.
99
Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois, 4e série, 184.
100
Ibid., 185.

120
The Orfilas reserved places in the main salon for old generals, magistrates, and learned
men to sit (called the “bench of the churchwardens”).
101
The rest of guests could wander in and
out. The Revue et gazette musicale wrote about these ravishing miniatures musicales, where all
the listeners were welcome to perform and where the virtuoso felt himself part of one big
family.
102
Sometimes Madame Orfila would leave her own parties early to go out to other
parties, telling her own guests, “I can keep you until midnight, my children; after that I am
taken; let’s hurry and amuse ourselves then.”
103
By all accounts, the salon was truly
entertaining and had a devoted following.
104
Le Ménestrel reported that the Orfilas’ guests
would follow them to the end of the world.
105

The Revue et gazette musicale considered him one of the most luminous protectors of
music.
106
While it is not yet apparent that Orfila directly supported any musicians financially,
he at least provided a space for them to demonstrate their talents to society. When Orfila died
in 1853, the opera dramatist Eugène Scribe wrote to Auber, asking him to help gather singers
and musicians for a mass at Saint-Sulpice for him on the following day, since Orfila had
“always made friends with artists and been extremely good to them.”
107

101
“Un Salon inamovible,” 1.
102
“Les soirées de M. Orfila,” Revue et gazette musicale no. 44 (2 Novembre 1845): page number illegible.
103
Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois, 4e série, 159: “Je ne peux vous garder que jusqu’à minuit, mes enfants, après
cela je suis prise; dépêchons-nous donc de nous amuser.”
104
Ibid.
105
“Un Salon inamovible,” 1.
106
“Les soirées de M. Orfila.”
107
Correspondance d’Eugène Scribe et de Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, ed. Herbert Schneider (Sprimont: Editions
Mardaga, 1998), 13 March 1853, 87.

121
Baron and Madame James de Rothschild (1792–1868 and 1805–1886)
The Parisian branch of the Rothschild family, headed by Baron James de Rothschild and his
wife Betty, held an elite salon at which they entertained four days of the week: about thirty
guests at lunches and sixty at dinners.
108
Though they were unfortunately resented by some
for being Jewish, their importance could not be ignored, and even their detractors admitted
that James de Rothschild assembled the best company in Paris.
109
The Rothschilds were
friends of Louis-Philippe and, like him, they aimed to be more inclusive of the lower classes.
110

The rising artistic elite often sat at their table, including the writers Balzac and Heine, the
artist Ary Scheffer, the beloved singer and actress Elisabeth Rachel Félix (known as
Mademoiselle Rachel, 1821–58), the composers Rossini and Meyerbeer (two of whose
descendants married into the Rothschild family), and the performer-composers Paganini,
Liszt, and Chopin.
111

Baron de Rothschild had professional relationships with some musicians in his
capacity as a banker. For instance, he invested Liszt’s 220,000 francs earned from his concert
tours and delivered the 20,000 francs that Paganini gave to Hector Berlioz as a gift for his
viola-and-orchestra concerto Harold in Italy.
112
Many more musicians sought out Baron de
Rothschild because of his wealth and social connections to other people who could also

108
Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 180–81.
109
Laura S. Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 36.
110
Ibid., 40.
111
Ibid., xi; Charlotte de Rothschild, “The Musical Associations of the Rothschild Family,” in The Rothschilds:
Essays on the History of a European Family, ed. Georg Heuberger (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), 289; “Music,”
The Rothschild Archive, accessed 15 March 2018,
https://www.rothschildarchive.org/family/family_interests/music.
112
These are mentioned in Rothschild, “The Musical Associations of the Rothschild Family,” 290.

122
support musicians. Musicians throughout the city sent the Rothschilds tickets to their benefit
concerts, which the family would purchase or distribute among friends.
113

Music was often a feature at the Rothschilds’ stunning gatherings, which they hosted
for both social and business purposes.
114
Their salon is sometimes credited with giving Chopin
his boost into success among the Parisian elite. He played at one of their musical evenings in
early 1832, a few weeks before his official Paris debut.
115
After that, he was made the family
piano teacher, giving lessons to Betty, her daughter Charlotte (1825–1899) and her grandniece
(Charlotte’s cousin once removed) Hannah Mathilde (1832–1924). Word of the Rothschilds’
endorsement spread and soon Chopin was in demand for teaching.
116
This profession
furnished him an income and reputation without his having to perform publicly. Betty used
her influence to secure other protectors for him: the Maréchale Lannes (Louise Antoinette
Guéhéneuc), Princesse de Vaudemont, Countess Apponyi, and Prince Adam Jerzy
Czartoryski.
117

113
See for example, Malou Haine, “Musicien, mécène et imprésario: Les concerts du violoncelliste Adrien-
François Servais et leur promotion par Jules Lardin,” in Le Concert et son public: Mutations de la vie musicale en
Europe de 1780 à 1914 (France, Allemagne, Angleterre), ed. Hans Erich Bödeker, Patrice Veit, Michael Werner (Paris:
Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2002), 98.
114
Niall Ferguson records James de Rothschild’s thoughts on his social life: “‘I think of nothing else but business,’
he assured Nathan. ‘If I attend a society party, I go there to become acquainted with people who might be useful
for the business.’” In January 1825, he wrote to his brother that “I am obliged to give a ball because the world
claims that I am broke, for the people who have become accustomed to my giving three to four balls, as I did
during the previous winter, will otherwise set their tongues wagging, and quite honestly the French are evil
people. Well, the carnival takes place next week and I wish it were already over. I give you my word that my
heart is not in it but one must do everything to put on a show for the world” (Ferguson, “Barons,” The House of
Rothschild: Money’s Prophets, 1798–1848 [New York: Penguin Books, 1999], iBook edition).
115
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 44; Ferguson, “Love and Debt,” The House of Rothschild,
iBook edition.
116
Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, ed. Bronislaw Edward Sydow, trans., Arthur Hedley (London:
Heinemann, 1962), 112.
117
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 44.

123

Figure 4.7: Betty de Rothschild, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1848). Source: Accessed 22 May
2018, https://www.artrenewal.org/Artwork/Index/9431.
Chopin gave the family preference. He gave Betty priority when he had to cancel
lessons by not canceling hers, and he invited her to his home to hear his other students and
the celebrated musicians of the time, such as the “Swedish nightingale” Jenny Lind.
118
After
Madame de Rothschild heard Chopin’s twelve-year-old student Karl Filtsch during his lesson
with Chopin,
119
she invited him to perform at her house along with Chopin and the singers

118
Letter from Chopin to his family in Warsaw, Paris, 12 December 1845, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk
Chopin, 257. For example, Jenny Lind in 1849 (Letter from Chopin to Wojchiech Grzymała, Chaillot, 18 June 1849,
in ibid., 359).
119
The meeting happened because Baron Stockhausen had visited Chopin’s house during Karl’s lesson and
stayed to hear the concerto by Chopin that he was working on. At dinner that evening when they were together
at Count Apponyi’s house, Stockhausen told the count about the marvelous concerto, asking Karl to play it again,

124
Lablache, Grisi, Mario, and Viardot.
120
Five hundred guests attended this performance in the
flower-filled, gilded, and crystal-studded mansion on the rue Laffitte.
121
This concert gave the
musicians enormous publicity as having that many attendees was rare even in a public
concert.
Besides giving Chopin social and financial connections and payment for lessons, Betty
Rothschild treated him with other kindnesses. She visited him when he was ill, bringing one
thousand francs to help cover his living and medical expenses while he could not teach.
122

Charlotte gave him other costly gifts.
123
James treated Chopin to several days at his home in
Ferrières, France.
124
Chopin honored them with dedications of pieces: to Betty the Waltz in C-
sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2, and to Charlotte the Ballade in F Minor, Op. 52, No. 4 (on the
occasion of her marriage to her cousin Nathaniel of the British branch of the family) and the
Waltz in Ab Minor Op. 69, No. 1.
125
Dedications were a common gesture of thanks in return for
financial gifts or professional privilege.

Chopin told them Karl would play it again at his house at his lesson on Monday, and they could come if they
wanted to. Word spread and Count Apponyi, Baron Stockhausen, Meyerbeer, Madame de Rothschild, the
ambassador of Hanover, and several unnamed others came. At this performance, Chopin was moved to tears by
Karl’s interpretation, the women flung themselves at him, and Meyerbeer hugged him. Karl and his brother
Joseph Filtsch described this event to their parents in a letter dated 29 November 1842, in ibid., 223–24.
120
This event was on 20 January 1843 (letter from Joseph Filtsch to his parents in Hungary, Paris, 20 January 1843,
in ibid., 227).
121
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 44.
122
Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, 356. This date was 21 May 1849.
123
Letter from Chopin to his family in Warsaw, Paris, 8 June 1847, in ibid., 288; Ferguson, “Quicksilver and
Hickory,” The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets, iBook edition.
124
This was before his castle was built on the property, what would be the largest castle of the French nineteenth
century. Letter from Chopin to Solange, Paris, 2 October 1847, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, 296.
125
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 45. The Waltz in Ab minor, Op. 69, No. 1 dedicated to
Charlotte can be seen on Gallica: Chopin, “Valse (manuscript autographe),” Bibliothèque nationale de France,
département Musique, MS-121, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b550010414/f2.image.r=charlotte%20rothschild.

125
Rossini was another well-known beneficiary of the Rothschild’s patronage. He was
often present at their soirées, including one in the winter of 1827–28, when their two-year-old
daughter Charlotte performed.
126
Much later, Rossini wrote a “Petit Souvenir” (1843) for
Charlotte—a handwritten score, bound in velvet with illustrations in the margins of the
pages—as a token of friendship and gratitude for the financial support her family gave to him:

Charlotte and Hannah Mathilde later published pieces of their own. Hannah Mathilde published thirty songs
using her husband’s name: Baronne Willy de Rothschild, 30 Melodies, pour chant et piano (Paris: Durand,
Schoenwerk & Cie., 1878), also viewable on Gallica: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8569356/f11.image.
Charlotte published a collection of four short piano pieces in the style of Chopin, also taking her husband’s
name, as well as two cello and piano pieces: Nathaniel de Rothschild, Quatre pièces pour piano (Paris: J. Maho,
1860), http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8582393/f1.image, and Deux Pièces pour Piano & Violoncelle par la Baronne
Nathaniel de Rothschild (Paris: J. Maho, c. 1872), https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3119099.image. Two of the
piano pieces are, in fact, pieces by Chopin (despite recent Internet sources that claim otherwise): the Nocturne in
C minor, WN 62, and the Waltz in A minor, WN 63 (see Fryderyk Chopin Various Compositions: Performance
Commentary, Source Commentary, p. 16 and Fryderyk Chopin Waltzes, Published Posthumously: Performance
Commentary, Source Commentary, in the series National Edition, Series B, Vol. III, ed. Jan Ekier, Paweł Kamiński, 17
[Kraków : Polskie wydawnictwo muzyczne, 1967]).
126
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 40.

126

Figure 4.8: Rossini’s “Petit Souvenir” for Charlotte de Rothschild (1843). The paper was designed by
“Chaulin, papermaker of the King. St Honoré Street at the corner of Richelieu Street.” Source:
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, MS-1338, accessed 22 May 2018,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52502175j/f5.image.
Rossini was apparently a close friend of the family, especially of James and his nephew
Lionel; he accompanied James to Lionel’s marriage in Frankfurt in 1836. On this occasion,
James offered Rossini a 10,000 francs rente, the term used for a revenue received for reasons
other than work, assumed to be periodic, usually annual.
127
This financial gift was reported in
the Revue et gazette musicale: “We attest that M. Rothschild offered Rossini 10,000 livres

127
“rente,” Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales, accessed 10 March 2017,
http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/rente.

127
revenue to convince him to travel to Frankfurt and add with his presence to the brilliance of
the wedding between two members of this opulent family, whose speculations so influence
politics.”
128
It is not clear about how often Rothschild would dispense this revenue to Rossini,
or if it was a one-time gift. The phrasing of this report emphasizes that this money was
necessary to convince Rossini to come; this is problematic because it is one of the many mixed
messages about Rossini’s relationship with the Rothschilds. The report distances Rossini from
the family by making it seem that he would not have agreed without a monetary arrangement,
even though other sources indicate that Rossini called Lionel “my very dear friend” and was
said to have had daily visits with James.
129
There were other markers for friendship as well: the
Rothschilds sent him a barrel of wine from their vineyard and a cake for his seventieth-
birthday party that they were unable to attend.
130
The impresario Maurice Strakosch, who
worked with Rossini, wrote in his memoirs that Rothschild, who almost never dined outside
his own home, would make exceptions for his friend Rossini.
131
In addition, an article in La
Petite Presse, after Rossini’s death, told of him visiting the Rothschild’s mansion and cooking
for them on one occasion—something one does not typically do with people who are purely
business associates.
132
The Gazette musicale seems to betray a bias against Rothschild by not
acknowledging this rapport.

128
Les Rothschild en France au XIXe siècle, press pack (Bibliothèque nationale de Paris), 11, accessed 15 November
2017, http://www.bnf.fr/documents/dp_rothschild_eng.pdf; Revue et gazette musicale (19 June 1836): 210: “On assure
que M. Rothschild a offert dix mille livres de rente à Rossini pour le déterminer à faire le voyage de Francfort
[sic], pour ajouter, par sa présence, à l’éclat des noces de deux membres de cette famille si opulente, et dont les
spéculations exercent tant d’influence sur la politique.”
129
Herbert Weinstock, Rossini: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 192; Rothschild, “The Musical
Associations of the Rothschild Family,” 288; Weinstock, Rossini, 270.
130
Weinstock, Rossini, 352.
131
Maurice Strakosch, Souvenirs d’un impresario (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1887), 282.
132
“L’Horoscope de Rossini,” La Petite Presse (25 November 1868): 2.

128
Yet aside from these brief anecdotes, there is little evidence that Rossini and
Rothschild were friends. The relationship between Rossini and this family has received
almost no attention from Rossini’s biographers aside from the fact that some mention a
composition Rossini wrote on Rothschild’s request for Napoleon III’s visit to his hunting
lodge: Chœur de chasseurs democrats (1862). This does not imply that a relationship did not exist,
but only that scholars have perhaps been unaware of it or hesitant to link the two.
Curiously, writings in the press at the time also minimized or ignored a relationship.
For example, though Rossini and Rothschild died within two days of each other (November 13
and 15, 1868), journals failed to mention an affiliation, even professional, and even though
many journals printed their memorials in the same issues. For example, an article in The
Israelite from Cincinnati, Ohio titled “Rothschild and Rossini: Last Hours of the Millionaire
and the Composer” was a joint obituary, yet makes no mention of an association between the
two.
133
The obituary in the Musical World opens with the statement “The death of Rossini has
been the European event of the week, so much so, indeed, that the obsequies of Rothschild,
the great king of finance, passed by almost unnoticed”; it makes no further connection
between the two.
134
La Petite Presse was one of the most verbose papers covering these deaths.
It has articles about Rossini ten out of the twelve days after his decease, reporting on
everything from his funeral and last testament to the emotional state of his dog and his
macaroni recipe.
135
In that same amount of time, it mentions Rothschild in only four articles

133
The Israelite, Cincinnati, Ohio (11 December 1868): 5.
134
“G. Rossini,” The Musical World (5 December 1868): 825–26.
135
“Rossini,” La Petite Presse (15 November 1868): 1; “L’Antichambre de Rossini” (16 November 1868): 2; “La Maison
de Rossini” (17 November 1868): 2; “La Maison de Rossini” (17 November 1868): 2; “Le Testament de Rossini” (18
November 1868): 4; “Les Funérailles de Rossini [I]” (22 November 1868): 3; “Les Funérailles de Rossini [II]” (23
November 1868): 2; “La Recette du macaroni” (23 November 1868): 4; “La Cueillette” and “Faits divers” (24
November 1868): 2; “L’Horoscope de Rossini” (25 November 1868): 2; “Rossini en robe de chambre” (26 November
1868): 2; “Faits divers” (27 November 1868): 2. As said in “Rossini en robe de chamber,” “Even though La Petite

129
(one of these does not actually discuss him, but the Jews in Père Lachaise cemetery
generally).
136
Attention to Rothschild at his death was therefore much less than what Rossini
received. Nonetheless, both men often featured in the same edition of the same papers, but
were not linked. It is difficult to tell whether lack of connection drawn between the two means
that their friendship was minimal, or whether papers betrayed an anti-Semitic bias in not
wanting to acknowledge it.
Of course, one possible explanation for this lack of connection in the press and
biographies is that no real relationship existed, and that the Rothschilds exaggerated stories
about time spent with him in order to seem more culturally prestigious and connected.
However, considering the lack of positive attention Rothschild generally received in the press
despite his fame, this explanation seems less likely.
137
More likely, their friendship was real,
particularly as the Rothschilds did not lack for social connections or prestige (cf. their
friendship with the king and their ability to attract any of the best company in Paris they
pleased).
In the documentation left by musicians linked with the Rothschilds, there seems to be
no evidence that either Rossini or Chopin was reticent about their connections with this
family. But neither did they highlight it. When Chopin wrote home to a friend after coming to
Paris, he mentioned Princess de Vaudemont’s protection of him rather than the Rothschilds’.
Rossini’s correspondence also reveals no special connection aside from their frequent

Presse has already spoken a lot of Rossini, it cannot resist the pleasure of showing him one more time in his
privacy, and, in a way, undressed, which is to say in the side most interesting in the lives of great men.”
136
“Les Rothschild,” La Petite Presse (17 November 1868): 1; “Le Cimetière des juifs: Après les funérailles de
Rothschild” (21 November 1868): 2; “La Cueillette” and “Faits divers” (27 November 1868): 2.
137
On the nature of Rothschild’s fame, see Ferguson, “‘Hue and Cry’ (1826–1829),” in The House of Rothschild:
Money’s Prophets.

130
interactions in banking matters. Thus, while the Rothschilds were useful to both Chopin and
Rossini, and both musicians seem to have given thoughtful kindnesses to the family, their
broadcasting of the relationship was perhaps muffled in order to conform to the general
ambivalent acceptance of the Rothschilds in Parisian society.
Another relationship, between the Rothschilds and a Jewish musician, was more
widely acknowledged and celebrated. Meyerbeer mixed easily with the Rothschilds easily as
he also came from a wealthy Jewish banking family. His diaries are marked with regular visits
and meals with the family.
138
Rothschild advocated for Meyerbeer both during his career and
after. Rothschild attended the premiere of Les Huguenots in 1836 and held an extravagant ball
in its honor in his new mansion that same night.
139
Henri Duponchel, the Paris Opéra’s stage
designer, was commissioned to decorate the mansion for the event. Heinrich Heine, after
staying until 4 o’clock in the morning, rapturously remarked on the impressive Renaissance
design of the house and the number of high officials in this “Versailles of the absolute
monarchy of money.”
140
He recorded that the guests were as they always were at the
Rothschilds’ soirées: “a strict selection of aristocratic specimens, calculated to impress by
reason of their great names and high rank, the women in particular by their beauty and
dress.”
141
After Meyerbeer’s death, Rothschild ensured that renovations on Gare du Nord were
halted for a funeral celebration in the grand hall. The orchestra and choruses of the Opéra

138
See The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Vols. 1–2.
139
The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Vol. 1: 1791–1839, 214.
140
Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 358.
141
Heinrich Heine, “The First Performance of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots!” Paris, 1 March 1836, translated in
Frederick H. Martens, O. G. Sonneck, and Heinrich Heine, “Heinrich Heine’s Musical Feuilletons [Continued],”
The Musical Quarterly 8, no. 2 (April 1922): 275.

131
and Opéra-comique performed and the columns of the hall were hung in black curtains and
placards with the names of the Meyerbeer operas.
142

The association between Rothschild and Meyerbeer did not end at Meyerbeer’s death.
One apocryphal story printed in a New Zealand newspaper in 1894 connected the two again:

Figure 4.9: “A Rothschild’s Generosity,” story in The Marlborough Express (27 March 1894): 4.
The anecdote, though unlikely true, nevertheless demonstrates Rothschild’s lasting
reputation for engagement with and significant generosity to musicians.
143
It also provides an
example of how musicians may have intervened on each other’s behalf to enlist the financial
help of the wealthy. An unfortunate musician approaches Meyerbeer for help, and Meyerbeer
writes to his wealthiest connection—an act in character for Meyerbeer, who generously

142
Mark Everist, “Review: The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, iv: 1857–1864 by Robert Ignatius Letellier,” Music &
Letters 88, no. 1 (February 2007): 148.
143
Another source claiming the Rothschilds’ generosity to musicians is Strakosch, Souvenirs d’un impresario, 281–
83.

132
helped musicians less established than himself on many occasions, including the young
Richard Wagner. Meyerbeer requests Rothschild’s support of the musician’s benefit,
appealing to the privilege and duty of the wealthy to protect those they can. The result is more
financial support than Meyerbeer initially expected, as well as exposure for himself, the other
musician, and Rothschild as the underwriter of the event, who finally paid 1,000 francs for a
seat that would normally cost 20 or 30 francs.
Rothschild’s generous support of music was unquestionable during his lifetime. Across
the Channel, the London journal the Musical World praised him in 1836 for his good taste in
music and for reinforcing his appreciation of it through tangible assets. The commentary was
at the same time a thinly veiled critique, making his appreciation of music appear vulgar, only
expressible through money dispensed, rather than in an ability to be touched by art:
M. de Rothschild does not rank with that class of fanatical dilettanti who
plunge over head and ears in an ecstasy at a pedal point, or faint away upon a
chord of the seventh. M. de Rothschild, like other people, adores music,
admires great composers, venerates genius; but his dilettantism is peculiar to
himself: it is concise, expressive, laconic; a dilettantism which stands not in awe
of the clatterings, the bravos, bravas, and bravis of the Royal Academy. To testify
his high esteem for artists of distinction; to attach and fix them to the soil of
France, M. de Rothschild . . . converts his admiration into terms tangible and
sterling. How should he do otherwise? would you have a great banker,
immersed in business, consume his precious time in laudatory tirades, in
formulas of enthusiasm, or the tread-bare, puffing interjections of Ah!—
charming!—sublime!—incomparable!—transporting!—no, no, the banker has a
feeling for art, but he is also conscientious: at the same time he knows the value
of time, the worthlessness of speeches, and the vanity of ejaculations. The
banker responds to a cavatina by a check for one thousand, a duett [sic] for two,
and a trio for 3,000 francs. For one act of an opera the author figures as an
annuitant in his ledger; and a complete score is followed by an estate in the
country. Thus, whenever M. Rothschild opens his portfolio, he produces an
argument which at once secures the approbation of the connoisseur, the
homage of the multitude, and the puff-paragraph of the journalist.
144

144
The Musical World (29 July 1836): 102.

133
It is unknown what these other acts of patronage were that The Musical World mentions.
145
It is
unfortunate that so few other details have been or can be gathered about the Rothschild’s
salons and patronage of musicians, particularly when this family had the means to be perhaps
the greatest private financial supporters of music in the city, as they were second only to the
king in wealth.
146

The Rothschilds developed personal and mutually generous relationships with
Rossini, Chopin, and Meyerbeer, providing them financial support, opportunities for teaching
or composing, and performance opportunities. Chopin’s career and acceptance into Parisian
salon culture seem to have, if not depended on, at least greatly benefited from his association
with this family. Rossini has an ambiguous history with the Rothschilds, profiting at least
financially from the relationship, but seeming to have an unpublicized friendship as well.
Meyerbeer, himself Jewish, was more easily associated with him in the press, and the
Rothschilds championed his work.

145
Little since the time has been written on the Rothschilds’ musical patronage, aside from a book chapter by a
descendant, another Charlotte de Rothschild (b. 1955), who is a professional soprano and who has taken interest
in her family’s musical history and a section of the chapter titled “Love and Debt” in Niall Ferguson’s The House
of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets. Lack of detail about their supposedly extensive musical patronage is in part due to
contemporary writers’ lack of interest in recording the details of the Rothschilds’ giving. Another barrier is the
destruction of many of their records by Germans and others during World War II. Many of their papers from this
era were destroyed, including 129 volumes of letters dated between 1812 and 1850. Moreover, much
correspondence dated before 1838 was lost when the Germans seized their property and files during World War
II (“The Paris Banking House,” The Rothschild Archive, accessed 22 May 2018, https://guide-to-the-
archive.rothschildarchive.org/the-paris-banking-house). The Rothschild Archive in London has only one letter
relating to Betty de Rothschild, dated 1874, and only one item relating to Charlotte (the score she published). It
does have a collection of 206 “autograph letters addressed to James and Betty de Rothschild by members of the
French royal family, members of the aristocracy, government ministers and politicians,” but dated 1848 onward
(“French Family Papers: James Mayer de Rothschild (1782–1868),” The Rothschild Archive, accessed 15 March
2018, https://guide-to-the-archive.rothschildarchive.org/rothschild-family-collection/depts/french-family-
papers/james-mayer-de-rothschild-1782-1868). None survive from the time period in question. I wrote to the
archive inquiring about any other sources related to the Rothschild’s charitable support of musicians and
received a reply that there are no documents on that topic or on the salon performances
(therothschildarchive@rothschild.com, email 11 October 2017).
146
He was worth 40 million francs in 1847 (Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 179). See also Niall Ferguson’s history of
the family, The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets.

134
Conclusion
The salons of the Rothschilds, the Orfilas, Zimmermann, Belgiojoso, Récamier, and d’Agoult
illustrate the diversity of salon formats: some were comprised of intimate friend-groups,
others were massive assemblies, and still others were semi-private with an invited guest list
and each attendee paying a fee (so they might be similar to concerts). Behavior at salons
differed from at concerts, as talking and discussion were always in order. Evenings might be
dedicated in whole or part to music, but in order to keep the interest of everyone, time was
also spent on literature, the sciences, other arts, or games.
Mood and tone could greatly vary. Soirées could be jovial and familial, such as the
Orfilas’, which were described as musical family gatherings. Other salons were more formal
and intellectually serious, such as at Madame Récamier’s. Other events were bohemian, just
among artists, such as those that Zimmermann initially held in his attic room, when guests
burned paper to keep warm after dinner and drank themselves into raucous joviality, as
would be later dramatized by Henry Murger in his 1851 novella Scènes de la vie de Bohème. Of
course, salons could be lavish and bringing musicians to the attention of hundreds of people,
such as at the events Princess Belgiojoso held in her glittering macabre rooms or the
Rothschilds hosted in their mansion.
The assistance that these hosts and hostesses brought to musicians included
employment as teachers, endorsements of their accomplishments, performance exposure to
an elite and wealthy audience, camaraderie with peers, introductions to potential
collaborators, and financial gifts. More about what these events contributed to musicians
appears in the next chapter.

135

V. Salon Networks and Musicians’ Incentives

Mathieu Orfila, with his diversified background as salon host, medical doctor, immigrant, and
singer, spoke explicitly of the salon as a place for networking. His singing twice per week at
the Princess de Vaudemont’s when he first came to Paris won her as an advocate, and through
her, he met many other doctors and people who would further his career.
1
The young Orfila
wrote, “All the rich Parisians who love music would like to have me at home, but I don’t go
there: I only sing for the princess of Vaudemont. She is mad about music and has put me in
touch with several physicians and others who can help me considerably.”
2
In 1818, she
connected him with Count Louis-Mathieu Molé, who publicized the work that made him
famous—his writing on poison remedies, Secours à donner aux personnes empoisonnées.
3
Other
honors followed: Orfila became a member of the Académie de Médecin in 1820 (he had
previously been named médecin par quartier du roi Louis XVIII in 1816) and became dean of
faculty in 1831.
4
Looking back on this period, he wrote, “It was in this time of my life and in this
house so celebrated that I came to know all that the capital had to offer; I established

1
Amédée Fayol, La Vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930), 133.
2
Benoît Florin, La princesse de Vaudémont, 1762–1833: la grande amie de Talleyrand (Aix-en-Provence: Editions
memoire & documents, 2012), 168: “Tous les riches parisiens qui aiment la musique aimeraient m’avoir chez eux,
mais je n’y vais pas: je chante seulement chez la princesse de Vaudémont. Elle aime la musique à la folie et elle
m’a mis en relations avec plusieurs physiciens et d’autres personnes qui peuvent m’aider considérablement à
l’occasion.”
3
Ibid., 168, 209.
4
Ibid., 168.

136
relationships with most of the powerful men, who were extremely useful to me in the course
of my life, helping me surmount obstacles that I would have hardly conquered alone as I
finished the projects for my medical studies.”
5
He also had a habit of boasting that he obtained
more favorable decisions for the Faculté and carried out more business in salons than in
commissions and administrative meetings.
6

Musicians also did business that was essential to their advancement in salons. Using
musicians’ biographies, the memoires of salon hostesses, a novella from the time, and other
scholars’ work, in this chapter I describe details of these exchanges. I write about the general
networking opportunities and motivations that musicians found for participating in these
events, and discuss what these events meant in the careers of Liszt and Chopin.

Networking
Salons first of all provided introductions to people who would protect musicians’ interests.
For example, when she was seventeen, Pauline Viardot’s career was launched in the salon of
Madame Caroline Jaubert, whose artistic-intellectual gatherings attracted Princess Cristina
Belgiojoso, Alfred and Paul de Musset, the sculptor Jean-Auguste Barre, lawyer Pierre-
Antoine Berryer,
7
and Eugène Delacroix.
8
This group spread her reputation immediately and

5
Ibid.: “C’est dans cette période de ma vie et dans cette maison si célèbre que j’ai connu tout ce que la capitale
renfermait de distingué; les relations que j’avais établies avec la plupart de ces hommes puissants m’ont été
extrêmement utiles au courant de ma vie pour surmonter les obstacles que j’aurais eu peine à vaincre pour
mener à bonne fin mes projets d’amélioration des études médicales.”
6
Fayol, La Vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila, 137.
7
April FitzLyon, The Price of Genius: The Life of Pauline Viardot (London: John Calder, 1964), 44, cited in Elaine
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition: Its Cultural and Historical Significance in Parisian
Musical Society” (DMA thesis, The Juilliard School, 1996), 264.
8
Caroline Jaubert, Souvenirs de Madame C. Jaubert, lettres et correspondances: Berryer, 1847 et 1848, Alfred de Musset,
Pierre Lanfrey, Henri Heine, 5th ed. (Paris: J. Hetzel & Cie., 1881), 41. At Madame Jaubert’s on another evening,
guests—including Sand, Chopin, Delacroix, and the lawyer Pierre-Antoine Berryer—sang arias by Rossini,

137
formed a “defensive league” about her to advocate for her career.
9
They gave her advice and
attended her performances.
10
When Alfred de Musset, who later became her lover, could not
attend her public debut in Paris on December 15, 1838, he asked for a private performance and
then wrote a laudatory article for the Revue des deux mondes predicting a brilliant career and
hailing her as Malibran’s ghost.
11
Malibran—Maria Malibran—had been her older sister,
using the name of her ex-husband; she died in a tragic riding accident a few years earlier,
cutting short her legendary career as a powerful, charismatic, and well-loved singer.
Malibran herself had received a similar form of patronage a decade earlier. On her
return to Paris in 1827 after being in the United States for two years, the Countess Merlin
helped her find work. Merlin hosted a morning musical jury before whom she sang opera
scenes and improvised.
12
This audition led her to starring roles at the Opéra and Théâtre-
Italien.
13
Sponsorship by a prestigious salon host was an important endorsement of talent and
often led others to acknowledge the musician as well. For example, La Presse introduced a new
vocalist by attaching her to Countess Merlin’s patronage. The announcement called Merlin’s

poked fun at Sand and Chopin’s mother–son relationship, and made up and sang lyrics to Chopin’s Marche
funèbre (“Enterrement de nos amours!”) (ibid., 43–44).
9
FitzLyon, The Price of Genius, 47, cited in Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 264.
10
FitzLyon, The Price of Genius, 47.
11
Revue des Deux Mondes (1 January 1839), cited in ibid., 50–51.
12
Anne Martin-Fugier, La vie elegante ou la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 416: “Je réunis
chez moi, le matin, une sorte de jury musical, composé en partie d’incrédules. Ils furents, comme je m’y attendais,
étonnés et charmés à la fois de la voir et de l’entendre. Marie était belle de son talent sur la scène, mais son
véritable triomphe était dans les improvisation intimes.”
13
Ibid.

138
benevolence a presage of success for the singer, since Merlin would only welcome “superior
talents.”
14

The Countess organized benefit concerts and salons to which many artists, musicians,
hommes de lettres, and politicians came.
15
It was there that opera arias written by Gioachino
Rossini, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Vincenzo Bellini, and Geatano Donizetti were tried out first
before they were performed onstage.
16
Her salons were known throughout Europe, and again,
as with the salons of Pierre-Joseph Zimmermann and Orfila, musicians coming to Paris for the
first time believed that an important first step was to present themselves to her and receive a
“passport to celebrity.”
17
In other words, her salon was perceived as an entryway to other
opportunities.
Jacques Offenbach came into his first high-profile position as a result of his salon
playing (on the cello) as well.
18
He first appeared as a duet partner with his friend the German
opera composer and Conservatoire-trained pianist Friedrich Flotow in the home of Countess
Bertin de Vaux in 1838.
19
Their first performance, which included music they composed for the
occasion, was successful enough that the countess invited them back many times, sponsored a
public concert, and further engagements followed, including patronage by Princess

14
La Presse (14 February 1837), quoted in ibid.: “Les dilettanti qui ont applaudi Mlle Lozano, il y a huit jours, chez
Mme la comtesse M. apprendront avec plaisir que Mlle Lozano s’est enfin décidée à se faire entendre du public.
La bienveillance de Mme la comtesse M. est déjà un présage succeès. Mme M. n’a jamais accueilli que des
supériorités.”
15
Malou Haine, 400 lettres de musiciens au Musée royal de Mariemont (Liège: Editions Mardaga, 1995), 180.
16
Sophie Gay, Salons célèbres (Paris: Michel-Lévy frères, 1837), 197.
17
Mme la comtesse de Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois: souvenirs intimes, Nouvelle édition, 2e série (Paris: J.
Victorion, 18..), 111: “[C]ar ses concerts étaient célèbres par toute l’Europe, et il ne venait pas un musicien chez
nous sans qu’il se crût obligé de se présenter d’abord chez elle, afin d’en recevoir un passe-port [sic] de célébrité.”
18
Alexander Faris, Jacques Offenbach (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), 23.
19
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 266.

139
Belgiojoso.
20
Eventually, through a salon connection, Offenbach won a position as orchestra
conductor for the Comédie-Française. He was recruited in 1849 by the new administrateur
général of the Comédie-Française, Arsène Houssaye. It happened that on the second day of
Houssaye’s appointment, Houssaye and another administrator were at a café discussing their
plans for artistic changes and the administrator asked him what he planned to do with the
orchestra. Houssaye had not yet given it any thought, but fortuitously, he noticed Offenbach,
whom he had seen perform many times in salons, sitting at a nearby table. Immediately
Houssaye asked him to be the orchestra’s new conductor for the respectable salary of 6,000
francs per year.
21

An additional benefit musicians drew from salons was the chance to meet people with
connections in other towns or foreign countries who could open doors on the musicians’
tours. Gilbert Duprez, after singing a duet with Countess Merlin at her salon in 1823, worked
up his nerve to ask Rossini if he would accompany him on a solo. Rossini agreed and must
have been impressed (Duprez wrote in his autobiography), because he wrote Duprez very
effective introduction letters for his tour in Italy two years later.
22

Even for Liszt, a musician with incomparable celebrity for most of his career, Paris
salons were critical. They were particularly helpful to him after the death of his father, when
Liszt was performing in public only rarely; the salon scene enabled him to mature into an
adult performer.

20
Faris, Jacques Offenbach, 23–24. Belgiojoso’s patronage is mentioned in Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the
Salon Tradition,” 267. I did not find evidence of the nature of this patronage.
21
André Martinet, Offenbach, sa vie et son œuvre (Paris: Dentu, 1887), 11–12. A variation of this story is told in Faris,
Jacques Offenbach, 40, citing Arsène Houssaye, Les Confessions: Souvenirs d’un demi-siècle, vol. 2, bk. 7, (Paris: Dentu,
1885), 403.
22
Gilbert Duprez, Souvenirs d’un chanteur (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1880), 28, 35.

140
Liszt had made a splash as a child prodigy in Parisian concerts and salons in 1824. He
played thirty-eight public concerts in his first four months, charging at least 100 francs per
appearance. In one performance at the Théâtre-Italien, he made over 4,000 francs in profit.
His frank childish friendliness and facility on the piano charmed audiences, as he would look
around the concert hall as he played, admiring the walls and ceilings, and nodding and
smiling to people he recognized. The orchestra of the Théâtre-Italien was so entranced by his
talent that they forgot to reenter on one of the ritornellos (this must have been either during
the Hummel Piano Concerto in B Minor or Czerny’s Variations for Piano and Orchestra, both
of which he played that night).
23

Yet, his skill and reputation were not enough to sway the director of the Conservatoire,
Luigi Cherubini, to open the school’s doors to him, as Charles X’s minister of fine arts had—
just three weeks before Liszt’s arrival in Paris—banned foreign pianists from entering the
Conservatoire because that branch of study was oversaturated.
24
Liszt’s route to fame barred
through the traditional methods of gaining educational credentials, Conservatoire
connections, and notoriety from winning the Conservatoire’s concours, he needed another
way.
He toured—London, Manchester, and the French provinces—but when his father died
in 1827, his public appearances took a steep decline. Liszt supposedly still lived in Paris, but
since the public ceased to see him, reports of his death began to circulate in 1828; Le Corsaire
published an obituary on October 23, 1828, and store windows displayed his portrait with the

23
A. Martainville, concert review of Liszt, Le Drapeau (9 March 1824), cited in Alan Walker, “Paris and the First
World Tours,” in Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), iBook version, section IV.
24
Walker, “Paris and the First World Tour,” in Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, iBook version, n. 15.

141
caption “Né le 22 Octobre 1811, mort à Paris, 1828” written underneath.
25
The death reports
seem to have been genuinely misinformed rather than intentionally symbolic, but in
retrospect, they were symbolic. Le Corsaire had announced the “death of the young Liszt” (mort
du jeune Liszt). That “le petit Liszt” had died in Paris was in fact true. He was being forced to
mature as an artist and man. He had to support himself and his mother. Anna Liszt, an ex-
chambermaid, had been living with her sister in Graz while Liszt and his father went on tour
and had not seen them for three years, but she moved to Paris to live with her son after his
father died. To make ends meet, he sold the piano Erard had given him and began teaching
private lessons to girls in aristocratic homes and in a music school. He found his first love with
a student, Caroline Saint-Cricq, during this time, but his fragility was augmented by
heartbreak and embarrassment when her father found that he had been visiting without
permission and abruptly fired him, forbidding him to see her again. After this, Liszt threw
himself into a busy teaching schedule. His days ran from 8:30am to 10pm with hardly time to
catch his breath. He spent any extra time he could at church and in confessional, slept on the
steps outside his flat if his mother was already asleep when he came home, and took up habits
of drinking and smoking.
Liszt was in the midst of a dark and inauspicious period. He hardly practiced.
26
He
performed on stage only a few times, usually in collaboration with others rather than as the
principal performer. On one occasion, his performance met with scathing review: François-
Joseph Fétis advised him in the Revue musicale to develop more musically substantial playing
before he ruined his budding career.
27

25
Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811–1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 133–35.
26
Walker, “Obscurity in Paris,” in Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, iBook version.
27
In the Revue musicale, Fétis reviewed Liszt’s performance of Hummel’s B-minor Concerto at the opening of the
Concert Spirituel at the Opéra in April 1828: “What a pity that natural gifts such as those possessed by M. Liszt

142
More often, if Liszt performed, it was in salons, and it was this setting that helped
establish him as an adult pianist and no longer a child prodigy.
28
Marie d’Agoult recorded the
story of Liszt’s reinvention, framing him as mostly forgotten after his childhood Paris
performances and being rediscovered. As she tells it, his exposure started when he met the
Marquise Le Vayer, an aunt of one his students, who invited him to come play music at her
home. He would come from time to time, on the condition that no one else would be invited
aside from the family. The marquise agreed, but after hearing him, she could no longer keep
her promise. She gradually invited more and more people until practically all of society had
heard him.
This is where d’Agoult met him in December 1832.
29
She was reluctant to come, not
having heard of him before and thinking that she had already seen all of the virtuosos worth
seeing. After refusing multiple invitations from the marquise, she finally changed her mind
and came on supposedly the last night Liszt would play.
30
She arrived at 10 o’clock. When
Liszt entered the room, she found him the most extraordinary person she had ever seen—like
an apparition, suffering and powerful at the same time.
31
The marquise introduced them and
they talked for a few moments before the marquise formally introduced him to the gathered

are employed solely to convert music into the subject for a thimble-rigger and conjuror. This is not for what this
enchanting art is destined . . . Profit from time where your still-virgin faculties permit your talent to change
direction; take a step back and be the first among the young pianists, and have the courage to renounce brilliant
frivolities for advances that are more substantial. You will reap the rewards” (translated in Walker, Franz Liszt:
The Virtuoso Years, 133).
28
Some of his salon performances are listed at “Concerts par année,” Liszt: Centre national de la recherche
scientifique, accessed 30 April 2018, http://www.liszt.cnrs.fr/concert/listyears.
29
Marie de Flavigny, comtesse d’Agoult, Correspondance générale: Tome I, 1826–1836, ed. Charles F. Dupêchez
(Paris: H. Champion, 2003), 27.
30
Comtesse d’Agoult (Daniel Stern), Mémoires: 1833–1854 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1927), 20.
31
Ibid., 21.

143
company and he moved to the piano. D’Agoult recorded how Liszt behaved during this
conversation; this record leaves us a fortunate example of how Liszt interacted in this setting:
He was introduced to me and with a mixture of boldness and charm sat down
close to me as if he had known me for a long time. Franz began to talk like a
friend. Behind his strange appearance which had astonished me at first I
sensed a strong, free mind which attracted me; and long before our
conversation ended I came to consider his manner and what he said very
simple, although they were quite unusual in the world where I had always
lived.
32

His earnestness and open-heartedness were what she had sought in vain among her typical
society. Other people who met Liszt also confirmed his open and warm disposition toward
strangers. Anthony Rothschild, for instance, met Liszt at his sister Charlotte’s home at the
Rothschild’s estate in Frankfurt in 1842; he wrote to his wife, “Dearest, he is an agreeable and
talkative man in society, and is no doubt a dear and pleasant companion.”
33
These attributes
surely worked to win him friends as he performed in salons.
Liszt’s relationship with the Countess d’Agoult turned out to be fruitful, not only in
terms of a romance, but for his career. She became one of his greatest promoters and acted
essentially as his public-relations manager. He was six years younger than she, and at first her
attentions were mostly to take care of him, with even such things as gentle recommendations
for his appearance and visiting the dentist.
34
She later took to writing publications and
newspaper articles in his name, building his reputation as a man of letters—a reputation he
very much wanted as he kept company with intelligent and creative people. He also attempted
to compensate for the gaps he sensed in his own education, which was halted at age sixteen at

32
Nancy Jane Shumate Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire: A French Cultural Institution in
Historical Perspective” (PhD diss., University of Texas, 1982), 203, citing ibid.
33
Charlotte de Rothschild, “The Musical Associations of the Rothschild Family,” in The Rothschilds: Essays on the
History of a European Family, ed. Georg Heuberger (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), 191.
34
Knieff, “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire,” 204.

