Between critic and public. Listening to the musical work in Stockholm during the long 19th century

‘The audience, yes—who is it and where can it be found?’ With these words Albert Rubenson, composer and music critic in Stockholm, draws attention to a much neglected part of 19^th century music life in Sweden. Writing for the periodical Ny tidning för musik in the summer of 1857, Rubenson paints a rather dull picture. Except for the friends of friends of the concert arranger, the audience is limited to, ‘a few young idlers, one or other real friend of music … and half a dozen critics, who believe themselves be better off as critics if they have heard the music beforehand’ (Rubenson, 1857, p. 218).[1] One might think the writer is promoting a naïve first-time experience of music, but reading further the text rather suggests the impact on Rubenson by Eduard Hanslick’s treatise Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, whichhad been published just a few years earlier. However Rubenson’s main issue was not primarily to educate the listener, but to elevate the status and quality of the Swedish composers, above the embarrassing level of the dilettante.[2] The chief task of the critic, therefore, was to aid the composer and mark a distinction between the amateur and the professional (see Reese Willén, 2014). Nevertheless, without the reports of the professional critic, so Rubenson seems to say, the audience is lost to ignorance and lewd enjoyment in its encounter with the music.

A perhaps more elaborated concern with the audience can be seen in an article in Stockholms musik-tidning, written by Rubenson’s colleague Per Conrad Boman. Boman wisely compliments the Stockholm audience for applauding Gluck’s Armide despite a poor performance, whereas Bellini’s La straniera had left the audience indifferent despite a strong input by the world-famous soprano Jenny Lind. Boman takes this as a sign of the audience’s appreciation of the music ‘itself’, though he warns against what he sees as a deplorable tendency to the opposite, namely a praising of the performance, the sensuous spectacle and the performer, at the cost of the musical work (Lind’s contribution was, after all, applauded, see Boman, 1843).

Boman’s article was published in 1843, and though his references are to operatic, rather than instrumental works, he seems to share with Rubenson an interest in the musical work ‘itself’, as distinct from its performance (however it should be noted that Hanslick’s treatise wasn’t published until 1854, which is eleven years after Boman’s article). It is therefore of particular interest to see that these two writers also connect the issue of the work with that of the audience. Even so, the listener was not an entirely new topic in mid-century Sweden. Complaints on the sensationalism of the listeners were aired in a missive to the (then fifteen-year old) Royal Swedish Academy of Music already in 1786 (see Jonsson, 1993, pp. 400f.). And in 1821 the journal Läsning i musikaliska ämnen had published a Swedish translation of Friedrich Rochlitz’ article on the differences in judgement about musical artworks (Verschiedenheit der Urtheile über Werke der Tonkunst). Rochlitz’ article, originally published in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung in 1799, takes for granted the customary distinction between Kenner and Liebhaber, and recasts it into four new categories: the vain listener, the one who listens with understanding only, the one who listens with his ear rather than with his brain, and finally the listener who listens with his entire soul (diejenigen, welche mit ganzer Seele hören).[3]

Rochlitz’ imported article notwithstanding, it takes almost half a century for the listener to become an issue in Sweden.[4] And when the listener eventually becomes one, it is in its collective sense, as an audience, a mass to be cultivated,[5] rather than as a plurality of individual listeners, Kenners or Liebhabers. Does this mean that the Swedish audience was less educated than its continental counterparts? Maybe even a bit backward? In one sense it was undoubtedly less educated, since the main body of knowledge that constituted the content of education, or Bildung, during the 19^th century was of German origin and arrived in Sweden with a delay. However, accusations of being backward was more or less common gunfire from Bildungs-promoters such as Rubenson and Boman, and served as much to mark the latter off as superior voices in the local debate (a tactic used against composers too, as we shall see).[6] In other words, the differences between Sweden and central Europe when it comes to the listening audience may not have been as overwhelming as they might seem at first glance. Perhaps the Swedish case may even add some light on less advanced portions of the continental audiences, which have hitherto gained proportionally little interest in the writing of Western music history.

Questions about the level of musical education among the audience—and, more specifically, whether this listening involved any awareness of a musical work ‘itself’ (and whatever that may have involved)—can be addressed in some more detail by relating to a claim by Lydia Goehr. Writing about the European situation in general, Goehr states that ‘[m]usicians began to think about music as involving the creation, performance, and reception not just of music per se, but of works as such’ already ‘[a]t the end of the eighteenth century’ (Goehr, 1992, p. v). As she continues, Goehr extends the claim to cover not only musicians, but also ‘persons who thought, spoke about, or produced music’ (ibid., p. 113)—even ‘audiences began to learn how to listen not just to music but to each musical work for its own sake’ (ibid., p. 237). However, Goehr warns that ‘[i]t took many years after the initial building of concert halls before audiences learned how to be quiet and how to listen, assuming that they (generally speaking) ever learned at all’ (ibid.).[7]

Goehr’s latter remark—whether audiences in general ever learned to be quiet and listen to musical works ‘as such’—warrants a redirection of focus, from the educated elite listener to the average concertgoer, and by extension, from the learned centres of continental Europe, to its peripheral (and supposedly more ignorant) north. Nevertheless, to the extent that a ‘reception … of works as such’ can be traceable among lay audiences, it is quite unlikely that such a reception comprised all facets of what Goehr calls the ‘new aesthetic’, that is ‘doctrines of a more or less romantic, formalist and idealist inclination’ (Goehr, 1992, p. 153). Perhaps most obviously, it is unlikely that average audiences in 19^th century Europe listened to formal technicalities to any considerable extent, although many listeners at the beginning of the century were potentially capable of doing so, trained as amateur singers and players as they were (some noblemen and -women also had training in composition).[8] In his book Listening in Paris James Johnson tells us that ‘by the late 1820s descriptions of operatic and instrumental music were pointedly excluding the extramusical’ and that according to the critic François-Joseph Fétis ‘people [now] spoke only of orchestral forms, modulations, stretti, and the like’ (quoted in Johnson, 1995, p. 216). However, reading the passage to which Johnson refers (in the journal Révue Musicale) reveals that Fétis writes about authors of journals, not amateur listeners (Fétis, 1828, pp. 413f.).[9] More telling in this case, one can assume, is Hanslick’s report in the Neue Freie Presse of the Vienna première performance of Brahms’ first symphony on December 17, 1876. The bulk of the review is programmatic, ‘extramusical’, leaving the few technical details to the very end (which are limited to the mentioning of ‘three elements … for which Brahms has a conspicuous predilection: syncopation, suspension, and simultaneous employment of contrasting rhythms and time-signatures’, see Hanslick, 1886, p. 169).[10]

That said, the question I want to ask is how the lay listener made sense of the music heard. More specifically the question is if, and if so by which terms, the Stockholm audience of the 19^th century listened to musical works. Whereas Goehr describes a view according to which individual musical works ‘as such’ exist more or less as Platonic entities,[11] this need not be the only way by which more or less autonomous musical works were conceived, an assumption that leaves considerable room for interpretation to the historian (explicit ontologies and metaphysics of works are conspicuous by their absence in daily criticism). An enormous problem, then, is how to tell what people listened for in the past when, as is the case here, no questionnaires were carried out (or even dreamed of) and no reports exist. My attempt at a solution, which for matters of space can be no more than a sketch, will be to look at what was written about in daily music criticism. With a number of representative samples from four different years, I hope to draw an—although far from exhaustive—at least plausible picture of how listening may have been made sense of, and whether any change in listening took place (is it possible to detect any impact from Boman’s and Rubenson’s mid-century campaigns?).[12] I will proceed in six steps. I start by presenting a methodological approach. The following four sections examine music criticism in the Stockholm press from the years 1835, -55, -85 and 1905. In the sixth section I summarize my findings.

The listening public and the daily press

My first step will be a narrowing-in of the concept of a listening audience. As a more or less cultivated mass of individuals I will regard this audience as a public. And as such I regard this public as partially constituted by what can be considered its mutual counterpart: the public criticism of the mass media. In this I follow the lead of Kristina Widestedt’s analysis of music criticism in the Swedish daily press from 1780 to 1995 (as distinct from the scholarly journals more commonly investigated by musicologists and music historians).[13] With reference to Jürgen Habermas, Widestedt states that ‘the audience, or the public, is constituted and held together through a criticism that mediates values that most can avow, while the public criticism would be power- and meaningless without anchoring in the audience/public’ (Widestedt, 2001, p. 38). At the same time Widestedt stresses (this time with reference to Theodor Adorno) that criticism isn’t just, indeed couldn’t just be a simple ‘incarnation of a self sufficient and indifferent ‘public opinion’’ (ibid.); criticism is also a cultivator of public taste.

Contrary to claims such that during the 19^th century the listening audience goes through a self-disciplining process, aimed mainly at the control of extrovert bodily behaviour (Widestedt, 2001, pp. 12ff, Widestedt refers to Johnson, 1995), Widestedt’s main thesis is that ‘music criticism, through description and evaluation, can formulate a hidden regulatory framework for concert-goers and news-readers, … in other words, exert power over the audience’ (ibid., p. 15).