144
his father’s death.
35
D’Agoult cooperated with Liszt in publishing (under his name only) “De la
situation des artistes et de leur condition dans la société,” “Lettre à George Sand,” and other
articles in the Revue et Gazette musicale in 1835. Over the next two years, she published the
“Lettres d’un bachelier ès musique” series in the same journal as a response to Sand’s “Lettres
d’un voyageur,” and then an article on fine arts in L’Artiste in 1838.
36
On one occasion, d’Agoult
wrote to the Journal des débats to confront them about misleading information they had
published about Liszt.
37
She wrote introductions to his published pieces and likely the bulk of
the eight-page biography of Liszt in the Gazette musicale (24 July 1835) that the music critic
Joseph d’Ortigue put his name to.
38
She continued offering to write Liszt’s publicity even for
several years after their romantic relationship ended.
39

A salon appearance had led him to this important person in his life. But why else Liszt
considered salons important to participate in, he never indicated. D’Agoult wrote that he
would continue to perform at all sorts of salons, even ones at which he only performed and
promptly left, not socializing with the guests.
40
Liszt and Marie both held the opinion that
these performances were frequently degrading to a musician’s value and self-worth (more on
this in the following chapter).

35
See Liszt’s own attestation of this desire, reproduced in Emile Haraszti, “Franz Liszt—Author Despite Himself:
The History of a Mystification,” trans. John A. Gutman, The Musical Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1947): 499.
36
D’Agoult’s authorship was claimed and contested even at the time these works were published; see ibid., 493–
94 (particularly 494).
37
Ibid., 494.
38
Ibid., 498.
39
Ibid., 497.
40
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 258, citing Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 344.

145
Liszt’s perspective on his time in Parisian salons was bitter. He wrote melodramatically
in 1837, in “Lettres d’un bachelier ès musique,” that his father had essentially ripped him from
his homeland and forced him to be a petty servant for the entertainment of others:
As his fatherly will, he abducted me from the steppes of Hungary, where I had
grown up free and untamed under wild tribes, and threw me, poor child, into
the salons of a glittering society who branded me with the flattering title of “the
little prodigy.” From then on, my earlier melancholy began to grow, and
against my will I bore the barely disguised humiliation of the court artist. . . . I
began to realize what Art could become and what the Artist must become. . . . A
bitter aversion to art overcame me, the art I saw before me degraded into a
more or less lucrative trade, stamped as the producer of entertainment for
distinguished society. I would prefer anything in the world to being a lord’s
hireling, patronized and paid by him like a juggler or the trained dog.”
41

Liszt, therefore, was not engaging the salon circuit because of the enjoyment it offered him,
but—publicly at least—considered it a necessary evil, an unfair lot in his life, a service
beneath him. Yet, it was a service he continued to perform for more than ten years after he
published this critique. Oddly, he did not seem to fear putting off this audience in the Revue et
gazette musicale. Criticism of audiences’ frivolity could very well have been part of his
branding strategy so that the audiences that sought him out would believe that that they were
listening to a great musician rather than a vacuous entertainer. He had a conflicted
relationship with his profession; many times he discussed his virtuoso career in terms of
having to sacrifice himself and his art to a shallow audience, yet, he did not limit himself to
teaching and serious performances (and a more moderate income), even though he could
have. Until he moved to Weimar to be a full-time conductor in 1848, he continued improvising
variations on popular themes and performing the flashiest virtuosic works in both concerts
and salons.

41
Franz Liszt, “Lettres d’un bachelier ès musique,” in Revue et gazette musicale (12 February 1837), translated in
Klára Hamburger, Liszt (Budapest: Gondolat, 1980), 18–19.

146
Returning to the image of Liszt presented at the start of Chapter Three: Liszt in a salon
more likely looked something like the following illustration by Jean-Jacques Grandville.

Figure 5.1: Jean-Jacques Grandville, “Artistic tea seasoned with great men” (1845). Pictured: Balzac
(leftmost), Alexandre Dumas (highest), Delphine de Girardin, Liszt, George Sand, Théophile Gautier
(seated), Victor Hugo (standing profile). Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département de
Musique, Est.LisztF.018 http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84220059.item.

147
This image is of course a caricature of a salon, rather than documentary evidence, but several
parts of it fit with other things we know about salons better than the Liszt-centric depictions
by Josef Danhauser and Josef Kriehuber. The musician is no longer the center of attention—
in fact, most people are not paying attention to him at all; they are charmed by the salon
hostess or absorbed in watching the people around themselves. Moreover, the room is
crowded, chaotic, and divided into multiple groups—not the tight and reflective circle we
often imagine. And the caricatural expression on Liszt’s face—it is difficult to know for certain
what it means, but it seems that he is desperately trying to hear the voice of inspiration
through the commotion around him.

Expectations for payment
Liszt, like any other musician, performed in salons for the social and remunerative advantages
it brought. Scholars have not agreed about whether musicians typically received payment for
salon performances. One respected expert says that, in general, musicians simply considered
their appearances advertising and exposure, and if they expected anything, it was gifts rather
than money.
42
However, the salon historian Anne Martin-Fugier says that musicians were
generally compensated.
43
Evidence points to an answer that combines these two views.
Many instances of payment are known to have happened. When the celebrated Pierre-
Jean Garat (1762–1823) and his wife sang at the Princess de Vaudemont’s salon, she paid them
an undisclosed amount.
44
The banker Baron Ferdinand Moritz Delmar paid 15,000 francs for

42
Meg Freeman Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace: The Nineteenth-Century Music Salon,” Women of
Note Quarterly 3, no. 4 (November 1995): 18.
43
Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 422.
44
Bassanville, Les Salons d’autrefois, 1è serie, 79.

148
musicians to put on a performance of Mozart’s Requiem at his house.
45
Singers from the
Théâtre Italien, such as Luigi Lablache or Giulia Grisi, were paid huge rates of 500 francs per
piece.
46
Le Siècle reported that Paganini asked an exorbitant 3,000 francs for one soirée.
47

Actresses sometimes were paid in gifts, such as cashmere shawls (sometimes costing more
than 500 francs). Mademoiselle Rachel, for instance, was paid in bracelets, velvet dresses, and
silver cutlery during the 1838/39 season.
48

While Chopin was in London near the end of his career, his fee was set by Broadwood
piano manufacturers at 20 guineas (about 530 francs) for a soirée.
49
Madame Charlotte de
Rothschild in London did not approve of it being so high. She, “so obviously trying to be kind
and helpful, replied that of course I play very beautifully, but that she advised me to take less,
as one had to show greater ‘moderayshon’ this season.”
50
In the same letter, Chopin says he
expects to earn 150 guineas (nearly 4,000 francs!) playing a concert at another private
residence, a rare amount for an artist in London, likely more than even the entire opera could
make after expenses.
51

45
Nouvelles à la main (20 January 1841), cited in Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 422.
46
Le Siècle (19 January 1843), cited in ibid.
47
Le Siècle (20 February 1839), cited in ibid.
48
Ibid.
49
Letter from Chopin to Wojciech Grzymała in Paris, London, 2 June 1848, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk
Chopin, ed. Bronislaw Edward Sydow, trans., Arthur Hedley (London: Heinemann, 1962), 320. The currency
conversion was made by converting 20 guineas into 21 British pounds and then using
http://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html to convert 21 British pounds to French francs in the
year 1848.
50
Letter from Chopin to Wojciech Grzymała in Paris, London, 2 June 1848, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk
Chopin, 320.
51
Ibid., 320–21.

149
Hosts either funded the musicians’ appearance out of their own pocket or sometimes
had the guests buy tickets for the evening to assist with the musicians’ fees. The previous
chapter describes the efforts of Juliette Récamier to conscript a friend to sell tickets for 20
francs each for Duprez’s concert in her salon. In this arrangement, the salon functioned as a
semi-private concert, using the hostess’s usual guests and social circle to fund the event.
Likely, this money went to the musicians.
The financial arrangement was different for salons that benefited political or
charitable causes. In these cases, musicians performed for free and used the appeal of their
names to sell tickets whose proceeds were given to the cause. The musician’s non-monetary
rewards were exposure and a reputation for generosity. Tickets to Princess Belgiojoso’s
charity bazaar in 1837 cost 25 francs.
52
The musicians were not paid for their performances or
compositions contributed to the event, but their appearances did give them publicity
(particularly Liszt and Thalberg, for the reports of their duel in the papers) and a good name
for using their time and skills toward philanthropy. As another example, Récamier organized
a soirée by subscription on February 4, 1841, for the victims of a flood in her hometown of
Lyon. The singers Giovanni Battista Rubini, Lablache, and Viardot donated their talents.
53

In addition, sometimes musicians performed without payment because they knew they
could call in favors from their hosts later in the year. The most common of these was hosts’
support of musicians’ benefit concerts. The pianist and composer Flotow, mentioned above as
having introduced Offenbach to salon culture, recorded his simple strategy for supporting
himself through returned favors for his salon performances:

52
Le Journal des débats (21 March 1837).
53
Malou Haine, 400 lettres de musiciens, 240–41.

150
One makes several appearances in the course of the winter and then, at the
beginning of Lent, one announces a concert and sends a dozen high-price
tickets, generally at ten francs, to the hostess of every salon at which one has
played. That is the usual practice. It practically never happens that all, or even
any, of the tickets are sent back.
54

Flotow refers to musicians’ practice of distributing envelopes of tickets among
potential supporters. Castil-Blaze’s Physiologie du musicien (1844), an entertaining description
of musicians’ lives for curious outsiders, says that while first-rate virtuosos could simply put
their name on a poster and have a concert, second- and third-rank musicians invest time in a
lot of soirées first and earn concert attendees.
55
These musicians would perform in salons for
free all season and then wait out the summer. Then, when people returned from their
vacations, the musician would go door to door offering tickets to their benefits.
56
Normally,
Castil-Blaze recounts, people would graciously accept tickets that they were sent and pay for
them, even if they had not yet received payment from the friends to whom they would
distribute them.
57
Alternatively, musicians mailed packets of tickets to potential buyers, who
would use them for themselves or share them among their friends and associates.
According to William Weber, salon hosts were obligated to buy tickets to their guest
musicians’ benefits, “and few families shirked the duty”; in fact, “frequent complaints in the

54
Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 250, citing Jeffrey Cooper, The Rise of Instrumental
Music and Concert Series in Paris, 1828–1871, Studies in Musicology, ed. George Buelow, no. 65 (Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1983), 86. Flotow (1812–1883) had to leave Paris because of the 1830 Revolution, but came back a
year later. His works were performed at the residence “of Count Castellane, where aristocratic families ran their
own private amateur theatre.” Flotow was driven back to Germany again by the 1848 Revolution. When the
political climate became more settled, he divided his time between Paris and Germany until his death (Peter
Cohen, “Flotow, Friedrich Freiherr von,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press,
accessed 5 September 2017; “Flotow, Friedrich Ferdinand Adolf von,” Encyclopædia Britannica 10 [11th ed.], ed.
Chisholm Hugh [Cambridge University Press, 1911]).
55
Castil-Blaze, Physiologie du musicien (Paris: chez tous les libraires, 1844), 43.
56
Ibid., 44.
57
Ibid.

151
press about the pressure of musicians put upon their clients show how strong the requirement
was,” some calling it a tax or extortion.
58
Musicians were often aggressive in ensuring that they
received compensation for the tickets they sent out. If sponsors did not either purchase their
tickets or return them ahead of the concert, musicians felt justified to write letters requesting
that the kept tickets be reimbursed. The virtuoso cellist Adrien-François Servais (1807–1866),
who toured throughout Europe and whom Berlioz described as “Paganinian,” had a manager
who contacted derelict invitees to Servais’s benefit two weeks after the concert.
59
One of the
derelicts, the Baron de Rothschild, received this letter:
Monsieur,
We had the honor of sending you four tickets for a musical evening we
gave in the Pape’s salons on last Sunday, 29 December. We have thought and
still think that a reply should be given to this letter, and we have just asked you
to kindly honor us with this reply. It is surely not from you, sir, that artists
should suspect a lack of regard.
We take this opportunity to renew to you the assurance of the very
distinguished sentiments with which we have the honor to be, respectfully, Sir,
your very humble servant.
60

Three of the five letters like this sent out received answers with the payment for the tickets
enclosed (or very nearly; the king’s sister sent twenty francs instead of twenty-four).
61
Servais’s

58
Musical Record (19 April 1845), 23, cited in William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of
Concert Life in London, Paris, and Vienna (London: Biddles Ltd., 1975), 37; Revue et gazette musicale (31 May 1946), 171;
Journal des dames (5 February 1846), 73; Revue musicale 4 (1833), 515–16; Revue et gazette musicale (8 February 1846), 46;
Gazette musicale (15 March 1840), 110. See also Simon McVeigh, “The Benefit Concert in Nineteenth-Century
London: From ‘Tax on the Nobility’ to ‘Monstrous Nuisance,’” in Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 1, ed.
Bennett Zon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 242–66.
59
Malou Haine, “Musicien, mécène et imprésario: Les concerts du violoncelliste Adrien-François Servais et leur
promotion par Jules Lardin,” in Le Concert et son public: Mutations de la vie musicale en Europe de 1780 à 1914 (France,
Allemagne, Angleterre), ed. Hans Erich Bödeker, Patrice Veit, Michael Werner (Paris: Editions de la Maison des
sciences de l’homme, 2002), paragraph 1, accessed 4 June 2018,
http://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/6763?lang=fr.
60
Ibid., paragraph 12.
61
Ibid., paragraph 13.

152
manager next wrote to the wife of a remaining non-responder (the Belgian ambassador to
France), and still not receiving payment, threatened to publish a defamatory article in a
newspaper.
62

Most often, however, invitees responded before the concert, sending payment for the
tickets’ value or even more. In the case of Servais, the queen returned the tickets he sent her,
but still sent thirty francs for her four tickets worth twenty-four francs; the king and Duke of
Orléans each sent eighty francs for their tickets worth the same amount. (It is unknown what
the king did with his tickets, while the duke gave his to guests.
63
)
This “tax” on salon hosts, the expectation that they would be present and supportive of
their guest musicians’ concerts, was a common form of repayment. Using salon connections
was also a fairly reliable and lucrative way for musicians to sell tickets to their benefits.
Unfortunately, appearances did not always yield the results hoped for. Houssaye, who
was a writer and director of the journal L’Artiste in addition to director of the Comédie-
Française, expressed the plight of many less fortunate musicians in a short novella, “Trois
pages de la vie de Vallia.”
64
In a well-known salon, a young harpist named Vallia performs, but
suddenly faints after finishing only her first piece. The hostess ushers her into another room
to recover; one guest, the narrator, is the only person to follow her and attend to her recovery.
He learns that she had not eaten well before coming and that she had rushed to the house and
was not allowed time to catch her breath before playing. “Hostesses are cruel like theater
directors,” he tells her (himself a theater director, Houssaye mocks himself at bit in process).

62
Ibid., paragraph 17–18. Haine does not specify if the critique was actually printed.
63
Ibid., paragraph 13.
64
Arsène Houssaye, “Trois pages de la vie de Vallia,” in Les Douze nouvelles nouvelles (Paris: E. Dentu, 1884), 75–96.
The story is set in 1870, well after the July Monarchy, but seems pertinent, as Houssaye participated in many July
Monarchy salons and was well informed about and involved in musicians’ careers.

153
“They sacrifice everything for their world. They would burn down their houses in order to put
on a fireworks show.”
65
“I don’t know why I came here,” the harpist tells him, “I don’t even
know the hostess. They told me that it would make me famous because there’s no one but
famous people here. But I know that currency! All winter I have played in similar houses, and
I’m neither better known nor the richer for it.”
66
“Don’t you enjoy playing the harp?” the guest
asks: voicing the perennial assumption that musicians perform for the love of it and not for a
living. “Not in the least!” she replies. “I play the harp and violin in the same way others paint
porcelain or work a sewing machine.”
67
He takes her to dinner and learns that she has no
parental support and tries to make her living in an honest way rather than as a courtesan like
her sister. A year later the girl dies, having never earned enough money to live well, though
her music had been enjoyed by her audiences.
Several points about salons come out of this story: one, both musicians and hosts
expected salon performances to lead to recognition and additional opportunities; two, such
expectations were not always met, or the system was abused. Some houses were more
interested in providing free entertainment, or appearing to be culturally engaged, than they
were in truly aiding musicians in their livelihood. A third point is that musicians participated
in salons to varying degrees. Sometimes they were part of the social circle, attending regularly
and lending artistic conversation and their own prestige. But in other situations, they were

65
Ibid., 80: “Les maîtresses de maison sont cruelles, comme les directeurs de théâtre; elles sacrifient tout à leur
monde. Elles brûleraient la maison pour donner un feu d'artifice.”
66
Ibid., 81: “Je ne sais pas pourquoi je suis venue ici, puisque je ne connais même pas la maîtresse de la maison.
On m'a dit que c'était pour me donner de la célébrité, parce qu'il n'y a ici que des gens célèbres. Mais je la connais
cette monnaie-là! Tout cet hiver j'ai joué dans de pareilles maisons; je n'en suis pas plus connue ni plus riche.”
67
Ibid.: ““Pas le moins du monde. Je joue de la harpe et du violon comme d'autres font de la peinture sur
porcelaine ou trépignent sur une machine à coudre.”

154
invited only to perform and did not even mingle with guests (the typical way musicians
appear at parties today). In this latter situation, musicians expected their hosts to either pay
them or advocate for further opportunities.
Rossini regularly acted as an impresario for this last type of appearance. D’Agoult
indicated that many musicians, even the most celebrated, including Liszt, played for these
events. She describes what this kind of salon was like around 1824–26 in the faubourg Saint-
Germain, the Parisian quarter where the conservative nobility resided:
Composers and singers still had their place apart; in spite of the eagerness to
have them, they appeared in the salons only on the footing of inferiors. If
someone wanted to give a fine concert, he sent to Rossini, who, for a recognized
fee—it was small enough, only 1500 francs if I recollect rightly—undertook to
arrange the program and then see to its carrying out, thus relieving the master
of the house of all embarrassments in the way of choice of artists, of rehearsals,
and so on. The great maestro himself sat at the piano all evening accompanying
singers. Generally he added an instrumental virtuoso—Herz or Moscheles,
Lafont or Beriot, Nadermann (the leading Paris harpist), Tulou (the king’s first
flute), or the wonder of the musical world, the little Liszt. At the appointed
hour they arrived in a body, entering by a side door; in a body they sat near the
piano; and in a body they departed, after having received the compliments of
the master of the house and of a few professed dilettantes. The next day the
master sent Rossini his fee and believed he had discharged his obligations
toward them and him.
68

Presumably, Rossini would divide the earnings among the players and himself, but it is
uncertain how. From D’Agoult’s last statement, it would seem that the rule was that a host
who paid his musicians had no further responsibility to help them find further opportunities
for career advancement.

68
Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos, 344, cited in Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition,” 258.

155
Chopin, salon performer archetype
The musician known as the archetypal salon performer was Frédéric Chopin, the pianist who
preferred the salon setting’s intimacy over public concerts.
69
His hiding away in the world of
elite salons caused one paper to describe him in this way: “There is an artist in Paris . . .
everyone knows him, everyone admires him, but almost no one has heard him.”
70
Thanks to
connections he made in salons, Chopin earned enough sponsors and teaching engagements to
mostly avoid performing in public. He gave only thirty concerts during his thirty-year career.
For his last one, he described his ideal setting: a hall seating a modest audience of 300 people,
all familiar faces of people he knew, flowers strewing the steps of the stage, and the piano on
which he would perform delivered to his home the week before for his practicing.
71

Familiarity was his modus operandi. It was personal connections with high society instead of
public concerts that established his reputation as a great pianist and composer, afforded him
students and social prestige, and gave him support in times of financial difficulty.
Chopin came to Paris at age twenty-one in September 1831; within a few months there,
he found himself famous.
72
By December, he had not yet performed publicly, but he wrote to
his friend childhood friend Tytus Woyciechowski, “You should know that I already possess a

69
See Andreas Ballstaedt, “Chopin as 'Salon Composer' in Nineteenth-Century German Criticism,” in Chopin
studies, ed. Jim Samson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 20–21, for more examples of how scholars
have identified him with the salon.
70
“Théâtres, fêtes et concerts,” La Presse (24 April 1841), quoted in Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin, âme des salons
parisiens, 1830–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 2013), 18: “Il est un artiste, à Paris, qui a une place tout à fait particulière:
chacun le connaît, chacun l’admire, et presque personne ne l’a entendu.”
71
Chopin, letters of 10 and 11 February 1848, summarized in “Chopin Biography: Year 1848,” The Fryderyk Chopin
Institute, accessed 4 June 2018, http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/life/calendar/year/1848.
72
See also Eigeldinger, Chopin, âme des salons parisiens, 15.

156
huge name among artists here,” undoubtedly because of appearances at private soirées.
73

After a chance encounter with a family friend from Warsaw, the Duke Walenty (Valentine)
Radziwiłł, Chopin was invited to the home of Baron James and Madame de Rothschild.
74

Chopin performed there on January 15, greatly impressing the family. He became the music
teacher to the Rothschild ladies, and a regular participant in their soirées. Other wealthy
families clamored to employ him as well after seeing him perform there and hearing of the
Rothschilds’ satisfaction with him as a teacher. The Rothschilds connected him with other
patrons, including the Princess de Vaudemont and the Czartoryskis, a princely Polish family
that came to Paris with the thousands of émigrés who fled Poland after the Russian invasion
in 1831.
To this point, Chopin’s performances and interactions with society had been only in
private settings; his public debut at the Salon Pleyel would not happen until February 26, 1832.
Young though Chopin was, he already had a background that had prepared him to succeed in
Parisian high society. He had been raised in the salon culture of Warsaw. His father, a
Frenchman, was a French language teacher and part of the intellectual elite in Warsaw, with
entrée into several salons in the area. His son’s unusual talent was recognized at these salons,
and soon he was being invited to perform in aristocratic salons in Warsaw in addition to the
homes of academics.
75
One of these events was the setting of the perhaps mythical story of
seven-year-old Chopin being asked by his mother what the audience liked best about his

73
“Chopin Biography: Year 1831,” Fryderyk Chopin Institute, accessed 5 December 2017,
http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/life/calendar/year/1831.
74
William G. Atwood, Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 66.
75
Kornel Michałowski and Jim Samson, “Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music
Online (Oxford University Press), accessed 5 December 2017. These salons are addressed in Halina Goldberg,
“Chopin in Literary Salons and Warsaw’s Romantic Awakening,” The Polish Review 45, no. 1 (2000): 53–64.

157
performance, to which he adorably replied, “My lace collar!”
76
In 1830, a Warsaw newspaper
pointed him out to a broader audience: “The young Chopin rises above all the pianists we
have heard here: he is the Paganini of the piano.”
77
Chopin immediately responded by
announcing a public concert at the National Theater.
78
It sold out three days in advance, so he
announced another, to which 900 people came, and a few months later, a third to which 700
came.
79
Seeking more exposure in other cities, he set out on successful tours of Germany and
Austria, eventually landing in Paris, not suspecting that he would stay the rest of his life.
In Vienna, Chopin wrote about his routine, providing a glimpse into what it was like
for him to visit salons as often as he did (nearly daily). His schedule at the time consisted of
being woken by a servant, practicing, cold coffee, the German teacher’s visit at nine, then Carl
Hummel (a painter and the son of the pianist Johann Nepomuk Hummel) drawing his portrait
while Thomas Nidecki (a fellow pupil of Joseph Elsner) practiced his concerto (at least at the
time he was writing the letter). He would take a noontime walk with a friend and have lunch
in a restaurant where university students would eat if he had no invitation elsewhere. After,
he took black coffee at a café, made calls, came home at nightfall, tidied his hair, put on
evening shoes, and went to a party. He would come home between ten and midnight, “play
the piano, have a good cry, read, look at things, have a laugh, get into bed, blow out my candle
and always dream about you all,” he told a friend in Warsaw.
80
He complained that he was

76
Atwood, Fryderyk Chopin, 6–7.
77
Kurier Warszawski (3 March 1830), referred to in Mieczysław Tomaszewski, Fryderyk Chopin: A Diary in Images,
trans. Rosemary Hunt (Arkady: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1990), 66.
78
Pictures of the theater on Krasiński Square and the interior can be seen at “250 Years of Teatr Narodowy (The
National Theater of Poland),” Google Arts & Culture, accessed 29 May 2018,
https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/QRIY75Qs.
79
Tomaszewski, Fryderyk Chopin, 66–74.
80
Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, 76–77.

158
mostly bored during the parties, even if people made a fuss of him and kept requesting
permission to draw or paint his portrait.
81
Moreover, from his nightly weeping, it seems that
he was even emotionally drained by them. In Paris, the frequency of his visits to salons
increased: George Sand wrote in her Histoire de ma vie published in 1856 that he would attend
twenty to thirty salons regularly, at least one per night.
82
This breakneck schedule,
considering his attitude about these events, implies that these were rounds he felt obligated to
make, rather than being a simple matter of pleasurable visiting. This view of salon attendance
matches the perspective of Clara Wieck, who was in Paris in 1839 and wrote home to her
fiancé Robert Schumann that the parties that she attended for exposure were “hardly
endurable; over 50 ladies sit round the piano in one tiny room, and behave in the silliest
fashion. . . . The levity, idleness, coquetry is [sic] unbelievable.”
83

Salon appearances, for which Chopin was at least occasionally paid, as well as a small
stipend from his father and income from his sheet-music sales, supported him until the end of
1832, by which time he was well settled in Paris and could live on his teaching income.
84
He
was giving five lessons that day at 20 francs each.
85
If this were his schedule five days a week,
Chopin was earning as much as 500 francs per week—a highly impressive amount,
considering that the average salary of an employee in a non-civic, non-agricultural job was 513
to 580 francs per year. Even for a high-level civil servant, the average income was only 1,023

81
Letter to Jan Matuszyński, in Vienna, Christmas 1830, in ibid., 73.
82
George Sand, Histoire de ma vie, vol. 10 (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1856), 133.
83
Letter of 10 March 1839, in Berthold Litzmann, Clara Schumann: An Artist’s Life: Based on Material Found in Diaries
and Letters, vol. 1, trans. Grace E. Hadow (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979), 202.
84
Michałowski and Samson, “Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek.”
85
Letter from Chopin to Dominic Dziewanowski in Berlin, Paris, second week of January 1833, in Selected
Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, 115.

159
francs per year.
86
Chopin kept his teaching schedule only six months of the year, October or
November through May, as he often escaped the heat of Paris during the summers.
87
He found
that his salary was not overly comfortable, as his expenses to fit in with high society were also
enormous:
I have five lessons to give today. You will imagine that I am making a fortune
but my cabriolet and white gloves cost more than that, and without them I
should not have bon ton. . . . I’m a revolutionary myself so I care nothing for
money, only for friendship.
88

He rented a posh apartment and bought expensive furniture for the comfort of those who
came to visit him or have lessons. His father showed surprised at the luxury of his apartment
but understood that a “little luxury” is necessary “since you give your lessons at home, and
now, as always, people judge by appearances.”
89
Chopin’s guests would include princesses,
ambassadors, countesses, and bankers.
Just over a year after he came to Paris, Chopin seemed blissful about his situation. He
wrote to a friend,
I have found my way into the very best society; I have my place among
ambassadors, princes, ministers—I don’t know by what miracle it has come
about for I have not pushed myself forward. But today all that sort of thing is
indispensable to me: those circles are supposed to be the fountainhead of good
taste. You at once have more talent if you have been heard at the English or
Austrian embassies; you immediately play better if the Princess de Vaudemont
has patronized you.
90

86
Christian Morrisson and Wayne Snyder, “The Income Inequality of France in Historical Perspective,” European
Review of Economic History, 4, no. 1 (April 2000): 73.
87
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin vu par ses élèves (Paris: Fayard, 2006), 17.
88
Letter from Chopin to Dominic Dziewanowski in Berlin, Paris, second week of January 1833, in Selected
Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, 115. A cabriolet is a two-wheeled carriage drawn by one horse.
89
Letter Nicholas Chopin to Frederyk in Paris, Warsaw, 7 September 1834, in ibid., 123.
90
Letter from Chopin to Dominic Dziewanowski in Berlin, Paris, second week of January 1833, in ibid., 114–15.

160
“I don’t know by what miracle it has come about for I have not pushed myself forward”—
Chopin recognized it was not his effort, but the recommendations of others that had helped
him to his current state. He credits the Princess de Vaudemont specifically. She was
considered a véritable dénicheuse de talents, or talent scout, and her biographer credits her with
making Chopin famous, though giving no detail as to how.
91
The princess had supported
several other eminent musicians. In 1807 and 1812, she had arranged for Jan Ladislav Dussek
(1760–1812)
92
followed by Sigismond Neukomm (1778–1858) to be employed as personal pianists
to Prince Talleyrand (Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Napoleon’s grand
chamberlain, then consultant, and then part of the committee that deposed him).
93
In
addition, Princess de Vaudemont protected Alexandre-Etienne Choron (1771–1834), who had
founded a music school and taught an impressive studio of vocalists who became star singers

91
Florin, La Princesse de Vaudemont, 232. Pekacz thinks it unlikely that Chopin ever appeared in the princess’s
salon (Pekacz, “Chopin and the Parisian Salons,” Chopin’s Musical Worlds: The 1840s, ed. Magdalena Chylińska,
John Comber, Artur Szklener, trans. John Comber [Warsaw: National Frederic Chopin Institute, 2007 (sic for
2008)], 39). But to the contrary point, Chopin seemed quite familiar with the princess and her soirées, which he
described in detail:
She received the Court and did much good, giving shelter to many aristocrats during the first
Revolution. She was the first of the noble ladies to frequent the Court [of Louis-Philippe] after
the revolution of July and was the last of the ancient Montmorency family. She always had a
host of little black and white bitches, canaries, parrots, and was the owner of Paris high
society’s most amusing monkey which used to bite the other countesses’ asses at her parties.
(Letter from Chopin to Dominic Dziewanowski in Berlin, Paris, second week of January 1833, in
Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, 114–15)
It seems impossible that Chopin could go multiple times to the princess’s parties, call her a patron, and never
have returned her favors by performing for her guests. This omission would be especially perplexing since she so
regularly had musical entertainment at her salons, including Malibran, Meyerbeer, Choron, Garat, and even a
comic opera written and performed by her devoted guests (see Florin, La Princesse de Vaudemont, 209, 232;
Bassanville, Les Salons d’autrefois, 1er série, 51).
92
Jan Dussek (1760–1812) was supposedly one of the first “glamor pianists” before Liszt. He turned the piano
sideways on stage so that people could see his handsome profile (Victor Chapin, Giants of the Keyboard
[Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1967], 47).
93
Florin, La Princesse de Vaudemont, 116, 170–71.

161
at the Opéra.
94
Though the exact nature of Princess de Vaudemont’s support for Chopin is
unrecorded, Chopin believed her a significant force in his early successes, if only for
connecting his name with hers.
Though Chopin is now known as the classical musician most associated with salon
performing culture, the scholar Jolanta Pekacz has pointed out that there is surprisingly little
documentary evidence that Chopin ever performed in or even attended the majority of the
most fashionable salons in Paris.
95
Her incredible revelation is that he is mentioned neither in
the private papers of fashionable hostesses, nor in the major studies of salons written in the
1830s and 40s.
96
Even if he regularly visited twenty to thirty Paris salons, he did not infiltrate
the scene as well as we have been led to believe.
97
A curious statement from two of Chopin’s
students hints toward this same conclusion: in 1842, Karl and Joseph Filtsch wrote to their
parents, “Chopin, who never goes into society, is so kind that he takes us everywhere to
introduce us to famous people.”
98
Their statement that Chopin never went out is puzzling.

94
Bassanville, Les Salons d’autrefois, 1er série, 63. Choron’s studio included Gilbert Duprez (the tenor who
supposedly first sang a high C in chest voice), Rosine Stoltz (a soprano at the Opéra and a true diva; she
eventually became unpopular because she used her position as the Opéra’s director’s mistress to push out other
sopranos), Pierre Dietsch (a singer, bass player, organist, composer, and by all accounts very poor conductor at
the Opéra [There is a story of him making Wagner go almost mad with his bad conducting of Tannhäuser in Léon
Escudier, “L’Orchestre de l’Opéra,” in L’Art musical (23 July 1863), translated in Encounters with Marcello Conati,
ed., Verdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 40]), and Paul Scudo (a music critic for the Revue des deux
mondes and L’Art musicale, and as an opponent of the music of Berlioz, Verdi, and all “the bad musicians from
Germany” including Liszt [who was actually Hungarian], Wagner, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and late Beethoven!
[Paul Scudo, “Revue musicale: La Reine de Saba,” Revue des deux mondes (15 March 1862): 511]).
95
George Sand, Histoire de ma vie, 133, cited in Pekacz, “Chopin and the Parisian Salons,” 43. Pekacz lists the salons
of Juliette Récamier, Sophie Gay, Delphine Gay-Girardin, Virginie Ancelot, the Duchess d’Abrantès (known for
her pro-Polish sympathies), Charles Nodier, Victor Hugo, the Princess de Rauzan, the Countess Merlin, the
Baron Delmar (who organized superb concerts), Mathieu Orfila, the Countess Bertin de Vaux (where Jacques
Offenbach was discovered), and the Baron de Trémont—among these, there is no record of Chopin’s attendance
(43–46).
96
Ibid., 41–42.
97
Ibid., 43.
98
Karl and his brother Joseph Filtsch to their parents, 29 November 1842, in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk
Chopin, 223–24.

162
One possible explanation for Chopin’s absence from most important salon records is that
Chopin chose to visit only the salons that provided useful connections to him; he seems to
have limited himself to the bankers he worked with, the wealthy who provided patronage, a
few “members of the royal court who provided status,” and several members of the Polish
exile community.
99
Indeed, Chopin’s circle was broadest when he first came to Paris, but
became narrower over time.
100
It is possible that by the time of the Filtsch brothers’ letter,
Chopin had tired of spreading himself thin and limited his outings to only what was
necessary. He certainly still did recognize the importance of making the rounds of society for
both himself and his students, as his facilitation of Karl Filtsch’s performance in the
Rothschilds’ salon, described in the previous chapter, illustrates. However, apparently most of
the other salons that Chopin participated in were not considered mainstream enough for
historians to note in their records of Parisian salons, even if they were beneficial to him.
101

Another explanation is that perhaps Chopin did perform at fashionable salons but his
appearances were not remarked on because he was not as well acclaimed as we have
imagined, or he did not stand out among more sensational performers. Since musicians were
often swept in and out of a back door rather than taking part in the social interactions at
salons, perhaps attendees took little notice of Chopin while they hobnobbed with each other.
George Sand corroborated that Chopin did not aim for grandiosity in his salon habits:
“He was the society man par excellence, not of the overly official or overly numerous society,

99
Pekacz, “Chopin and the Parisian Salons,” 48.
100
Ibid.
101
Ibid.

163
but of intimate society, salons of twenty people, at an hour when the crowd has gone away.”
102

Instead of being celebrated by any and all audiences, Chopin and his music were more to the
taste of connoisseurs. Berlioz, who reviewed an appearance of Chopin in the salon of the
Marquise de Custine, said that Chopin was not as well-known as Liszt or Thalberg because his
qualities were not those that aroused strong admiration in the crowd; he preferred calm, on
the contrary, and the attention of a small but sympathetic audience was more favorable to him
than the loudest applause.
103
Berlioz also wrote about Chopin as a performer for a small circle
of people who really wanted to listen, and after most others had left the salon late at night—in
other words, not the large crowds or groups who wanted easy entertainment, as Franz Liszt
complained was the case at most salons.
104

By the end of his life, Chopin’s health had deteriorated to the point that he had to stop
giving lessons, and when he could no longer afford his rent and medical bills, it was salon
hosts who took care of him. Madame de Rothschild and Jane Stirling (another significant
student and patron who often visited him from Scotland) sent him large amounts of money.
105

The people with him at his deathbed included members of the Czartoryski family, in whose
Monday salon in the most exquisite private home in the city, on the corner of the Ile Saint-

102
Quoted in Eigeldinger, Chopin, âme des salons parisiens, 15: “Il était l’homme du monde par excellence, non pas
du monde trop official et trop nombreux, mais du monde intime, des salons de vingt personnes, de l’heure où la
foule s’en va.”
103
Hector Berlioz, Chronique de Paris (18 June 1837), cited in Cécile Reynaud, “Chopin et les salons parisiens,” Revue
de la BnF 1, no. 34 (2010): 25–32, paragraph 22, accessed 26 May 2018, https://www.cairn.info/revue-de-la-
bibliotheque-nationale-de-france-2010-1-page-25.htm.
104
Hector Berlioz, Journal des débats (27 October 1849), quoted in Eigeldinger, Chopin, âme des salons parisiens, 116;
Franz Liszt, F. Chopin, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1882; first published in Paris, 1852), 127–28, quoted in Ballstaedt, “Chopin as
‘Salon Composer,’” 24.
105
Stirling helped Chopin with the logistics of his tour across the Channel in 1848 and in amassing and
annotating a collection of his works; she also paid for his funeral.

164
Louis, Chopin had frequently played fantasies on Polish themes.
106
Prince Adam and Princess
Anna’s niece, Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, took piano lessons with Chopin and had
become a dear friend. While he was ill, she asked to visit him almost every day.
107
His letters
frequently refer to her kindness: “Princess Marcelina is the one who keeps me alive—she and
her family.”
108

Figure 5.2: Teofil Kwiatkowski, Chopin on His Deathbed (1849). Pictured left to right: Chopin’s friend
Aleksander Jełowicki, Chopin’s sister Ludwika, Princess Marcelina Czartoryska, Chopin’s friend
Wojciech Grzymała, and the artist. Source: Accessed 22 August 2018,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Chopin#/media/File:Ostatnie_chwile_Fryderyk
a_Chopina.jpg.

106
“Persons Related to Chopin,” Fryderyk Chopin Institute, accessed 15 March 2018,
http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/persons/detail/id/6320.
107
Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, 350.
108
Chopin to Wojciech Grzymała in Paris, London, 21 November 1848, in ibid., 353.

165
The salon society and connections Chopin found there were a vital source financial
and moral support to him, even if his salons were less important in the Parisian elite social
scene than we have imagined. A network of interlinking connections and introductions
supported him and helped him reach fame throughout his career in Warsaw and Paris.

Conclusion
This chapter, with the preceding two, has explained what role music served in the nineteenth-
century salon and discussed the logistical workings of musicians’ salon appearances,
including the favors and payments musicians could expect for their salon appearances. These
events led musicians to sponsors who advanced and protected their reputations, who hosted
or underwrote further events where the musicians could receive more exposure, who bought
tickets to their concerts, who provided them annuities or gifts of money, who opened doors to
them in other cities, and who found them employment, whether as conductors of orchestras,
music teachers, or singers at the Opéra. Musicians expected to receive financial remuneration,
favors, and employment opportunities, as well as to meet influential people in their field.
In sum, musicians performed not for the simple love of music and enjoyment of
edifying company, but for their own benefit (edifying company was, in fact, often not even
part of the equation). Salons, infrequently given credit in the scholarly literature for
musicians’ development, were crucial to many musicians’ gaining recognition during their
early careers.
166

VI. The Rising Status of the Musician in Salons

Parisian salons were significant for musicians in ways other than as places for networking and
exposure. Musicians used them for a different kind of self-promotion independent of
performances; through them, they furthered a social agenda to earn greater dignity for
themselves. In the context of the July Monarchy, musicians mixed socially with upper classes
with the hopes of becoming accepted and respected as equals. Moments of both surprise and
frustration infused musicians’ interactions with the aristocracy; these moments reveal their
placement in society which, Franz Liszt argued, was not as distinguished as we might assume.
More careful consideration of these musicians’ context causes us to reconsider whether
musicians were as honored and as satisfied during salons as we have imagined.

The uneasy mixing of musicians and aristocrats
Meg Freeman Whalen, who has studied music in nineteenth-century salons, writes about the
salon as a place of boundary crossing between social classes:
The musical salon was a crucial social link between the aristocracy and the
upper middle-class, often providing a setting where the two social classes could
meet on equal footing (unlike in public concert halls where the audience
becomes impersonal and isolated). It was in salons that a new upper class,
combined of the aristocracy and the upper bourgeoisie, first emerged.
1

1
Meg Freeman Whalen, “A Little Republic Filled with Grace: The Nineteenth-Century Music Salon,” Women of
Note Quarterly 3, no. 4 (November 1995): 16.
167
Though this mixing of classes in salons is widely acknowledged, there are signs that it was not
always easy for musicians to integrate in this environment, even in middle-class settings.
We have already glimpsed the uneasy reception of musicians who mingled with the
social elite. When Count Rudolph Apponyi recalled first meeting Princess Cristina Belgiojoso
in her small Parisian apartment, he recorded surprise at seeing her surrounded by
“bohemians,” as he called them: Franz Liszt and the journalist François Mignet. He called this
“extraordinary scene” odd and even pitiable, assumedly because it seemed the princess had
plunged from her status as a wealthy Italian princess to living in a tiny garret apartment
surrounded by people of lower station.
2
Simultaneously, her behavior aroused his admiration,
because she was choosing to associate with whomever she pleased and she had the
personality and wit to attract other intellectuals to herself.
Another hint of unease concerned the activity of musicians and aristocrats eating at
the same table. The Rothschilds, for instance, were noted for their inclusion of artists and
musicians at their table with the wealthiest aristocrats in Europe.
3
And a story touched upon
but not elaborated in the previous chapters concerned the awkward and unexpected
invitation of some musicians to dinner at the Princess de Vaudemont’s salon. When Pierre-
Jean Garat (1764–1823) and his wife the contralto Marie-Catherine-Césarine Duchamps sang
for the Duke of Berry, the princess was taken off guard when the duke asked if the musicians
could stay for dinner. She discretely told him that she had already paid them and had not

2
“I was so taken aback by this extraordinary scene that I had difficulty in starting up a conversation. The
Princess, loving to surround herself both with young bohemians and the most distinguished savants, presents an
odd mixture of tastes which inspires in turn admiration and pity.” Journal du Comte Rodolphe Apponyi, reproduced
in Charles Neilson Gattey, A Bird of Curious Plumage: Princess Cristina di Belgiojoso, 1808–1871 (London: Constable &
Company Ltd., 1971), 42, cited in Mark Viner, liner notes for Liszt Opera Fantasies: Lucrezia Borgia, Norma,
Hexaméron (Piano Classics #PCL 0106), 8, accessed 22 October 2017, https://issuu.com/klassiek.nl/docs/liszt-viner-
booklet-low_res.
3
Laura S. Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 36.
168
expected that it would be suitable for them to dine with his highness. But he insisted, voicing
his apparently unconventional opinion that Monsieur and Madame Garat, as musicians, were
all the more desirable to dine with: “Are not artists the beloved children of God?”
4

It had not been the case that musicians would mix with their employers in the previous
century. Mozart, as he worked for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg in 1772–77 and 1779–81,
sat at the servants’ table. He wrote that his “insignificant self” was seated below the valets, but
he was moderately consoled to be above the cooks, at least. He was not esteemed by his
employers or the other staff, who frequently addressed him by a diminutive German term
meaning “low fellow of the streets.”
5
The extremity of his poor treatment was reached when
the Archbishop’s major-domo literally booted him to the door during their parting argument.
6

Mozart’s situation was extreme, but within the norms of the time for musicians who were
employed in wealthy households.
7

At the start of the nineteenth century, music was not a very highly respected
profession. In England, for example, professional musicians struggled against a perception of
being of low social origin and poor, “mere fiddlers,” despite the fact that the majority of them

4
Mme la comtesse de Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois: souvenirs intimes. Nouvelle édition. 1re série (Paris: J.
Victorion, n.d.), 79.
5
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Leopold Mozart, 17 March 1781, in The Letters of Mozart and His Family, vol. 3, ed.
and trans. Emily Anderson (London: MacMillan and Co., 1938), 1060.
6
Richard A. Carlton, “Changes in Status and Role-Play: The Musician at the End of the Eighteenth Century,”
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 37, no. 1 (June 2006): 13.
7
Joseph Haydn’s position illustrates that even the most successful musicians were in positions of upper servants.
He was required to appear before the Prince in full livery and wig twice per day and await instructions about
upcoming musical needs and performances. His employer owned the rights to his compositions, which could not
be published or shared without his permission, and Haydn was only allowed to take outside commissions when
his employer allowed. See Haydn’s contract with the Esterházy court, signed 1 May 1761, reproduced in facsimile
and translation in László Somfai, Joseph Haydn: His Life in Contemporary Pictures (London: Faber and Faber, 1969),
25–33, and read more about musicians’ social status in this time in Carlton, “Changes in Status and Role-Play.”
169
between 1750 and 1850 were actually from middle-class backgrounds.
8
Children from both
middle- and high-class backgrounds were often discouraged from pursuing a career in music
because of its association with low-life entertainers; for these classes, having musical talent
was seen only as a social advantage. Pursuing music professionally was considered
advantageous usually only for children from the lower classes.
9
Part of the concern, as well,
was music’s potential corrupting influence on moral behavior, as it was an art based in the
sensual rather than in reason.
10
In France, the writer, violinist, and composer Michel-Paul Guy
de Chabanon (1730–1792) wrote, “One doesn’t imagine what a danger it is, for young people,
the cultivation of musical talent. This art talks to the senses, without ever having anything to
say about reason.”
11

Even in the 1830s musicians continued to be treated as second-class citizens. They
generally appeared in the homes of the wealthy as hired entertainers. Liszt in his “On the
Situation of Artists and Their Condition in Society” (1835) wrote that leading artists such as
Rubini, Pasta, Malibran, Moscheles, and Lafont when singing at aristocratic homes, were still
being asked to enter through service entrances.
12
They were there for the entertainment of the
hosts and not because anyone wished to interact with them. Marie d’Agoult also described the

8
Deborah Rohr, The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850: A Profession of Artisans (Cambridge University Press,
2001), 22.
9
Ibid., 22–27.
10
On the stereotyping of women singers as sexually loose, see Kimberly White, “Female Singers and the maladie
morale in Parisian Lyric Theaters, 1830–1850,” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 16 (2012): 57–85.
11
Chabanon, “Réflexions préliminaires,” in Œuvres de théâtre et autres poésies (Paris: Prault et chez Pissot, 1788), 9,
reproduced in Laurine Quetin, “Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon, ‘Quelques circonstances de ma vie,’” Revue
Musicorum 19 (2017): 43: “On n’imagine pas de quel danger est, pour les jeunes gens, la culture des talents de
musique. Cet art parle aux sens, sans jamais rien dire à la raison.”
12
D’Agoult translated in Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History (New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1954), 344: Liszt, “De la situation des artistes et leur condition dans la société (troisième article),” Revue et
gazette musicale (3 May 1835): 166.
170
violinist Charles de Beriot and the pianists Henri Herz, Moscheles, and even the young Liszt
as coming, performing, and leaving together, meaning that they did not socialize. D’Agoult
named Malibran as one of the first musicians to break out of this cycle when she dared to stay
after her salon performances and chat with the guests.
13
In doing so, Malibran boldly asserted
her right to an evening of entertainment as well: she would not only perform for her viewers’
benefit, but to converse for her own.
Part of the salon hosts’ hesitancy to include musicians may have had to do with
musicians’ lack of education. Most musicians likely did not have the same training in social
graces as aristocrats. Mozart, again perhaps an extreme case, was remembered by “Vienna’s
Madame Récamier” Caroline Pichler in her memoirs published in 1844 (the year after her
death) as in one minute playing a duet with her and then the next jumping over the chairs and
tables, meowing like a cat.
14
In her opinion, he was certainly not mannered enough for the
high society in which he was participating. An additional concern might have been musicians’
insufficient education in subjects aside from music. Though I have not yet encountered
complaints from members of French society about uncouth behavior or conversation from
musicians, musicians’ inability to participate in educated repartee likely could have been a
reason that they were not desired social company. This requirement of education was likely a
reason for Liszt’s insecurity about his lack of formal schooling; despite this concern, he was

13
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin âme des salons parisiens, 1830–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 2013), 127. One can certainly
include d’Agoult as aiding in the movement for musicians and aristocrats to integrate, in her way. She, a
countess, did not appreciate the company of the aristocratic society she was born into and to have instead
established her own artistic society. She lived out her beliefs about the source of truly valuable companionship in
her salon that was not very important among the Parisian elite, but well frequented by artists, musicians, and
writers.
14
Cited in Lucien Karhausen, The Bleeding of Mozart: A Medical Glance on His Life, Illness, and Personality (Dartford:
Xlibris Corporation, 2011), 24.
171
reported to be a charming conversationalist.
15
The issue of education was, nonetheless,
certainly pertinent. The Chopin biographer William Atwood points to Chopin’s education in
the lyceum, where he studied history, literature, mathematics, and natural sciences for three
years (fall 1823 to spring 1826) before entering conservatory. Atwood explains that this and
being raised in his parents’ academic social circle likely smoothed his entrance into Paris and
London society.
16
However, he calls Chopin’s assimilation a true “miracle” because this was
not a typical occurrence at the time.
17
In addition, the problem of education could be
somewhat allayed by foreign musicians, as they were viewed as more cultured (at least by
English society) because of their international travel and ability to speak multiple languages.
18

An aristocracy of talent
Malibran’s actions, and those of a few others, were remarked upon, as society noticed that
more members of the upper classes were open to including musicians in their circles. In
describing a salon concert in 1846, a journalist wrote,
The elegant composer [referring to Antoine Kontski (1817–1889)] drew together
the five corners of the world, the three aristocracies of birth, of industry, and of
talent. All of this world, separated by interests and reunited by pleasure,
submitted to the irresistible influence of beauty and music.”
19

15
The Countess Marie d’Agoult and Anthony Rothschild, already cited, are two. See Comtesse d’Agoult (Daniel
Stern), Mémoires: 1833–1854 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1927), 21, and Charlotte de Rothschild, “The Musical
Associations of the Rothschild Family,” in The Rothschilds: Essays on the History of a European Family, ed. Georg
Heuberger (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994), 191.
16
William G. Atwood, Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 9–10.
17
Ibid., 67.
18
Rohr, The Careers of British Musicians, 49.
19
La France musicale (8 March 1846): 77, translated in William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social
Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between 1830 and 1848 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 42.
172
This journalist saw that musicians performing in salons were not only uniting people of
varying political persuasions and classes through a mutual appreciation of music, but also
bringing themselves into participation with these classes. This “aristocracy of talent” the
reviewer mentions was a relatively new idea in France and the United States. Thomas
Jefferson, whose ideas were influential in France, had most famously described the
aristocracy of talent in 1813 when wrote about “a natural aristocracy among men” grounded in
“virtue and talent” and contrasted against the “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and
birth, without either virtue or talents.”
20
The idea was that honor and skill should be the real
objects of our admiration and should be the basis of social privilege.
This ethic was indeed in line with the spirit of the times, embodied by the French king
himself, Louis-Philippe, who based his political policy on a leveling of the social classes. He
branded himself “king of the French” rather than “king of France,” through which he
emphasized that he ruled a people rather than a country. He also called himself the “Citizen
King.”
21
He behaved in a more middle-class manner than any previous king had. He was the
son of a man who had renamed himself Philippe Egalité.
22
In the 1789 Revolution, Louis-
Philippe joined the Jacobin party, the violent extremist group who wanted egalitarianism at
almost all costs. After being exiled, he worked as a school teacher in Switzerland and then as a
French-language tutor in Boston. Back in Paris, he retained some of the middle-class habits he
adopted while living a civilian life. He sent his sons to a public university rather than hiring a
private tutor as aristocratic families normally did. Finally as king, he dressed in the clothing of

20
Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams, 26 October 1813, in John Carson, The Measure of Merit: Talents,
Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2007), 11.
21
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 38.
22
He was born Louis-Philippe Joseph d'Orléans (1747–1793) and became the Duke of Orléans.
173
the upper bourgeoisie instead of royalty. He carried an umbrella and walked in the streets
instead of riding in a carriage. He met the people and shook hands with them instead of
demanding respectful distance.
23
Though his reign was ultimately deemed a failure, his idea to
bridge social class barriers was an important topic at the time, and it encouraged other people
to try to do the same.
24
The Rothschilds, for instance, good friends with Louis-Philippe, are
described as having intentionally acted upon his policy of integrating all social classes.
25
The
monde—the too expansive term for a relatively small group, French high society—was
opening, and was no longer limiting its circle to those with wealth or high birth. It was instead
welcoming people who earned a right to be there.
Arsène Houssaye remembered that during his young adulthood in the July Monarchy,
his comrades viewed the true Parisian high society as comprised of artists and men of letters.
26

Having money or being born into title was becoming less important, while having skills was
becoming more. The social integration of artists had already been catching on for a while.
When Mathieu Orfila entered the Parisian salon culture as a young singer and medical
student from Spain around 1810, he was surprised to find acceptance, respect, and even
celebrity himself; he recognized the basis of that respect to be related to his talent rather than

23
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 38.
24
Despite these efforts to break boundaries, people ultimately found his bourgeois behavior distasteful and
found him to be more of a talker than a real instigator of change. His position in the middle ground alienated the
most powerful political parties that were on either side, and he failed to reform the electoral system so that the
lower middle class had better representation. Assassination attempts were made within even the first few years
of his reign. After eighteen unhappy years, another uprising occurred, forcing his abdication of the throne in
1848.
25
Schor, The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 40.
26
Arsène Houssaye, Les Confessions: Souvenirs d’un demi-siècle, vol. 2 (Paris: Dentu, 1885), 3.
174
his birth: “In this country, people consider men from a different point of view than they do in
our own: true nobility is based on talent.”
27

Honoré de Balzac in 1830 made an overt attempt to erase the line between fashionable
high society and artists.
28
In an upper-class fashion magazine, he published a Traité de la vie
élégante, in which he compared the vie élégante and the vie artistique. He praised the later as a
life that was full of both elegance and leisure, like the vie élégante, but more productive. The vie
élégante, in contrast, was distinguished by idleness: “To be fashionable, you must enjoy rest
without having to go through work.” Artists, however, could be fashionable while working.
Their work looked like idleness, but this seeming idleness was meditation on masterpieces.
Why should artists not be as highly regarded as people born into title when they were
ultimately useful, Balzac wondered. He described artists as being the expression of great
thought and a dominating force in society. He asked that they be included in la vie élégante.
29

Conscientious effort to rise: a brief history
Musicians’ assumption into an aristocracy of talent was a project that had been long in the
making. In the previous century, Chabanon had written about the need for musicians’ status
to improve.
30
Writing in 1779, he pointed out that wealthy classes treated musicians as if they
owned them. He stressed that musicians needed to elevate themselves, demand greater

27
Amédée Fayol, La Vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila (Paris: Albin Michel, 1930), 133: “Dans ce pays, on considère les hommes
d’un point de vue différent du nôtre: la vraie noblesse, on la place dans le talent.”
28
Balzac’s Traité de la vie élégante appeared in six installments in La Mode (2 October to 6 November 1830),
discussed in Anne Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante ou la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815–1848 (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 27,
30.
29
Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 27, 30.
30
Quetin, “Chabanon,” 48.
175
respect, and become self-directed.
31
He recommended that musicians learn to do these things
by mixing socially with men from other disciplines who had achieved more social recognition:
men of letters, painters, and writers. He pointed out that painters already were comfortably
spending time with men of letters and the higher classes.
32
Chabanon himself formed an
essential link between men of letters and music professionals in his time.
33
He was elected to
the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (1760) and to the Académie Française (1779),
becoming—after several failed attempts—one of the lucky few musicians to enter either
organization.
34

The eleven-years-younger composer André Ernest Modeste Grétry (1741–1813) followed
after Chabanon with his own ideas on musicians’ need to rise.
35
He had a pessimistic view of
the reality of musicians’ current situation. His treatise De la verité: ce que nous fûmes, ce que nous
sommes, ce que nous devrions être (Of the truth: what we were, what we are, what we should be;
1801) considered the status of musicians at the turn of the century. Under the Ancien Régime,
musicians were regarded as servants, or—even worse—as essentially having the same value
as the instruments they played on.
36
That musicians had allowed others to take this
dehumanizing viewpoint of them was their own fault, Grétry explains, because they were

31
Michel-Paul Guy de Chabanon, Observations sur la musique, et principalement sur la métaphysique de l'art (Paris:
Chez Pissot, Père & Fils, 1779), cited in Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden, “Politics, the French Revolution, and
Performance: Parisian Musicians as an Emergent Professional Class, 1749–1802” (PhD diss., Duke University,
2015), 51.
32
Geoffroy-Schwinden, “Parisian Musicians as an Emergent Professional Class,” 78–80.
33
Quetin, “Chabanon,” 48.
34
Quetin, “Chabanon,” 23.
35
Grétry was highly influential through his operas, especially the royalist opéra comique Richard, Cœur de Lion
(1784), which continued to be performed hundreds of times in the decades after its premiere.
36
André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, De la vérité: Ce que nous fumes, ce que nous sommes, ce que nous devrions être (Paris:
Charles Pougens, 1801), II: 6.
176
content to accept social favors and material goods rather than demand their worth in money.
They had deluded themselves with the excuse of thinking that they were raising their work’s
value by not deigning to take financial payment for it. Grétry says that while men of letters
might be above taking money for their work, musicians were not yet on that level. On the
contrary, they had accepted a position even lower than that of the merchant class, who at least
were compensated fairly for what they produced. Musicians needed to aspire to at least
merchant status before they could aspire to parity with other creative types, such as thinkers
and writers.
37

Grétry challenged composers to break their dependence on the nobility so that the
nobility could not feel as if they owned them. To make this break, musicians needed to find
ways to make their craft more economically viable. Musicians did indeed do this through the
early nineteenth century with the emergence of the Conservatoire, publishing companies,
instrument manufacturing, and orchestras and more theaters for public entertainment.
38

Many also sought their own opportunities as touring soloists.

37
Geoffroy-Schwinden, “Parisian Musicians as an Emergent Professional Class,” 59–60.
38
A fascinating study of the founding of the Conservatoire and the public services its founders framed it to serve
is given in Geoffroy-Schwinden, “A Topography of Social Networks in the Emergent Professional Class of
Musicians,” in “Parisian Musicians as an Emergent Professional Class,” 82–128. For studies about the large
number of instrument manufacturers and music publishers in Paris during this time, see Malou Haine, “La
participation des facteurs d’instruments de musique aux expositions nationales de 1834 et 1839," in Music in Paris
in the 1830s, ed. Peter Bloom, 365–86 (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987), and Cecil Hopkinson, A Dictionary of
Parisian Music Publishers: 1700–1950 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977). For the expansion of public concerts, see
James H. Johnson, “The Birth of Public Concerts,” in Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1995). On musicians’ general entrepreneurship, see William Weber, “The
Musician as Entrepreneur and Opportunist, 1700–1914,” in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers,
Charlatans, and Idealists, ed. Weber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).
177
Still apart
Yet, while musicians were asserting their independence from the aristocracy and therefore
expecting treatment as equals to them, their task was not yet completed. Even into the 1830s
and 40s, musicians were still facing social embarrassment and frustration over what they
believed to be insufficient progress. A few of the most successful of them gained the
impression of being able to circulate in high-class circles, dining and conversing with people
of wealth and title, yet they were repeatedly reminded that they were outsiders.
Stories from musicians’ own biographies and writings, as well as fiction published in
the Gazette musicale, illustrate musicians’ resulting disillusionment with high society. The
tenor Gilbert Duprez, a star at the Paris Opéra where he had just taken over Adophe Nourrit’s
position as principal tenor, provides an example. He was handsome, loved by the audience
and much in demand for performances in private salons. Reveling in his success as Arnold in
Guillaume Tell in 1841, he opened the doors of his home, hoping to establish his own salon in
the faubourg Saint-Germain. But the aristocrats, bankers, and artists from the neighborhood,
whom he awaited—and with whom he had spent many evenings in their own salons—never
came. They seemed indifferent to his invitation. It was a stinging experience for him, as he
realized that to be celebrated by high society was not to be part of it.
39

Despite society’s eagerness to have them as guests, composers and singers still
occupied “a place apart” as “subalterns,” d’Agoult wrote.
40
Liszt also complained of musicians
being invited to middle-class homes (not even aristocratic ones) and even there being made to
sit at the end of the table, and knowing that his entrance was conditional on his performance

39
Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante, 425.
40
In Eigeldinger, Chopin âme des salons parisiens, 126: “Cependant les compositeurs et les chanteurs gardaient
encore une place à part: ils ne paraissaient dans les salons, en dépit de l'empressement qu'on mettait à les y avoir,
que d'une manière subalterne.”
178
after dessert.
41
Stories circulated of musicians trying to throw off this expectation, such as one
about the German oboe player Johann Christian Fischer (ca. 1733–1800), who was invited to
dinner, with the host adding “You’ll bring your oboe with you!” to which Fischer quickly
replied, “My lord, my oboe never sups!”
42

A few years after the July Monarchy, in 1854, the Revue et gazette musicale published a
story—“Le Chanteur de salon” by Edouard Fétis (son of the journal’s founder François-Joseph
Fétis)—satirizing the social position of the musician in salons. Fétis still found respect toward
musicians lacking and pointed out their position as outsiders in the society they served. A
father, having lost the majority of his fortune, decides to move outside of Paris and live out his
days less expensively in the countryside, but he tells his son to stay in the city and employ the
talent he developed in singing. While the professoriate and theater would be too competitive,
the father advises his son,
You will be, if you believe me, a salon singer. It is a career more brilliant and
more productive than is commonly believed. The salon singer has, if he wishes,
all the enjoyments of a rich man without opening his purse, and without cost to
his dignity. You will be sought after, celebrated, pampered in the aristocratic
salons as well as in those of the bourgeoisie. Do not give yourself out too freely;
let yourself be desired; it will only be more valuable to possess you. Invitations
to dinner will rain down upon you; accept them sometimes, refuse them often,
so that people won’t think they’ve sufficiently compensated your voice with
just a compliment to your stomach [in other words, refuse dinner often so that
people will not think that a free dinner is sufficient payment].
43

The path of a salon singer thus seems comfortable, respected, flattering, and if not lucrative
then at least posh.

41
Franz Liszt, “De la situation des artistes et leur condition dans la société (4è article),” Revue et gazette musicale (26
July 1835): 247.
42
Jon Frederickson and James F. Rooney, “How the Music Occupation Failed to Become a Profession,”
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 21, no. 2 (December 1990): 195, citing Crowest, 1902: 333.
43
Edouard Fétis, “Le Chanteur de salon,” Revue et gazette musicale (22 January 1854): 26.
179
The singer debuts at the salon of his father’s friend, who takes him “under his active
patronage” and puts him before music appreciators whose opinions are considered
authoritative. This launches the singer on a successful salon career. His protectors keep his
reputation clean of rumors and gossip. He sings light repertoire, especially romances, because
this is what women, “this public that makes the reputation of salon artists,” likes.
44
Of course,
the salon singer’s appearances lead to other opportunities, such as offers of positions at the
Opéra and in the Queen of Spain’s chapel, but he refuses these because he prefers his
freedom in high society. Everything his father said has come true. He is widely sought after,
and each summer he accepts invitations to châteaux in the countryside; he stays two weeks in
each place before going to the next.
This career is not all roses and glamour, however. While he at first thought himself
part of the monde, he now realizes that he lives a vie d’exception imposed on him by his
admirers.
45
At parties, he is celebrated, but not treated as the rest of the company. He sits at
the hostess’s side, but only if there is no one else to whom she owes the honor. He must stay in
the salon with the women after dinner rather than going to smoke and talk politics with the
men. And in summers while his hosts and their guests take walks in the woods, he stays inside
with the grandparents and old people. Part of the reason for this is to protect his voice, but he

44
Fétis, “Le Chanteur de salon,” 27 : “ce public [féminin] est celui qui fait la réputation des artistes de salon.” It
was acknowledged at the time that women often made the reputations of virtuoso musicians. “From the . . .
domestic sphere, women controlled a portion of the music market by creating the need for new music, teachers,
instruments, and musical performance” (Elaine Leung-Wolf, “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition: Its
Cultural and Historical Significance in Parisian Musical Society,” [DMA thesis, The Juilliard School, 1996], 225).
Moreover, it even happened that some musicians—specifically Henri Herz and Charles Philippe Lafont—were
known as women’s musicians (compositeur and violoniste des femmes) (Laure Schnapper, Henri Herz, magnat du
piano: La vie musicale en France au XIXe siècle (1815–1870) [Paris: EHESS Editions, 2011], 54, 62).

45
Fétis, “Le Chanteur de salon,” 27.
180
finds that no one ever makes a step toward him to converse with him or hear his opinions. He
is only present for his services, and not as real company.
The singer eventually realizes that he is losing his place to a younger and more
handsome version of himself who is taking over his salon circuit. He had known that this day
would come, however, and by this point, he has luckily found an aristocratic widow to marry.
Thus, he need no longer sing for a profession; in fact, he can finally sing music of his own
choosing, instead of only what women have asked for, as he has done all these years.
Liszt, a good twenty years earlier than this story was published, had expressed similar
feelings as the chanteur de salon. He also complained about being unable to perform music he
found valuable: “‘The most beautiful works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert,’ if he risked
playing them, met with ‘inept silence,’ whereas ‘miserable bagatelles’ occasioned ‘noisy
transports [of delight].’”
46
He had also lamented what he saw as artists’ ostracism from society.
In his series of six essays titled “On the Situation of Artists and Their Condition in Society,”
published in the Revue et gazette musicale (1835), he (sounding much like d’Agoult) claims
subalternité as the main descriptor for the situation of artists and musicians for the previous
two hundred years; they had been subordinated and excluded from society and they
continued to be so. Despite the many improvements that people could cite regarding the
position of the artists in terms of their fortune, their consideration, and the so-called leveled
playing field between the now-recognized aristocracies of birth, fortune, and capacity, Liszt
does not find the improvements to be enough. He cites his own experience of feeling like a
lonely, second-class outsider in the homes of the wealthy. Even he, who had reached the
pinnacle of wealth, fame, and admiration for a musician, felt as if he were looked down on by

46
Liszt, quoted and translated in Ralph P. Locke, “Liszt on the Artist in Society,” in Franz Liszt and His World, ed.
Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 291.
181
aristocratic society in general. He found that he was admitted into their homes exceptionally,
as if despite his status as an artist. And once there, he was considered little more than an
amusement or entertainment to the other people present.
47

Liszt’s social program and musicians’ assertions of inspiration
Liszt published his plan for how society could address these issues. Taking a role as the next
Chabanon or Grétry, but this time addressing society rather than the musician, he
admonishes that society should provide musicians with more respect, social status, and
financial support rather than exploitation. He complains heavily about the poor treatment
and exploitation of artists, specifically about their lack of access to training and opportunities
for employment and their treatment as lower-class citizens. He calls for an end to benefit
concerts in which musicians have to request financial assistance from the public; he instead
desires a greater effort toward providing musicians with meaningful work and fair wages. He
builds an eight-step program that has the aim “to raise and ennoble the condition of artists,
providing remedies for the abuses and injustices that they suffer, and determining what
measures are necessary to maintain their dignity.”
48
The program increases arts education,
competitions, and opportunities available to musicians and promotes more organized musical
events supporting state, religious, and social life. Liszt knew that increased access to training
and competitions would raise the level of performance and develop standards for musicians to
meet. Increased opportunities would give musicians more chance to be useful to society as

47
Liszt, “Encore quelques mots sur la subalternité des musiciens,” Revue et gazette musicale (15 November 1835): 371.
48
Liszt, “On the Situation of Artists and Their Condition in Society (Final Installment),” trans. Ralph P. Locke, in
Franz Liszt and His World, 299.
182
well as to earn money outside of patronage, as Grétry had asked for at the beginning of the
century.
Liszt’s ideas have continued to resonate. Scholars Jon Frederickson and James F.
Rooney have argued that up to the present day one reason musicians have generally never
had high earning power or social prestige is that they never professionalized—that is, they
never established an official training program, standardized competence test, or anything to
keep their field exclusive and quality controlled, in the way that the bar exam does for
lawyers, medical exams for doctors, or certifications for electricians.
49
While we have
conservatories, these have no shared standard for what competencies must be attained in
order to be granted a degree. Musicians graduating from universities and conservatories can
have an incredibly broad range of skill levels. Liszt believed that more training and an
established path to a successful career would distinguish the truly qualified and entitle
musicians to more respect, credence, and opportunity. He says this as someone who had been
excluded from the Paris Conservatoire and never received training outside of private study.
At the time that Liszt wrote this essay, his eyes were alight with the ideas of Saint-
Simonianism, a radical philosophy that taught that society should be reorganized with artists
taking the role of priests in the upper echelon of society and guiding all other classes.
50
Liszt
calls artists “initiators, these apostles, these priests of an ineffable, mysterious, eternal

49
Frederickson and Rooney, “How the Music Occupation Failed to Become a Profession.”
50
Dana Gooley, “From the Top: Liszt’s Aristocratic Airs,” in Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and Power in
Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Edward Berenson, Eva Giloi (New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2010), 77.
183
religion.”
51
He wanted artists to be honored as men who “enchant the sacred flame of heaven”
and realize the ideal for the rest of society.
52

The idea of musicians’ exceptional calling was present in other musicians’ thoughts
around this time. There was a strong belief that musicians could no longer be subservient to
employers’ wishes but had the right, and maybe even the divine appointment, to write music
for its own sake. This attitude was present when Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) wrote in
his diary in 1812 that an artist “should stand there, free as a god, filled with a feeling of strength
from within and steeled through his art!”
53
When Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) wrote of the
composer-conductor in his Memoirs, he said, “He listens to himself, is his own judge, and when
he is moved and his emotion is shared by those artists near him, he no longer concerns
himself with the reactions of the distant public.”
54

Beethoven was the most iconic and reverberant musician to live this out. He carried
himself as a bearer of a message rather than a servant, and through charisma and force of
character, made it seem like a privilege for his patrons to support him.
55
Bettina Brentano
(1785–1859) writing to Goethe on May 28, 1810 recorded the forceful impression he left on those
in his presence: “The entire energy and force of humanity seem to revolve around him. He
alone creates freely from within himself that which has not yet been thought of: the uncreated

51
Liszt, “De la situation des artistes et leur condition dans la société (premier article),” Revue et gazette musicale (3
May 1835): 155: “Ces hommes initiateurs, ces apôtres, ces prêtres d'une religion ineffable, mystérieuse, éternelle . .
.”
52
Ibid.: “Ces hommes prédestinés, foudroyés et enchaînés qui ont ravi au ciel la flamme sacrée . . .”
53
Walter Salmen, “Social Obligations of the Emancipated Musician in the 19th Century,” in The Social Status of
the Professional Musician from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century, ed. Walter Salmen, Herbert Kaufman, Barbara
Reisner (New York: Pendragon Press, 1983), 270.
54
Salmen, “Social Obligations of the Emancipated Musician,” 270.
55
Michael Hurd, “Patronage,” The Oxford Companion to Music; Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press,
accessed June 3, 2017).
184
. . . No emperor or king is as conscious as Beethoven of his power, and of the fact that all power
emanates from him.”
56
Beethoven’s utter self-confidence, self-absorption, and attitude of
autonomy infected many musicians who followed after him; he was the well-known tipping
point that heralded in the Romantic-era artist.
57

These claims for musicians’ value were not mere vain self-glorification; they were part
of the reframing of musicians for their social elevation and economic viability.
58
With this
attitude, they were trying to convince the rest of society that their work was 1) valuable in and
of itself, 2) morally meaningful and spiritual rather than sensual, 3) worthy of admiration, 4)
worthy of financial support, and 5) made the bearer or messenger deserving of respect. This
ethos was present among the most ambitious musicians, and it was what Liszt was taking part
in when he wrote “On the Situation of Artists,” as he reacted against the depreciation of
musicians he witnessed taking place in salons.

Conclusion
Thus, Liszt, d’Agoult, Duprez, and Edouard Fétis, with his representative salon singer from
the Gazette musicale, found that musicians had not made the progress they had expected to
make. They were being teased—entering wealthy homes expecting to find social parity, but
not being met with reciprocal interest in themselves and their opinions.

56
Salmen, “Social Obligations of the Emancipated Musician,” 269.
57
Ibid., 268.
58
This idea might also be compared with what David Gramit describes in his chapter “Selling the Serious: The
Commodification of Music and Resistance to It in Germany, circa 1800,” in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–
1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, ed. William Weber, 81–103 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004),
in which he describes how classical art musicians essentially had to frame their product as non-commercial in
order to commercialize it.
185
It should be stated that this discontent was not universal: Chopin was pleased with the
social connections he made, at least at the beginning of his time in Paris; when he commented
on the subject, he wrote that he felt part of the world he joined (“I have found my way into the
very best society”).
59
Rossini as well, seems to have fit in, been accepted, and even in demand
socially without having to perform. He was invited to soirées at the Rothschilds’ in which he
was practically the only untitled guest.
60

Yet, most musicians’ experiences were not this. Judging from Liszt’s accounts and the
stories featured here and in the previous chapters—including Houssaye’s story of the poor
salon harpist in whom no one took interest when she was in need and Pekaczs’ findings that
Chopin is not mentioned in the chronicles of the fashionable Parisian salonnières— it was still
common for musicians not to be part of the social fabric of soirées in which they performed. If
these sources can be believed, it seems that the upper echelons only opened their sitting
rooms and dining tables to musicians who had distinguished themselves as celebrities.
Musicians who had not achieved the notoriety and celebrity of Malibran or Liszt were
unlikely to be invited to eat with their hosts.
61

59
Letter from Chopin to Dominic Dziewanowski in Berlin, Paris, second week of January 1833, in Selected
Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, ed. Bronislaw Edward Sydow, trans., Arthur Hedley (London: Heinemann,
1962), 114.
60
For instance, the guests aside from himself on one evening at the Rothschilds’ salon were Lord and Lady
Granville; Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian Ambassador; the Duke de Mouchy and his brother and sister-in-law the
Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Laoilles; Count and Countess de Flahaut; Count and Countess Alexandre de
Girardin; Countess Alexandre de Laborde and her daughter Madame Gabriel Delessert; Baron Gérard, the
famous painter; Baron Salomon von Rothschild; and the Maréchal de Castellane (Schor, The Life and Legacy of
Baroness Betty de Rothschild, 36). Everyone in this list is titled, except for Rossini and the daughter of one of the
countesses.
61
Even so, this seems like small improvement from the situation in the previous century in England. Simon
McVeigh in his study of eighteenth-century London says, “In reality dinner invitations were a badge of celebrity,
rather than an acknowledgement of equal status. Perhaps only Charles Burney, by his literary endeavours
outside the music profession, found a genuine acceptance among the leisured classes. Samuel Crisp wrote of
Burney in 1781: ‘He is now at the Top of the Ton. He is continually invited to all the great Tables, and parties, to
meet the Wits and Grandees, without the least reference to Music’” (Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993], 204).
186
Nonetheless, both the musicians and salon hosts received social prestige from their
associations with one another. As described in Chapter Three, hosts found cultural prestige in
inviting or hiring musicians to perform in their homes. The musicians not only found career
connections in salons, but used them to raise themselves socially, as Chabanon had
recommended half a century before. July Monarchy salons still occupied a period of transition
in this process. Musicians were gaining independence in their careers, and through becoming
recognized as part of an aristocracy of talent, they were finding some inclusion that they had
not had previously. However, they still found themselves ignored at parties and treated as
entertainers who were bribed with food. To combat this, they continued to initiate more
opportunities to earn money outside private patronage, as described in the rest of this
dissertation. Rebranding themselves as inspired artists who were spiritually higher than the
rest of society and whose work was of value, was also part of becoming more viable.
187

VII: Paris’s Favorite Virtuosos and Their Phrenological Publicity

In Paris during the 1830s and 40s, two related and dubious medical theories reached the
pinnacle of their popularity. Phrenology and physiognomy aligned physical traits of the
human body and skull with personality traits, teaching that our physical features disclose our
predispositions to certain behaviors, talents, and desires. These ideas were fringe theories,
hotly contested—considered by some to be pure quackery, and by others to be the science of
the future. The disciplines spread, after their conception in the late eighteenth century, from
Switzerland and Germany into France, Great Britain, and the United States, with journals and
societies founded in each place. The theories were intended to illuminate human nature, and
they gained a significant following among many of the most forward thinkers, artists, and
writers. Coinciding and melding with this phenomenon was the rise of celebrity: certain
public figures’ fame intensified to the point that they developed followings of people who
could learn enough about them through the media to gain the illusion of knowing them
intimately.
1
Phreno-physiognomy could participate in this knowledge seeking, giving viewers
a code or rubric for interpreting personalities just from an image.
2
Theorists of phreno-
physiognomy used celebrities as case studies so that audiences could confirm their claims

1
Antoine Lilti, The Invention of Celebrity (Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017), 6–7.
2
Phrenology and physiognomy during this time were often used in combination. Though the ideas were distinct,
they were related and complementary. I use the term “phreno-physiognomy” to refer to them together.
188
through the already familiar stories and portraits in newspapers and shops. In Paris, a group
that particularly interested phrenologists and their audiences were celebrated musicians.
Musicians’ publicity in Paris at this time exemplifies how phrenologists engaged with
celebrity culture and influenced public thought on celebrities’ qualifications and true
identities.
Phrenology and physiognomy were reaching the height of their popularity during the
virtuoso craze and became part of the discussion of celebrity musicians. The ideas of these
disciplines, spread through pamphlets and portraits, were useful for discussing musicians’
skills as well as for bringing audiences of strangers into the sense of being more intimately
acquainted with performers they would likely never be able to speak to in person. Celebrity
musicians, such as the Italian daredevil violinist Niccolò Paganini and the Hungarian
heartthrob pianist Franz Liszt, were shrouded in gossip, myth, or sensationalism. But through
the “sciences” of phrenology and physiognomy, audiences had the impression they could
learn about public figures’ true personalities.
Phreno-physiognomy was commonly referenced in music criticism and portraiture,
but because of our general lack of familiarity with these concepts today, these references
usually escape our notice. Scholars, however, have begun to discover ways that phreno-
physiognomy was applied in literary character descriptions, portraiture, exposés of singers’
skills, and even the selection of students for music education.
3
I extend this discourse to the
image formation of Liszt and Paganini, the two most important virtuosos on the Paris stage.

3
See Graeme Tytler, “Character Description and Physiognomy in the European Novel (1800–1860) in Relation to
J. C. Lavater’s Physionogmische Fragmente” (PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1970); Alan
Davison, “High-Art Music and Low-Brow Types: Physiognomy and Nineteenth-Century Music Iconography,”
Context 17 (Winter 1999): 5–19; Céline Frigau Manning, “Phrenologizing Opera Singers: The Scientific ‘Proofs’ of
Musical Genius,’” 19th-Century Music 39, no. 2 (2015): 125–41; David Trippett, “Exercising Musical Minds:
Phrenology and Music Pedagogy in London circa 1830,” 19th-Century Music 39, no. 2 (2015): 99–124.
189
A trend for social understanding
In this time between revolutions of 1830 and 1848, many Parisians were open to the ideas of
phreno-physiognomy because of the social certainty it could offer. The city’s population had
doubled from 500,000 in 1801 to 1,000,000 by 1843.
4
This was a dramatic growth rousing
changes and feelings of alienation, anonymity, and uncertainty of who one’s neighbors were.
“Mutually unknown” masses wanted a way to understand and make sense of each other, so
phrenology and physiognomy became attractive tools for knowing and being known.
5

Additionally, evidence of an obsession with understanding society pervaded print
media. Novelists gave more detailed character descriptions in their novels.
6
In 1830, Honoré de
Balzac began publishing pieces for his Comédie humaine, ninety-one interlinking novels and
stories known for their detailed character sketches.
7
He intently studied human nature and
attempted to sum up the entirety of Parisian society at all levels in this massive œuvre.
8

Physiognomy heavily influenced his character portrayals, as well as those of Sir Walter Scott,
whose works were also popular in Paris at this time and valued for their rich character
descriptions.
9

4
Haejeong Hazel Hahn, “Street Picturesque: Advertising in Paris, 1830–1914” (PhD diss., University of California,
Berkeley, 1997), 21.
5
Richard Sennett’s introduction to Judith Wechsler, A Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century
Paris (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 7. See also Martin S. Staum, Labeling People: French
Scholars on Society, Race, and Empire, 1815–1848 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).
6
Tytler, “Character Description and Physiognomy,” 2.
7
Ibid.
8
Duncan McColl Chesney, “The History of the History of the Salon,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 36, no. 1/2
(Fall 2007–Winter 2008): 94.
9
See, for example, Christopher Rivers, Face Value: Physiognomical Thought and the Legible Body in Marivaux,
Lavater, Balzac, Gautier, and Zola (University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 104–39, and Tytler, “Character Description
and Physiognomy,” 2.
190
Other kinds of entertainment literature also reflected this focus. Books that, in a word,
“cataloged” people types had been a long Parisian tradition, but these types of cataloging
books reached a vogue in the 1830s and 40s.
10
The eight-volume Les Français peints par eux-
mêmes (1840–42) contains portraits and reports of all sorts of people: the music lover, the
provincial theater director, the poor, the editor-in-chief. Its purpose was to record what was
not usually recorded by historians: everyday life, “what sort of men we were, and how we
employed our time.”
11
The two-volume Le Diable à Paris, Paris et les parisiens (1845–46) with text
by Balzac, Eugene Sue, George Sand, et al., chronicled “our physiognomy, our gesture, and
our costumes.”
12
Finally, a paperback series of “physiologies” was published beginning in the
1830s, nearly 130 physiologies being published between only 1840 and 1842.
13
These books
account for almost everyone: the man, bon vivant, spoiled child, godmother, protector, kept
woman, the ventriloquist, dock worker . . . there was even a Physiologie des physiologies that
called these books a “plague” like the gnats and frogs in Egypt.
14
The physiologies commented
on social mores more than physical appearances, but with a clear desire to satirize and explain
everyone.
15
Music, a prominent fixture of Parisian life, also featured in this series; various
writers contributed the Physiologies du violon (1839), du chant (1840), de la voix et du chant (1841),
de la chanson (1842), du musicien (1841 and 1844), des bals de Paris (1841 and 1845), de l’Opéra (1842),

10
An earlier example is the artist Edmé Bouchardon’s series of prints, Etudes prises dans le bas peuple, ou Les cris de
Paris, published between 1737 and 1746.
11
Translated in Wechsler, A Human Comedy, 36.
12
Ibid., 38.
13
Ibid.; Jillian Taylor Lerner, “Panoramic Literature: Marketing Illustrated Journalism in July Monarchy Paris”
(PhD diss., Columbia University, 2006), 114.
14
Anonymous, Physiologie des physiologies (Paris: Desloges, 1841), 84.
15
Wechsler, A Human Comedy, 16.
191
and du cabaret (1849). This captivation with the culture and people of Paris gave phreno-
physiognomy an ideal environment in which to grow.

Phrenology and physiognomy
In its most standard form, phrenology determined that the brain is made up of approximately
thirty-five smaller organs which each control an aptitude: concentration, hope, or perception
of color or size, for example (see Figures 7.1 and 7.2).
16
With exercise, the organs of the brain
could grow like muscles and change the shape of the skull.

16
A helpful breakdown of phrenology’s development through these different theorists can be found in John van
Wyne, “The History of Phrenology on the Web,” last modified 2011,
http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/organs.html#gall.
192

Figure 7.1: The phrenological organs of the brain. Source: Claude-Étienne Bourdin, Essai sur la
phrénologie considérée dans ses principes généraux et son application pratique (Paris: impr. de Mme Vve
Bouchard-Huzard, 1847).
193

Figure 7.2: The phrenological organs of the brain (cont.). Source: Claude-Étienne Bourdin, Essai sur la
phrénologie.