There are two important differences between Widestedt’s approach and mine. Whereas Widestedt’s main (Foucauldian) issue is the dichotomous relation between rationality and emotions, the first controlling the latter through the construction of music as an object of knowledge (Widestedt, 2001, pp. 16, 93f.), my concern is rather what kind (or different kinds) of knowledge-object it is that the daily music criticism in Stockholm promotes at different points of time during the 19th century. Is music understood primarily as an activity or is it regarded as an enduring object (i.e. work) of which the performance is but a means of communication? Moreover, accepting the Habermasian argument as my premise—as much as Widestedt’s cautious remark, that ‘the signs of disciplining can only be interpreted intentionally, that is as a (bi-)intention of the criticism’, and not as a confirmation that ‘any disciplining of the audience actually did come about’ (ibid., p. 36, cf. Goehr’s similar remark above.)—I will regard the knowledge-object articulated in music criticism (that conceptual formation by which the listener makes sense of the musical sounds) as of a kind that can be taken to correspond sufficiently to what the public audience may have heard.[14]  Another way of putting the central question thereby becomes: what is it that the music criticism of the Stockholm daily press tells the city’s audience to listen to?

To enable comparisons with her findings (and thereby ‘thicken’ my own descriptions), I will use much of the same sources as does Widestedt, though my choice of samples and quotes differ. This amounts to an examination of the daily press criticism in Stockholm during the years 1835, 1885 and 1905. Whereas Widestedt also surveys 1780, 1955 and 1995, I restrict the period of samples to what can be considered as parts of the ‘long’ 19^th century (cf. Dahlhaus, 1989, pp. 1f.). On the other hand I add the year 1855, a year when Rubenson was busy campaigning for new ideals in the scholarly press. I also double the number of dailies examined in the years 1885 and 1905, from Widestedt’s two to four (although only three are explicitly quoted for the last year).

As an illustrative historical foil, some words should also be said about the debate in Stockholms Posten during Eastertime 1780 (not commented on by Widestedt, but cf. Leux-Henschen, 1958), between the director of the Royal Opera Count Barnekow and court composer Joseph Martin Kraus. Barnekow initiates the debate when accusing Kraus’ colleague and friend Francesco Uttini of a ‘Crimen musicalis’ in the latter’s adaption of a performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater to available vocal and instrumental means. Like painters ‘Ticiani, Raphael, Correge, Carrache, van Dyck’, Barnekow says, Pergolesi is a ‘genie createur’, and ‘to improve Pergolesi is an impossibility: to respectfully imitate him a great difficulty: the latter praiseworthy, the former inexcusable’ (anon., 1780a).

Kraus intrepidly responds to the nobleman, that ‘[h]ad it always been a rather inexcusable wrong to modify others’ compositions, then surely Geminiani had not dared change those by Corelli put Solos for Violin and Bass to Concerts for 7 parts … . These Concerts, which under the name of Corelli-Geminiani Concerti Grossi are rather well known, have withal in all times been considered as Masterpieces, without Corelli’s musical reputation thereby having been to any degree aggrieved, or that favour him denied, to be regarded equal with Geminiani and Pergolesi, as Auctor Classicus in Music’ (anon., 1780b).

The debate, which continues for several weeks, comes to read like a duel between the mighty Aristocrat and the clever Freeman, a verbal duel eventually ending to the latter’s advantage (a month later the paper tells about Barnekow having received ‘gracious dismissal’ from his duty as director of the Royal Opera) (anon., 1780c.). Of relevance for the present context is that the debate displays a typically 18^th century view of composer and work. In contrast to the modern ethics of Werktreue that Goehr brings to the fore (Goehr, 1992, pp. 243ff.), Barnekow’s unease concerns a piece of perfection, rather than a work of originality, a written composition corresponding impeccably to the rules of genre, rather than an abstract work expressing the unique character of its composer. And the composer is (at his best) an auctor classicus, a pre-romantic genie createur (a concept not yet severed from mimetic exactions), rather than a true romantic genius.[15] Neither Kraus nor Uttini is of any contradictory view in this regard. Neither is Barnekow’s unease to any considerable extent tied up with the musical experience of the audience, as is none of the published articles in Stockholms Posten this year.