194
The theory had developed from cranioscopy, developed by Franz Joseph Gall (1757–
1828), an Austrian doctor who moved to Paris in 1807.
17
His ideas had grown out of the much
older theory of physiognomy, which taught that facial and bodily features correspond with
character.
18
The Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) was the most influential
recent theorist to promote these beliefs through his book Physionogmische Fragmente of 1775.
19

His book codified associations that still pervade our perceptions of human nature, such as that
a hooked nose signals a domineering and overbearing personality, red hair reveals a quick
temper, and a high forehead equates to intelligence (our source for the terms highbrow and
lowbrow).
20
Lavater’s book reached France in 1781 under the title Essai sur la physiognomonie
destiné à faire connaître l’homme et à le faire aimer. A more popular version, in four volumes,
annotated and illustrated by Moreau de la Sartre, L’Art de connaître les hommes par la
physionomie, was published between 1806 and 1809.
Phrenology and physiognomy were controversial as soon as they emerged, but also
enormously popular (or infamous, depending on which side you asked). Even before Gall
published his work in France, the French philosopher Charles de Villers (1765–1815) attested in

17
Gall first presented his ideas in lectures that he gave starting in 1796. He published his four-volume treatise on
phrenology with his disciple Johann Gaspar Spurzheim: Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux en général et du
cerveau en particulier, avec des observations sur la possibilité de reconnaître plusieurs dispositions intellectuelles et morales
de l’homme et des animaux par la configuration de leurs têtes (Paris: Librarie grecque-latine-allemande, 1810–1819).
George Combe, from whose work the above Figure 1 comes, was another influential disciple and early shaper of
phrenology.
18
The earliest record of this belief dates from ancient Mesopotamia (see “From Analogy to Causality: The History
of Physiognomy before 1700” in Rivers, Face Value, 18–32).
19
For a history of Lavater and physiognomy, I recommend Graeme Tytler, Physiognomy in the European Novel:
Faces and Fortunes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
20
See Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (Paris: Administration du Grand dictionnaire
universel, 1866), 914, for these and other examples of physiognomy’s teachings.
195
1802, “Who hasn’t heard of Gall and his skulls?”
21
The mid-nineteenth-century French
dictionary has extended, multi-column entries on phrénologie and physiognomonie, much
longer than its average entries on other subjects.
22
The Encyclopedia Britannica from the same
period records a near hysteria following the publication of Lavater’s book some eighty years
earlier: the study of human character from the face became such an epidemic that “people
went masked about the streets.” Everywhere, Lavater was discussed in extremes: “the
discoverer of the new science was everywhere flattered or pilloried” with “admiration,
contempt, resentment, and fear.”
23
The two sciences were taught at every level. In Great
Britain, if not in France, inexpensive kits of sixty plaster skulls were sold, from which aspiring
phrenologists could study at home or school children could be taught along with their math
and geography.
24
In Paris and Lyon, practitioners offered free public courses—there were at
least five by the late 1830s.
25
Across France, German, and England, stage works (most of them
comical or satirical) featured physiognomy, providing another indication of the extent of
public awareness.
26

21
Trippett, “Exercising Musical Minds,” 112.
22
Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, 896–98 and 913–15.
23
Encyclopedia Britannica edition published between 1853 and 1860, cited in Tytler, “Character Description and
Physiognomy,” 58.
24
Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 291 quoting
Spurzeim to Combe, 20 May 1831, NLS, Combe MSS 7227, fols. 197–98, and Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self,
293.
25
Staum, Labeling People, 50.
26
Tytler, Physiognomy in the European Novel, 387. Most overt were La Physiognomie, a one-act comic opera with
music by Alexandre Piccini, libretto by Razy and Ferrière, premiered at the Théâtre Louvois, Paris (January 17,
1801); Avis au public, ou le Physionomiste en défaut, a two-act comic opera, music by Piccini, libretto by Émile
Désaugiers, premiered at the Théâtre Feydeau (November 22, 1806); Lavater, a one-act vaudeville by Armand
Séguier, unknown place of premiere (1809); Lavater, a five-act prose drama by Joseph Mathurin Brisset,
premiered at the Comédie Française (September 14, 1835); and Lavater, a two-act vaudeville by Philippe
Dumanoir and Louis Clairville, premiered at the Théâtre Dramatique (January 10, 1848). In addition, the
following theater pieces were produced in England and Germany: Karl und Sophie; oder, die Physiognomie, a five-
act comedy by Christoph Bretzner (1780); False Colours, a farce by Edward Morris, performed at the Haymarket
196
Organizations were founded for phrenology’s formal study in France, the British Isles,
and the United States.
27
In Paris, the Société Phrénologique was founded in 1831 and boasted
150 members within a year.
28
The Journal de la Société phrénologique de Paris was founded in
1832, the Musée de Phrénologie in 1837, and La Phrénologie: Journal du perfectionnement
individuel et social par l’application de la physiologie also in 1837. Participants in these
organizations were mostly medical doctors, but also philosophers, artists, university faculty,
lawyers, and justice officials who believed that improved ability to read human character
could inform their work.
The implications were disturbing to some people, as they feared weddings would be
canceled or innocent men sent to the gallows if persons were found to have cranial bumps of
coquetry or murder.
29
In 1833, Jean-Pierre Dantan, creator of the immensely popular
caricature statues of famous Parisian politicians and musicians, formed a rather sinister
caricature bust for the phrenologist (see Figure 7.3). The figure has a wide-mouthed, sardonic
grin and arms that clutch an overflowing pile of brains and skulls. While his most prominent
feature, a long neck, might be interpreted as phallic, its characteristics had meaning in

(1783); Die Organe des Gehirns, a three-act comedy by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (1806); The
Phrenologists: A Farce in Two Acts, by Thomas Wade, premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden (January 12,
1830) (London: Rogerson, 1830); The Organs of the Brain: A Comedy, in Three Acts, by August Friedrich Ferdinand
von Kotzebue, trans. Henry Capadose (London: Edward Bull, 1838).
27
“La Phrenologie,” The Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science 12 (1839): 176–77. Societies and journals
also formed in Europe and the United States, mostly between the 1820s and early 1840s. Great Britain had at least
fifteen organizations, even in provincial towns such as Wakefield (more can be read about the early spread of
phrenology through Great Britain in Hewett C. Watson, Statistics of Phrenology: Being a Sketch of the Progress and
Present State of that Science in the British Islands [London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman,
1836]). No societies, however, formed in Italy (Simone Baral, “Un’ ‘armonica e magnifica fronte’: La persistenza
della frenologia nei discorsi medici italiani intorno al genio musicale,” Laboratoire italien 20 [6 November 2017]).
By the 1850s, most organizations were defunct, though their ideas continued to be influential and, in one case,
even formally promoted well into the twentieth century (by the British Phrenological Society, 1881–1967).
28
Staum, Labeling People, 50.
29
Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self, 299, quoting Charles Fourier, “Les alliés dangereux,” La réforme
industrielle 2 (1933): 149–52.
197
physiognomic tradition: a stiff neck symbolized an inflexible personality and unsociability; a
neck marked with swollen veins and nerves characterized a spiteful, malicious person.
30
The
character’s depiction vividly conveys the mistrust that some in the general public had toward
phrenology and perhaps a view of phrenologists as working out of greedy self-interest.
Dantan himself, despite the criticism he put forward in this caricature, was a member of the
Société Phrénologique, and his busts were used frequently in phrenological analyses.
31

Figure 7.3: The phrenologist, by Jean-Pierre Dantan (1833). Source: Dantan, “Portrait-charge de Holm,
phrénologiste allemande,” Musée Carnavalet, Paris, inventory number S1080, accessed online 17 July
2018, http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/portrait-charge-de-holm-
phrenologiste-allemand#infos-principales.

30
Larousse, “physiognomonie,” Grand dictionnaire du XIXe siècle, 914.
31
For information about Dantan’s relationship with phrenology, see Laurent Baridon, “Jean-Pierre Dantan, le
caricaturiste de la statuomanie,” Caricatures & caricature: Actualité-recherche sur l’histoire de la caricature politique et
du dessin de presse (4 September 2007), accessed 22 May 2017, http://www.caricaturesetcaricature.com/article-
13884914.html.
198
While skeptics remained unconvinced by demonstrations of the so-called sciences,
others predicted phreno-physiognomy would be the science of the future, departments of
physiognomy would arise at universities, crime would be solved or prevented as we learned
how to better identify criminals, and people would be spared ill-suited careers because
phrenologists would prescribe professions for which they had natural ability. For example,
phrenology was used in music pedagogy in London in the 1830s to identify true musicians at a
young age and spare others the arduous path to failure.
32
In Paris, Alexandre-Etienne Choron
seems to have examined children’s physiognomies before recruiting them to join his music
school.
33

Phreno-physiognomy and music
Both for doctors and the public, phreno-physiognomy was particularly interesting to apply to
musicians, as it addressed a desire to identify the mechanisms behind the glut of musical
genius and artistic success present in the city at that time. Moreover, musicians were
considered to provide some of the strongest evidence that phrenology was a provable
science.
34

Parisian phrenologists had strong ties with musicians. Francesco Bennati, doctor at the
Théâtre-Italien opera company, held to phrenology’s doctrines and applied them to his

32
Trippett, “Exercising Musical Minds.”
33
Mme la comtesse de Bassanville, Les salons d’autrefois: souvenirs intimes. Nouvelle édition. 1e série. Madame la
comtesse de Vaudemont, Isabey, Madame la comtesse de Rumfort, M. de Bourrienne (Paris: J. Victorion, n.d.), 62.
34
A writer for the Edinburgh phrenology journal recorded that no other faculty besides that of “tune” had been
so well established in phrenology, but also so much debated. His claim seems exaggerated; musicians are
mentioned regularly in phrenology journals (which were released monthly), but treated seriously only in
perhaps in two to five articles per year and not with much development in thought (barely any new claims or
discoveries). Anonymous, “Music.—Madame Catalani, Madame Ronzi de Begnis, Signor Ronzi de Begnis, and
Mr Kalkbrenner,” Phrenological Journal and Miscellany 2 (1824–25): 120–21, translated in Trippett, “Exercising
Musical Minds,” 103.
199
patient Paganini. Jean Fossati, cofounder and vice-president of the Société Phrénologique and
doctor at the Théâtre-Italien as well, presented his findings on musicians several times at
society meetings; his presentations were reported on in the Gazette musicale.
35
Charles Place,
the secretary general of the Société and editor of La Phrénologie, had a special interest in music
and the arts; he published a thesis on phrenology and the dramatic arts, and a lengthy analysis
of Luigi Cherubini, the internationally esteemed director of the premier musical institution in
Europe, the Paris Conservatoire.
36

Phrenologists taught that there are two primary cranial organs for musical skill located
above the exterior angle of the eye: the organs of tune (giving the sense of melody and
harmony) and time (giving the sense of rhythm; see Figures 7.1 and 7.2, above). These would be
manifest by protrusions on the skull at this location. Cler’s Physiologie du musicien—which
describes the musician’s daily routine, salary, philosophy of living, and social status—includes
a chapter called “Des bosses musicales” (“Of Musical Bumps”; see Figure 7.4), which points out
that musicians often have foreheads that “appear to be strongly swollen over the outer angle
of the eye” (see Figure 7.5).
37

35
For example, Jean Fossati, “Sur le talent de la musique, discours prononcé dans la séance annuelle de la Société
Phrénologique de Paris, par M. le Docteur Fossati, Vice-Président,” Journal de la Société phrénologique de Paris
(January 1835): 93–109.
36
Charles Place, De l’Art dramatique au point de vue de la phrénologie, appréciation de M. Kemble, de Mmes Adélaïde et
Fanny Kemble, tragédiens anglais, sur les bustes de M. Dantan jeune [...] lue à la séance annuelle de cette société le 18
décembre 1842 (Batignolles: Hennuyer et Turpin, 1843); Essai sur la composition musicale: biographie et analyse
phrénologique de Cherubini avec notes et plan cranioscopique (Paris: Les principal librairies et éditeurs de musique,
1842).
37
Albert Cler, Physiologie du musicien, vignettes de Daumier, Gavarni, Janet-Lange, Valentin (Paris: Aubert: Lavigne,
1841), 36: "Souvent les fronts des musiciens paraissent fortement enflés au-dessus de l’angle externe de l’œil."
200

Figure 7.4: Title page of “Des bosses musicales” in Albert Cler, Physiologie du musicien, vignettes de
Daumier, Gavarni, Janet-Lange, Valentin (Paris: Aubert: Lavigne, 1841).

Figure 7.5: Illustration of the musical bump, from Cler’s Physiologie du musicien (34).
201
Other organs could combine with tune and time to create diverse kinds of musical
giftedness. For instance, large organs of combativeness and destruction would incline a
musician toward writing strongly accented or military music.
38
A large organ of veneration
would dispose a person toward sacred music, or a large area of mirth fit him or her for comic
music.
39
Other organs supported execution: developed organs of weight and touch, for
example, would be advantageous for harpists, pianists, or cellists knowing how much pressure
to apply to the keys or strings.
40

Analyses of the musical departed
Phrenologists tried to avoid being rash in their assessments. It was common, and even
advised, that phrenological analyses be performed after a subject’s death—this was, ironically,
after a clear reputation had already been established. Famous composers analyzed
postmortem include Cherubini, Vincenzo Bellini, Carl Maria von Weber, Ludwig van
Beethoven, and Joseph Haydn. Their postmortem analyses were performed on portraits,
busts, and sometimes exhumed skulls.
41
The analyses ranged in purpose from simply
affirming the physiological markers of these musicians’ specific kinds of musical talent, to
providing intricate details into their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and tastes.

38
George Combe, A System of Phrenology, 4th ed., vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1836), 532.
39
Alfred Ellis, Phrenology and Musical Talent, or The Phrenological and Physiological Qualifications Necessary to Make
a Successful Vocalist or Instrumentalist (Blackpool: “Human Nature” Office, 1896), 14, in Manning, “Phrenologizing
Opera Singers,” 133.
40
Combe, A System of Phrenology, 532.
41
David Trippett briefly writes about Beethoven’s, Haydn’s, and Schubert’s exhumed skulls: “Exercising Musical
Minds,” 104–05.
202
Comments on Weber and Bellini provide examples of how phrenologists associated
phrenological protrusions with the types of music composers wrote. Place writes that Weber
had strong form and sense of the supernatural (merveilleux), which enabled him to author the
fantastical Der Freischütz.
42
Bellini is discussed in a short feature the Gazette musicale,
presumably by Fossati, who had just analyzed Bellini’s bust by Dantan (see Figure 7.6) at a
meeting of the Société Phrénologique. Bellini’s organ of time was declared extremely feeble,
making his melodies short and breathless. A well-developed organ of benevolence and small
organs of courage and firmness gave his music tender expression and gentle grace. However, a
small organ of construction, which aids in finger dexterity, confirmed why Bellini was
incapable of playing even his own compositions on the piano.
43

Figure 7.6: Bust of Bellini, by Dantan (1835). Source: “Portrait sérieux de Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835),
compositeur italien,” Musée Carnavalet, Paris, inventory number S1687, accessed online 17 July 2018,
http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/musee-carnavalet/oeuvres/portrait-serieux-de-vincenzo-
bellini-1801-1835-compositeur-italien#infos-principales.

42
Place, Essai sur la composition musicale, 33.
43
“Nouvelles,” Gazette musicale de Paris 2, no. 44 (1 Novembre 1835): 359.
203
The substantial, thirty-eight–page analysis published by Place two months after
Cherubini’s death, Essai sur la composition musicale: biographie et analyse phrénologique de
Cherubini avec notes et plan cranioscopique (1842), is an example of the type of phrenological
examination that would give intricate details into a celebrated figure’s personality and drives.
Cherubini (see Figure 7.7) was an Italian immigrant, a composer, and the highly esteemed
director of the Paris Conservatoire. In this position, he was a gatekeeper for the most talented
musicians who came to Paris to be educated or to perform (it was he who famously disallowed
Liszt from studying at the Conservatoire, for example). Cherubini was well-known throughout
the European music world; Beethoven, for instance, wrote him asking for advice on his
compositions and praised him as one of the greatest composers alive. After his death, 3,000
people participated in his funeral procession in Paris, and memorializing events—tribute
performances, statues, services, streets named after him—continued for months and years.
Place, however, prefaces his study by claiming that his goal is to forget what is known about
Cherubini and the universal glory that he received, and use phrenology to rigorously
investigate whether Cherubini was really worthy of the prestige given to him.
44
In reality,
Place does nothing to forget Cherubini’s popularity as he assesses his skull, and uses his
known reputation to inform the character analysis.

44
Charles Place, Essai sur la composition musicale, 7.
204

Figure 7.7: Luigi Cherubini, portrait by unknown artist, after Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Source:
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, Est.Cherubini016,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84164277.
205
Working from a sculpted bust, Place confirms the physiological markers of
Cherubini’s already notorious iron will and studied compositions.
45
He finds the expected
developed areas of tune and time. A strongly developed area of construction made
Cherubini’s pieces organized and scientific; large imitation aided his music in evoking nature
(a philosophical ideal in the early 1800s
46
); small acquisition kept him from the desire to
prostitute his music to commercialism (we will see that Paganini, who had a large organ of
acquisition, was vilified for this); and highly pronounced veneration made his best music
religious.
Place also notes Cherubini’s traits of combativeness, courage, and perseverance, which
explain why he often defended his convictions against all opposition, and his low sense of
justice, explaining why he would shamelessly give low marks to students who defied him.
However, highly developed affection and love of children explain his paternal love for
students who showed him friendship.
47

The scholar Joli Jensen describes posthumous celebrity as occurring when more detail
is added to the public knowledge of a famous person in effort to keep the person’s image
“alive” longer after their death.
48
Cherubini’s analysis gives reasons for his styles of
composing, teaching, and governing his music conservatory, but also explains various
idiosyncrasies, from his difficulty recognizing faces to his organizing his handkerchiefs by

45
The bust was by “M. Sollier,” likely Joseph-Elzéar-Noël Sollier d’Apt, who is listed in the Explication des
ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, et lithographie des artistes vivants exposés au Musée royal le 15 mars
1843 (Paris: Vichon, fils et successeur de Mme Vc Ballard, imprimeur des musées royaux, 1843). I could not trace
whether the bust still exists today.
46
See James H. Johnson, “Expression as Imitation,” in Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 35–50.
47
Place, Essai sur la composition musicale, 23, 25.
48
Joli Jenson, “On Fandom, Celebrity, and Mediation,” in Afterlife as Afterimage: Understanding Posthumous Fame,
ed. Steve Jones and Joli Jensen (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), xxi.
206
date.
49
This kind of behind-the-scenes look into this internationally renowned composer’s
habits unveiled more information than was ever publicly known about him during his life. It
behaved as more than a memorial to him; it was evidence of a posthumous celebrity that
exceeded what he experienced while living.
This study of Cherubini also illustrates how phrenologists interwove known
reputation and phrenology in creating their analyses. Even if they claimed to divine character
primarily from the skull, phrenologists gave biographies almost the same importance as
sources for their deductions.
50
Thus, they considered the characteristics of musical talent and
personality mutually reinforcing, and their process was quite circular.
Postmortem analysis posed obvious advantages for phrenologists since they would not
run the risk that the subject would change personality or career, or commit a crime that
phrenologists did not anticipate.
51
Gall’s disciple Johann Gaspar Spurzheim advised
phrenologists to be judicious in their choices of subjects: “The rule should be, Examine no
heads of living individuals of respectable standing; and the exceptions to the rule, examinations of
well-marked heads, whenever it is evident that the science may be promoted by reporting them . . .”
52

In other words, living heads could be examined only if they obviously backed up the
discipline’s theories.

49
Place, Essai sur la composition musicale, 23–28.
50
Baral, “Un’ ‘armonica e magnifica fronte.’”
51
Phrenologists had a few embarrassments misdiagnoses. See, for example, Cristina Belgiojoso, 14 February 1842,
the Belgiojoso Family Papers, written from Locate, now in the Belgiojoso family archives in Merate, translated in
Monica Chiyoung Yoon, “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso: Her Passion for Music and Politics”
(University of Washington, DMA diss., 2014), 6–7; Staum, Labeling People, 77; James Q. Davies, Romantic Anatomies
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 231; “Phrenological Quacks,” Edinburgh Phrenological Journal 9
(September 1834–March 1836): 517; and Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science 14 (1841): 84.
52
Spurzheim’s advice, translated in “Phrenological Quacks,” 517.
207
Despite the warning, plenty of phrenologists nevertheless chose to analyze famous
living figures, and the leader of the Société Phrénologique, Fossati, boldly endorsed it. He
recommended celebrities as case studies—because celebrities had widely circulating
biographies and images that the public could use to “verify” the claims phrenology made.
53
As
Céline Frigau Manning illustrates in her article about phrenology and living Parisian opera
singers, the fame of phrenology’s subjects was integral to phrenology’s workings. The goal
was relatively simple; in general, phrenologists reinforced what the public already knew—
that the musicians being discussed were talented.
54
In this context, phrenology appeared
reliable, and the musicians benefited as their publicity increased and audiences learned a new
vocabulary through which to discuss and learn about them.
Unsurprisingly, the two instrumentalists to receive the most attention were the two
greatest of the virtuosos: Liszt and Paganini. In their cases, however, phrenology did more
than simply tell the public what it already knew; it also worked to construct character.
Scholarship has already examined Liszt’s portraiture for its connection with phrenology and
physiognomy.
55
I discuss his intentional use of phreno-physiognomy to present an image to
the public and to feed his fans’ hunger for details about his private life. Paganini, who has not
yet been examined in the phrenological context, had a sensational reputation highly reliant

53
Giovanni Antonio Lorenzo Fossati, Manuel pratique de phrénologie ou Physiologie du cerveau: d’après les doctrines de
Gall, de Spurzheim, de Combe et des autres phrénologistes (Paris: G. Baillière, 1845), 101, cited in Frigau Manning,
“Phrenologizing Opera Singers,” 129, 131.
54
Ibid., 140.
55
Alan Davison has published the groundbreaking studies of Liszt’s interaction with phreno-physiognomy,
particularly in connection with Liszt’s iconography. See “Studies in the Iconography of Franz Liszt” (PhD diss.,
University of Melbourne, 2001); “The Musician in Iconography from the 1830s and 1840s,” Music in Art 28, no. 1/2
(Spring–Fall 2003): 147–62; “Liszt and the Physiognomic Ideal in the Nineteenth Century,” Music in Art 30, no. 1/2
(Spring–Fall 2005): 133–44.
208
on his physical appearance; his case illustrates the power phreno-physiognomy had to destroy
a person’s character in the public perception.

Liszt’s ideal
Franz Liszt (1811–1886), who might be called a virtuoso of self-promotion in addition to a
virtuoso of the piano, clearly engaged with the idea that his public desired more detail about
himself. As Liszt scholar Dana Gooley has noted, Liszt was an expert in providing “intimacy at
a distance.” He did so mostly through widely published anecdotes about himself.
56
Similarly,
he actively pursued an extensive phrenological analysis, which he had published in Paris. The
analysis, paying little attention to his ability as a pianist, focuses on Liszt for his own sake,
celebrating him apart from his skill. Liszt consciously employed phreno-physiognomy in
many publicity outlets (portraits and busts in addition to the published phrenological
analysis), but he complicated the matter and claimed naivety about these theories in his
writings. This paradox is both baffling and tantalizing, and makes his actions seem even more
manipulative.
We have on record at least two statements in which Liszt claimed ignorance about
phreno-physiognomy. In autumn 1835, Liszt modestly replied to the writer George Sand’s
rapturous letter about phrenology’s potential: “Although I know phrenology and
physiognomy only very superficially and solely from hearsay, I am convinced that when these
two systems are completed, the one through the other, magnificent results will be achieved.”
57

56
Dana Gooley, “From the Top: Liszt’s Aristocratic Airs,” in Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and Power in
Nineteenth-Century Europe (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 83.
57
Letter dated autumn 1835 in Franz Liszt, Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Adrian Williams (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1998), 16. The French version is reproduced in Thérèse Marix-Spire, Les romantiques et la musique: le cas
George Sand, 1804–1838, vol. 1 (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1954), 613.
209
Then, three years later, Liszt wrote about his experience sitting for a bust by the sculptor
Lorenzo Bartolini. He casually remarked on Bartolini’s peculiar attention to his forehead: “He
put trust in some bump or other that he discovered on my forehead and took a liking to the
angle of my face” (see Figure 7.8).
58

Figure 7.8: Liszt, sculpted bust by Lorenzo Bartolini (1838–39). Source: De Agostini / A. Dagli Orti, De
Agostini Picture Library, accessed online 17 July 2018, http://www.gettyimages.in/detail/photo/franz-
liszt-hungarian-composer-pianist-and-high-res-stock-photography/165534373.
Liszt’s pretending to have no understanding of the significance of this bump and to
know phreno-physiognomy “only very superficially and solely from hearsay” is false modesty.
He had received three official phrenological examinations prior to his letter to Sand.
59
His

58
Liszt, L’Artiste 2, no. 14 (1839): 156, reproduced in Adrian Williams, Portrait of Liszt: By Himself and His
Contemporaries (Oxford: Carendon Press, 1990), 109, quoted in Davison, “Liszt and the Physiognomic Ideal,” 142.
59
The dates of Liszt’s analyses were:
1825 by James Deville, cofounder of the London Phrenological Society,
1824–26 by Gall,
1827–34 by Pierre-Marie Alexander Dumontier, a student of Gall,
210
relationship with phrenology was actually longstanding and renowned among phrenologists.
As a fourteen-year-old, Liszt had been presented to a founder of the London Phrenological
Society; he already had a promising piano career, but was presented anonymously, as a “lazy
boy, devoid of natural talents . . . whose family did not know what to do with him.”
60
Laying
hands on the boy’s head, the phrenologist immediately asked if he had ever tried music and
said that he was firmly convinced that this was the path the boy was suited for.
61
This
purportedly blind test of phrenology’s ability to intuit Liszt’s talent was considered proof of
the discipline’s reliability. The story appeared in Liszt’s earliest biographies by Joseph
d’Ortigue (1835) and Ludwig Rellstab (1843), which aimed to support Liszt’s genius by all
means available, including this popular science.
62

Moreover, earlier during the same year as Liszt’s first denial, he had participated in a
highly publicized phrenological controversy involving a mentally insane woman who could
accurately sing back any melody she heard, even though the location of her bump of melody
was a depression rather than a protrusion. Liszt went to her asylum cell at La Salpêtrière and
showered her with so many notes that she could not sing but only vibrate as if she were being

1836 by Fleury Imbert, who married Gall’s widow (however, this seems to have been a missed
connection, and the analysis likely did not occur), and
1844 by Castle.
These are given in Pauline Pocknell, “Le Liszt des phrènologues: ou Liszt, Castle, la Comptesse et la Princesse,”
Ostinato rigore: Revue internationale d’études musicales 18 (2002): 169–83.
60
Trippett, “Exercising Musical Minds,” 104, quoting “The First Biography: Joseph d’Ortigue on Franz Liszt at
Age Twenty-Three,” trans. Vincent Giroud, ed. Benjamin Walton, in Franz Liszt and His World, ed. Christopher
Gibbs and Dana Gooley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 314–15. Liszt had the previous year (1824)
performed in London and been acclaimed as a child prodigy (Hannu Salmi, “Viral Virtuosity and the Itineraries
of Celebrity Culture,” in Travelling Notions of Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe, eds. H. Salmi, A. Nivala &
J. Sarjala [Routledge, New York 2016]: 135–53, accessed online, 17 May 2017,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296596933, 3).
61
Trippett, “Exercising Musical Minds,” 104, quoting Ludwig Rellstab’s “Biographical Sketch of Liszt” (1843), ed.
and trans. Allan Keiler, appearing in Franz Liszt and His World, 350.
62
Benjamin Walton, “The First Biography: Joseph d’Ortigue on Franz Liszt at Age Twenty-Three,” in Franz Liszt
and His World, 304.
211
electrocuted. This incident was written up in three journals: Vert-Vert, the Gazette médicale de
Paris, and Le Pianiste.
63
By the time of Liszt’s second claim to ignorance, he had discussed
having a fourth examination with another phrenologist and had likely attended a phrenology
course with his partner Marie d’Agoult (their joint agenda is marked “Cours de phrénologie”
on July 6, 1836).
64
Finally, phrenology was a well-known influence in Saint-Simonianism,
which Liszt was so taken with; this utopian philosophy imagined a hierarchical society with
theologians, poets, and artists at the top level acting as a “spiritual power” that would lead the
people below them for a better quality of life for all.
65
Some of Saint-Simon’s followers
naturally gravitated to phrenology’s claim to reveal the most enlightened and talented human
beings.
66
This information clearly indicates that Liszt must have been thoroughly aware of
phrenology.
Liszt ultimately sat for at least five examinations and as many as ten head molds over
his lifetime.
67
His contemporaries held him up repeatedly as the epitome of phrenological
demonstration.
68
George Sand wrote, “You, my dear Franz, must be one of those perfected,
quasi-angelic beings. Your physiognomy, complexion, imagination, and genius disclose those

63
Davies, Romantic Anatomies, 231. François Leurat, “Phrénologie: observation d’un cas de sentiment musical très-
développé chez une idiote,” Gazette médicale de Paris (3 January 1835): 1a ; “L’idiote dilettante,” Vert-Vert: Journal
politique du matin et du soir (23 January 1835): 1b and (24 January 1835): 1a; “L’idiote mélomane,” Le Pianiste (5
February 1835): 53b.
64
BnF département des manuscrits, NA.F. 14321, cited in Marie de Flavigny, comtesse d’Agoult: Correspondance
générale: Tome I: 1821–1836, ed., Charles F. Dupêchez (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), 455
65
Staum, Labeling People, 18.
66
Ibid., 17ff.
67
Pocknell, “Le Liszt des phrènologues,” 171.
68
Davison, “Liszt and the Physiognomic Ideal,” 133–44. See also Pocknell, “Le Liszt des phrènologues,” 171.
212
capabilities with which heaven endows its elected ones.”
69
The writer Charles Didier said of
him, “His head fully justifies phrenology.”
70
Rudolf Lehmann, an artist and the brother of
Henri Lehmann, who painted the most famous Liszt portrait (Figure 7.9), observed the
prominent and sharply defined ridges on his forehead where the phrenologists located
musical talent (these are clearly visible in the portrait by his brother).
71

Figure 7.9: Portrait of the Young Franz Liszt, by Henri Lehmann (1839). Source: Musée Carnavalet, Paris,
inventory number P1683, accessed 17 July 2018,
http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/node/152744#infos-principales.

69
George Sand to Liszt, July–August 1835, published in the Revue des deux mondes (1 September 1835), appearing in
Franz Liszt, An Artist’s Journey: Lettres d’un bachelier e ̀s musique, 1835–1841, trans. Charles Suttoni (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989), 212, quoted in Davison, “Liszt and the Physiognomic Ideal,” 142.
70
Liszt, Selected Letters, 51, quoted in ibid.
71
Rudolf Lehmann, An Artist’s Reminiscence (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1894), 260–61, quoted in ibid.
213
Liszt went on to encourage the most extensive written phrenological analysis we have
on a musician: the seventy-nine–page Etude phrénologique sur le caractère originel et actuel de M.
François Liszt (1847).
72
The phrenologist who undertook the work was Michael Castle (dates
unknown; he seems to have been publishing mostly in the 1840s), a member of the College of
Medicine in New York and prolific author reported to have written more than two thousand
phrenological analysis monographs of living subjects.
73
The writer Paul de Musset observed
Castle at work in Milan and was astounded at his rapid unrolling of accurate examinations of
people on whom he had no previous information.
74

Liszt met Castle perhaps as early as 1841.
75
It is uncertain whether Liszt approached
Castle about the study, or vice versa. However, Liszt’s letter to Castle in March 1844 reveals his
pleasure at the idea:
I will be very flattered and enchanted if You would like to occupy Yourself with
a phrenological work on my more or less badly bumped noggin. I even believe
[. . .] that a phrenological study of the genre that You have so marvelously
succeeded in, would interest the Public, and would compensate for a lot of
twaddle that it has swallowed on my account. [. . .] I would be very grateful to
You for undertaking this task [. . .] use all the resources of Your talent.
76

72
Arthur Michael Castle, Etude phrénologique sur le caractère originel et actuel de M. François Liszt (Milan: n.p., 1847).
73
Castle was a rage in Milan; everyone was asking him for studies of themselves (Paul de Musset, Voyage
pittoresque en Italie: Partie septentrionale [Paris: Belin-Leprieur et Morizot, 1855], 217. Castle produced these
monographs between 1839 and 1850 (Pocknell, “Le Liszt des phrènologues,” 173).
74
Musset, Voyage pittoresque en Italie, 217–18.
75
Pocknell, “Le Liszt des phrènologues,” 173–74.
76
Preface to Castle, Etude phrénologique: “Je serai assurément très flatté et très enchanté d’apprendre que Vous
voulez bien Vous occuper d’un travail phrénologique sur ma caboche plus ou moins mal bossée. Je crois même
(puisque tant il y a, qu’on se met à besogner biographiquement sur mon pauvre individu, de la façon dont on le
fait depuis deux ans) qu’une étude phrénologique du genre de celles qui Vous ont si merveilleusement réussi,
intéresserait le Public, et le dédommagerait de beaucoup de fadaises qu’on lui fait avaler sur mon compte. [. . .] je
Vous serai très reconnaissant d’entreprendre cette tâche [. . .] exige toute les ressources de Votre talent.”
214
Once the study was finished, Liszt went through significant personal effort to publish it
in Paris. He found an editor to patch up the French and a publisher to print it at a moderate
cost.
77
He organized the publication himself since Castle, a foreigner, did not have the
necessary connections. Nine preserved letters from Liszt discuss the manuscript, giving us a
wealth of documentation to indicate the project’s importance to him.
78
He apparently valued
participating in this fashionable and avant-garde field, almost certainly because he carefully
cultivated a persona as an intellectual and cultured man, and because this type of media was
serviceable in bringing him closer to his public.
Only one of the fourteen sections in Castle’s study addresses Liszt’s musical ability.
Musset wrote that with just one glance at Liszt’s forehead, the public would know just as well
as Castle that Liszt had a gift for music; thus, Castle focused on personality in order to
contribute something new to public understanding.
79
On the subject of music, however, Castle
correctly determines that Liszt possesses all the necessary elements for creating new and
lasting works. He emphasizes that it would be difficult to find someone with stronger
intellectual elements for musical genius.
80
Developed organs of weight and distance assist
Liszt in his mastery of the piano; powers of reflection and reason facilitate his study of music.
81

He has sentiments of sweetness and tenderness par excellence, but also a nervous temperament

77
Liszt to Marie d’Agoult, 14 April 1846, printed in Marie Broussais, “Liszt dans les collections anthropologique du
Musée de l’Homme,” L’éducation musicale 309–10 (June–July 1984): 31.
78
The letters are reproduced in part in Pocknell, “Le Liszt des phrènologues.”
79
Musset, Voyage pittoresque en Italie, 219.
80
Ibid., 26–27.
81
Ibid., 27.
215
that produces an energy, brusqueness, violence, and destruction. The resulting vacillating
effect can make his music either charming or disagreeable to listeners.
82

The study concentrates on personality, moral character, and intellect. Particularly
emphasized are his amiability and desire to please, his thirst for glory but conflicting self-
criticism that makes him sometimes loathe performing, his constant need for change and
extreme emotions, and his passion for love. Passages about the last are especially vivid.
Considering the hysteria Liszt already created among women, who vied for his handkerchiefs,
gloves, and even cigarette butts, descriptions of his “tyrannical desires for possession of the
loved object… tenderness, generosity, and entire abandon to naive and instinctive joy in the hours
of intimacy” could only have fanned the flames.
83

Castle’s analysis reads as a cross between a gossip column and medical report; it
contains information to interest the casual reader in addition to those studying phrenology.
Overall, it is clear that it was written for appreciators of Liszt’s celebrity more than of his
musical ability: readers receive insight into attitudes, passions, and behaviors that normally
only close friends or lovers could access.

82
Ibid., 27–28.
83
In context: “[His] sentiment of love . . . [can absorb] him entirely, creating in him tyrannical desires for possession
of the loved object, and a nervous unrest when he is distant from it, at the same time a tenderness, a generosity, and
an entire abandon to naive and instinctive joy in the hours of intimacy . . . Either his passion is to be appeased by
complete satisfaction, or it must be hindered by great difficulties.” Castle, Etude phrénologique, 31: “[son] sentiment de
l’amour . . . l’absorbant tout entier, créant en lui des désirs tyranniques pour la possession de l’objet aimé, et une
inquiétude nerveuse, lorsqu’il s’en trouve éloigné, en même temps qu’une tendresse, une générosité et un entier
abandon à une joie ingénue et instinctive dans les heures d’intimité. . . . soit que sa passion ait été apaisée par une
complète satisfaction, soit qu’elle ait été entravée par de grandes difficultés.” Italics are maintained from the original.
See also ibid., 22: “The desire to please . . . which forms the base of his ambition, acts in concert with the
benevolent and affectionate parts of his nature . . . allies with his sexual propensity and produces a general gallantry
toward women, and often another species of gallantry that, impatient for satisfaction, is audacious and
enterprising.” / “Le désir de plaire qui forme la base de son genre d’ambition, agissant de concert avec la partie
bienveillante et affectueuse de son naturel, produit cette amabilité et cette complaisance qui doivent généralement
caractériser ses manières. Le même désir s’alliant avec sa propension sexuelle, produit chez lui une galanterie
générale envers les femmes, et souvent aussi une autre espèce de galanterie, non moins impatiente de satisfaction,
qu’elle est hardie et entreprenante.”
216
Liszt, in his letter to Castle (transcribed above), recognizes that the analysis will
interest the public. He also states his intent to use it to clarify aspects of his personality and
reduce the “lot of twaddle” the public has “swallowed” about him. The twaddle likely involved
rumors regarding his self-promoting ambition and his out-of-control sexual propensities—he
lived openly with a married woman and was suspected of seeing other women while away on
concert tours. Despite titillating public interest with descriptions of Liszt’s amorous urges,
Castle guards against the spreading of harmful rumors by underscoring that “the title of moral
man” fully belongs to him: he is benevolent and affable, incapable of committing any ignoble
action.
84

This was a study that Liszt conscientiously pursued. In it we have a picture of himself
that he desired people to see. It seems appropriate, therefore, that the study be referred to in
future scholarship about Liszt’s reputation and self-promotion. The study’s context reveals
Liszt’s consciousness engagement with the public’s desire for details about his inner life,
desires, and personal struggles. He designed it to feed public interest and increase his illusion
of intimacy. The study also participates in his aim to be seen as something greater than a
“mere” virtuoso. It highlights his intellectual ability and cultural awareness, and fleshes him
out as more complete human being. The study was thus an important investment for building
his career and popularity.

Paganini, the evil genius
Five feet five inches in height, built on long sinuous lines, a long, pale face, with
strong lineaments, a protruding nose, an eagle eye, and curly hair flowing to his
shoulders, hiding an extremely thin neck; two lines, one might say were graven
on his cheeks by his profession, for they resembled the ff of a violin or double-
bass. Bright with the fire of genius, his pupils roll in the orbits of his eyes . . . .

84
Castle, Etude phrénologique, 39.
217
His wrist is so loose and supple that I would compare the play of his hands to
the movement of a handkerchief tied to the end of a stick, and floating in the
breeze.
—Castil-Blaze, writing in 1831
85

Unlike Liszt, Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) was more a victim of phrenology than an
exploiter—but a somewhat lucky victim at that. The memory of Liszt lives on more strongly
today thanks to his compositions which are still frequently performed, but Paganini while
living had notoriety that far exceeded Liszt’s. He displayed harrowing performance
techniques, such as brilliant left-hand pizzicato, harmonics, double-stops, and playing on
frayed strings that would break until he finished the piece on just one string. Seemingly
supernatural skill led to his acclaim as the demon violinist, surrounded by an aura of evil and
wrongdoing. It was said that he sold his soul to the devil; he was haunted by rumors of
murder, seduction, forced abortions, and imprisonment. Not only his performances, but these
macabre and demonic associations built Paganini’s celebrity.
References to phreno-physiognomy are woven throughout Paganini’s publicity and
have remained unexamined. Sources pointed out malevolent tendencies written on his face;
others defended him. One agreement between all sources, at least, was that Paganini bore
physical signs of genius.
Paganini had a bony frame, pale and thin skin, and long, dark hair (see Figure 7.10).
Words such as “gaunt,” “diabolical,” and “grotesque” dominate the many written accounts of
his appearance.
86
He was often compared with a cadaver or a ghost. The Parisian press cast

85
Translated in Jacques-Gabriel Prod’homme, Paganini (Paris: H. Laurens, 1927), 15.
86
See, for example, Maximilian Julius Schottky in Jeffrey Pulver, Paganini: The Romantic Virtuoso (New York: Da
Capo Press, 1970), 164–65. For other analyses of Paganini’s morbid or diabolical personas, see Nina
Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, “Blemished Physiologies: Delacroix, Paganini, and the Cholera Epidemic of 1832,” The
Art Bulletin 83, no. 4 (2001): 686–710, and Mai Kawabata, Paganini: The “Demonic” Virtuoso (Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 2013).
218
him in an overwhelmingly morbid pall, frequent reporting illnesses and periodic rumors of
his death.

Figure 7.10: Paganini, caricature sculpture by Dantan reproduced in engraving. Source: “Paganini.” Le
Charivari (1836). Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, Est.PaganiniN.029,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8423344r/f3.item.
Through the pall, however, many observers detected genius in his face. The poet
Heinrich Heine described Paganini’s “pale, corpse-like face, on which trouble, genius, and hell
had graved their indelible marks.”
87
The critic Castil-Blaze mentions eyes “bright with the fire

87
Heinrich Heine in Pulver, Paganini, 203–5.
219
of genius.”
88
The critic-composer Hector Berlioz also cites “piercing eyes” and “strange and
ravaged face” as testaments to his genius.
89
(Berlioz, relevantly, an ex-medical student, agreed
with Gall’s and Lavater’s ideas, owned copies of their books, and even believed they had not
taken their ideas far enough.
90
) Paganini’s physician Francesco Bennati described a number of
facial features that “to a certain degree testified to his undeniable genius.”
91

It has long been acknowledged that appearance had much to do with Paganini’s
reputation. Mai Kawabata observes in her book on Paganini’s demonic persona: “The focal
point for the swirl of speculation and aura of mystery was Paganini’s decrepit body. It was a
source of endless fascination to his public: contorted, cadaverous, and disease-ravaged, it
spoke of abnormality, alterity, excess.”
92
Liszt had noticed from the beginning that legends
about Paganini’s foul past grew as people tried to explain what they saw onstage:
The excitement he caused was so unusual, the magic that he practiced upon the
fantasy of his hearers, so powerful that they could not satisfy themselves with a
natural explanation. Old tales of witches and ghost stories came into their
minds; they tried to . . . fathom the marvel of his genius in a supernormal way;
they even whispered that he had dedicated his soul to the Evil One and that the
fourth string of his violin was made of his wife’s intestines which he himself
had cut out.
93

Paganini, as well, recognized the role of his appearance. To his friend and lawyer Luigi Germi
he complained that his looks were receiving almost more attention than his playing: “Now no

88
Quoted in Prod’homme, Paganini, 15.
89
Kendall, Paganini, 98.
90
Trippett calls this Berlioz’s private endorsement of phrenology (Trippett, “Exercising Musical Minds,” 100).
91
Francesco Bennati, “Notice physiologique sur Paganini,” Revue de Paris (May 1831): 61, translated in
Prod’homme, Paganini, 16.
92
Kawabata, Paganini, 36.
93
Sheppard and Axelrod, Paganini, 112.
220
one ever asks if one has heard Paganini, but if one has seen him. . . . The papers talk too much
about my outward appearance, which arouses incredible curiosity.”
94

Paganini responded with mixed feelings to the malevolent persona growing around
him. On one hand, he did not want this distinction: “To tell you the truth, I regret that there is
a general opinion among all classes that I’m in collusion with the Devil.”
95
Yet, many things
Paganini did encouraged this perception—his bizarre behavior onstage, pieces in his
repertoire such as Le Streghe (“Witches’ Dance”), his visits to graveyards to watch cholera
victims being buried, his name (“little pagans”), and even his writing to newspapers to
allegedly deny harmful legends, which he graphically retold.
96
Most people who encountered
him found him sullen and peculiar; he was private and hardly ever spoke with anyone.
Despite, and thanks to, these oddities, his renown grew to such extent that performing was no
longer necessary to maintain his celebrity: he only needed to appear. A music store in the
Passage de l’Opéra benefitted from the customers he drew as he sat daily in the display
window of the shop, wrapped in a cloak, reading scores, and acknowledging no one.
97
At the
Casino Paganini (a short-lived enterprise capitalizing on Paganini’s name and offering
concerts, music and painting lessons, game and reading rooms, gardens, and a café), he agreed
to appear three times a week.
98
Sometimes, rather than perform, he simply walked through

94
G. I. C. de Courcy, Paganini, the Genoese, vol. 2 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), 89. Emphasis
added.
95
Ibid.
96
One defense against these rumors is found in the Revue musicale (14 May 1831): 117–18.
97
Charles Hallé in Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811–1847 (New York: Cornell University Press,
1987), 169.
98
“Casino-Paganini” (advertisement), Le Siécle (18 November 1837): last page.
221
the garden so that the guests could see him.
99
His celebrity was such that his mere presence,
eerie and otherworldly, without action, violin performance, or even a word from his mouth,
drew crowds.
Contemporary consciousness of phreno-physiognomy must have informed public
interest in Paganini, tying his skill, physical appearance, and ill repute to one cause. Three
significant publications discussed his phreno-physiognomy: one dealt purely with his musical
ability, but the two others implicated his character and represent the struggle Paganini had in
trying to protect his reputation.
A brief review in the Gazette musicale summarizes an analysis delivered at the Société
Phrénologique in 1835.
100
The report remains aloof from rumors about personality and reports
only highly developed organs of tune and touch that give Paganini ultra-precise agility in
rapid and complex passages, and a defective organ of time that explains why he neglects
accurate rhythm.
Bennati’s “Notice physiologique sur Paganini” (1831), however, had a much larger
intention. The ten-page article appeared in the Revue de Paris, and in extracts in the Revue
musicale, as part of the press buildup preceding Paganini’s tour through Paris.
101
Bennati
claims to have a scientific explanation for Paganini’s great talent and says he will defend
Paganini’s character. He claims that he can explain his extraordinary feats not through myths,

99
William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between
1830 and 1848 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 57.
100
“Nouvelles,” Revue et gazette musicale de Paris (1 Novembre 1835): 359. The bust is likely one at preserved at the
Musée Carnavalet: http://parismuseescollections.paris.fr/en/node/153823#infos-principales (accessed 31 January
2018).
101
The Revue de Paris was a weekly journal that published Balzac’s novellas and later Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
Paganini’s arrival in Paris was much anticipated. In one case, a reviewer announcing Moscheles’ upcoming tour
almost seemed to wish it were Paganini’s: “Le célèbre Moschelès est de retour à Paris. On dit toujours que Paganini
viendra; il ne se presse pas beaucoup de nous faire cet honneur” (Journal des artistes 3, no. 1 [3 January 1830]: 23).
222
as biographies had done (an allusion to Paganini’s legendary soul-selling), but through
physical justification.
102
He cites flexible ligaments, perfectly proportioned hands, large and
well-defined ears, and (oddly for us) skin that sweats when he hears music—an indication of
his musical sensitivity. Pertinently, his ears, as Bennati describes them, resemble musicians’
ears as described in the nineteenth-century Grand dictionnaire entry on physiognomonie (they
are one of the only physical features this source associates with a specific profession).
103
These
ears, in addition to their large size and protrusion from the head, have strongly defined
curves, trenches, and ridges. “You have to believe . . . there is a rapport between the external
characteristics and internal organization of his ear,” Bennati writes.
104
It is these ears which
allow him to hear low voices from long distances and tune his violin with only a few light
plucks in the middle of the cacophony from the orchestra’s percussion.
105
Moreover, Bennati
notes that David d’Angers, another founding member of the Société Phrénologique, took
particular care to sculpt a true musician’s ears in his Paganini bust (see Figure 7.11).
106

102
Bennati, “Notice physiologique sur Paganini,” 52.
103
Larousse, “physiognomonie,” Grand dictionnaire du XIXe siècle, 914.
104
Bennati, “Notice physiologique sur Paganini,” 60: "Certes il faut croire . . . qu’il y a un rapport entre les
caractères extérieurs et l’organisation intérieur de son oreille."
105
Ibid., 60–62.
106
Ibid., 61.
223

Figure 7.11: Paganini, bronze bust by David d’Angers, (1830–33). Source: The Courtauld Institute of Art,
accessed 17 July 2018, http://www.artandarchitecture.org.uk/images/conway/791f54ac.html.
Bennati cites Gall’s and Lavater’s theories and the strongly developed “lump of
melody” in Paganini’s forehead as plausible explanations for Paganini’s skill. He asserts that
physical fitness is the source: “Paganini is in his entirety . . . an organism made expressly . . . for
attaining the highest perfection as an executant musician.” Paganini’s skill and celebrity as a
musician result from the construction of his body:
The superiority of the celebrated violinist is less a result of continued practice,
as has been averred, but rather of special physical fitness. . . . His head alone
should have made Paganini a distinguished composer, a musician of the
highest standing; but without his delicate sense of rhythm, the build of his
224
body, his shoulders, arms and hands, he could never have been the
incomparable virtuoso whom we all admire.
107

In other words, Paganini’s genius, skill, and acclaim are literally attributable to the make of his
body and head.
Bennati describes Paganini’s facial features, but offers no interpretation of their
implications for his character. Readers at the time were likely familiar enough with
physiognomy to interpret facial features themselves.
108
But it is possible that Bennati refrains
from interpretation because many of Paganini’s features had negative physiognomic
connotations (as the public already assumed); defining them would have therefore
undermined his defense. Yet, in a notice physiologique, these features had to be described.
Bennati notes his broad and massive forehead, which would indicate intelligence. However, a
head disproportionately large (Bennati does not specify) would signal brutality and animal
instinct; this interpretation rang true with general thought about Paganini and may have been
the source for the conception of him as brutish and cruel.
109
Bennati mentions an aquiline
nose, a sign of domination and stubbornness.
110
He calls the mouth “full of . . . malice” [une
bouche pleine (…) de malice]. However, more positively, Paganini’s “perfectly arched

107
Bennati, “Notice physiologique sur Paganini,” translated in Prod’homme, Paganini, 16. Scholars now believe
that Paganini’s odd appearance, awkward movements, and unusual ability on the violin can be attributed to a
genetic abnormality called Marfan’s Syndrome, which results in a thin and bony figure, pale skin, and unusually
flexible joints (Sperati and Felisati, “Nicolò Paganini”; Myron Schoenfeld, “Nicolo Paganini: Musical Magician or
Marfan Mutant?” The Journal of the American Medical Association 239, no. 1 (1978): 40–42). This condition explains
how Paganini could touch his thumb to his pinky behind his hand, spread his hand to twice its width, and finger
three octaves over three strings. He could make his hands especially compact—touching his thumb to the center
of his palm, for instance (“Academie royale de musique: Première concert de Paganini,” Revue musicale [12 March
1831): 41–43; discussed in Kendall, Paganini, 52–53). To have the combined capabilities for both unusual breadth
and compactness was useful for executing his iconic and incredibly difficult violin tricks, such as rapid passages
of left-hand pizzicato while fingering other notes that the bow played.
108
Davison, “Liszt and the Physiognomic Ideal,” 134.
109
Larousse, “physiognomonie,” Grand dictionnaire du XIXe siècle, 914.
110
Ibid.
225
eyebrows” [des sourcils arqués d’une manière parfaite] would symbolize good nature and
simplicity, and protruding ears would signal ability, frankness, and openness—the opposite of
what Paganini was often accused of, with his secretive past and perplexing talent.
111

Bennati adds that Paganini is not melancholic and grieving, as people often think, but
cheerful, witty, laughing with his friends, and playing games with his little son Achille. Yet
despite pointing out Paganini’s most complimentary features indicating good nature,
intelligence, openness, and simplicity, he also hints at negative characteristics (malice, cruelty,
domination), glossing over them without commentary. Bennati clearly wanted to feed
audiences’ appetites with what was sometimes excruciating detail: he describes Paganini’s
being nearly buried alive during a bad case of measles at age four and his suffering from
hemorrhoids now. The physical description, in part an obligatory component of the
physiological notice, was perhaps also a way to tacitly guard the dark underbelly that created
Paganini’s allure, even while the article as a whole conspicuously defended him. Perhaps
Bennati recognized that scandal was part of Paganini’s success. A few unsavory parts remain
while Bennati maintains focus on humanizing Paganini and making him more socially
acceptable.
But a third publication demonstrates just how damaging phreno-physiognomy could
be to a reputation. It also provides irrefutable evidence of phreno-physiognomy being used to
understand and create celebrity at the time. Théodore Poupin’s (unknown dates) two-volume
collection of celebrity sketches, Esquisses phrénologiques et physiognomoniques des contemporains
les plus célèbres (1836), contains one chapter for each phrenological organ, each epitomized by a
different Parisian celebrity. This collection seems to have been quite popular, as it was printed

111
Ibid. Complaints were given, for example, that in all his tours and traveling, no one ever heard him practice.
226
by three different presses: Trinquart and G. Baillière in Paris, and Établissement
encyclographique in Brussels. Three musicians feature: the admired singer Luigi Lablache
illustrates the organ of time; the superstar composer Gioachino Rossini represents tune; and
Paganini, acquisition. The phrenological bump for acquisition lies in a small area just north of
tone and toward the side of the head, above the temples; this protrusion is present in the
accompanying portrait of Paganini (see Figure 7.12), but not explicitly pointed out or
commented on in the text. In fact, Poupin’s text never verbally explains how the celebrities’
defining phrenological organs might be seen; readers are left to deduce them for themselves
or simply take the author at his word (particularly when the associated phrenological organ is
on the back of the head, and all of Poupin’s illustrations are facial views). The publication is
therefore much less scientific than others mentioned here and was intended for a mainstream
audience.
227

Figure 7.12: Paganini in Théodore Poupin, Esquisses phrénologiques et physiognomoniques des
contemporains les plus célèbres (Brussels: Établissement encyclographique, 1837), 137.
Lablache and Rossini each receive detailed biographies that take pages to treat their
training and professional accomplishments (Rossini’s also dwells on his conspicuous love of
228
food). Paganini’s entry, in contrast, associates him with an unmusical quality—greed—and
does not mention him until the last two, abrupt paragraphs. He is attacked as a “devious and
wicked” miser, who, for a few bow strokes, ungratefully “carried away twenty coffers of our
gold without letting one parcel fall to our poor.”
112
He is then taunted:
Look at this somber figure all cast in anxiety, in worry over small things and
this sordid love [of money], which we have attempted to paint; look at him
quickly, very quickly, because the time of recriminations is passed, and we
cannot anymore, without cowardice, crush a fallen man. There he is, this
Paganini, the exile of the press that chased him out of Paris forever.
113

The association with greed stuck. The year after Poupin claimed that Paganini was
“chased out” of Paris forever, Paganini returned to open the Casino Paganini, which soon
folded and resulted in his losing more than 100,000 francs in lawsuit fees over
mismanagement and accusations of avarice. Heine, that same year, wrote a story featuring “a
corpse arisen from the grave, a vampire with a violin, who sucks, if not the blood out of our
hearts, at the least the money out of our pockets.”
114
The actuality of Paganini’s greed is more
complex. He made immense amounts of money from performing (for example, 165,000 francs
from his twelve concerts in spring 1831).
115
However, he also gave away money liberally—

112
Théodore Poupin, Esquisses phrénologiques et physiognomoniques des contemporains les plus célèbres, selon les
systèmes de Gall, Spurzheim, Lavater, etc., avec des remarques bibliographiques, historiques, physiologiques et littéraires...
(Paris: Librairie médicale de Trinquart, 1836), 190: “ce sournois et mauvais riche . . . qui, pour quelques coups
d’archet, a emporté vingt malles de notre or sans en laisser tomber une parcelle sur nos pauvres.”
113
Ibid.: “Regardez cette sombre figure toute empreinte d’inquiétude, de soucis des petites choses et de cet amour
sordide que nous avons essayé de peindre, voyez-le vite, bien vite, car le temps des récriminations est passée, et
nous ne pouvons plus, sans lâcheté, écraser l’homme tombé. C’est là ce Paganini, l’exilé de la presse, qui l’a
chassé de Paris à tout jamais.”
114
Heine, Florentinische Nächte, translated in Salmi, “Viral Virtuosity and the Itineraries of Celebrity Culture,” 5.
115
Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 134.
229
20,000 francs to Berlioz, entire concert proceeds to charities, and large amounts to family, but
these generosities went almost unnoticed.
116

Regardless of any reality, Paganini’s reputation hinged on one fact: to the nineteenth-
century viewer, he did not look like someone who could be kind or generous. Bennati had
presented a complex and three-dimensional person with both good and bad qualities, toward
whom readers could be sympathetic. But Poupin’s message was more cogent: Paganini was
evil and his physiology proved it.
Naturally, this message hurt Paganini personally. “I don’t do harm to anyone,” he
confided to Germi, “and yet people who don’t know me make out that I am an utterly wicked,
greedy, and objectionable person.”
117
Professionally, however, this message worked to his
advantage. He became infamous, and his notoriety as an untrustworthy person caused people
to eye him all the more closely. People thronged to his performances, curious to see the
mysterious and diabolical talent that such a malformed person could exude. As early as 1830, a
biographer recognized that Paganini would have been less interesting to the public if he had
been physically different. He wrote, “[Paganini’s] peculiarities make of him an original,
reminiscent of the spiritual and of all that is antithetical to the everyday… it would have been
a real error if Nature had given him more flesh.”
118
In Paganini’s celebrity, skill and body were
inseparably dependent on each other, and phreno-physiognomy’s implications were much to
credit.

116
See Výborný, “The Real Paganini.”
117
Letter to Luigi Germi, 10 January 1829, translated in Výborný, “The Real Paganini,” 348.
118
Schottky translated in Pulver, Paganini, 165.
230
Conclusion
The publicity of musicians in 1830s and 40s Paris demonstrates that celebrated figures were
for a time assessed through a perspective largely forgotten today. Phrenology and
physiognomy gave viewers a lens through which they believed they could see behind the
façades of faces and bodies and into the true characters of the figures they followed. For
phrenologists, well-known and often-seen celebrity figures were instrumental in bringing
attention to their ideas. The most reliable evidence for their work was in analyzing
established, deceased musicians, such as Cherubini, Bellini, and Weber. Living musicians and
their publicists also participated as they saw phreno-physiognomy as an opportunity to
influence public opinion; they used it to explain their talent and put forward a deliberate
public image, especially in the cases of Paganini and Liszt. Though phrenology and
physiognomy were built on unreliable evidence, they succeeded for a time because they met
two great needs of the culture: they responded to Paris’s manias for talent and celebrity by
providing scientific explanations for skill and insights into the inner lives of the most
inaccessible figures.
I hope that scholars will extend this work by watching for physical descriptions in
writings from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and considering their
interpretations in light of phrenology and physiognomy’s teachings. Recognizing the
perspective people at the time held can lead us to uncover more of the perceptions people had
of each other and reveal some of the hidden factors at work in publicity.

231

VIII. Conductors: A New Kind of Virtuoso

I shift now to address another kind of musician than the instrumentalists, composers, and
singers that have been observed in the rest of this dissertation. Up through the early part of
the nineteenth century, conductors’ role had been split between two or three different people,
namely the music director, first violinist, and keyboardist, and their basic function had been
correction rather than initiation of musical expression.
1
They had largely been facilitators,
choosing music, running rehearsals, and helping players start, stop, and navigate difficult
passages.
2
But during the 1830s, conductors developed into charismatic artists rather than
being only functional organizers. They appropriated the trappings of soloists, promoting
themselves as interpreters of music, and cultivating a strong stage presence. They exuded
power and authority, sometimes earning exorbitant fees for their work. By the middle of the

1
Harold Schonberg, The Great Conductors (London: Victor Gollancz, 1973), 32. For a history of conducting up to
this point, see Schonberg, “Bach and Handel” and “Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven,” in The Great Conductors, 33–
64; John Spitzer et al., “Conducting,” Grove Music Online; Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed 12
March 2015; or D. Kern Holoman, “The Emergence of the Orchestral Conductor in Paris in the 1830s,” in Music in
Paris in the Eighteen-Thirties, ed. Peter Bloom (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987), 374–430; and The Cambridge
Companion to Conducting, ed. José Antonio Bowen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Peter Bloom,
“Virtuosités de Berlioz,” Romantisme no. 128 (2005): 74.
2
One notable exception was Jean-Baptiste Lully, who was a notoriously charismatic force. He was arrogant,
scheming, energetic, and reactive (known to smash violins in rage). He had a vision to control the entire
production of whatever he participated in. Moreover, he held his musicians to high standards, enforcing uniform
bowing and making them the best orchestra in Europe. He might be called the first of the great conductors. See
Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 35.

232

nineteenth century, conductors had secured the public’s admiration, loyalty, and applause,
forever transforming the relationship between them and their audiences.
The common image in scholarship is that the nineteenth-century conductor became
the “new virtuoso.” In The Cambridge Companion to Conducting, José Bowen notes that “the
power, prestige and money gradually shifted to conductors, who became the focus of modern
music-making.”
3
Alan Houtchens writes, “Conductors who could lead a gargantuan orchestra
and chorus without using a score were admired above virtuoso soloists.”
4
And the Grove entry
on conducting says that “the steady growth in the number of public professional and semi-
professional orchestra concerts in London, Paris and Vienna encouraged the transference of
the image of the virtuoso onto the conductor.”
5
Moreover, William Weber has linked the rise
of the conductor with the fall of the instrumental virtuoso.
6
As audiences tired of publicity
scams and the frivolity of virtuosic concertos, variation sets, fantasies, and improvisations, the
conductor became the next diversion.
7
None of these sources, though, provides an account of
how the transference occurred.

3
Bowen, “The Rise of Conducting,” in The Cambridge Companion to Conducting, 94.
4
Alan Houtchens, “Romantic Composers Respond to Challenge and Demand,” in The Orchestra: Origins and
Transformations, ed. Joan Peyser (New York: Billboard Books, 2000), 175, quoted in Holly Mathieson, “Embodying
Music: The Visuality of Three Iconic Conductors in London, 1840–1930” (PhD diss., University of Otago, 2010), 16.
5
Spitzer et al., “Conducting.”
6
His argument is that charismatic conductors ascended as audiences tired of empty virtuosic pieces and wanted
instead more artistically substantial symphonic music by master composers (William Weber, “Mass Culture and
European Musical Taste, 1770–1870,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 25, no. 1/2 [June–
December 1994]: 186–88).
7
For writings on the criticisms of virtuosity, refer to footnote 48 in Chapter One. Regarding scams specifically,
see an example from the Gazette musicale de Paris (27 March 1836): 103, cited in Weber, “Mass Culture and
European Musical Taste, 1770–1870,” 187: “Who would believe it? The name of the great artists that the concert
season sets in Paris, the interest that their talent and reputation inspire, are exploited at this time by swindling
speculation, against which we must place our readers on guard. Officious persons present themselves to rich arts
patrons, as agents of our musical luminaries, to offer tickets for a concert that will be given at the Salle Saint-

233

I describe how this shift occurred through looking specifically at conductors in Paris
during the 1830s and 1840s. Within this setting, I can demonstrate that this transfer of the
virtuoso image onto the conductor was happening broadly and for the first time in French
history. However, I do not find a correlation between a fall of the virtuoso and ascendency of
the conductor; instead, conductors were winning public favor as star performers
simultaneously with instrumentalists in the virtuoso era. The four conductors François-
Antoine Habeneck, Philippe Musard, Louis-Antoine Jullien, and Hector Berlioz serve as
models. In their various career paths and individual strengths, they each earned reputations
for their proficiency, power, and ability to command audiences’ attention. I define how the
term virtuosity applies to the conducting of both popular and art music, and I demonstrate
how these four conductors manifested virtuosity in their careers and took on the identities of
soloists in ways that have continued to be appropriated up to the present.
8

Jean. People pay the price of the tickets, and present themselves at the designated day and hour. The door is
closed! At the concert! And they have to leave with the annoyance of an inconvenience and anger over having
been duped by a mystification in which the most honorable names were involved in an unworthy way. We
cannot too strongly call the attention of the police to this type of industry, which can become so prejudicial to the
interests of the artists.” (“Qui le croirait? le nom des grands artistes que la saison des concerts fixe à Paris, l’intérêt
qu’inspirent leur talent et leur réputation, sont exploités en ce moment par une spéculation d’escroquerie, contre
laquelle nous devons mettre en garde nos lecteurs. D’officieux personnages se présentent chez les riches
dilettanti, comme mandataires de nos sommités musicales, pour offrir des billets pour un concert qu’elles
doivent donner à la salle Saint-Jean. Ils perçoivent le prix de ces billets, dont les porteurs se présentent à jour et
heure fixes au local désigné. Porte close! Point de concerts! et il faut s’en retourner avec l’ennui d’un
dérangement et la colère d’avoir été dupes d’une mystification dans laquelle ont été mêlés indignement les noms
les plus honorables. Nous ne saurions trop vivement appeler l’attention de la police sur ce genre d’industrie, qui
pourrait devenir si préjudiciable aux intérêts des artistes.”)
8
My discussion of Berlioz is partial and relatively brief since the bulk of Berlioz’s career and recognition
occurred in the twenty years after the period I discuss in this chapter. Berlioz’s career ended in 1868. In contrast,
Jullien’s career in Paris ended with his move to London in 1839, Habeneck’s with his retirement in 1848 before his
death in 1849, and Musard’s with ill health in 1848. See Jules Prudence Rivière, “Musard’s Last Opéra Ball—His
Death,” in My Musical Life and Recollections (London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Company, 1893), 75–76.

234

Virtuosic conducting
Peter Bloom defines virtuosity in the nineteenth century as “extraordinary ability manifested
in a stunning display of skill, dexterity, and artfulness.”
9
In this definition and others,
virtuosity is not merely high-level skill, but showy display of it. Philosopher Vernon Howard
argues that “a virtuoso(a) is one whose performance has been consistently recognised as being
virtuosic . . . The trick word in this otherwise banal statement is ‘recognition’; for without
recognition . . . virtuosity simply does not exist.”
10
Historian Paul Metzner confirms: “Virtuosos
are . . . people who exhibit their talents in front of an audience, who possess as their principal
talent a high degree of technical skill, and who aggrandize themselves in reputation and
fortune, principally through the exhibition of their skill.”
11

This quality of self-aggrandizement does not appear in dictionary definitions of
virtuosity in the nineteenth century, though dictionaries did recognize that personality was an
aspect of virtuosity. For example, the Nouveau dictionnaire de le langue français defined a
virtuoso as “someone who has great talent for music” and virtuosité as “the character, talent of
a virtuoso.”
12
Therefore, even at the time, it was recognized that not only talent, but also the
character or nature of a person, played a role in defining virtuosity. Personality was important
for a virtuoso’s popularity, especially as the romantic cult of the individual climaxed.

9
Bloom, “Virtuosités de Berlioz,” 73.
10
Vernon Alfred Howard, Charm and Speed: Virtuosity in the Performing Arts (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 12.
11
Paul Metzner, Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 1.
12
Pierre Larousse, Nouveau dictionnaire de la langue française (Paris: P. Larousse & Cie, 1886), 796.

235

In the 1830s, conducting in the modern sense—the practice of one person standing in
front of an orchestra indicating time, dynamics, and musical expression without playing an
instrument—was still nascent. In fact, Habeneck, the first widely respected conductor from
France, led with his violin in hand for much of his career. While conductors were still forming
a standard technique, virtuosity within conducting was an even more novel idea. It was, as
well, a response to both changing musical styles and contemporary tastes for spectacle. As the
nineteenth-century repertoire became more complex, it became increasingly necessary for
orchestras to have a strong leader with a clear interpretative vision. Moreover, the conductor’s
highly visible position helped him to become the audience’s new focus (see Figure 8.1).
13

Figure 8.1: Concert hall on the Rue de la Victoire, Paris, 1843 (unknown conductor). Source:
L’Illustration: Journal Universel 1, no. 15 (10 June 1843): 230, accessed 1 February 2017,
https://archive.org/stream/lillustrationjou01pari#page/229/mode/2up.

13
Holly Mathieson, “Embodying Music,” 17.

236

Orchestral conductors in this time faced out toward the audience, rather than toward the
musicians. There was an immediate assumption that the conductor was there to communicate
with the audience—an intuition less present among conductors since.
From this stance, the orchestral conductor had the potential to become the virtuoso of
virtuosos. He did not play just one instrument, but commanded dozens or even hundreds. His
role, which combined sensitive interpretation with precise direction, required profound
knowledge of the music and authority over both his musicians and his audience. As Bloom
explains, “More than a virtuoso soloist of a romantic concerto, who dominates the room like
the principal person of a drama, the conductor—incarnate divine teacher, or rather father
director—inevitably becomes the star of the concert.”
14

In standard usage, the term virtuosity applies to conductors in two ways. First, a
virtuosic conductor can refer to one who successfully leads an orchestra in performing
challenging (i.e., virtuosic) repertoire.
15
Second, virtuosity may refer to the conductor who
makes a grand display of talent, attracting an audience through personality, visual bravura, or
unique musical interpretation.
16
Richard Wagner complained about the latter type in his

14
Bloom, “Virtuosités de Berlioz,” 92.
15
For example, Kern Holoman writes, “Out of the shambles of post-Napoleonic concert life in France there
flowered by mid-century the very notion of the virtuoso conductor, the development of a theory of his art, and a
vastly improved standard of measure for the quality of orchestral performance,” see “The Emergence of the
Orchestral Conductor in Paris,” 388. Other examples of this definition come from Bloom, “Virtuosités de Berlioz,”
and Cécile Reynauld, “Berlioz, Liszt, and the Question of Virtuosity,” in Berlioz: Past, Present, Future.
16
Historian William Weber writes, “The conductors active during the 1840s … made themselves into charismatic
figures at the podium and devised grand programs which made the music of the masters seem awesome rather
than esoteric” (“Mass Culture and the Reshaping of European Musical Taste,” 188). The Grove entry on
conducting explains that in the transference of the virtuoso’s image onto the conductor, “the visual aspects of
conducting style assumed new significance. The conductor took on the role of a leading stage personality and
became the focus of adulation, criticism and applause” (John Spitzer et al., “Conducting”).

237

essay, “The Virtuoso and the Artist,” which he wrote from Paris in 1840. He accused
conductors of employing the same kind of superficial virtuosity as soloists. In taking a
composer’s work and adjusting it or adding to it (instead of remaining loyal to the composer’s
intentions), such conductors, Wagner claimed, gave the impression that they were the
creators of the music, and thus placed themselves above the composer and his music.
17
It
might seem ironic that Wagner complained about this, since he did this same thing later in his
career, particularly when he conducted Beethoven.
18
However, he found it one among many
other things in the Paris scene that were distasteful to him while he was not yet finding good
work.
These two types of virtuosity—that of leading difficult music and that of being (some
would say) excessively interpretive—fit loosely with two types of conductors sprouting up
across Europe in the 1830s: those of high art music, who were conducting new works as well as
those forming the emerging canon, and those of light music, whose main intentions were to
give concerts that were accessible, entertaining, and profitable. These two types of conductors
have been identified in conducting historian John Spitzer’s article, “The Entrepreneur

17
Richard Wagner, “The Virtuoso and the Artist,” trans. William Ashton Ellis, in Richard Wagner’s Prose Works,
Volume 7: In Paris and Dresden (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1898), 114: “Lo there the man who certainly
thinks least about himself, and to whom the personal act of pleasing has surely nothing special to bring in, the
man beating time for an orchestra. He surely fancies he has bored to the very inside of the composer, ay, has
drawn him on like a second skin? You won’t tell me that he is plagued with the Upstart-devil, when he takes your
tempo wrong, misunderstands your expression-marks, and drives you to desperation at listening to your own
tone-piece. Yet he can be a virtuoso too, and tempt the public by all kinds of spicy nuances into thinking that it
after all is he who makes the whole thing sound so nice: he finds it neat to let a loud passage be played quite soft,
for a change, a fast one a wee bit slower; he will add you, here and there, a trombone-effect, or a dash of the
cymbals and triangle; but his chief resource is a drastic cut, if he otherwise is not quite sure of his success. Him
we must call a virtuoso of the Baton.”
18
See the chapter on Wagner in Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 176–88.

238

Conductors and Their Orchestras.”
19
This division between high art and popular music
conductors is convenient, but the dividing lines are not always clear. One conductor may cross
over into the other genre, as Berlioz did when he led “monster concerts” with hundreds of
musicians, meant to be huge public spectacles and publicity generators. Jullien also crossed
over when he brought the masterworks of Mozart and Beethoven to a demographic who
would not have heard such music otherwise.
20
However, these divisions remain useful, as a
clear distinction exists between the overall goals of Jullien and Musard and those of Habeneck
and Berlioz. Musard and Jullien became known through their visual splash, personal appeal,
and keen business sense. They exemplify popular music conductors who entertained
audiences and sought profit or fame. Habeneck and Berlioz did not reach the same star status
among a broad, general public. But as conductors of serious music, they became legendary
among art music appreciators for their skill and rigor in leading, their promotion of “great”
music, and their innovative techniques that influenced the future of conducting.
In what follows, Habeneck is discussed first as it was he who ushered in the modern
conducting period in France. I then move to the popular music conductors and close with
Berlioz, who took on some of their characteristics. First, however, I briefly summarize the state
of conducting in France before this time in order to give context to the significance of what
happened in the July Monarchy.

19
John Spitzer, “The Entrepreneur–Conductors and Their Orchestras,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 5, no. 1
(June 2008): 3–24.
20
Adam Carse, The Life of Jullien, Adventurer, Showman–Conductor and Establisher of the Promenade Concerts in
England together with a History of Those Concerts up to 1895 (Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1951), 119–21.

239

Conducting in pre-1830s France
Before the nineteenth century, conducting was not its own profession. Those who performed
conducting duties were men of many talents who served in court and chapel positions.
Usually their most time-consuming duty was to compose and copy repertoire for their
ensemble.
21
Then they rehearsed it and performed it, almost always from the position of
keyboard player or first violinist. When Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, or Handel led their own
music, their ability to direct the ensemble was typically not a focal point, unless they were
unable to do so (in Beethoven’s case).
22
One notable exception, however, was Jean-Baptiste
Lully (1632–1687)—his conducting did become a focal point because he famously died from it,
after he stabbed himself in the foot with the staff he beat time with and the foot became
gangrenous. However, while he was alive, he was as the others, known for his command of the
multiple responsibilities of his job: in his case, ballet dancing included. He was a strong leader
and a notoriously charismatic force—arrogant, scheming, energetic, and reactive—known to
smash violins in rage. He had a vision to control the entire production of whatever he
participated in, and he held his musicians to high standards, enforcing uniform bowing and
making them into the best orchestra in Europe. He might be called the first of the great
conductors because of his sense of control.
23
His ability to manipulate was infamous. He

21
I say that conductors were men only because women were largely—or perhaps entirely—excluded from
orchestras, as both musicians and conductors, through the nineteenth century. It was only in the late 1800s that
women began to form female-only orchestras. In 1887, Marie Soldat-Roeger founded the earliest known example
of these groups in Berlin (Judith Tick, et al., “Women in Music, §II: Western classical traditions in Europe & the
USA,” Grove Music Online; Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed 31 January 2017).
22
A more detailed history of the beginning of conducting can be found in Raymond Leppard, “Music and the
Conductor,” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 121, no. 5207 (October 1973): 707–16.
23
Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 35.

240

ruthlessly undermined other ensembles or created laws that limited their ability to compete
with him.
24
He received a title of nobility from his employer Louis XIV and became a wealthy
man, acquired property and passive income, and lived in luxury.
25
However, despite having
some degree of respect and infamy in the French aristocratic music circle, he did not achieve
the kind of public reputation as the conductors in this chapter. Neither was his performance
of conducting a highlight at the concerts he led. Still, no one of his stature led on the French
stage in the intervening 140 years between his death and the career of Habeneck.

François-Antoine Habeneck (1781–1849)
François-Antoine Habeneck, a name unfamiliar to many classical musicians now, was hailed
as “the famous Habeneck” in his time.
26
He was enormously influential within the Parisian
music scene. As director of the Paris Opera and the best orchestra in Europe, the Société des
Concerts du Conservatoire, he was connected with the careers of nearly every skilled
musician who performed in Paris.
27
He conducted new works (including championing those
by Berlioz) and played a major role in solidifying the canon of masterworks by “introducing”

24
Jérôme de La Gorce, “Lully,” Grove Music Online; Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press, accessed
12 September 2017).
25
James P. Fairleigh, “Lully as ‘Secrétaire du Roi,’” Bach 15, no. 4 (October 1984): 16–22.
26
“Fete musicale de Lille,” La France musicale (15 July 1838): 3.
27
As a measure of his influence, a search of “Habeneck” in Grove Music Online shows that he is mentioned in
forty-five entries aside from his own biography. See also, “Chronique musicale—Concerts du Conservatoire,”
L’Illustration (15 April 1843): 101–02, and Adam Carse, The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz (New York: Broude
Bros., 1949), 90ff.

241

Beethoven’s symphonies to France.
28
For his contemporaries and later critics, he was the
standard against which all other conductors were measured.
29
Nearly all scholarship on
Habeneck credits him with establishing a long-lasting set of expectations for the conductor’s
role and persona.
As a key transitional figure in the history of conducting, Habeneck began his career as
the concertmaster of the Conservatoire orchestra. He eventually shifted from playing his
violin to leading the orchestra with only his bow (see Figure 8.2).
30

28
See “Chronique musicale—Concerts du Conservatoire,” L’Illustration (15 April 1843): 102, and Holoman, “The
Emergence of the Orchestral Conductor in Paris in the 1830s,” 393.
29
Examples in Carse, The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz: “[would] that an English Habeneck would have been
discovered” (387), “we look in vain for signs of a man who could rank with Habeneck” (389), and “Lobe ranked
Mendelssohn only with Habeneck” (350). A contemporaneous Parisian journalist called Habeneck “the perfect
model” (du parfait modèle) (“Nouvelles,” Revue et gazette musicale de Paris [15 January 1837]: 28, quoted in Nicolas
Southon, “L’émergence de la figure du chef d’orchestre et ses composantes socio-artistiques: François-Antoine
Habeneck [1781–1849]: La naissance du professionnalisme musical” [PhD diss., Université François-Rabelais de
Tours, 2008], 88).
30
Carse, The Orchestra, 313; Southon, “L’émergence de la figure du chef d’orchestre,” 87.

242

Figure 8.2: Habeneck and a solo violinist at the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. Source: P. S.
Germain, “Salle des Concerts du Conservatoire,” L’Illustration (15 April 1843): 101, accessed 31 January
2017, https://archive.org/stream/lillustrationjou01pari#page/100/mode/2up.
Unlike most other conductors at the time, Habeneck was not a composer; he wrote a few
violin pieces, but nothing of consequence. Instead, he was a pioneer in conducting as a self-
standing profession. Spitzer has written that the separation of conducting from composing
“mystified the skills and technique of the conductor” and drew attention to the conductor’s
manners, appearance, and interpretations of the music.
31
This moved conducting beyond the
simple, practical organization of players into the realm of visual performance. It also made
Habeneck a communicator to the audience, and not solely to the musicians. The
contemporary music critic Joseph d’Ortigue said that Habeneck seemed to channel the very

31
Spitzer et al., “Conducting.”

243

soul of the composer to the listener through players.
32
This aim was highly valued by music
theorists at the time; it was the ability to create an inspired, seemingly improvised, and
genuinely expressed performance that was also true to the composer’s intentions.
33

Habeneck conducted rehearsals with infamous strictness, the same kind of ill temper
and austerity conductors like Hans von Bülow and Arturo Toscanini would later assume. The
art critic Gustave Planche said in 1836, “Monsieur Habeneck’s ability has for a long time been
proverbial, and [he has] excited universal admiration for the precision and discipline of his
government.”
34
The contemporaneous composer and musicologist Georges Kastner called
him “the ideal sort of conductor” because of his “perspicacity, cold blood, perseverance,
patience, and firmness.”
35
Wagner observed, “He was the master—and everyone obeyed
him.”
36
Habeneck refused to be challenged, even by the composers whose works he rehearsed.
In one instance, Habeneck abruptly ended a rehearsal when Berlioz requested a faster tempo
for his piece. Berlioz recorded in his memoires that Habeneck “stopped, and, turning round to

32
Joseph d’Ortigue, “Concerts du Conservatoire. Quatrième séance,” Gazette musicale de Paris (16 March 1834), 88,
quoted in Southon, “L’émergence de la figure du chef d’orchestre,” 101.
33
See Mary Hunter, “‘To Play as if from the Soul of the Composer’: The Idea of the Performer in Early Romantic
Aesthetics,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 58, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 357–98, particularly the
quotations from Pierre Baillot’s and Johann Nepomuk Hummel’s method books of 1835 and 1838, on pages 365
and 367, respectively.
34
Gustave Planche, Études sur les arts (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1855), 342–43, quoted in Southon, “L’émergence
de la figure du chef d’orchestre,” 88: “L’habileté de Habeneck est depuis longtemps passée en proverbe, et qu’il
excite une admiration universelle par la précision et la discipline de son gouvernement.”
35
Georges Kastner, Supplément au Cours d’instrumentation considérée sous les Rapports poétiques et philosophiques de
l’art à l’usage des jeunes compositeurs (Paris: Messonnier et Heugel, 1844), 15, translated in Holoman, “The
Emergence of the Orchestral Conductor in Paris in the 1830s,” 395–96.
36
Richard Wagner, On Conducting, trans. Dannreuther (London, 1897), 15, quoted in Carse: The Orchestra, 95.

244

the orchestra, said, ‘Since I am unfortunately unable to satisfy M. Berlioz, we will leave it at
that for today. You may go, gentlemen.’ And there the rehearsal ended.”
37

Caricatures—and even portraits—of Habeneck symbolize his inflexibility. In Figure
8.3, Habaneck’s frame, arms, and face are all square and regulated in the caricature of him
performing with Liszt. In contrast to the winning graces of Jullien or tragicomedy of Musard,
Habeneck’s portraits are austere, respectable, and resolute (see Figure 8.4). The early historian
of the Société des concerts, Antoine Elwart, wrote that “Habeneck’s character was variously
judged. He had a rough bark; but that bark hid an excellent heart.”
38

Figure 8.3: Caricature of Habeneck, Liszt, and Luigi Lablache, by Henri Lehmann. Source: “Liszt
jouant ‘Grand galop chromatique,’” color illustration (1843), Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de
Strasbourg, NIM35493, accessed 14 December 2016, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10219978h.

37
Hector Berlioz, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, ed. David Cairns (London: 1977), 244, cited in David Charlton, et
al., “Rehearsal,” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera; Grove Music Online; Oxford Music Online, Oxford University
Press, accessed 14 November 2016.
38
Antoine Elwart, Histoire de la Société des concerts du Conservatoire impérial de musique (Paris: S. Castel, 1860), 327–
28.

245

Figure 8.4: François-Antoine Habeneck, lithograph portrait by P. C. Van Geel (Paris: Kaeppelin, 1835).
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, département Musique, Est.Habeneck003, accessed 14
December 2016, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8420708b.

246

The Société des Concerts performed only six concerts per year under Habeneck and
sometimes rehearsed a piece for years before performing it. This was far from the typical
practice, in which new repertoire received little rehearsal and was frequently led by a
conductor who had little more familiarity with it than the musicians (as agonizing, early-
career experiences of Berlioz with other conductors testify). In Habeneck’s orchestra, each
musician knew his part as if it were chamber music. Consequently, the Société des Concerts
performed with such ease and comprehension that listeners could appreciate works which
they had previously considered impenetrable.
39
This did much for the establishment of the
classical canon.
Habeneck’s popularization of Beethoven’s symphonies in France represents one of his
most enduring legacies. According to the story, he invited a number of musicians over for
“lunch” in 1826. They arrived to find not food, but parts for Beethoven’s Third Symphony
waiting for them. Lunch was not served until four hours later, but their interested had been
piqued, and they continued to rehearse Beethoven’s music for two years, at which time they
became an official, government-funded orchestra.
40
Composed mostly of young Conservatoire
students and graduates, the Société des Concerts became a marvel in Europe. In 1832
Mendelssohn referred to it as “the best orchestra I have ever heard.”
41
Because of the
orchestra’s preparedness, audiences finally understood and appreciated Beethoven, whose
music they had previously resisted for its difficulty. Under Habeneck’s twenty-year tenure, the

39
Carse, The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz, 90ff.
40
David Cairns, “The French Tradition,” in The Cambridge Companion to Conducting, 139.
41
Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 99.

247

orchestra gave 158 performances of Beethoven’s symphonies, thirty of Haydn’s, twenty of
Mozart’s, and five of Mendelssohn’s.
42

Figure 8.5: Program for an all-Beethoven concert conducted by Habeneck at the Société des Concerts,
23 March 1828. Source: D. Kern Holoman, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828–1967 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2004), after 378.

42
Ibid., 100–2.

248

Habeneck’s goal of gaining acceptance of Beethoven’s music in France was almost a
religious mission. David Cairns observed that exposure to unfamiliar and great music gave
Habeneck and his musicians “the sense of adventure and excitement, the conviction . . . that
they were engaged in a heroic enterprise, a historic mission.”
43
This spirit is confirmed in an
1843 account in the periodical L’Illustration: “Singlehandedly, Habeneck had already made
deep and conscientious study of Beethoven’s processes and style; he had divined the secrets of
this mysterious genius and vowed in his heart a cult for Beethoven for which he searched for
converts everywhere. . . . This was, for artistic France, like the discovery of a new universe, and
the revelation of a new god.”
44
Habeneck was his prophet.
Habeneck was a prophet of another sort as well. His leadership was part of a
movement across Europe for what William Weber calls the hegemony of the symphony
orchestra. The orchestra rose to a position of cultural prominence in a way it never had
before. Orchestras began existing as institutions that led serious music taste and preservation
and that continued through multiple conductors as enduring authorities in cultural taste.
John Ella (1802–1888) in London, Otto Nicolai (1810–1849) in Vienna, Schumann (1810–1856) in
Leipzig, and Habeneck in Paris “rose to their positions of authority by virtue of their shrewd
political and social skills, their ability to read where musical life, indeed society as a whole,

43
Cairns, “The French Tradition,” 138–39.
44
“Chronique musicale—Concerts du Conservatoire,” L’Illustration (15 April 1843): 102. Original context: “Seul,
Habeneck avait déjà fait une étude consciencieuse et approfondie des procédés et du style de Beethoven ; il avait
deviné tous les secrets de ce génie mystérieux, et lui avait voué dans son cœur un culte pour lequel il cherchait
partout des prosélytes. . . . Nous n’essaierons pas de décrire les transports d’admiration et d’enthousiasme qui
éclatèrent de toutes parts à l’apparition de ces chefs-d’œuvre si hardiment conçus, si neufs de pensée et de forme,
si riches de coloris, si vastes de proportions, si magnifiques d’ordonnance. Ce fut, pour la France artiste, comme
la découverte d’un nouvel univers, et la révélation d’un nouveau dieu.”