1835—the work as aesthetic activity

In 1780, there was no sign of interest in the listener in the Stockholm press.[16] Criticism and listening public were not yet separately defined. At this incunabular moment, music criticism was rather a mixture of voices and opinions tending towards a common point of view, or consensus (public concert life still being in its infancy). Half a century later the contours of the new media genre appear more clearly. By 1835 critic and audience have evolved into two distinct and clearly defined actors on the Stockholm arena of criticism, and in addition a third party is articulated: the musician (singer, player, composer). The remainder of the 19^th century, until 1905, can from a historian’s perspective be seen as a power struggle in and by which the critic and the audience are the major antagonists, each seeking support in the musicians’ third party, each dominating the other to some extent at different points in time (Widestedt, 2001, pp. 49ff.).[17]

Criticism, as exemplified in Widestedt’s study, is thus a means by which a listening mass of persons constitutes itself as a public audience (a means of self-constitution articulated differently at different points in time). Given this circumstance it is no big surprise that a significant topic of the daily criticism in the Stockholm papers is music as a common cultural phenomenon, a source of Bildung and shaping of the listener’s moral character. Widestedt relates this to journalism’s obvious interest in the public event, in contrast to music as object of aesthetic discourse. Nevertheless, music as aesthetic object is important too during the entire century. So much so that music as aesthetic object and music as social event make up for two contrasting principal themes of musical criticism in Widestedt’s analysis, themes by which the actors of the critical discourse relate. To this Widestedt adds another two distinct themes, the individual (the critic’s) and the collective (the audience’s) experiences of the music. Of the latter two, collective experience turns out to be the major theme of the century as a whole, outdoing even those of music as social event and music as aesthetic object (Widestedt, 2001, pp.45ff, 91).

However if we look at the particular years observed things turn out differently. Of interest for our present concern is that Widestedt points out music as aesthetic object as the major theme in 1835. It is said to dominate the reports in sharp competition with that of the public experience, leaving the two remaining themes (social event and individual experience) far behind. Now, Widestedt makes it clear that her statistics does not differentiate between criticism of performances and of compositions. This means that ‘music as aesthetic object’ is a category too blunt for answering if, and if so by which terms, the Stockholm audience listened to musical works. Besides opera being a main subject (dominating with vocal solo recitals over instrumental solo and orchestral concerts), reading the dailies Aftonbladet and Dagligt Allehanda reveals that even the distinction between performance of the work and the work as composition is not wholly accurate. Although musical compositions are often (but not always) mentioned by name, this does not mean they are spoken about as reified objects, ‘as such’ or ‘in themselves’. So how, then, is music conceived of as aesthetic object by the Stockholm dailies in 1835?

As aesthetic object, music is mostly described in either of two ways: either as the compositional activity of the composer, or (which happens more frequently) as the execution by the performers. In other words, the work of music is regarded primarily as an activity carried out by the composer and (subsequently) by the performer. In this it is more similar to the standard view held by Kraus in 1780, than to the new approach propagated by Rubenson in the 1850:s. The ‘work’ is still very much something you do. In other words it is not a question of describing either the work or the performance; the work is rather made sense of in relation to how it was composed and/or to the way it is performed. As such technical or formal descriptions of the music, to the extent that they occur, are usually interspersed as brief references in reviews of the performer’s execution and/or the composer’s compositional activity.

An example of the work being an activity carried out by the performer is a review of a performance at the Royal Opera of Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz—the work objectifyingly spoken of as ‘an old friend and favourite’—wherein the focus is on a new cast of opera singers’ respective contributions. For instance, in the role as Agatha, the reader is told, Mrs Engbom’s ‘strong and sonorous voice was heard to much delight, and to the extent that not all parts were given perfectly, however the eminently beautiful aria by the balcony could, in particular, not fail to win much acclaim’ (anon., 1835a).

Another example similarly focusing on the work-as-performance is the review of a program by foreign clarinet virtuoso Wagner (not presented by forename), containing Weber’s clarinet concerto, preceded by the ouverture to Iphigenie, and followed by compositions by Wagner’s own hand. According to the critic,

the ouverture was not, especially the first part thereof,  executed with the power and verve , for which our orchestra otherwise so often have given excellent evidence. … That with most style and effect performed number seemed to us Mr W:s own composition: a potpourri on several themes from famous operas. [However, his] performance seemed to us not to any higher extent distinguished by spirit or virtuosity in general, and in the country that is familiar with [Bernhard] Crusell [the foreign virtuoso] does not attune the listener so much to his advantage. (anon., 1835b)

As we see, the musical works are spoken of in terms of the way they were executed, by the orchestra and by the soloist. Indeed, this way of speaking about music is so common and familiar, even today, that it may seem odd to point it out as such.

In contrast to hearing music in terms of its performance, the 1835 criticism also displays how music can be heard in terms the composer’s compositional activity. In a review of a performance of the Danish composer Friedrich Kuhlau’s comic opera The Triplet Brothers From Damascus, it is said about the composer that

one has found it before, [Kuhlau] does not disregard the timpanist; this time outranking Auber himself in clatter and pounding. (