249

was headed, and to mount concerts and form permanent institutions taking advantage of what
they saw going on.”
45
Habeneck’s Société des Concerts continued performing until 1967, when
it was reformed as the Orchestre de Paris by the French government. Subscription to the
Société des Concerts was the highest marker of prestige in the musical world.
46
People tried
for years to get tickets, and families held on to their subscriptions for years and decades,
passing them down in their wills.
47

Habeneck brought orchestral performance to new levels of proficiency and took the
orchestra to a new level authority as an institution. He rehearsed rigorously, communicated
enlightened interpretations of music to his audiences, and performed difficult repertoire at a
highly competent level. He was revered as a prophet of music, particularly for promoting the
new musical religion which was Beethoven. These accomplishments made him the first non-
composing conductor in France to be successful and respected.

45
William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between
1830 and 1848 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), xxvii.
46
Ibid., 81.
47
Ibid., 82.

250

Figure 8.6: Poster for the Société des Concerts benefit for those injured in the February 1848
revolution, conducted by Habeneck. Source: Holoman, The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828–
1967, after 378.

251

Philippe Musard (1782–1859)
While Habeneck had an international reputation among music connoisseurs, the first French
conductor to become known internationally among popular audiences was Philippe Musard.
In his later life and after his death, orchestras in Europe and the United States followed his
pattern in their own “concerts à la Musard.” After training as a violinist at the Paris
Conservatoire, Musard formed an orchestra which performed in Paris and across Europe
from 1833 until 1848. His nightly concerts were meant to appeal to a broad audience: tickets
cost one franc, and repertoire consisted of arrangements of popular opera tunes, Musard’s
own compositions, dance tunes, and overtures by Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Weber.
48

Sumptuous decor and Musard’s theatrics characterized the Concerts-Musard, held in the
open air at the Champs-Elysées, indoors at the Salles St. Honoré and Vivienne, and at the
Opéra and Opéra-Comique balls.
49
Musard became one of the first conductors to be
financially independent from any form of institutional support or private patronage and to
draw an audience not by the talent of his players or the works they performed, but by his
reputation.
50

The luxurious setting of the Concerts-Musard no doubt contributed to their
popularity. In the summer the orchestra performed in gardens (see an example in Figure 8.7,

48
Agenda musical pour l'année 1836 (Paris: au bureau du Recueil des arts, 1836), 56; Weber, The Great Transformation
of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 210.
49
The Salle St. Honoré was later known as the Salle Valentino. Gérard Streletski, et al., “Musard, Philippe,” Grove
Music Online; Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed 1 February 2017.
50
Carse, The Life of Jullien, 11.

252

which is an illustration of not a Musard event, but another outdoor ball), and in winter it
performed in halls lavishly furnished with candles, mirrors, richly upholstered furniture, and
walls sumptuously painted with garden scenes.
51
These concerts were not places for sitting
and reverently listening, but rather, for walking, talking, taking refreshments, and dancing.
Michael Walker has pointed out that eighteenth-century concert culture “was closely tied to
the commercialization of leisure” and meant to give attendees an experience—an escape from
their normal settings.
52
This attitude of bringing elegant leisure to those who could afford it
was democratized in the mid-nineteenth century in concert series such as Musard’s. His ticket
prices were lower than any of the other successful music venues in town, such as the Opéra or
Conservatoire, and were low enough for most people to afford. This helped with drawing
large crowds to the concerts.

51
“Musard’s Concerts at Paris (From the Diary of an Amateur),” Musical World (16 June 1837): 5–6, cited in Spitzer,
“The Entrepreneur-Conductors,” 6.
52
Michael Walker, "Something Borrowed: Eighteenth-Century Concert Culture Reimagined" (DM thesis, Indiana
University, 2015), 32.

253

Figure 8.7: Outdoor ball at the Champs-Elysées (not Musard’s). Source: L'Illustration (4 July 1846): 277.

Figure 8.8: 1846 Opéra ball. Source: L'Illustration (21 March 1846): 40.

254

Figure 8.9: Frontispiece for an arrangement of a Musard quadrille performed at the Opéra balls.
Musard stands in the background in front of his orchestra, facing the crowd. Source: Musard, Le Bal
masque: Quadrille Populaire (Paris: J. Meissonnier, 1843).
Though the venue was spectacular, the larger draw was the man himself. He was
known for his eccentric and sometimes shocking actions in front of the crowd: he would
become caught up in the music, throwing his baton, smashing chairs, or walking to the edge of
the stage and firing a pistol into the air to mark the final verse of a quadrille.
53
Musard’s
showmanship and full emotional investment in the music were clear.

53
Siegfried Kracauer, Orpheus in Paris: Offenbach and the Paris of His Time, trans. Gwenda David and Eric
Mosbacher (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), 29–30, 36; Arthur Pougin, Dictionnaire historique et pittoresque du
théatre et des arts qui s’y rattachent (Paris: Librarie de Firmin-Didot, 1885), 75.

255

His ability to convey music in his facial expressions and physical gestures seems to
have been unrivalled. A review in a weekly music journal describes the thrall in which the
audience was held by Musard: “This is no man, no mere musician, but a god who conducts the
orchestra. Now he rolls his eyes like two flaming orbs, now he casts his calm gaze from right to
left and back from left to right. His indefatigable bow marks every note, from whole notes to
sixteenth, and seems to convey the sound directly to his listeners’ ears.”
54
This account reveals
that Musard was one of those conductors of the French violinist–conductor tradition who still
used his bow to lead, at least in the early part of his career (he later switched to a baton).
Importantly, the reviewer also recognized that Musard was not simply standing before the
orchestra to keep the players together, but he was conveying the music to the audience
through his own physical expression.
Musard was also surrounded by an aura of mystery. The supernatural is a frequent
trope in his press reviews, as it was with Paganini’s. His nickname, in fact, was “the Paganini of
dance” because of his dark associations and his frequent performances conducting for balls
(see depictions of his balls in Figures 8.8 and 8.9, above).
55
The comparison was apt. Reviewers
often connected his musical prowess with the occult.
56
The reviewer quoted above had
intimated that Musard was no mere man and that his eyes were “flaming orbs.” A later review

54
The quotation is from an 1830s review in Le Ménestrel reproduced in Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens—
Supplément et complément publié sous la direction de M. Arthur Pougin II (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1880), 255, and found in
translation in Spitzer, “The Entrepreneur–Conductors,” 16.
55
Pougin, Dictionnaire historique et pittoresque, 75: “la Paganini de la danse.”
56
See Mai Kawabata, Paganini: The “Demonic” Virtuoso (Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2013);
Meagan Mason, “Paganini’s Body and Projection of Genius,” Porte Akademik Müzik ve Dans Araştırmaları
Dergisi/Journal of Music and Dance Studies 12 (Autumn 2015): 63–71.

256

mentions his baton as a “small black scepter” that resembled a piece of licorice or a fragment
of broomstick.
57
When solicited by La France musicale for a quadrille that the newspaper could
give to subscribers as a gift, he composed a piece entitled Satan.
58
Gautier, a repeat attendee at
Musard’s concerts, captured his dark personality thus:
Our friend came to take us and led us to the auditorium, to the foot of the
musicians’ platform, to make us see Musard unleashing the carnival by a sign of
his conductor’s baton. Musard was there, gloomy, ghastly, and pockmarked, his
arm extended, staring. Certainly, it would be difficult for a priest of a
bacchanalia to have a figure more dark and sinister . . . . When the moment
came, he bent over his desk, extended his arm, and a hurricane of sounds broke
out suddenly in the fog of noise that hung over our heads . . . . And it seemed as
if the buglers of the Last Judgment were engaged to play quadrilles and waltzes
. . . . The dead would dance to such a music.
59

Paganini always dressed in black, ill-fitting clothes and was extremely pale, thin, and
haggard. Musard also wore black and was frequently noted for his grotesque appearance: he
was short, yellow-skinned, pockmarked, and unkempt.
60
Paganini mesmerized audiences
through his contradictions: he was humorous and tragic, good-natured and diabolical,

57
Louis Huart, Bibliothèque pour rire: Le Bal Musard; 60 vignettes par Cham (Paris: Aubert, 1850), 2: "un petit sceptre
noir, qui, de loin, ressemble à un vulgaire fragment de manche à balai, mais qui, de près, a un faux air de bâton
de réglisse!"
58
La France musicale (6 February 1842): 53.
59
This performance may have been particularly affective, loud, and darkly intoned because the orchestra
included saxophones, which were new instruments at that time. Théophile Gautier, La Presse 10, no. 3530 (29
December 1845): 2, 4th and 5th columns, accessed 13 October 2016, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k4301665:
“Notre ami vint nous prendre et nous conduisit dans la salle, au pied de l’estrade des musiciens, pour nous faire
voir Musard, déchainant le carnaval par un signe de son bâton de chef d’orchestre. Musard était là, morne, livide
et grêlé, le bras étendu, l’œil fixe. Certes, il est difficile pour un prêtre de bacchanales d’avoir une figure plus
sombre et plus sinistre . . . Le moment venu, il se courba sur son pupitre, allonga le bras, et un ouragan de
sonorité éclata soudainement dans le brouillard de bruit qui planait au dessus des têtes . . . et l’on aurait dit que
les clairons du Jugement dernier s’étaient engagés pour jouer des quadrilles et des valses . . . Les morts
danseraient à une pareille musique.”
60
Carse, The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz, 376.

257

physically weak and ill yet mind-bogglingly dexterous.
61
Musard also contained a strange
mixture of power and weakness: a journal reminisced that it was a “curious thing that the
great amuser, this surprising leader of crowds, was a small man with a sad and colorless
aspect.”
62
His balls were known for their fury and their “contagious, mad pleasure.”
63
He was
carried out on the shoulders of his audience on more than one occasion (see Figure 8.8).
64

Watching someone so unattractive, alone, and impassioned rouse a crowd into revelry was a
fascinating paradox. Audiences may have seen something which they could relate to or
fantasize about in this intensely dramatic misfit who could command the center of attention.

61
Mason, “Paganini’s Body and Projection of Genius.”
62
“Au temps des Chicards,” Supplément illustré du Petit Journal (5 April 1914): 106, accessed 7 October 2016,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k7171065.
63
Ibid.
64
See, for example, La France musicale (22 December 1844): 374, and (25 February 1844): 63. Huart’s Bibliothèque
pour rire: Le Bal Musard jokes that “Musard was carried 345 times in triumph, which is 344 more times than
Napoleon” (3).

258

Figure 8.10: Musard carried in triumph at the Opéra ball (1846). Source: Charles Vernier, Au Bal de
l’Opéra, no. 19 (1846), accessed 31 January 2017, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Musard.
Even after his career had ended, the cartoonist Cham (Amédée Charles de Noé)
continued to caricature him, fully conveying Musard’s paradoxical power and weakness.
Figures 8.9 and 8.10 depict his aggression as a both a conductor and as a conquering
Napoleonic figure. (Incidentally, Liszt, another virtuoso, was also famously compared to
Napoleon.
65
)

65
Dana Gooley, “Warhorses: Liszt, Weber’s Konzertstück, and the Cult of Napoleon,” in The Virtuoso Liszt
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 78–116.

259

Figure 8.11: Musard’s aggression, caricature by Cham. Source: Louis Huart, Bibliothèque pour rire: Le Bal
Musard; 60 vignettes par Cham (Paris: Aubert, 1850), 3, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2009-49977,
accessed 2 February 2017, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5730667r.

Figure 8.12: Musard as Napoleon, caricature by Cham. Source: Cham, “L’astronome Balochard
découvre l’étoile de Napoléon Musard,” Album du Charivari (Paris: 1851), accessed 2 February 2017,
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Musard.

260

Figure 8.11 depicts him at home alone on a Monday after a weekend of revelry. He is sitting
quietly in his house robe, next to a pot of tea, and “hiding his crown” under a cotton cap, the
journalist wrote. All of these items appear to dwarf him, illustrating that even this demigod
was “prey in all measures to poor humanity.”
66

Figure 8.13: Musard at home, caricature by Cham. Source: Louis Huart, Bibliothèque pour rire: Le Bal
Musard, 3, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2009-49977, accessed 12 February 2017,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5730667r.

66
Huart, Bibliothèque pour rire: Le Bal Musard, 3.

261

Musard’s bizarre and stage-driven behavior was not without its critics. Berlioz, for one,
blamed Musard for feeding Parisians’ thirst for sensationalism.
67
Musard, Berlioz lamented,
catered to the same gentlemen of Paris who paid to see a bull and donkey eaten alive by
dogs.
68
He believed that Musard’s financial success had driven him to consider himself a
second Mozart.
69
Musard made at least 20,000 francs per year, which was equivalent to the
lifetime earnings of an unskilled worker at the time and would be nearly $800,000 today.
70

Berlioz would eventually earn that same amount in one evening (20,000 francs was what
Paganini would give Berlioz three years later for writing Harold en Italie); however, Berlioz,
observing Musard’s consistent successes, was pained by his own struggle to produce music of
artistic substance and live, while Musard easily made a fortune by cranking out cheap dance
tunes.
71

67
Berlioz was perpetually disillusioned with what he considered to be France’s musical poverty, a
disillusionment at least partly caused by the country’s lack of acceptance of him. He wrote in 1847, “France is
becoming more and more profoundly stupid in all that relates to music.” See Hector Berlioz, Letter XXIV, 1
November 1847, Life and Letters of Berlioz II, trans. H. Mainwaring Dunstan (London: Remington and Co., 1882),
206.
68
Berlioz, Letter LXI, dated April or May 1835, Life and Letter of Berlioz II, 170. These dog fights are mentioned in a
popular guidebook to Paris: Galignani's New Paris Guide (Paris: A. and W. Galignani and Co., 1837), 451.
69
Berlioz, Letter LXI, dated April or May 1835, Life and Letter of Berlioz II, 171.
70
Ibid. I reach the number $800,000 through the following calculation: An unskilled worker earned 30 francs per
month in 1838, and 55 years of working at this rate amounts to 20,000 francs. Today, if we consider that an
unskilled worker earns about $1,200 per month, this is $792,000 over 55 years. See Lilian Noack and Dieter
Noack, “The Cost of Living in Daumier’s Time,” last modified 30 June 2016, H. Daumier: His Life and Work,
accessed 5 October 2016, http://www.daumier.org/176.0.html. According to another source, in the late 1830s,
Musard was rumored to be making 50,000 francs a year, or nearly $2 million (Weber, The Great Transformation of
Musical Taste, 214).
71
Coincidentally, 20,000 francs was also the amount Jullien offered Berlioz to conduct his orchestra in London
for the 1847 season, including four concerts of Berlioz’s own works. Berlioz accepted the offer and did the work,
but he was never paid because of Jullien’s bankruptcy. See Berlioz, Life and Letters of Berlioz I, 165.

262

Despite what Berlioz perceived as low-class sensationalism, many people considered
Musard to be a true artist. The saying in Paris was, “If you want to see a handsome man, go
and eat an ice in the Jardin Turc at Jullien’s feet. But if you want to hear a musician, go and
listen to Musard!”
72
Musard’s performances were popular, drawing audiences of one thousand
or more per night. Though they were affordable enough for tradesmen, they also drew
including the king of France and intellectual and artistic elites.
73
The guest list for the 1836
season’s inaugural concert included writers George Sand, Alfred de Musset, and Théophile
Gautier, as well as musicians Giacomo Meyerbeer and Franz Liszt.
74

Musard became a household name, and his reputation endured.
75
Decades after his
death, magazines still published retrospectives and tributes to him.
76
In his godlike ability to
manipulate crowds, he had earned a reputation on a par with that of Paganini and had
become the first conductor to maintain a successful independent career in the public sphere.

Louis-Antoine Jullien (1812–1860)
Patterning himself after Musard and producing similar promenade concerts, Louis-Antoine
Jullien equally exploited visual aspects of performance. But while Musard identified with

72
Kracauer, Orpheus in Paris, 39.
73
Weber, “Mass Culture and European Musical Taste,” 182–83.
74
Spitzer, “The Entrepreneur–Conductors,” 9.
75
Demonstrating that he was known to everyone, an ad for a wigmaker indicated that the business was located at
“Rue Vivienne, 49, near the Concerts Musard” (L’Independant [12 July 1838]: 3). Apparently also, figures of Musard
were made of chocolate and gingerbread at Christmas and consumed by the thousands; “The greed with which
the public devoured them was in exact proportion to the impetuosity of his sway” (Kracauer, Orpheus in Paris, 31).
76
See, for example, “Au temps des Chicards,” 106.

263

ugliness and dark occultism, Jullien aligned himself with beauty, royalty, and deity. While
there is no evidence that Musard created his image purposefully or controlled his press,
Jullien certainly did. He was the first conductor to truly exploit the power of marketing, and
he surpassed Musard in the publicity he incited.
77

Jullien had been a composition student at the Paris Conservatoire, which did not yet
offer courses in conducting. (It was not until Berlioz’s treatise Le chef d’orchestre: théorie de son
art published in 1855 that anyone formally began to think of conducting as a teachable skill.
78
)
Jullien used his composition skills to write music for his orchestra, and he prolifically
published piano arrangements of his orchestra’s repertoire for people to enjoy at home. He
advertised these publications regularly in Parisian music journals. Jullien’s approach to
advertising, like everything else about himself, was much more flamboyant than his
predecessors’. Unlike other concert publicity, which was rather plain, his was extravagant and
florid. His reviews gloat over his successes and cleverness and describe the ravishing displays
of fireworks, colored lights, and musketry and canons going off with the music.
79
The
announcements preceding his concerts stood apart from the others as well. Rather than
simply giving the facts of his concert, as was standard (date, location, performer’s name, and
repertoire), they made claims about how innovative the concerts were and how they would

77
Carse, Life of Jullien, 103.
78
According to John Goulden, the first to suggest that conducting was a teachable skill was Édouard Marie Ernest
Deldevez, a student of Habeneck and author of an 1878 treatise on conducting, L’Art du chef d’orchestre. Note,
however, that Berlioz had published his Le chef d’orchestre: théorie de son art in 1855, and Wagner had published
Über das Dirigiren in 1869. See Michel Faul, Louis Jullien: musique, spectacle et folie au XIXe siècle (Biarritz, Paris:
Atlantica-Séguier, 2006), 23, and Sir John Goulden, Michael Costa: England’s First Conductor: The Revolution in
Musical Performance in England, 1830–1880 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015), 44.
79
Revue et gazette musicale (19 June 1836): 210.

264

interest the public.
80
Additionally, once he got to London, Jullien became one of the first
conductors to print his name in large letters on concert posters (see Figure 8.14); only soloists
such as Paganini had done so before.

80
For example, one announcement read: “Today, M. Jullien will execute, in the concert rooms at 339, rue St.-
Honoré, six pieces from M. Halevy’s opera La Juive. These six pieces, intermingled with quadrilles and waltzes
from his new repertoire, will create a concert of an entirely new genre and will strongly rouse the curiosity of his
public” (Revue et gazette musicale [6 November 1836]: 392: “Aujourd’hui, M. Jullien fera exécuter, dans les salles du
concert, rue St-Honoré, n
o
339, six morceaux de l’opéra de la Juive, de M. Halevy. Ces six morceaux, entremêlés de
quadrilles et de valses de son nouveau répertoire, formeront un concert d’un genre tout nouveau et piqueront
vivement la curiosité de son public”).

265

Figure 8.14: Jullien’s concert poster at Drury Lane Theatre (1841), with his name in large letters. It
advertises spaces where the audience could stroll through “costly decorations,” greenhouse plants,
fountains, and sculptures, take ice cream and refreshments, and view tableaux vivants. Source: Carse,
The Life of Jullien.

266

Jullien had a career in Paris only from 1836 to 1839. He was unable to compete with
Musard, and moved to London to escape incarceration for bankruptcy.
81
In The Musical World,
he published an eleven-part biography, which included sensational descriptions of four
narrow escapes from death and a childhood history of phonophobia (fear of music),
apparently caused by his overly sensitive musical ear.
82
When he toured in his later career, he
warmed public interest ahead of his concerts by circulating “authentic” biographies in town
newspapers. These biographies framed him as an incredibly sensitive musician, and the story
of his early phonophobia only furthered this agenda.
From the time of his infancy—when he was christened with thirty-four middle
names—he aimed for grandiosity in everything he did.
83
Regarding his plan to publish a
musical arrangement of the Lord’s Prayer, he told a friend, “Just imagine, the work will bear
on its title page two of the greatest names in history:
THE LORD’S PRAYER

81
Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 150.
82
Carse, The Life of Jullien, 23. These accounts can be found in The Musical World (21 May–23 July 1853). If it is true
that Jullien reacted strongly to music, he may have had a condition now known as the rare Stendhal, or Florence,
Syndrome. This condition of physically being overcome by art was described twenty years earlier by Stendhal,
who experienced dizziness, fainting, and confusion at being overwhelmed by the art he saw in Florence. See
Mark D. Griffiths, “Having an Art Attack: A Brief Look at Stendhal Syndrome,” Psychology Today, 10 March 2014,
accessed 14 November 2016, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201403/having-art-attack. Berlioz
acknowledged the violent effect music could have on listeners when he recorded the singer Malibran’s
convulsions upon hearing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. See À travers Chants (Paris, 1862), 1–4, 5–7, trans. Piero
Weiss, in “From the Writings of Berlioz,” Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, ed. Piero Weiss and
Richard Taruskin (Belmont: Thomson Schirmer, 2008), 297–98. From a different side, Jullien’s tale of fearing
music as a young child seems like an intensification of the story of young Mozart fearing the sound of trumpets.
See commentary on this Mozart story in Elisa Koehler, Fanfares and Finesse: A Performer’s Guide to Trumpet History
and Literature (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014), 3. I unaware of any evidence that Jullien knew
this about Mozart.
83
He was named Louis George Maurice Adolphe Roch Albert Abel Antonio Alexandre Noé Jean Lucien Daniel
Eugène Joseph-le-brun Joseph-Barême Thomas Thomas Thomas-Thomas Pierre Arbon Pierre-Maurel
Barthélemi Artus Alphonse Bertrand Dieudonné Emanuel Josué Vincent Luc Michel Jules-de-la-plane Jules-
Bazin Julio César Jullien after his thirty-five godparents, the members of his father’s band.

267

words by
JESUS CHRIST

music by
JULLIEN.”
84

This near self-deification went well beyond the self-aggrandizement of any instrumental or
vocal virtuoso at the time. Some contemporaries certainly thought highly of themselves: Liszt
and Wagner, for example, positioned themselves as successors to Beethoven—Liszt by telling
the story of receiving a Weihekuss (“kiss of consecration”) from Beethoven as a child; Wagner
by publishing his novella, Pilgrimage to Beethoven (1840), in which Beethoven entrusts him to
carry forward his musical mission to move the symphony into its next iteration.
85

Additionally, Paganini had puffed himself up through creating—or at least feeding—a
diabolical, Faustian persona.
86
But Jullien’s self-confidence exceeded all this. Berlioz, who
worked with Jullien in London for half a season, described him as delusional, the kind of
person who would try to mount Robert le diable on six days’ notice, “despite the fact that he
possesses neither music, English translation, costumes nor scenery and the singers in his
company do not know a note of the work.”
87

Throughout his career, the shade of charlatanism hung with Jullien. He was constantly
dodging his debts (he did not pay Berlioz for his work that half-season in London, for

84
Nicholas Slonimsky, Slonimsky’s Book of Musical Anecdotes (Abingdon, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2014), 235.
85
See K. M. Knittel, “Pilgrimages to Beethoven: Reminiscences by His Contemporaries,” Music & Letters 84, no. 1
(February 2003): 19–54; Nicholas Vazsonyi, “Beethoven Instrumentalized: Richard Wagner’s Self-Marketing and
Media Image,” Music & Letters 89, no. 2 (May 2008): 195–211.
86
See Kawabata, Paganini: The “Demonic” Virtuoso.
87
Hector Berlioz, The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, trans. and ed. David Cairns (London: Cardinal, 1990), 384.

268

instance), and he largely built his fame through rather gaudy visual phenomena—two factors
that doubtless contributed to his reputation for charlatanism, though they mean nothing
necessarily for his musical skill.
88
Jullien was handsome and impeccably well dressed, in
contrast to Musard. “If you want to see a handsome man,” the Parisian witness had written,
“go and eat an ice at the Jardin Turc and sit at Jullien’s feet.”
89
In England, the journalist
George Sala described him as “Jullien the Superb, maestro of the ambrosial ringlets, the softly-
luxuriant whiskers and moustaches, gracilis puer of the embroidered body-linen, the frogged
pantaloons, the coat with moire antique facings, the diamond studs and sleeve buttons.”
90

88
In her dissertation, “Embodying Music: The Visuality of Three Iconic Conductors in London, 1840–1930,” Holly
Mathieson argues that Jullien was primarily a visual phenomenon; because of this, he “embodied a little-
acknowledged, yet pivotal concept pertaining to the mid-nineteenth-century conductor, which was to influence
the ongoing development of his profession” (65).
89
Kracauer, Orpheus in Paris, 36.
90
George Augustus Sala, Twice Round the Clock, or The Hours of the Day and Night in London (London: Richard
Marsh, 1862), 382.

269

Figure 8.15: Jullien, by Charles Baugniet. Source: “Louis-Antoine Jullien,” lithograph (London: M. & N.
Hanhart, 1846), Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, département Musique, ESTMACNUTTGF011,
accessed 9 December 2016, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84543333.
Jullien’s visual gimmickry also involved two specific props that he used during
concerts: a jeweled baton that he used to conduct Beethoven, and a large, richly upholstered
chair where he rested onstage between pieces (see Figure 8.16).
91

91
See John Spitzer, et al., “Conducting.”

270

Figure 8.16: Jullien and his chair. Source: “The British Army Quadrilles, Covent Garden, 1846,”
reproduced in Carse, The Life of Jullien, 58.
The jeweled baton was brought out on a cushion (or a silver platter, depending on the version
of the story) by a servant. It was twenty-two inches long (at the upper end of baton size by
today’s standards) and made of maple entwined with gold circlets and two gold serpents, each
with a diamond on its head.
92
An analogy can be made between this baton and a royal scepter.
It symbolized both Jullien’s effort with Beethoven’s music and his power in being able to

92
Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 88.

271

conduct it.
93
Collapsing onto the chair between pieces conveyed the physical sacrifice he made
for the music. This gesture encapsulated Jullien’s tragic heroism; it portrayed him as pitted
against the music’s difficulties, which he overcame. The throne-like appearance of the chair
again connected Jullien with kingship or deity.
94
With both the scepter and throne, he turn
himself into a symbol of a powerful and self-sacrificing leader. These props reinforced the
concepts of adversity vanquished, body and energy sacrificed in a great pursuit, and service
and reverence offered to art.
Behind all these trappings, was Jullien was a good musician, or simply a
sensationalized, overly-promoted celebrity? Likely, he was both.
95
George Sala believed that
Jullien’s London orchestra was composed of musicians of soloist quality, too good to play
under even Britain’s favorite conductor, Michael Costa. And he found Jullien to be a good
musician whose reputation was caught up in a stereotype:
Alas! To some men, howsoever talented, charlatanism seems to adhere like a
burr and will not depart. Jullien must have caught this stain at the battle of

93
Mathieson gives this theory for Jullien’s practice of using a jeweled baton to conduct Beethoven: “The fact that
he reserved this for Beethoven’s music gave conflicting messages to his audience. On the one hand he was
signalling to them that Beethoven’s music required special attention or was different in some way, or that it was a
higher class of music deserving of such luxurious and respectful treatment. It was also possibly a satirical gesture
as, in his ostentatious way, Jullien may have been mimicking those conductors who venerated Beethoven by
repeated programming of his symphonies and ensured the exclusivity of this music by restricting access to the
wealthiest members of society. Jullien’s exaggerated display would have therefore informed his more democratic
audience that they too were worthy of hearing Beethoven” (Mathieson, “Embodying Music,” 81).
94
Another conductor at this time also had a throne, it seems. The soprano Clara Novello wrote about her visit to
Gaspare Spontini in 1837: “His house was a gallery of portraits of himself, alternating with sonnets in his praise,
busts of himself, etc., all the way to his own sort of throne room, where he sat on a raised dais in an armchair with
his portraits, busts, medals, and sonnets all around him.” See Clara Novello’s Reminiscences, compiled by Valeria
Gigiucci (London: Edward Arnold, 1910), 21, 70. Spontini was living in Berlin at the time, but he had spent
seventeen years of his early career in Paris (1803–1820), where he was well connected, conducting the Paris Opera
and marrying a niece of the piano maker Sébastien Erard. It is possible that he had absorbed his grandiosity from
the culture there.
95
See, for example, David Cairns, Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness, 1832–1869 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000), 392.

272

Navarino [an 1827 naval battle in which the French, British, and Russians fought
against the Turkish for Greece’s independence in which Jullien was supposed
to have fought] or at the Jardin Turc, and it has abided by him ever since. There
is not the slightest necessity for this clever, kindly, and really accomplished
musician—to whom the cause of good and even classical music in England
owes much—to be a quack, but I suppose he can’t help it.
96

At his death, The Musical World published about a half dozen tributes to him. All
expressed that Jullien had raised the level of orchestra performance in England, through
bringing over the best performers from the Continent and training many English players,
“who through the publicity he placed at their disposal, no less than through their own
industry and ability, have since attained acknowledged eminence.”
97
He was also credited with
raising public taste. Jullien played popular music, but mixed his programs with the overtures
and symphonies of classical greats: Beethoven, Weber, Rossini, Mendelssohn, and Mozart. He
was considered by some as “a man with a high mission, a reformer of the music for the
multitudes, a saviour who brought the gift of true musical appreciation to the poorest of the
people.”
98
The Musical World reported, “In providing for the amusement of his patrons, he also
contrived to improve and elevate their taste, and thus—while establishing an essentially
popular entertainment—to aid in the great work of art-progress.”
99

Jullien made a lasting impression as a personality. He kept concerts filled six nights a
week for years.
100
His brief Paris career was credited with making an impression on him and

96
Sala, Twice Round the Clock, 382.
97
The Musical World (24 March 1860): 186.
98
Carse, The Life of Jullien, 119–21.
99
The Musical World (17 March 1860): 174.
100
Carse, The Life of Jullien, 119–21.

273

coloring his behavior as a salesman and showman. He carried this experience to London were
he made an unforgettable impact as a popularizer of classical music.
101
In Harold Schonberg’s
history of the great conductors, Jullien was “the originator of the line that was to lead to men
like Leopold Stokowski and Leonard Bernstein.”
102
These were the charismatic conductors of
next century who brought classical music to the people, just as Jullien brought classics by
Beethoven and Mozart to a popular audience. And with his biographies, self-promoting
posters, newspaper advertisements, Jullien also prefigured the limelight-loving,
autobiography-writing twentieth-century virtuoso conductors who, like Herbert von Karajan,
were the primary marketing force of their orchestras.
103

Jullien was among the first of the kind of conductor who was seen practically as a solo
performer. With his monarchical accoutrements, he put on a performance that was between
that of a conductor and actor. And with his press, focus was on him rather than his players. He
was the vehicle through with the music was communicated, and glory was his.

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)
The performances of Musard and Jullien centered around exhibitionist theatrics, personal
expression, and the ability to lead crowds. Habeneck and next Hector Berlioz drew the
audience’s focus in different ways. They instead earned praise for their gravity, their

101
Ibid., 149.
102
Ibid. Stokowski (1882–1977) led the Cincinnati and Philadelphia Orchestras, among others, and conducted
Disney’s Fantasia; Bernstein (1918–1990) directed the New York Philharmonic, composed Broadway shows, and
hosted the Young People’s Concerts, televised and easily-accessible lectures on classical music.
103
The description of this type of conductor is from Carse, The Orchestra, 339–40.

274

proficiency in directing the orchestra (their “mega-instrument”), and the difficulty of their
repertoire. Both men were described as “playing the orchestra.”
104
This most impressive kind
of performer demonstrated control over a massive number of musicians and the growing
complexity of the nineteenth-century repertoire. Berlioz wrote to Liszt:
Then, I grant you, the composer-conductor lives on a plane of existence
unknown to the virtuoso [soloist]. With what ecstasy [the conductor] abandons
himself to the delights of playing the orchestra! How he hugs and clasps and
sways this immense and fiery instrument! Once more he is all vigilance. His
eyes are everywhere. He indicates with a glance each vocal and orchestral
entry, above, below, to the left, and to the right. His right arm unleashes
tremendous chords which seem to explode in the distance like harmonious
projectiles.
105

Berlioz seems to lose himself in the dramatic power he saw in this role.
Berlioz surpassed Habeneck in terms of technique, musicality, and communication
with the orchestra.
106
He brought about the next phase of virtuosic conducting through his
development of formalized technique. His colleagues and contemporary scholars saw him as a
virtuoso for his combined strengths of conducting, composing, and organizing players.
107

Yet, unlike the other conductors studied here, Berlioz was slow to reach positive
reception in Paris. Initially, if he received press attention at all, critics discussed his

104
On Habeneck, see Édouard Marie Ernest Deldevez, L’art du chef d’orchestre (Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1878),
12. On Berlioz, see examples cited in D. Kern Holoman, Berlioz (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), 424, for example,
“How well I conducted. How well I played upon the orchestra,” Berlioz, letter of 25 April/7 May 1847,
Correspondance générale, vol. 3, 1842–1850 (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), 423. See more examples in Bloom, “Virtuosités
de Berlioz.” See also Reynauld, “Berlioz, Liszt and the Question of Virtuosity,” 116: “It seems clear that orchestral
virtuosity, for Berlioz, is intimately associated with the virtuoso conductor. Indeed … Berlioz sees the conductor
as the virtuoso and the orchestra as his instrument.”
105
Berlioz, quoted in Reynauld, “Berlioz, Liszt and the Question of Virtuosity,” 117.
106
Jacques Barzun, Berlioz and His Century: An Introduction to the Age of Romanticism (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1978), 223.
107
Ibid.

275

compositions and not his conducting. But even while undervalued in his own city, he was
appreciated in other European cities, particularly London, Vienna, Weimar, and St.
Petersburg.
108
He toured prolifically, often by invitation, to conduct his own music, which was
considered some of the most difficult in the repertoire, and that of others, and he was treated
as a celebrity on these trips. In his account of his tour through Vienna in 1845, he was the new
fashion: ladies were wearing bracelets, rings, and earrings ornamented with his likeness, and
artists were vying to paint his portrait.
109
The next year in Prague, he wrote to his friend
Joseph d’Ortigue that the public “went off like a barrel of powder, and I am now being treated
here like a fetich, a lama, or a manitoo [sic] . . . . There is adoration—the word is laughable but
true.”
110

Each of these words associates Berlioz with an exotic spiritual force or object of
reverence: a fetich, an archaic spelling of fetish, is an object of an irrational reverence or
devotion, a lama is a priest or monk in Tibet or Mongolia, and a manitou is a spiritual force
revered by Native Americans. The exoticism was key; Berlioz was a stranger in these places.
He was perhaps the first French art-music conductor to be in demand for performances in
other countries. But his thoughts always returned bitterly to the reception he lacked in his
own city.
111
He wrote d’Ortigue, “They have honoured me with a banquet—they have

108
Daniel Bernard, “Introduction,” in Life and Letters of Berlioz I, 2.
109
Life and Letters of Berlioz I, 50.
110
Berlioz, Letter XXXI, 27 January 1846, Life and Letters of Berlioz I, 158.
111
David Cairns, “The French Tradition,” 141.

276

decorated me with the Order of the White Eagle—the King has presented me with a snuff-
box—the newspapers here laud me to the skies—let Paris know it.”
112

Still, Berlioz was tirelessly enthusiastic about conducting:
Give me orchestras to lead, give me rehearsals to go through, let me stay eight
or even ten hours on my feet, practicing with the chorus, singing their parts
when they miss, while I beat time for the rest until my arm gets cramped and I
spit blood; let me carry music desks, double basses, and harps; compel me to
correct proofs during night time, and I will do it . . . . I have done it and can do it
again.
113

Charles Hallé, who would found the respected Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, England, in
1857, wrote in 1838:
There never lived a musician who adored his art more than did Berlioz; he was
indeed “enthusiasm personified” . . . and what a picture he was at the head of
this orchestra, with his eagle face, his bushy hair, his air of command, and
glowing with enthusiasm. He was the most perfect conductor I have ever set
eyes upon, one who held absolute sway over his troops and played upon them
as a pianist upon a keyboard.
114

Berlioz began conducting in 1834 to ensure that his works were performed as he
intended. In a pleasant exception to the majority of his experience with other conductors
conducting his works, he thanked Robert Schumann for leading a well-rehearsed and
performed concert of Les Francs-juges in Leipzig:
I have, as yet, to be satisfied with the various musical societies who have
thought fit to make the same experiment. Apart from those of Douai and Dijon,
the remainder have been discouraged after a single rehearsal, and the work,
after having been mutilated in a thousand different ways, has been consigned

112
Quoted in Bernard, “Introduction,” in Life and Letters of Berlioz I, 2.
113
Quotation from Barzun, Berlioz and His Century, 272, reproduced in Donald L. Appert, “Berlioz, the Conductor”
(DMA thesis, University of Kansas, 1985), 11.
114
Charles Hallé, Life and Letters of Charles Hallé, ed. C. E. and Marie Hallé (London: Smith, Elder, 1896), 64.

277

to the shade of the libraries as worthy, at most, of a place in a collection of
monstrosities.
115

After several concerts in which his pieces were performed badly because of inadequate
rehearsal time and conductors who did not understand his scores, he warned, “Unhappy
composers! Learn to conduct, and how to conduct yourself well (with or without a pun), for do
not forget that the most dangerous of your interpreters is the conductor himself.”
116

Berlioz was in an advantageous position to develop his conducting technique. For one,
since he was not an instrumental performer (a peculiar state when compared to other
conductors), he was not distracted by the execution of a violin or keyboard
part.
117
Additionally, through his tours of Europe, he had opportunities to observe other
conductors and create an informed approach based on what he saw. He wrote his treatise Le
Chef d’orchestre: théorie de son art in 1855. Sectional rehearsals, a full score for the conductor, the
consistent use of a baton, and never beating time on the music stand (as French conductors,
including Habeneck, had done before him) were his innovations. These made him the first
truly modern conductor in France, and they are still followed today.
118
As Kern Holoman
writes, “His notions of the craft of conducting, moreover, came to be the very rules of the
profession.”
119

115
Berlioz, Letter XXIII, 19 February 1837, Life and Letters of Berlioz I, 132.
116
Berlioz, Memoires, 223, quoted in Appert, “Berlioz, the Conductor,” 16.
117
Holoman, Berlioz, 349.
118
David Cairns, “The French Tradition,” 137.
119
Holoman, Berlioz, 3.

278

Berlioz considered it his task to convey the music’s expression to the musicians,
emphasizing the conductor’s role as a communicator and not just a keeper of time: “It is
essential that one feel that the conductor himself is moved, that he understands, for only then
are his feelings and emotions communicated to those under his command, only then are they
warmed by his inner flame, electrified by his inner electricity, and swept away by his
intensity.”
120
Berlioz wrote that a conductor must have a certain “indefinable gift” to link
himself with those he directs.
121

Berlioz was not visually flamboyant in the manner of Musard or Jullien, but he was
passionate. Matching the shock of always-tousled red hair on his head, he was fiery and in
constant motion, leaping, crouching, and gyrating as he motioned to particular players.
122
We
can trust that he was not overly showy, though. Much later in Berlioz’s career, Rimsky-
Korsakov noted that the motions of the former were “simple, clear, beautiful.”
123
And
Holoman notes that Berlioz was “studiously unpretentious in costume and manner” and
“acknowledged the public as little as possible, feeling that bows provoked unwarranted
applause.”
124
This does not mean, however, that Berlioz was opposed to grandeur. He seemed
to want the grandeur to accrue to the music, and not to himself. He wrote that the ideal

120
Bloom, “Virtuosités de Berlioz,” 92; Berlioz, Le Chef d’orchestre: théorie de son art, trans. Bloom, quoted in
Reynauld, “Berlioz, Liszt, and the Question of Virtuosity,” 117.
121
Berlioz, The Orchestral Conductor: Theory of His Art (New York: Carl Fischer, 1902), 2.
122
Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 108–9.
123
Ibid. 109.
124
Holoman, “The Emergence of the Orchestral Conductor in Paris in the 1830s,” 424.

279

orchestra would contain at least 467 instrumentalists.
125
He realized and even exceeded this
number when he organized several “monster concerts” in Paris during the 1840s. One
included five assistant conductors and over twelve hundred musicians.
126
One of these that he
conducted at the Palais de l’Industry on August 1, 1844, had 1,022 players and seven sub-
conductors. Berlioz wrote about the experience: “My thousand and twenty-two artists went all
together like the performers in a first-rate quartet . . . there were seven conductors who never
lost sight of me for a moment, and our eight arms though far removed from each other, rose
and fell simultaneously with incredible precision. Hence the miraculous unanimity which so
astonished the public.”
127

These monster concerts were made possible by a positive turn in Berlioz’s critical
reception in Paris in 1839, when he conducted his Roméo et Juliette. This was his most
demanding conducting engagement to date, and the performance was met by an ecstatic
audience response. Berlioz added two extra performances of the work and still had to turn
people away at the box office.
128
One anecdote attests to the celebrity status Berlioz acquired at

125
Craig Wright, The Essential Listening to Music (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2012), 170.
126
Holoman, Berlioz, 476.
127
Robert Ignatius Letellier, Meyerbeer Studies (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), 190, quoting
Berlioz, Correspondance générale, no. 918, (letter to Meyerbeer). His Mémoires chapter 53 explains more: the 1,022
musicians were half instrumentalists and half singers; five conductors were for the chorus, and three for the
orchestra (including Berlioz). The occasion was The Industrial Exhibition, at which the concert was the grand
finale. The massive building built for the occasion had to be dismantled afterward (Letellier, Meyerbeer Studies,
222–23). The program was massive—Spontini’s overture to La Vestale, Auber’s prayer from La Muette de Portici,
Beethoven’s scherzo and finale from his Symphony in C minor, Rossini’s prayer from Moïse, Berlioz’s Hymne à la
France (composed for the occasion), Weber’s overture to Der Freischütz, Mendelssohn’s hymn to Bacchus from
Antigone, Berlioz’s “March to Execution” from Symphonie fantastique, Adolphe Dumas’ and Meraux’s Chant des
Industriels, a chorus from Halévy’s Charles VI, the “Blessing of the Daggers” from Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, the
pleasure garden scene from Gluck’s Armide, and the apotheosis from Berlioz’s Symphonie Funèbre et Triumphale.
128
Ibid., 202. “Nobody had ever dared give the same work three times in a row,” he told his sister.

280

this point: wanting a souvenir of the night’s performance, an Englishman paid 120 francs to
bribe a servant for Berlioz’s baton.
129
Wagner was present at this performance and was highly
impressed. He commented that “it was the impact of orchestral virtuosity, such as I had never
before dreamed of, that nearly overwhelmed me.”
130
This virtuosity from the orchestra was a
result of Berlioz’s difficult part writing, his rehearsal with the orchestra, and his ability to lead
it in stunning unity.
131

Berlioz’s reputation was borne out in his influence on the following generation of
Parisian conductors: almost all of the conductors in Paris after Habeneck played under
Berlioz’s baton at some point.
132
Outside Paris, he earned the respect of Jullien, Liszt, Wagner,
Hallé, and Thomas Beecham (founder of several London orchestras).
133
Holoman writes that
Berlioz could claim much credit for the concept of virtuosic conducting, which solidified by
midcentury because of the standards for high quality performances and conducting
techniques he had set.
134
Peter Bloom goes so far as to credit Berlioz with animating a

129
Ibid.
130
Richard Wagner, My Life, trans. Andrew Gray, ed. Mary Whittal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983), 191. This comment about the orchestra’s performance was different from those Wagner made about the
other pieces on the program (Harold en Italie and Symphonie fantastique), which he praised as compositions and
said nothing about their execution. He felt like “a mere schoolboy” next to Berlioz’s compositional prowess (192).
131
See Barzun, Berlioz and His Century, 218.
132
Holoman, Berlioz, 350.
133
Bloom, “Virtuosités de Berlioz,” 91, and Holoman, “The Emergence of the Orchestral Conductor in Paris in the
1830s,” 388.
134
Holoman, Berlioz, 348.

281

revolution in orchestral conducting virtuosity, one that would allow later conductors to raise
themselves to the rank of demigods.
135

Figure 8.17: Caricature of Berlioz in concert, engraving after Jean-Jacques Grandville (1846). Source:
Bezt, Lelior, Laurent Hotelin, and Recner, “Hector Berlioz,” L’Illustration, Bibliothèque nationale de
France, département Musique, Est. Berlioz 039, accessed 14 December 2016,
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8415763t.

135
Bloom, “Virtuosités de Berlioz,” 92.

282

The continuation
Conductors after Berlioz did indeed continue to rise to stardom. Theodore Thomas (1835–
1905), briefly a student of Jullien, was one of the limelight-loving, autobiography-writing
conductors described earlier. As the first director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he
claimed a position of absolute authority and acted as the main soloist at each concert. When
the soprano Adelina Patti disagreed with him in rehearsal about the tempo of her aria,
insisting that she was the prima donna, his response was, “I beg your pardon, Madame. Here, I
am the prima donna.”
136

This sort of behavior from conductors became widely accepted and acknowledged. In
1895, a newspaper editorial by the music critic Joseph Bennett observed cynically, “As prime
donne are rivals, so now are conductors rivals, and as each ‘first woman’ seeks to out-shine her
colleagues, so does the conductor, impelled by the exigencies of his position, try, as the vulgar
phrase is, to ‘go one better’ than others.”
137
Expressing nearly the same sentiment as Wagner
had in 1840, Bennett claims that this devolution began “as soon as the chef d’orchestre lifted
himself . . . from the position of a student-translator, hidden as much as possible behind the
work interpreted, into the position, almost, of a creative artist.”
138

Through the rest of the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth,
eminent conductors, as virtuoso performers had done before them, took generous interpretive
license with composers’ works. Wagner, for instance, rewrote parts of Beethoven’s

136
Theodore Thomas, Theodore Thomas: A Musical Autobiography, Vol. I, Life Work, ed. George Upton (Chicago: A.
C. McClurg, 1905), 122.
137
Joseph Bennett, “The Conductor in Music,” Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 36, no. 629 (1 July 1895), 439.
138
Ibid.

283

symphonies since Beethoven had, after all, been deaf and could not have realized his mistakes
in instrumentation (Wagner thought). Gustave Mahler also heavily edited music he
conducted, believing that he could see contradictions between the score and what the
composer (Beethoven or Schumann, for example) surely meant.
139

Later, in the mid-twentieth-century, the virtuoso concert cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky
complained that he often felt the conductor had replaced the instrumentalist as the chief
figure of charisma and dexterity on stage. He explained the reason for this as he saw it, an
explanation that I believe still holds true:
It is a conductor’s era . . . . The popular interest for symphonic music could not
alone sustain the great expense of keeping orchestras alive. Concerts had to be
enhanced, illuminated with some new glamour, with something divine—a
superman leader. Like no other musician, the conductor has answered the call.
The focus of attention has shifted from prima donna, prima ballerina, and the
virtuoso to a conductor, who, as a performer, has become all three in one.
140

Conclusion
We might refer back to Figure 1.3, the page of L’Illustration in 1844, in which Berlioz’s and
Habeneck’s portraits are given alongside those of the virtuoso pianists Liszt, Emile Prudent,
and Theodor Dœhler.
141
Conductors had reached a level of recognition that put them on the
same level as other soloist performers.
Conductors’ comportment as the stars and charismatic leading personalities of
concerts has strong roots in the 1830s. Audiences continue to desire a lead figure who can

139
Schonberg, The Great Conductors, 231: “like every musician of the time.” Bruno Walter, a Mahler disciple,
supported him in this.
140
Gregor Piatigorsky, Cellist (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976), 239–40.
141
L’Illustration [18 May 1844]: 188.

284

transmit the spirit of the music, guide their listening, and awe them with knowledge and
command. Symphony orchestra marketing in the last one hundred years has clearly used
conductors’ personalities—from Arturo Toscanini to Gustavo Dudamel—to boost audience
interest in classical music. This is nothing new; the skills and personalities of conductors have
been tools to draw audiences to classical music for much longer.
Each in his own way, the four Paris conductors discussed here transformed the ways
conductors could present themselves and convey authority. Musard and Jullien attracted the
focus that audiences were giving to instrumental virtuosos by becoming just as glamorous and
compelling. Habeneck’s intense rehearsal technique and Berlioz’s proficiency and innovation
inspired the appreciation of serious music lovers and enabled orchestras to perform more
advanced repertoire. By being a focal point of musical interpretation, they taught audience
members how to listen, especially to “difficult” music. In addition, Habeneck, Berlioz, and
Jullien demonstrated how important the conductor can be in the success of a musical work or
institution—here, the works of Beethoven, Mozart, or Berlioz himself. Future studies could do
more to connect the work of conductors to the acceptance and success of particular
composers.
Illustrating the long history of personality-driven and spectacle-focused advertising of
classical music, the conductors discussed here remind us that skill alone does not ensure
reputation, financial status, or legacy. Musicians must offer something audiences can connect
with, namely, an inspiring performance and personality. Be it through the performance of
spectacle (as in Jullien’s perfectly groomed appearance, lavishness, and flaunted bursts of
energy and exhaustion), morbid passion (Musard’s eruptions of violence paired with his
dejection and lamentable sadness), severe command (Habeneck’s authority, rigor, and

285

sternness), or innovation (Berlioz’s fresh ears, ideas, and behaviors), a compelling
performance must be marked by inspiration and personality. I suggest that we continue to
enliven our performances of classical music by encouraging this very human aspect of music
making: the presence of personality and the desire to connect with and speak to our
audiences.
286

IX. Conclusion

In the end, it is our loss that not more musicians had the awareness and resolution to promote
their own work. Many musicians of the nineteenth century remain obscure because they did
not follow the practices described in this dissertation. Those who entered our canon were not
necessarily the most gifted, but those understood the growing need for self-promotion and
had perhaps the sheer luck that their personality traits and artistic goals aligned with their
era’s economic changes, social norms, and tastes.
The case of the gifted but obscure pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813–1888) is
illustrative. Alkan began performing in Paris when he was a child in the 1820s.
1
At age twenty-
two, he was hailed as a pianist from whose fingers notes showered in “a fairy rain of pearls
and diamonds.”
2
During the July Monarchy, he had the most productive part of his career, yet
he performed only rarely and his publicity was sparse.
3
Journals reported the prizes he won at
the Conservatoire, but only as they did for all prize winners. When he performed in the young
César Franck’s concert in 1837, he was announced as “the celebrated Alkan” even though there
is little evidence that much was known about him publicly.
4
In truth, he was better known and

1
Ronald Smith, Alkan: Volume One: The Enigma (New York: Crescendo Publishing, 1977), 14.
2
Edouard Bélanger, “Fête de Saint Cécile,” Revue et gazette musicale (1835): 393: “une pluie féerique de perles et de
diamans.”
3
Smith, Alkan, 14; Joseph d’Ortigue, “Concerts de la France musicale,” La France musicale (7 January 1844): 65.
4
Smith, Alkan, 30–31.
287
appreciated among musicians than among the public.
5
Journalists referred to him as a nearly
unknown genius.
6
Already uncomfortable onstage, he was further discouraged from
performing by reviews such as one in 1845 that criticized him as “one who is occupied a great
deal more by his own impressions than by those which he might produce on his audience.”
7

Alkan remained loath to return to a stage where he felt unappreciated, but he would never
adjust his actions to grant what the public wanted.
8
The following year, 1846, the journalist
Léon Kreutzer reviewed Alkan’s symphony, as Alkan had shifted his focus to composition by
this time; Kreutzer categorized Alkan as different from those “young artists who just want
their names to be known and are content with that.” Instead, Alkan belonged to the camp of
true artists who consecrate their lives to the study of art, but “have spent too much time on
their work to spend any part of it on publicity and canvassing”; therefore, they “become a little
disgusted with a public which does not come and seek them out. They continue, all the same,
to perfect their own works but do nothing to promote them, thus dedicating them obscurity.”
9

This assessment describes Alkan’s experience throughout his career: he never became widely
known, never became part of our musical canon. Despite the exceptional quality of his music,
this virtuoso led a marginal existence even among connoisseurs. Reaching out to the public
through the media was never his practice, nor would he even reach out to his colleagues

5
Léon Kreutzer, “Revue critique: Compositions de M. V. Alkan,” Revue et gazette musicale (11 January 1846): 13,
cited in Smith, Alkan, 38.
6
Léon Escudier, “Concert de C. V. Alkan,” La France musicale (7 January 1844): 131.
7
Smith, Alkan, 37; see another example ibid., 47.
8
Much more than Chopin, Alkan “demonstrated the most extreme sense of introversion and performance
withdrawal” (William Alexander Eddie, Charles Valentin Alkan: His Life and His Music [Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2007], x).
9
Kreutzer, “Revue critique: Compositions de M. V. Alkan,” Revue et gazette musicale (11 January 1846): 13–14,
translated in Smith, Alkan, 38.
288
through networking; in fact, he was a notorious recluse who avoided contact with anyone
except his closest friend the composer Ferdinand Hiller.
10
The results of his isolation are
unsurprising. When Alkan died in 1888, Le Ménestrel reported, “Charles-Valentin Alkan has
just died. His demise was necessary for us to suspect his existence.”
11

Alkan, like the composer Henri Reber (1807–1880) with whom Kreutzer compared him,
was “missing this ardor, this pursuit of success, this firm will to make room for himself, so
deplorably necessary today.”
12
As much as this “deplorable” need to self-promote was
resented, it remained a reality, even for the most gifted. Alkan’s experience demonstrates that
being gifted actually guaranteed little for a musician’s recognition. Skill alone was rarely
automatically rewarded with further opportunity. Opportunity instead needed to be carved
out. July Monarchy musicians were keenly aware of the necessity to generate publicity if their
works were to receive the appreciation they deserved. Thus, the most successful musicians’
efforts to distinguish themselves and remain present in the fickle Parisian audience’s
consciousness were calculated, creative, and continuously reinventive.
An implicit irony in this fact about the Romantic musician has already been pointed
out by scholars such as Jim Samson and Žarko Cvejić. As discussed in Chapter One, the
virtuoso and the composer as artist appeared to be Romantic symbols of individuality,
freedom, and full devotion to artistic creation. Nonetheless, they were intrinsically market-
driven. The virtuoso depended on an audience that would appreciate his work, pay him for it,
and want to see more of it. The problem, as Cvejić argues, is that “the economic and

10
Smith, Alkan, 53.
11
William G. Atwood, Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 118.
12
Léon Kreutzer, “Henri Reber et ses nouvelles compositions,” Revue et gazette musicale (2 November 1845): 361:
“Serait-ce que cette ardeur, cette poursuite du succès, cette ferme volonté de se faire faire place, si
déplorablement nécessaire aujourd’hui, manquent tout-à-fait au jeune artiste?”
289
commodified figure of the virtuoso squares neither with the free subject of Idealist philosophy
nor with the aesthetic autonomy of music that was meant to symbolize it.”
13
The virtuoso was
profoundly tied to and responsive to audience taste, rather than being the independent force
that he or she represented.
14

However, this was a fact that a serious musician would wish to hide. In order to distract
attention from their market-dependence, virtuosos framed their work as high art, an act that
was in fact was part of their salesmanship. As David Gramit has argued in his chapter “Selling
the Serious: The Commodification of Music and Resistance to It in Germany, circa 1800,”
composers and music publishers have for a long time marketed serious music as rarified and
exclusive in order to create demand among an audience seeking a distinguished product.
15

Advertisements using language to indicate set-apartness and elitism made the music desirable
to the upper class and connoisseurs, and paradoxically created a commodity out of something
that was supposedly above commodity. A similar strategy was used in the advertising of
virtuoso concerts. The journalism and aesthetics of media publicity discussed in Chapter Two
has described that virtuosos’ newspaper advertisements and posters were for the most part
unpretentious, basic, factual. They were read with a critical eye by the purveyors and
protectors of elitist music (publishers, journalists, and audiences), who would publicly chasten
musicians who deviated from the established norm and puffed themselves up (in that they

13
Žarko Cvejić, The Virtuoso as Subject: The Reception of Instrumental Virtuosity, c. 1815–c. 1850 (Newcastle upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 21–22.
14
Jim Samson, Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 71.
15
David Gramit, “Selling the Serious: The Commodification of Music and Resistance to It in Germany, circa
1800,” in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, ed. William Weber
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 81–103.
290
lacked the talent they claimed). In maintaining discrete advertising, virtuosos targeted their
performances to those audiences who wanted to have discriminating taste.
A number of musicians, though, walked a fine line in trying to have broad appeal at
the same time. Newspapers were now much more popular, and concert audiences were
shifting toward the growing middle class. As described in Chapter One, demand for concerts
increased exponentially between the 1820s and 40s, in part due to audiences expanding from
the population boom and in part from the middle class gaining increasing wealth and
influence in matters of high culture. Musicians depended on reaching this audience as well as
the elite.
In needing to maintain an exclusive art, yet be profitable and more broadly recognized,
some of the musicians discussed in this dissertation—Liszt, Paganini, and especially Musard
and Jullien—stand out as all the more impressive against the backdrop of musical
conservatism as they were creative, grandiose, and verbally colorful in their advertisements.
Though they clearly had the musical ability and charisma to deliver the experience they
promised, still all four were at times accused of being charlatans. Because these performers
more than anyone else knew how to draw large audiences, they threatened the exclusivity of
art. To counteract them, the guardians of what was coming to be seen as a classical music
tradition, who wanted to preserve its gravity and elitism, accused them of charlatanism, or
being without real talent.
16

These musicians had to counteract these accusations by making themselves and their
work still appear serious despite its broader appeal. Ways of doing so were through

16
Steven Huebner demonstrates that the musicians and critics at this time were beginning to refer to living
composers’ music as “classical music” (musique classique) (“Discourses around the Classic,” conference paper
given 10 July 2017 at Francophone Music Criticism, 1789–1914, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris).
291
engagement with educated ideals and by portraying themselves as having been endowed
beyond the normal human’s capacities. They wished for their music to be seen as not the
mere mechanical result of training, but the result of inspiration, philosophical study, soulful
engagement with music, or simply innate giftedness. For instance, Paganini’s baffling skill was
made all the more mystifying by the rumor that no one had ever heard him practice. This lack
of practical cause for his skill promoted an image of playing from inner genius rather than
playing from dedication to technical proficiency. When phrenology and physiognomy were
invoked to explain musicians’ skill, the same purpose was being served. The doctors who
analyzed Paganini and other musicians pointed to their natural giftedness and predispositions
to perform or compose. Liszt took a step beyond everyone else and actively employed
phrenology and physiognomy in his publicity in order to be part of a trending discourse
among the more educated members of society, thereby making himself and his music more
desirable and valuable.
The conductors Habeneck, Berlioz, Musard, and Jullien also lifted themselves, or
found themselves lifted, out of the role of commonplace executant and instead inhabiting
personas that cast them in almost superhuman terms. Habeneck was discussed as a priest and
a leader of the new religion of Beethoven in France. Musard was called godlike in his
command of the orchestra and described as seeming to channel supernatural or diabolic
inspiration. Whereas Berlioz lacked any kind of supernatural narrative in his homeland of
France, in other countries when he performed he was revered as an exotic spiritual force.
Finally, when Jullien took on the trappings of kingship with his jeweled baton-scepter and
throne, he acted out being more than a man. His behaviors were not mere entertainment and
kitsch, but symbols that musicians were acting with greater hubris. His performances were
292
excessive, but whether genuinely or in parody, Jullien unmistakably acknowledged musicians’
claim to more grandeur in their profession.
Moreover, a number of Paris musicians were no longer satisfied to earn the elite’s
praise for only their musical talent; they instead wanted to be placed on a social and
intellectual par with their assessors in salons. While many virtuosos considered the best in
their fields still performed for hire in homes where they entered through service entrances,
Malibran, Liszt, and Duprez tried to break through the class barrier. Through social
engagement in these settings, these musicians took part in an effort that had existed since at
least the mid-eighteenth century to overcome the stigma that musicians were mere
entertainers in the service of those who paid them.
In the wake of Beethoven, image promotion of the great musicians involved a push to
be seen as serious artists. They framed themselves to be inspired and self-determined rather
than controlled by the demands of a public or an employer; thus, their music was of superior
quality and uplifted the listener. As argued in Chapter Six, this message was an important part
of their being able to hold an elite audience who would fund them through purchasing tickets
to concerts, introducing them to networks, endorsing them in the press, or hiring them to
teach their children. The need to involve a wealthy audience was crucial. As Wagner, whose
story began this dissertation, counseled in “An End in Paris,” patronage remained necessary:
If you are sure of firm and influential patronage, by all means venture on the
fight; but without this, and without money,—give up, for you’re sure to go
under, without so much as being noticed. It will be no question of commending
your work or talent (a favour unparalleled!), but what will be considered is the
name you bear. Seeing that no renommée attaches to that name as yet, and it is
to be found on no list of the moneyed, you and your talent remain in
obscurity.
17

17
Richard Wagner, “An End in Paris,” trans. William Ashton Ellis, in Paris and Dresden: Richard Wagner’s Prose
Works (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1898), 47.
293

“What will be considered is the name you bear”—this phrase referred to not only the
musicians’ own name, but the alliances formed between the musician and his or her patrons.
Musicians’ efforts to secure patronage are visible in the many examples given throughout this
dissertation. Though music historians have given less attention to patronage in the Romantic
period than in the preceding periods, it remained vital, though it was less formal and
appeared in more diversified forms.
18

Suggestions for future research
This study has considered image promotion in Paris between the years 1830 and 1848—a small
window into musicians’ career strategizing issues in the Romantic period. This study has
revealed a number of topics that have potential for expansion in future research. A few
suggestions are given below.
I have discussed participation in salons as a form of advertising. My study of the career
advancements that musicians made through salons has only just scratched the surface. The
large repertoire of Parisian magazines about high society and correspondence from
salonnières, including Récamier, Belgiojoso, and Merlin, has not been examined in this light.
Perhaps these sources can reveal more about the social status of musicians in salons and their

18
On the assumption that patronage was less important in the nineteenth century, consider, for example,
statements in the Oxford Companion to Music: “Before about 1800 most composers, unable to support themselves
by composition alone, had to rely on some form of direct patronage,” and, “Though direct church patronage
remained a potent force until well into the 18th century . . .” (Michael Hurd, “Patronage,” The Oxford Companion to
Music; Oxford Music Online [Oxford University Press, accessed June 3, 2017]). These statements make it seem as if
musicians in the nineteenth century could support themselves only on commissions and that patronage was no
longer necessary. Hurd does, however, acknowledge that “patronage of a kind” continued. Deborah Rohr has
defined several forms of patronage in The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850: A Profession of Artisans
(Cambridge University Press, 2001), 41–46.
294
relationships with their patrons, and more concrete examples can be found of assistance that
salonnières gave to musicians.
The study on salons can also be broadened to other cities, London and Vienna
particularly. Vienna had a much less active public concert culture than did London or Paris,
and its salons were arguably the more popular venue for performance.
19
In London as well,
salons were potentially much more important to musicians’ careers than they were in Paris, as
London’s musical culture was controlled to a greater extent by the aristocratic class, which
had not been dismantled by revolution as it had in Paris.
20
Thus the salon cultures of both
London and Vienna likely had greater roles in musicians’ careers.
In particular, more work could be done on patronage by the Rothschilds. This family
had the means to be some of the most important supporters of musicians in all of Europe. For
whatever reason, their participation in the musical life of the cities in which they lived has not
been thoroughly examined.
21

Another issue that should be expanded to other cities is phreno-physiognomy’s role in
musicians’ publicity. Music and phreno-physiognomy in England and France have received
scholarly attention through the work of David Trippett, Celine Frigau-Manning, and Alan
Davison, but it remains to have a study of this topic in German sources. These disciplines
were well known in Germany, especially since the first publications on these topics were

19
Stephen Zank, “The Concert and the Virtuoso,” in Piano Roles: A New History of the Piano, ed. James Parakilas
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 192–93; William Weber, Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure
of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna between 1830 and 1848 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1975), 5.
20
Cvejić, “The Virtuoso as Subject,” 26; Weber, Music and the Middle (Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 54.
21
The only existing study is Charlotte de Rothschild, “The Musical Associations of the Rothschild Family,” in The
Rothschilds: Essays on the History of a European Family, ed. Georg Heuberger (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994),
287–96.
295
published in German, but is unknown to what extent they influenced the study and portrayal
of musical skill.
Finally, a comparison of musicians’ newspaper advertising techniques in various major
cities would illuminate differences in musical values across cultures. A particular issue is that
the musical advertisements in London’s top music journal, the Musical World, seem to have
been more sensationalized than those in Paris’s La France musicale and the Revue et gazette
musicale, even though London is supposed to have had more conservative taste in music at this
time.
22
The Paris media, in contrast, had fewer and less overt advertisements than British and
American newspapers and distanced music from commercialism.
23
A comparison of
advertising aesthetics between cities, based on the work started in this dissertation, could
explain the discrepancy in London’s more conservative attitude toward music yet openness to
its commercialization.

Application
In closing, this dissertation bears a message applicable to musicians today. All of the studies
presented here come together to increase our appreciation of the work professional classical
musicians did to become recognized and of the multiple angles through which they
approached the public. Those who became celebrated were business-minded, proactive,
tenacious, and surrounded by a framework of supporters that they gathered and maintained.
In addition, much of their energy was directed toward an audience. Paganini’s supposed
imprisonment, Liszt’s womanizing, Musard’s depression and fiery temper, and Jullien’s full-

22
For London’s more conservative music taste, see Weber, Music and the Middle Class (2004), 54.
23
H. Hazel Hahn, Scenes of Parisian Modernity: Culture and Consumption in the Nineteenth Century (New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 5–6.
296
bodied, exhausted service to music: publicity of this sort helped them reach outside the ivory
towers and become known by a wider audience. Among the musicians who became
celebrities, those few who achieved long-term recognition and canonization were those who
remained committed to absolute excellence and innovation in their craft. But their making
their art known was a crucial first step.
Making art known will always be controversial to some extent, because it risks making
high art low and transferring its basis from high ideals to commercialism. The commercial
side of high art, however, is nevertheless real. It is a topic we have hardly wanted to
acknowledge, even back during the lifetimes of the musicians in this study. Stendhal, in his
1824 biography of Rossini, mentions that Rossini was writing four or five operas per year
during his youth, in order “to pay the inn-keeper and the washerwoman” as well as to pay
touring expenses and to support his parents; he then apologizes for broaching such a topic:
I blush at the necessity which forces me to ferret about among such vulgar
details, and I entreat the reader’s pardon; but would remind him that I am
writing a biography . . . And such is the truth. Every art is faced with the same
problem; the artist is confronted with gross material indissolubly rooted in
vulgarity, and it is his task to surmount it, even though the coarseness of the
details makes it impossible for the powers of imagination to come to the
rescue.
24

Perhaps this is a worthy goal for our composing and performing musicians today: know that
the “vulgarities” of making a living and appealing to an audience are necessities, but that such
vulgarities have in the past been and can still be surpassed. Musicians’ pursuit of high ideals
will be apparent and endure in our histories when the musicians have dedicated themselves
to quality of work and creativity as well as to their audience.

24
Stendhal, “Chapter 4 La Pietra del Paragone,” in Life of Rossini, trans. Richard N. Coe (New York: Criterion
Books, 1957), iBooks edition.

Appendices

298
Appendix A: Concert Fees

Hall administration fees
Even when halls were provided without charge, supporting staff and other musicians for the
concert still needed to be paid. For a concert booked at the Conservatoire, for instance, the
charge for the staff needed to run the hall was 230 francs. This amount paid for
- the door openers;
- the garçons d’orchestre who set up the stands and chairs for the orchestra, put the music
out, arranged the large instruments such as the basses and percussion that were kept at
the hall;
- the fumiste (who tended the fires for heating) and the wood;
- the lampiste who tended the gas lamps; and
- the firemen and municipal guard who would be on hand.
1

For his performance at the Salon Pape, the Belgian cellist Adrien-François Servais paid 30
francs for lighting and did not record other building fees, even though his concert was in the
winter (December 29, 1833).
2

1
“De l’impot prélevé sur la musique,” Revue et gazette musicale (14 December 1834): 401; Arthur Pougin, “garçon
d’orchestre,” Dictionnaire pittoresque et historique du théâtre et des arts (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1885).
2
Malou Haine, “Musicien, mécène et imprésario: Les concerts du violoncelliste Adrien-François Servais et leur
promotion par Jules Lardin,” in Le Concert et son public: Mutations de la vie musicale en Europe de 1780 à 1914 (France,
Allemagne, Angleterre), ed. Hans Erich Bödeker, Patrice Veit, Michael Werner (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des
sciences de l’homme, 2002): paragraph 16, accessed online 23 May 2018,
http://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/6763.

299
Droit des indigents
A tax called the droit des indigens (recte: indigents) or droit des pauvres, begun in 1796 and ended
only in 1947, was imposed on all public entertainment from the theater to public concerts,
house concerts, and street marionette shows and collected for the benefit of the poor.
3
The
idea behind it was that those who could afford to spend money on entertainment could afford
to give a little extra to those who could not. However, performers viewed it more as a burden
on themselves than on their audiences. This “forced charity”
4
was not regarded favorably by
musicians; it was a burden when independent musicians were already struggling to earn their
livings. The tax was billed as either a flat fee arranged ahead of time or a percentage of
performance receipts, at least 11%, but sometimes as much as 25%, imposed before expenses.
5

Moreover, the tax was still collected even when the concert’s expenses were higher than its
earnings.
6
Nothing like it was imposed on painters, sculptors, or poets, and it was not optional:
failure to pay was punished with six months in prison.
7
The founder of the Conservatoire,
Bernard Sarrette, had protested the tax and received exemption for the Conservatoire’s
concerts on the argument that their activities were for education and civil service rather than
public amusement or entertainment. Though official Conservatoire events were not taxed,
other concerts in the Conservatoire’s hall were.
8
The Société des concerts paid a percentage of
their receipts for the six concerts they held in their first year (1828), a total of 2,000 francs.

3
Hervé Audéon, “Le concert en France sous le Premier Empire: aspects législatifs et formels,” Napoleonica: La
Revue 7, no. 1 (2010): 31–53.
4
“De l’impot prélevé sur la musique,” Revue et gazette musicale (14 December 1834): 402.
5
Pougin, “Droit des pauvres,” Dictionnaire pittoresque.
6
“Des Artistes étrangers à Paris,” Revue et gazette musicale (22 May 1836): 172–74; “De l’impot prélevé sur la
musique”; Pougin, “Droit des pauvres,” Dictionnaire pittoresque.
7
“De l’impot prélevé sur la musique,” 401–2.
8
Audéon, “Le concert en France sous le Premier Empire,” paragraph 21.

300
However, from the second year until 1857 they negotiated to pay a flat fee of 200 francs per
concert (1,200 francs per year, usually).
9
The droit des indigens required of a soloist who booked
the Conservatoire space was 375 francs.
10
This was a considerable sum, considering that many
concerts’ revenues surpassed their expenses by much less. Even Chopin in late career once
held a concert that paid him only 60 francs.
11
A concert at the Conservatoire would have lost
him money on that occasion.

9
Antoine Elwart, Histoire de la Société des concerts du Conservatoire impérial de musique (Paris: S. Castel, 1860), 122.
10
“Artistes étrangères à Paris,” 172.
11
James Huneker, Chopin: The Man and His Music (Auckland: The Floating Press, 2009), 43ff.

301
Appendix B: Sample Benefit Concert Programs

Example 1

Figure B.1: Chopin’s program for February 26, 1832. Source: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, James Fuld
Collection. Photo James Zehavi, 2008. Reproduced in Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, “Documents inconnus
concernant le premier concert de Chopin à Paris (25 février 1832),” Revue de Musicologie 94, no. 2 (2008): 575–84.

302
Example 2
For the piano virtuoso Theodor Dœhler’s (1814–1856)
1
concert on at 2:00 p.m. on April 6, 1841 in
the Salon Erard, the program was as follows (formatting adapted for easier reading):
1. Grand duo de l’opéra Gli illustri rivali, chanté par Madame Laty et M. Mecatti
2. Fantaisie pour le piano sur des motifs de Guillaume Tell, par M. Dœhler
3. Air chanté par mademoiselle Nau, de l’Académie royale de musique
4. Nocturnes et études pour le piano, par M. Dœhler
5. Mélodie italienne chantée par M. Mecatti
6. Aire de Marino Faliero, chanté par Madame Laty
7. Grand caprice sur des motifs de Maometto secondo, pour le piano, par M. Dœhler
8. Finale. Le piano sera tenu par M. Alary
2

Figure B.2: Theodor Dœhler, lithograph by Josef Von Kriehuber (1842). Source: Photo by Peter Geymayer,
accessed 1 August 2018, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Döhler#/media/File:Theodor_Döhler_Litho.jpg.

1
Dœhler was often listed with other of the most famous piano virtuosos of the era: Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg, Herz,
Kalkbrenner, and Pleyel (Delphine de Girardin, La Presse [6 April 1845]; “Correspondance étrangère,” Revue et
gazette musicale [4 April 1841]: 214). However, he is less known today as he did not contribute anything substantial
to the repertoire: mostly fantasies on opera themes or exotic themes.
2
“Nouvelles,” Revue et gazette musicale (4 April 1841): 214.

303

Dœhler appeared three times, playing solo pieces of his own arrangement or composition: a
fantasy on Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829), nocturnes and etudes by himself, and a caprice on
another Rossini opera, Maometto secondo (1820); his program was more geared toward popular
music selections than Chopin’s. Four supporting artists held the stage with him:
Mademoiselle Dolores Nau (1818–1891), a Conservatoire-educated singer, born in New York,
but popularly said to have come from Haiti, supposedly the birthplace of her parents. She
sang secondary roles in many of the important opera productions in Paris.
3
The other three
were the mezzo-soprano Madame Laty and baryton Monsieur Mecatti (whose first names and
dates are not known) and pianist and voice professor Giulio Alary (1814–1891). These musicians
were Italians and had worked together on many occasions, mostly performing in salons. Just
the month before, the three had given a public concert for their own benefit attended by many
well-known diplomats and salon hostesses.
4

As was customary, Dœhler chose co-performers who were popular and well known
(such as Laty, Alary, and Mecatti) or reputable (Nau is identified on the program as being
“from the Académie royale de musique”). The aim was that they would attract audience
members to his concert, but not outshine him. This balance was particularly challenging for
newcomers to Paris. In an article called “Des Artistes étrangers à Paris," a journalist wrote that
recruiting performers with good names was nearly impossible for foreigners, particularly
when many of best musicians in the city had managers who controlled where they performed
and would not grant a performance with anyone they did not know personally. Foreign

3
Kurt Gänzl, “Nau, Dolores (Bénédicte Josephine),” in Victorian Vocalists (New York: Routledge, 2017), 408–18.
4
“Madame Laty—MM. Mecatti et Alary,” Revue et gazette musicale (4 March 1841): 141; G. Alary, "La Gita in
Gondola," nocturne pour mezzo soprano et bariton, chanté par Madame Laty et Mecatti (Paris: Chabal, n.d.).

304
performers thus had to make recourse to also newly landed rivals and countrymen, who were
usually no better known than they.
5

Example 3
A final feature in the benefit program might be an orchestra. This was an extravagant
expense, but necessary if the performer wished to play a concerto or mount their concert on a
grand scale. Musicians had two options for hiring an orchestra: they could bring together
musicians from various sources; they would be unaccustomed to playing together and be of
unreliable quality, and could quite possibly massacre the concert. This would cost at least
1,000 francs, a figure well above what most musicians would make in ticket sales.
6
The only
alternative was that musicians could hire a competent, already formed orchestra, for much
more money.
7
That is what the thirteen-year-old violinist Thérésa Milanollo (1827–1904) did
when she gave a concert that included an orchestra on April 5, 1841 at 8:00 p.m. in the Salle
Henri Herz (again, the formatting has been adapted):
1. Ouverture exécutée par l’orchestre de M. Fessy
2. Romances chantées par M. F. Jourdain
3. Fantaisie d’Artôt exécutée par mademoiselle Thérésa Milanollo
4. Air français chanté par mademoiselle Elian Barthélemy
5. Variations brillantes composées par Mayseder, exécutés par mademoiselle Maria
Milanollo, élève de sa sœur Thérésa
6. Air chanté par M. ***
7. Adagio et polonaise d’Habeneck exécutés par mademoiselle Thérésa Milanollo
8. Finale du deuxième acte de Lucia di Lammermoor, arrangé par Fessy
9. Air chanté par Ponchard
10. Air varié de Bériot, exécuté par mademoiselle Maria Milanollo
11. Duo chanté par mademoiselle Elian Barthélemy et M. ***

5
“Des Artistes étrangers à Paris,” Revue et gazette musicale (22 May 1836): 173.
6
“De l’impot prélevé sur la musique,” Revue et gazette musicale (14 December 1834): 401–2.
7
“Des Artistes étrangers à Paris,” 173.

305
12. Grande fantaisie et variations sur la romance Ma Céline, d’Hauman, exécutées par
mademoiselle Thérésa Milanollo
8

The orchestra performed at least in the first, seventh, and eighth pieces. The orchestra was
that of Alexandre Fessy (1804–1856), who directed the orchestra of the Concerts Vivienne, a
glamorous yet inexpensive series dedicated to performances of popular music. Tickets were
one franc, an appealing price for the middle and lower classes.
9

Figure B.3: Frontispiece for a piano arrangement of quadrilles that were performed by Fessy’s orchestra,
designed by Célestin Nanteuil (1842). Les Mystères de Paris : orchestré par Fessy pour les concerts Vivienne / quadrille
sur des motifs originaux par Melle Loïsa Puget, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et
photographie, FOL-DC-290 (2), http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84512258/f1.item.zoom.

8
“Nouvelles,” Revue et gazette musicale (4 April 1841): 215.
9
A. and W. Galignani and Co., Galignani's New Paris Guide, 13th edition (Paris: E. Brière, 1842), 474.

306

Aside from Milanollo and her younger sister, all of the performers on the program
besides were adults with established careers. The asterisks on the sixth and eleventh
selections mean either that one of the singers had not yet been secured at the time the
announcement was posted (the day before the concert!), or that the performer was a non-
professional who did not want to sully his or her name by announcing it in a newspaper.

Figure B.4: Thérésa Milanollo in La France Musicale (1841).

307
Example 4
When Liszt performed in his own in first solo recitals while on tour in Italy, he
understandably did not want the trouble of finding other musicians. This process was likely
easier for him than it was for anyone else in Europe, as musicians would have jumped at the
chance to have the exposure of performing at Liszt’s concerts; however, the time needed for
choosing the instruments, organizing the program around a balanced repertoire, and
rehearsing was considerable. Moreover, these musicians had to be paid or compensated in
some way. Liszt gained both time and money by not having them. But a musician who did this
took on the risk of having to fill concert seats on his name alone—not much of a challenge for
Liszt, but certainly for others. Liszt’s ability to keep an audience entertained by himself
demonstrated what a consummate musician and performer he was. High on the first success
of performing alone, Liszt described his program to his patron the Princess Cristina Belgiojoso
(formatting adjusted and pieces numbered):
1. Overture to William Tell, performed by M. L.
2. Reminiscences of the Puritani. Fantaisie composed and performed by the
above-mentioned!
3. Etudes and fragments by the same to the same!
4. Improvisation on themes given—still by the same.
And that was all; neither more nor less, except lively conversation during the
intervals, and enthusiasm if there was room for it.
10

Liszt’s conversation with the audience between pieces differentiates his performances from
the recitals of today. What a thing to have been in that room!

10
Franz Liszt to Princess Belgiojoso in Paris, from Italy, 4 June 1839, in Letters from Liszt: Volume 1 Paris to Rome:
Years of Travel as a Virtuoso, ed. La Mara, trans. Constance Bache (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894).
308
Works Cited

“250 Years of Teatr Narodowy (The National Theater of Poland).” Google Arts & Culture.
Accessed 29 May 2018.
https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/QRIY75Qs.
Adam, Mme. Edmond (Juliette Lamber). My Literary Life. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1904.
Adamowicz-Hariasz, Maria. “From Opinion to Information: The Roman-Feuilleton and the
Transformation of the Nineteenth-Century Press.” In Making the News: Modernity & the
Mass Press in Nineteenth-Century France, edited by Dean De la Motte, Jeannene M.
Przyblyski. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.
Agenda musical pour l'année 1836. Paris: au bureau du Recueil des arts, 1836.
Agoult, Comtesse d’ (Daniel Stern). Mémoires: 1833–1854. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1927.
Agoult, Marie d’. Marie de Flavigny, comtesse d’Agoult: Correspondance générale: Tome I: 1821–1836,
edited by Charles F. Dupêchez. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003.
——. Mémoires, souvenirs et journaux de la comtesse d’Agoult: Présentation et notes de Charles F.
Dupêchez. Paris: Mercure de France, 2007.
Alary, G. “La Gita in Gondola, nocturne pour mezzo soprano et bariton, chanté par Madame
Laty et Mecatti.” Paris: Chabal, n.d.
Anonymous. “Au temps des Chicards.” Supplément illustré du Petit Journal (April 5, 1914): 106.
Anonymous. Physiologie des physiologies. Paris: Desloges, 1841.
Anonymous. Salle Erard image. Accessed 12 July 2018.
http://www2.culture.gouv.fr/Wave/image/memoire/0307/sap01_67p00452_p.jpg.
Anonymous. “Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Biographies: Mathieu Joseph
Bonaventure Orfila (1787–1853).” U.S. National Library of Medicine; National Institutes
of Health. Accessed 31 May 2018.
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/visibleproofs/galleries/biographies/orfila.html.
Appert, Donald L. “Berlioz, the Conductor.” DMA thesis, University of Kansas, 1985.
Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina. “Blemished Physiologies: Delacroix, Paganini, and the
Cholera Epidemic of 1832.” The Art Bulletin 83, no. 4 (2001): 686–710.
À travers Chants (Paris, 1862), 1–4, 5–7. Translated by Piero Weiss. In “From the Writings of
Berlioz.” In Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, edited by Piero Weiss
and Richard Taruskin, 297–98. Belmont: Thomson Schirmer, 2008.
Atwood, William G. Fryderyk Chopin: Pianist from Warsaw. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1987.
309
Audéon, Hervé. “Le concert en France sous le Premier Empire: aspects législatifs et formels.”
Napoleonica: La Revue 7, no. 1 (2010): 31–53.
Ballstaedt, Andreas. “Chopin as a ‘Salon Composer’ in Nineteenth-Century German
Criticism.” In Chopin Studies II, edited by John Rink and Jim Samson, 18–34.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Baral, Simone. “Un’ ‘armonica e magnifica fronte’: La persistenza della frenologia nei discorsi
medici italiani intorno al genio musicale.” Laboratoire italien 20 (6 November 2017).
https://journals.openedition.org/laboratoireitalien/1619.
Baridon, Laurent. “Jean-Pierre Dantan, le caricaturiste de la statuomanie,” Caricatures &
caricature: Actualité-recherche sur l’histoire de la caricature politique et du dessin de presse, 4
September 2007. http://www.caricaturesetcaricature.com/article-13884914.html.
——. “Jean-Pierre Dantan, le caricaturiste de la statuomanie.” Ridiculosa no. 13, “Sculptures et
caricatures.” Brest, UBO (2006): 127–43.
Barzun, Jacques. Berlioz and His Century: An Introduction to the Age of Romanticism. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978.
——. “Introduction.” In Music in Paris in the 1830s, edited by Peter Bloom, 1–22. Stuyvesant, NY:
Pendragon Press, 1987.
Bassanville, Mme la comtesse de. Les salons d’autrefois: souvenirs intimes. Nouvelle édition. Paris:
J. Victorion, n.d.
Baudelaire, Charles. “Some French Caricaturists.” In Selected Writings on Art and Artists, 209–31.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972.
Bennett, Joseph. “The Conductor in Music.” Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 36, no. 629
(July 1, 1895): 437–40.
Berlioz, Hector. Correspondance générale, vol. 3, 1842–1850. Paris: Flammarion, 1978.
——. Evenings with the Orchestra. Translated by Jacques Barzun. Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1999.
——. Life and Letters of Berlioz, vol. 1. Translated by H. Mainwaring Dunstan. London:
Remington and Co., 1882.
——. The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz. Translated and edited by David Cairns. London: Cardinal,
1990.
——. The Orchestral Conductor: Theory of His Art. New York: Carl Fischer, 1902.
Biographie universelle et portative des contemporains, ou, Dictionnaire historique des hommes vivant
et des hommes morts, vol. 5, edited by Alphonse Rabbe, Claude Augustin Vieilh de
Boisjolin, and Sainte-Preuve. Paris: Au Bureau de la biographie, 1836.
310
Blackwell, William L. Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800–1860. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968.
Bloch, Gregory W. “The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-Louis Duprez.” Cambridge Opera Journal
19, no. 1, The Divo and the Danseur: On the Nineteenth-Century Male Opera and
Ballet Performer (March 2007): 11–31.
Bloom, Peter. “A Review of Fétis’s Revue Musicale.” In Music in Paris in the 1830s, edited by Peter
Bloom, 537–51. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987.
——. “Virtuosités de Berlioz.” Romantisme no. 128 (2005): 71–93.
Boczkowska, Ewelina. “Chopin’s Ghosts.” 19th-Century Music 35, no. 3, Chopin’s Subjects (Spring
2012): 204–23.
Bœrne, Ludwig. Briefe aus Paris, 1831–1832. Herisau: Literatur-Comptoire, 1835.
Bonds, Mark Evan. Absolute Music: The History of an Idea. New York: Oxford University Press,
2014.
Bordry, Guillaume. “Grand Opéra, Réclame et produits dérivés: Le Prophète de Meyerbeer et le
nonciorama.” In Meyerbeer and Grand Opéra from the July Monarchy to the Present,
edited by Mark Everist. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2016.
Bourdin, Claude-Étienne. Essai sur la phrénologie considérée dans ses principes généraux et son
application pratique. Paris: impr. de Mme Vve Bouchard-Huzard, 1847.
Broussais, Marie. “Liszt dans les collections anthropologique du Musée de l’Homme,”
L’éducation musicale 309–10 (June–July 1984): 29–31.
Bull, Ole. “Violin Notes.” In Sarah C. Bull, Ole Bull: A Memoir, 347–80. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin and Company, 1893.
Bull, Ole. “Violin Notes.” In Sara Chapman Thorpe Bull and Alpheus Benning Crosby, Ole
Bull, 347–408. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1882.
Cambridge Companion to Conducting, The, edited by José Antonio Bowen. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
Cairns, David. Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness, 1832–1869. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000.
——. “The French Tradition.” In The Cambridge Companion to Conducting, edited by José
Antonio Bowen, 134–45. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Carlton, Richard A. “Changes in Status and Role-Play: The Musician at the End of the
Eighteenth Century.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 37, no. 1
(June 2006): 3–16.
311
Carse, Adam. The Life of Jullien, Adventurer, Showman–Conductor and Establisher of the
Promenade Concerts in England together with a History of Those Concerts up to 1895.
Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1951.
——. The Orchestra from Beethoven to Berlioz. New York: Broude Bros., 1949.
Carson, John. The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and
American Republics, 1750–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Castil-Blaze. Physiologie du musicien. Paris: chez tous les libraires, 1844.
Castle, Arthur Michael. Etude phrénologique sur le caractère originel et actuel de M. François Liszt.
Milan: n.p., 1847.
Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales. Accessed 10 March 2017.
http://www.cnrtl.fr.
Chapin, Victor. Giants of the Keyboard. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1967.
Charlton, David, et al. “Rehearsal.” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Grove Music
Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 14 November 2016.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Chauvaud, Frédéric. “‘Cet homme si multiple et si divers’: Orfila et la chimie du crime au XIXe
siècle.” Sociétés et Représentations 22, no. 2 (2006): 171–87. https://www.cairn.info/revue-
societes-et-representations-2006-2-page-171.htm.
Chesney, Duncan McColl. “The History of the History of the Salon.” Nineteenth-Century French
Studies 36, no. 1/2 (Fall 2007–Winter 2008): 94–108.
“Chopin Biography: Year 1831,” Fryderyk Chopin Institute, accessed 5 December 2017,
http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/life/calendar/year/1831.
“Chopin Biography: Year 1848,” The Fryderyk Chopin Institute, accessed 4 June 2018,
http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/life/calendar/year/1848.
Chopin, Fryderyk. Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin, edited by Bronislaw Edward
Sydow and Arthur Hedley. London: Heinemann, 1962.
——. “Valse (manuscript autographe).” Bibliothèque nationale de France, département
Musique, MS-121. Accessed 10 August 2018.
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b550010414/f2.image.r=charlotte%20rothschild.
Clara Novello’s Reminiscences, edited by Valeria Gigiucci. London: Edward Arnold, 1910.
Cler, Albert. Physiologie du musicien, vignettes de Daumier, Gavarni, Janet-Lange, Valentin. Paris:
Aubert/Lavigne, 1841.
Code civil des Français. Paris: A. Commaille, 1807.
Codignola, Arturo. Paganini intimo. Genua: n.p., 1935.
312
Cohen, H. Robert. “The Nineteenth-Century French Press and the Music Historian: Archival
Sources and Bibliographical Resources.” 19th-Century Music 7, no. 2, Special Issue:
French Archives (Autumn 1983): 136–42.
Cohen, Peter. “Flotow, Friedrich Freiherr von.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online.
Oxford University Press. Accessed 5 September 2017.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Combe, George. A System of Phrenology, vol. II. Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1836.
Comini, Alessandra. The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Study in Mythmaking. Santa Fe:
Sunstone Press, 2008.
Conati, Marcello, ed. Encounters with Verdi. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Cooper, Jeffrey. The Rise of Instrumental Music and Concert Series in Paris, 1828–1871, Studies in
Musicology, edited by George Buelow, no. 65. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983.
Correspondance d’Eugène Scribe et de Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, edited by Herbert Schneider.
Sprimont: Editions Mardaga, 1998.
Correspondence of Franz Liszt and the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult. Translated by Michael Short.
Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2013.
Courcy, G.I.C. de. Paganini, the Genoese II. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press,
1957.
Cvejić, Žarko. The Virtuoso as Subject: The Reception of Instrumental Virtuosity, c. 1815–c. 1850.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016.
Dantan jeune: caricatures et portraits de la société romantique, exhibition catalog edited by
Philippe Sorel. Paris: Musée Carnavalet, 1989.
Davies, James Q. Romantic Anatomies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.
Davison, Alan. “High-Art Music and Low-Brow Types: Physiognomy and Nineteenth-Century
Music Iconography.” Context 17 (Winter 1999): 5–19.
——. “Liszt and the Physiognomic Ideal in the Nineteenth Century.” Music in Art 30, no. 1/2
(Spring–Fall 2005): 133–44.
——. “The Musician in Iconography from the 1830s and 1840s.” Music in Art 28, no. 1/2 (Spring–
Fall 2003): 147–62.
——. “Studies in the Iconography of Franz Liszt.” PhD diss., University of Melbourne, 2001.
Deldevez, Édouard Marie Ernest. L’art du chef d’orchestre. Paris: Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1878.
Demuth, Norman. César Franck. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.
DeNora, Tia. Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792–1803.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995.
313
The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, Volume 1: 1791–1839, edited and translated by Robert Ignatius
Letellier. London: Associated University Presses, 1999.
Dictionnaires d’autrefois: Dictionnaires des 17ème, 18ème, 19ème et 20ème siècles. Accessed 15
March 2018. http://portail.atilf.fr/cgi-bin/dico1look.pl?strippedhw=conversation.
Duprez, Gilbert. Souvenirs d’un chanteur. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1880.
Eddie, William Alexander. Charles Valentin Alkan: His Life and His Music. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2007.
Eigeldinger, Jean-Jacques. Chopin âme des salons parisiens, 1830–1848. Paris: Fayard, 2013.
——. Chopin vu par ses élèves. Paris: Fayard, 2006.
——. “Documents inconnus concernant le premier concert de Chopin à Paris (25 février
1832).” Revue de Musicologie 94, no. 2 (2008): 575–84.
Ellis, Alfred. Phrenology and Musical Talent, or The Phrenological and Physiological Qualifications
Necessary to Make a Successful Vocalist or Instrumentalist. Blackpool: “Human Nature”
Office, 1896.
Ellis, Katharine. Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century France: La Revue et Gazette musicale de
Paris, 1834–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Elwart, Antoine. Histoire de la Société des concerts du Conservatoire impérial de musique. Paris: S.
Castel, 1860.
Encyclopédie pittoresque de la musique, vol. 1, edited by Adolphe Ledhey and Henri Bertini. Paris:
Delloye: 1835.
“Erard: register de fabrication - Années 1830 à 1839 - N° inv. E.2009.5.45,” 14 Mai 1835 [Element
32 of 145]. Musée de la Musique: Archives en Ligne. Accessed 17 July 2018.
http://archivesmusee.citedelamusique.fr/exploitation/Infodoc/digitalcollections/viewe
rpopup.aspx?seid=E_2009_5_45_P0001.
Everist, Mark. “Introduction: Trading in the Unthinkable.” In Perspectives on the French Musical
Press in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Mark Everist. Lucca Centro Studi Opera
Omnia Luigi Boccherini (MCN Studies, 1), x–xiii. Accessed 15 July 15, 2018.
https://www.music-criticism.com/trading-in-the-unthinkable/.
——. Mozart’s Ghosts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
——. “Review: The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer, iv: 1857–1864 by Robert Ignatius Letellier.”
Music & Letters 88, no. 1 (February 2007): 148–51.
Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, et lithographie des artistes
vivants exposés au Musée royal le 15 mars 1843. Paris: Vichon, fils et successeur de Mme
Vc Ballard, imprimeur des musées royaux, 1843.
Fairleigh, James P. “Lully as ‘Secrétaire du Roi.’” Bach 15, no. 4 (October 1984): 16–22.
314
Faris, Alexander. Jacques Offenbach. London: Faber and Faber, 1980.
Faul, Michel. Louis Jullien: musique, spectacle et folie au XIXe siècle. Biarritz, Paris: Atlantica-
Séguier, 2006.
Fauquet, Joël-Marie. “La Musique de chambre à Paris dans les années 1830s.” In Music in Paris
in the 1830s, edited by Peter Bloom, 299–326. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1987.
Fayol, Amédée. La Vie et l’œuvre d’Orfila. Paris: Albin Michel, 1930.
Ferguson, Niall. The House of Rothschild: Money’s Prophets, 1798–1848. New York: Penguin
Books, 1999. iBook edition.
FitzLyon, April. The Price of Genius: The Life of Pauline Viardot. London: John Calder, 1964.
Florin, Benoît. La Princesse de Vaudemont (1762–1833): La grande amie de Talleyrand. Aix en
Provence: Editions mémoire & documents, 2012.
“Flotow, Friedrich Ferdinand Adolf von.” Encyclopædia Britannica 10, 11th ed., edited by
Chisholm Hugh. Cambridge University Press, 1911.
François-Sappey, Brigitte. Clara Schumann: ou l’œuvre et l’amour d’une femme. Drize: Papillon,
2001.
Frederickson, Jon, and James F. Rooney. “How the Music Occupation Failed to Become a
Profession.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 21, no. 2
(December 1990): 189–206.
Fryderyk Chopin Various Compositions: Performance Commentary, Source Commentary and
Fryderyk Chopin Waltzes, Published Posthumously: Performance Commentary, Source
Commentary. In the series National Edition, Series B, Vol. III, edited by Jan Ekier and
Paweł Kamiński. Kraków: Polskie wydawnictwo muzyczne, 1967.
Gabet, Charles. Dictionnaire des artistes de l'école française au XIXe siècle: Peinture, sculpture,
architecture, gravure, dessin, lithographie et composition musicale. Paris: Madame Vergne,
1831.
Galignani and Co., A. and W. Galignani's New Paris Guide, 13th edition. Paris: E. Brière, 1842.
Galignani's New Paris Guide. Paris: A. and W. Galignani and Co., 1837.
Gall, Franz Joseph, and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux
en général et du cerveau en particulier, avec des observations sur la possibilité de reconnaître
plusieurs dispositions intellectuelles et morales de l’homme et des animaux par la configuration
de leurs têtes. Paris: Librairie grecque-latine-allemande, 1810–1819.
Gänzl, Kurt. Victorian Vocalists. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Gay, Sophie. Salons célèbres. Paris: Michel-Lévy frères, 1837.
315
Geoffroy-Schwinden, Rebecca Dowd. “Politics, the French Revolution, and Performance:
Parisian Musicians as an Emergent Professional Class, 1749–1802.” PhD diss., Duke
University, 2015.
Gerando, M. le Baron de. Lettres inédites et souvenirs biographiques de Mme Récamier et de Mme de
Stael. Paris: Ve Jules Renouard, 1868.
Gluck, Mary. Popular Bohemia: Modernism and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Goldstein, Jan. The Post-Revolutionary Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
Gooley, Dana. “The Battle against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century.”
In Franz Liszt and His World, edited by Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley, 75–111.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
——. “From the Top: Liszt’s Aristocratic Airs.” In Constructing Charisma: Celebrity, Fame, and
Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by Edward Berenson and Eva Giloi, 69–85.
New York & Oxford: Bergham Books, 2010.
——. “La Commedia del Violino: Paganini's Comic Strains.” Musical Quarterly 88, no. 3
(Autumn 2005): 370–427.
——. The Virtuoso Liszt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Goulden, Sir John. Michael Costa: England’s First Conductor: The Revolution in Musical
Performance in England, 1830–1880. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015.
Gramit, David. “Selling the Serious: The Commodification of Music and Resistance to It in
Germany, circa 1800.” In The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans,
and Idealists, edited by William Weber, 81–103. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2004.
Grétry, André-Ernest-Modeste. De la vérité: Ce que nous fumes, ce que nous sommes, ce que nous
devrions être. Paris: Charles Pougens, 1801.
Griffiths, Mark D. “Having an Art Attack: A Brief Look at Stendhal Syndrome.” Psychology
Today, March 10, 2014. Accessed 14 November 2016.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201403/having-art-attack.
Hahn, H. Hazel. Scenes of Parisian Modernity: Culture and Consumption in the Nineteenth Century.
New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.
——. “Street Picturesque: Advertising in Paris, 1830–1914.” PhD diss., University of California,
Berkeley, 1997.
Haine, Malou. 400 lettres de musiciens au Musée royal de Mariemont. Liège: Editions Mardaga,
1995.
——. “Musicien, mécène et imprésario: Les concerts du violoncelliste Adrien-François Servais
et leur promotion par Jules Lardin.” In Le Concert et son public: Mutations de la vie
316
musicale en Europe de 1780 à 1914 (France, Allemagne, Angleterre), edited by Hans Erich
Bödeker, Patrice Veit, and Michael Werner, 93–117. Paris: Editions de la Maison des
sciences de l’homme, 2002. Accessed 23 May 2018.
http://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/6763.
——. “La Participation des facteurs d’instruments de musique aux expositions nationales de
1834 et 1839.” In Music in Paris in the 1830s, edited by Peter Bloom, 365–86. Stuyvesant,
NY: Pendragon Press, 1987.
Hallé, Charles. Life and Letters of Charles Hallé, edited by C. E. and Marie Hallé. London: Smith,
Elder, 1896.
Hamburger, Klára. Liszt. Budapest: Gondolat, 1980.
Haraszti, Emile. “Franz Liszt—Author Despite Himself: The History of a Mystification.”
Translated by John A. Gutman. The Musical Quarterly 33, no. 4 (October 1947): 490–516.
Harley, Maria Anna, Susan Marie Praeder, and Louis Pomey. “Chopin and Women
Composers: Collaborations, Imitations, Inspirations.” The Polish Review 45, no. 1 (2000):
29–50.
Haugen, Einar, and Camilla Cai. Ole Bull: Norway’s Romantic Musician and Cosmopolitan Patriot.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
Heron-Allen, Edward. A Contribution towards an Accurate Biography of Charles Auguste de Beriot
and Maria Malibran: Extracted from the Correspondence of the Former. Kensington: J. W.
Wakeham, 1894.
Himelfarb, Constance. “Un Salon de la Nouvelle-Athènes en 1839–1840: L’album musical
inconnu de Juliette Zimmerman.” Revue de Musicologie 87, no. 1 (2001): 33–65.
Hoffman, E. T. A. “Beethoven’s Instrumental Music.” In E. T. A. Hoffmann's Musical
Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the Composer, Music Criticism, edited by David
Charlton. Translated by Martyn Clarke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Holoman, D. Kern. Berlioz. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.
——. “The Emergence of the Orchestral Conductor in Paris in the 1830s.” In Music in Paris in
the Eighteen-Thirties, edited by Peter Bloom, 374–430. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press,
1987.
——. The Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, 1828–1967. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004.
Hopkinson, Cecil. A Dictionary of Parisian Music Publishers: 1700–1950. New York: Da Capo
Press, 1977.
Houssaye, Arsène. Les Confessions: Souvenirs d’un demi-siècle, vol. 2. Paris: Dentu, 1885.
——. “Trois pages de la vie de Vallia.” In Les Douze nouvelles nouvelles, 75–96. Paris: E. Dentu,
1884.
317
Howard, Vernon Alfred. Charm and Speed: Virtuosity in the Performing Arts. New York: Peter
Lang, 2008.
Huart, Louis. Bibliothèque pour rire: Le Bal Musard; 60 vignettes par Cham. Paris: Aubert, 1850.
Huebner, Steven. “Discourses around the Classic,” conference paper. Francophone Music
Criticism, 1789–1914. Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, 10 July 2017.
Huneker, James. Chopin: The Man and His Music. Auckland: The Floating Press, 2009.
——. Franz Liszt. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1911.
Hunter, Mary. “‘To Play as if from the Soul of the Composer’: The Idea of the Performer in
Early Romantic Aesthetics.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 58, no. 2
(Summer 2005): 357–98.
Hurd, Michael. “Patronage.” The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press. Accessed 3 June 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Indy, Vincent d’. César Frank. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1906.
Jakobowicz, Nathalie. “Les pratiques d’affichage dans l’espace public à Paris en 1830.” Revue
d’histoire du XIXe siècle 39 (2009): 17–36. Accessed 27 April 2018.
http://journals.openedition.org/rh19/3912.
Jaubert, Caroline. Souvenirs de Madame C. Jaubert, lettres et correspondances: Berryer, 1847 et 1848,
Alfred de Musset, Pierre Lanfrey, Henri Heine, 5th ed. Paris: J. Hetzel & Cie., 1881.
Jenson, Joli. “On Fandom, Celebrity, and Mediation.” In Afterlife as Afterimage: Understanding
Posthumous Fame, edited Steve Jones and Joli Jensen, xv–xxiii. New York: Peter Lang,
2005.
Jerold, Beverly. “Fontenelle’s Famous Question and Performance Standards of the Day.”
College Music Symposium 43 (2003): 150–60.
Johnson, James H. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1995.
Kale, Steven D. French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the
Revolution of 1848. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
——. “Women, Salons, and the State in the Aftermath of the French Revolution.” Journal of
Women’s History 13, no. 4 (Winter 2002): 54–80.
——. “Women’s Intellectual Agency in the History of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century
French Salons.” In Political Ideas of Enlightenment Women, edited by Lisa Curtis-
Wendlandt, Paul Gibbard, Karen Green, 123–38. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013.
Kawabata, Mai. Paganini: The “Demonic” Virtuoso. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013.
Kendall, Alan. Paganini: A Biography. London: Chappell and Company, 1982.
318
Knieff, Nancy Jane Shumate. “The Parisian Salon of the Second Empire: A French Cultural
Institution in Historical Perspective.” PhD diss., University of Texas, 1982.
Knittel, K. M. “Pilgrimages to Beethoven: Reminiscences by His Contemporaries.” Music &
Letters 84, no. 1 (Feb. 2003): 19–54.
Koehler, Elisa. Fanfares and Finesse: A Performer’s Guide to Trumpet History and Literature.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014.
Kracauer, Siegfried. Orpheus in Paris: Offenbach and the Paris of His Time. Translated by
Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938.
Kroll, Mark. Ignaz Moscheles and the Changing World of Musical Europe. Woodbridge: Boydell
Press, 2014.
Labat, Jean-Baptiste. “Zimmermann et l’école française de piano.” Montauban: impr. de
Forestié neveu, 1865.
La Gorce, Jérôme de. “Lully.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.
Accessed 12 September 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Lara, Réné. “Le Cinquantenaire du premiere concert du Saint-Saëns.” Le Figaro (2 June 1896):
3–4.
Larousse, Pierre. Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. Paris: Administration du Grand
dictionnaire universel, 1866.
——. Nouveau dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris: P. Larousse & Cie, 1886.
Lehmann, Rudolf. An Artist’s Reminiscence. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1894.
Lenormant, Amélie. Souvenirs et correspondance tirés des papiers de Mme Récamier, tome prémier.
Paris: Michel-Lévy frères, 1859.
Leppard, Raymond. “Music and the Conductor.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 121, no. 5207
(October 1973): 707–16.
Lerner, Jillian Taylor. “Panoramic Literature: Marketing Illustrated Journalism in July
Monarchy Paris.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2006.
Le Senne, Emile. “Le Salon de la princesse Belgiojoso.” Bulletin de la Société historique et
archéologique des VIIIe et XVIIe arrondissements de Paris 9 (January–June 1907): 56–72.
Les Rothschild en France au XIXe siècle, press pack. Bibliothèque nationale de Paris. Accessed 15
November 2017. http://www.bnf.fr/documents/dp_rothschild_eng.pdf.
Letellier, Robert Ignatius. Meyerbeer Studies. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 2005.
Letters of Mozart and His Family, The, vol. 3, edited and translated by Emily Anderson. London:
MacMillan and Co., 1938.
319
Leung-Wolf, Elaine. “Women, Music, and the Salon Tradition: Its Cultural and Historical
Significance in Parisian Musical Society.” DMA thesis, The Juilliard School, 1996.
Levin, Alicia Cannon. “Seducing Paris: Piano Virtuosos and Artistic Identity, 1820–48.” PhD
diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009.
Levine, Laurence. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Lewis, Joseph. What Killed the Great and Not So Great Composers. Bloomington, IN:
AuthorHouse, 2010.
Lilti, Antoine. Figures publiques: L’invention de la célébrité, 1750–1850. Fayard, 2014.
——. The Invention of Celebrity. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017.
Liszt: Centre national de la recherche scientifique. Accessed 30 April 2018.
http://www.liszt.cnrs.fr/concert/listyears.
Liszt, Franz. An Artist’s Journey: Lettres d’un bachelier ès musique, 1835–1841. Translated by
Charles Sutton. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
——. Letters from Liszt: Volume 1 Paris to Rome. Translated by La Mara (Marie Lipsius). New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894.
——. Selected Letters, edited and translated by Adrian Williams. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1998.
Litzmann, Berthold. Clara Schumann: An Artist’s Life: Based on Material Found in Diaries and
Letters, vol. 1. Translated by Grace E. Hadow. New York: Da Capo Press, 1979.
Locke, Ralph P. “Liszt on the Artist in Society.” In Franz Liszt and His World, edited by
Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley, 291–302. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2006.
Loesser, Arthur. Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1954.
Manning, Céline Frigau. “Phrenologizing Opera Singers: The Scientific “Proofs of Musical
Genius.” 19
th
-Century Music 39, no. 2 (2015): 125–41.
Marix-Spire, Thérèse. Les romantiques et la musique: le cas George Sand, 1804–1838, Volume 1.
Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1954.
Marmontel, Antoine. Les pianistes célèbres. Silhouettes et médaillons. Paris: A. Chaix et Cie., 1878.
Martens, Frederick H., O. G. Sonneck, and Heinrich Heine, “Heinrich Heine’s Musical
Feuilletons [Continued],” The Musical Quarterly 8, no. 2 (April 1922): 272–95.
Martinet, André. Offenbach, sa vie et son œuvre. Paris: Dentu, 1887.
Martin-Fugier, Anne. La vie élégante ou la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815–1848. Paris: Fayard, 1990.
320
Mason, Meagan. “Paganini’s Body and Projection of Genius.” Porte Akademik Müzik ve Dans
Araştırmaları Dergisi/Journal of Music and Dance Studies 12 (Autumn 2015): 63–71.
Mathieson, Holly. “Embodying Music: The Visuality of Three Iconic Conductors in London,
1840–1930.” PhD diss., University of Otago, 2010.
“Mathieu-Joseph-Bonaventure Orfila (Mateu-Josep-Bonaventura Orfila i Rotger).” Portraits de
Médecins. Accessed 15 March 2018.
http://medarus.org/Medecins/MedecinsTextes/orfila.html.
McVeigh, Simon. “The Benefit Concert in Nineteenth-Century London: From ‘Tax on the
Nobility’ to ‘Monstrous Nuisance.’” In Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies 1, edited
by Bennett Zon, 242–66. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999.
——. Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993.
Meredith, William. “The Official Report on the First Exhumation of the Graves of Beethoven
and Schubert by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1863: An English Translation.”
Translated by Hannah Liebmann. The Beethoven Journal 20, no. 1/2 (Summer 2005): 47–
55.
Metzner, Paul. Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age
of Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Michałowski, Kornel, and Jim Samson. “Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek.” Grove Music Online.
Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 5 December 2017.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Michéa, Claude-François. Galerie des célébrités contemporaines. Paris: Moquet, 1852.
Mitchell, B. R. European Historical Statistics, 1750–1970. London: MacMillan Press, 1975.
Morrisson, Christian, and Wayne Snyder. “The Income Inequality of France in Historical
Perspective.” European Review of Economic History, 4, no. 1 (April 2000): 59–83.
Moscheles, Charlotte. Life of Moscheles, with Selections from His Diaries and Correspondence.
London: Hurst and Blackett, 1873.
Musard, Philippe. Le Bal masque: Quadrille Populaire. Paris: J. Meissonnier, 1843.
Musset, Paul de. Voyage pittoresque en Italie: Partie septentrionale. Paris: Belin-Leprieur et
Morizot, 1855.
Nanteuil, Célestin. Les Mystères de Paris: orchestré par Fessy pour les concerts Vivienne / quadrille
sur des motifs originaux par Melle Loïsa Puget, 1842. Bibliothèque nationale de France,
département Estampes et photographie, FOL-DC-290 (2). Accessed 12 July 2018.
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84512258/f1.item.zoom.
Noack, Lilian, and Dieter Noack. “The Cost of Living in Daumier’s Time.” H. Daumier: His
Life and Work. Updated 30 June 2016. http://www.daumier.org/176.0.html.
321
Orfila, Mathieu-Joseph-Bonaventure. Don d’une somme de 121,000 francs fait à divers
établissements publics, en 1853. Paris: Impr. de Rignoux, 1853.
Osborne, Richard. Rossini: His Life and Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Pajot, Charles. Célébrités médicales et chirurgicales contemporaines, par un docteur inconnu. Paris:
Desloges, 1841.
Pekacz, Jolanta. “Chopin and the Discourse on Salons.” In Chopin in Paris: The 1830s, edited by
Artur Szklener, John Comber, and Magdalena Chylińska, 299–314. Warsaw: Narodowy
Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, 2007.
——. “Chopin and the Parisian Salons.” In Chopin’s Musical Worlds: The 1840s, edited by
Magdalena Chylińska, John Comber, Artur Szklener. Translated by John Comber, 39–
53. Warsaw: National Frederic Chopin Institute, 2007 (sic for 2008).
Pellier, Henri. Bon écolier et grand savant. Paris: Larousse, 1937.
“Persons Related to Chopin,” Fryderyk Chopin Institute, accessed 15 March 2018,
http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/persons/detail/id/6320.
Piatigorsky, Gregor. Cellist. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976.
Place, Charles. De l'Art dramatique au point de vue de la' phrénologie, appréciation de M. Kemble, de
Mmes Adélaïde et Fanny Kemble, tragédiens anglais, sur les bustes de M. Dantan jeune [...] lue
à la séance annuelle de cette société le 18 décembre 1842. Batignolles: Hennuyer et Turpin,
1843.
——. Essai sur la composition musicale: biographie et analyse phrénologique de Cherubini avec notes
et plan cranioscopique. Paris: Les principaux libraires et éditeurs de musique, 1842.
Pocknell, Pauline. “Le Liszt des phrènologues: ou Liszt, Castle, la Comptesse et la Princesse.”
Ostinato rigore: Revue internationale d’études musicales 18 (2002): 169–83.
Pougin, Arthur. Dictionnaire historique et pittoresque du théatre et des arts qui s’y rattachent. Paris:
Firmin-Didot, 1885.
Poupin, Théodore. Esquisses phrénologiques et physiognomoniques des contemporains les plus
célèbres, selon les systèmes de Gall, Spurzheim, Lavater, etc., avec des remarques
bibliographiques, historiques, physiologiques et littéraires... Paris: Librairie médicale de
Trinquart, 1836.
Prod’homme, Jacques-Gabriel. Paganini. Paris: H. Laurens, 1927.
Pulver, Jeffrey. Paganini: The Romantic Virtuoso. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.
Quetin, Laurine. “Michel Paul Guy de Chabanon, ‘Quelques circonstances de ma vie.’” Revue
Musicorum 19 (2017): 15–58.
Reynaud, Cécile. “Berlioz, Liszt, and the Question of Virtuosity.” In Berlioz: Past, Present, Future,
edited by Peter Bloom, 105–22. Rochester, NY: Rochester Press, 2002.
322
——. “Chopin et les salons parisiens.” Revue de la BnF 1, no. 34 (2010): 25–32. Accessed 26 May
2018. https://www.cairn.info/revue-de-la-bibliotheque-nationale-de-france-2010-1-
page-25.htm.
——. “Présentation—Misère et accomplissement de l’art dans la virtuosité romantique.”
Romanticisme 2, no. 128 (2005): 3–17. Accessed 11 August 2018.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-romantisme-2005-2-page-3.htm.
Rivers, Christopher. Face Value: Physiognomical Thought and the Legible Body in Marivaux,
Lavater, Balzac, Gautier, and Zola. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.
Rivière, Jules Prudence. My Musical Life and Recollections. London: Sampson, Low, Marston &
Company, 1893.
Roach, Joseph. It. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.
Robinson, Philip E. J., and Elizabeth Forbes. “Lablache, Luigi.” Grove Music Online. Oxford
Music Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 19 March 2018.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Rohr, Deborah. The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850: A Profession of Artisans. Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
Rothschild Archive. Accessed 15 March 2018. https://www.rothschildarchive.org.
Rothschild, Baronne Willy de. 30 Melodies, pour chant et piano. Paris: Durand, Schoenwerk &
Cie., 1878. Accessed 10 August 2018.
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8569356/f11.image.
Rothschild, Charlotte de. “The Musical Associations of the Rothschild Family.” In The
Rothschilds: Essays on the History of a European Family, edited by Georg Heuberger, 287–
96. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1994.
Rothschild, Nathaniel de. Quatre pièces pour piano. Paris: J. Maho, 1860. Accessed 10 August
2018. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8582393/f1.image.
——. Deux Pièces pour Piano & Violoncelle par la Baronne Nathaniel de Rothschild. Paris: J. Maho,
c. 1872. Accessed 10 August 2018. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3119099.image.
Saffle, Michael. Liszt in Germany, 1840–1845: A Study in Sources, Documents, and the History of
Reception. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1994.
Sala, George Augustus. Twice Round the Clock, or The Hours of the Day and Night in London.
London: Richard Marsh, 1862.
Salmen, Walter. “Social Obligations of the Emancipated Musician in the 19th Century.” In The
Social Status of the Professional Musician from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century, edited
by Walter Salmen, Herbert Kaufman, and Barbara Reisner, 265–81. New York:
Pendragon Press, 1983.
323
Salmi, Hannu. “Viral Virtuosity and the Itineraries of Celebrity Culture.” In Travelling Notions
of Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe, edited by H. Salmi, A. Nivala, and J.
Sarjala, 135–53. Routledge, New York 2016.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296596933.
Samson, Jim. “Chopin, Past and Present.” Early Music 29, no. 3 (August 2001): 381–88.
——. “Romanticism.” Grove Music Online (2001). Accessed 20 August 2018.
——. Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Sand, George. Histoire de ma vie, 10 vols. Paris: Michel Lévy, 1856.
Schnapper, Laure. Henri Herz, magnat du piano: La vie musicale en France au XIXe siècle (1815–
1870). Paris: EHESS Editions, 2011.
Schoenfeld, Myron. “Nicolo [sic] Paganini: Musical Magician or Marfan Mutant?” The Journal
of the American Medical Association 239, no. 1 (1978): 40–42.
Schonberg, Harold. The Great Conductors. London: Victor Gollancz, 1973.
Schottky, Maximilian Julius. Paganini's Leben und Treiben als Künstler und als Mensch, mit
unpartheiischer Berücksichtigung der Meinungen seiner Anhänger und Gegner. Prague: J. G.
Calve, 1830.
Sennett, Richard. Fall of Public Man. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Sheppard, Leslie, and Herbert Axelrod. Paganini. Neptune City, NJ: Paganiniana Press, Inc.
1979.
Schor, Laura S. The Life and Legacy of Baroness Betty de Rothschild. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
Slonimsky, Nicholas. Slonimsky’s Book of Musical Anecdotes. Abingdon, UK, and New York:
Routledge, 2014.
Smart, Mary Ann. “Parlor Games: Italian Music and Italian Politics in the Parisian Salon.”
19th-Century Music 34, no. 1 (Summer 2010): 39–60.
Smith, Ronald. Alkan: Volume One: The Enigma. New York: Crescendo Publishing, 1977.
Somfai, László. Joseph Haydn: His Life in Contemporary Pictures. London: Faber and Faber, 1969.
Southon, Nicolas. “L’émergence de la figure du chef d’orchestre et ses composantes socio-
artistiques: François-Antoine Habeneck [1781–1849]: La naissance du professionnalisme
musical.” PhD diss., Université François-Rabelais de Tours, 2008.
Sperati, Giorgio, and Dino Felisati. “Nicolò Paganini (1782–1840).” Acta Otorhinolaryngologica
Italica 25, no. 2 (2005): 125–28. Accessed 21 July 2015.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2639882/.
324
Spitzer, et al. “Conducting.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.
Accessed 12 March 2015. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
——. “The Entrepreneur–Conductors and Their Orchestras.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review
5, no. 1 (June 2008): 3–24.
Suvini-Hand, Vivienne. “‘It isn’t he!’: Ingres’s Paganini and Delacroix’s Parody.” Journal of
Romance Studies 11, no. 2 (September 2011): 35–59.
Staum, Martin S. Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race, and Empire, 1815–1848.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
Stendhal, Life of Rossini. Translated by Richard N. Coe. New York: Criterion Books, 1957),
iBooks edition.
Strachan, John. Advertising and Satirical Culture in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007.
Strakosch, Maurice. Souvenirs d’un impresario. Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1887.
Strandberg, Kristen. “Art or Artifice?: Violin Virtuosity and Aesthetics in Parisian Criticism,
1831–1848.” PhD diss., Indiana University, 2014.
——. “Napoleonic Narrative and Visual Media in Paganini’s Spectacle for Paris.” Journal of
Musicological Research 35, no. 4 (2016): 324–49.
Streletski, Gérard, et al., “Musard, Philippe.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press. Accessed 1 February 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Studd, Stephen. Saint-Saëns: A Critical Biography. London: Cygnus Arts, 1999.
Szulc, Tad. Chopin in Paris: The Life and Times of the Romantic Composer. New York: Da Capo
Press, 2000.
Thomas, Theodore. Theodore Thomas: A Musical Autobiography, Vol. I, Life Work, edited by
George Upton. Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1905.
Thornton, Sara. Advertising, Subjectivity and the Nineteenth-Century Novel: Dickens, Balzac and
the Language of the Walls. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.
Tick, Judith, et al. “Women in Music, §II: Western classical traditions in Europe & the
USA.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 31
January 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Timbs, John. Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts. London: Kent and
Co., 1860.
Tomaszewski, Mieczysław. Fryderyk Chopin: A Diary in Images. Translated by Rosemary Hunt.
Warsaw: Arkady/Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1990.
Triaire, Paul. Récamier et ses contemporains, 1774–1852, étude d’histoire de la médecine aux XVIIIe et
XIXe siècles. Paris: J.-B. Baillière et fils, 1899.
325
Trippett, David. “Exercising Musical Minds: Phrenology and Music Pedagogy in London circa
1830.” 19
th
-Century Music 39, no. 2 (2015): 99–124.
Tytler, Graeme. “Character Description and Physiognomy in the European Novel (1800–1860)
in Relation to J. C. Lavater’s Physionogmische Fragmente.” PhD diss., University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1970.
——. Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces and Fortunes. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1982.
Vazsonyi, Nicholas. “Beethoven Instrumentalized: Richard Wagner’s Self-Marketing and
Media Image.” Music & Letters 89, no. 2 (May 2008): 195–211.
Viner, Mark. Liszt Opera Fantasies: Lucrezia Borgia, Norma, Hexaméron. Piano Classics #PCL
0106. Accessed 22 October 2017. https://issuu.com/klassiek.nl/docs/liszt-viner-booklet-
low_res.
Výborný, Zdeněk. “The Real Paganini.” Music and Letters 42, no. 4 (1961): 348–63.
Wagner, Richard. My Life, vol. 1. Authorized translation. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company, 1911.
——. My Life, edited by Mary Whittal. Translated by Andrew Gray. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983.
——. Paris and Dresden: Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, vol. 7. Translated by William Ashton
Ellis. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1898.
Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983, iBook version.
——. Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811–1848. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Walker, Michael. “Something Borrowed: Eighteenth-Century Concert Culture Reimagined.”
DM thesis, Indiana University, 2015.
Walton, Benjamin. “The First Biography: Joseph d’Ortigue on Franz Liszt at Age Twenty-
Three.” In Franz Liszt and His World, edited by Christopher Gibbs and Dana Gooley,
303–34. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Waterfield, Robin. Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis. New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003.
Watson, Hewett C. Statistics of Phrenology: Being a Sketch of the Progress and Present State of that
Science in the British Islands. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and
Longman, 1836.
Weber, William. “Mass Culture and European Musical Taste, 1770–1870.” International Review
of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 25, no. 1/2 (June–December 1994): 175–90.
—— Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris, and Vienna.
London: Biddles Ltd., 1975.
326
——. Music and the Middle Class: The Social Structure of Concert Life in London, Paris and Vienna
between 1830 and 1848. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.
——. “The Musician as Entrepreneur and Opportunist, 1700–1914.” In The Musician as
Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, edited by William Weber, 3–
24. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
——. “Recital.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 22
April 2017. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.
Wechsler, Judith. A Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris. Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Weinstock, Herbert. Rossini: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.
Weitz, Shaena. “Henri Herz and the Gazette musicale: On Propaganda and the ‘Truthiness’ of
Deceit,” conference paper. France: Musiques et Cultures. Bibliothèque Historique de la
Ville de Paris Paris, 7 July 2018.
Whalen, Meg Freeman. “A Little Republic Filled with Grace: The Nineteenth-Century Music
Salon.” Women of Note Quarterly 3, no. 4 (November 1995): 16–26.
White, Kimberley. “The Cantatrice and the Profession of Singing at the Paris Opéra and
Opéra Comique, 1830–1848.” PhD diss., McGill University, 2012.
——. “Female Singers and the maladie morale in Parisian Lyric Theaters, 1830–1850.” Women
and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 16 (2012): 57–85.
Whiting, Jim. The Life and Times of Johann Sebastian Bach. Hockessin, Delaware: Mitchell Lane
Publishers, 2004.
Williams, Hugh Noel. Madame Récamier and Her Friends. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1906.
Williams, Raymond. “Advertising: The Magic System.” In Problems in Materialism and Culture,
edited by Raymond Williams, 320–36. London: Verso, 1980.
Wright, Craig. The Essential Listening to Music. Boston: Cengage Learning, 2012.
Wyne, John van. “The History of Phrenology on the Web” Updated 2011. Accessed 11 May 2017.
http://www.historyofphrenology.org.uk/organs.html#gall.
Yoon, Monica Chiyoung. “Princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso: Her Passion for Music and
Politics.” DMA diss., University of Washington, 2014.
Zank, Stephen, and Richard Leppert. “The Concert and the Virtuoso.” In Piano Roles: A New
History of the Piano, edited by James Parakilas, 184–223. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002.

327
Nineteenth-century periodicals
Gazette médicale de Paris
Gazette musicale de Paris
The Israelite
Journal de la Société phrénologique de Paris
Journal des artistes
La France musicale
L’Artiste
La Petite Presse
Le Figaro
Le Ménestrel
Le Pianiste
Le Siècle
L’Illustration
L’Indépendant
The Marlborough Express
Miroir de Paris
The Musical World
The Medico-Chirurgical Review
The Phrenological Journal and Magazine of Moral Science
The Phrenological Journal and Miscellany
Revue de Paris
Revue des deux mondes
Revue et gazette musicale de Paris
Revue musicale
Vert-Vert: Journal politique du matin et du soir

Abstract (if available)

Abstract From 1830 to 1848 was the height of the virtuoso craze in Europe, and Paris audiences were particularly consumed with desire for spectacle. The scene was inundated with talent and competition: Liszt, Chopin, Clara Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Paganini, Wagner, Meyerbeer, Berlioz, and others lived or toured in Paris in these years. In the midst of this competition, many musicians wondered how they would make their own way. As a matter of course, virtuoso performances had to be unabashedly showy and executed with scintillating precision. But these musicians also needed to book performance venues and supporting musicians, advertise, and entice press coverage. Methods of gaining publicity ranged from the ordinary—posting concert flyers and selling sheet-music—to the tabloid-worthy—spreading salacious gossip about themselves in newspapers. This dissertation studies techniques of promotion musicians used in this setting. ❧ Scholars have already studied the public personas of such musicians as Liszt, Paganini, and other violinists and pianists, but a survey of self-promotion practices among performing musicians in Paris remained to be written. By using press, correspondence, memoirs, fiction, and iconography, I address executant musicians’ advertising in the public media, their promotion through salons, their harnessing of the popular pseudo-medical trends of phrenology and physiognomy to influence public opinion, and the ways in which conductors took on characteristics of the “new virtuoso.”

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Asset Metadata

Creator Mason, Margaret (Meagan) (author)

Core Title Music business and image promotion among virtuosos in Paris, 1830–1848

School Thornton School of Music

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Music (Historical Musicology)

Publication Date 10/23/2020

Defense Date 12/10/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 1830–1848,advertisements,Berlioz,Chopin,class,Composers,Habeneck,image promotion,July Monarchy,Liszt,Louis-Antoine Jullien,Marketing,Music,music business,Musicians,newspapers,nineteenth century,OAI-PMH Harvest,Paganini,Paris,Philippe Musard,posters,Romantic,Salons,soloists,virtuoso,virtuosos,Wagner

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Brown, Bruce Alan (committee chair), Morrison, Leah (committee member), Vest, Lisa Cooper (committee member)

Creator Email masonm@usc.edu,meaganmason@me.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-90254

Unique identifier UC11676653

Identifier etd-MasonMarga-6904.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-90254 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-MasonMarga-6904.pdf

Dmrecord 90254

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Mason, Margaret (Meagan)

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA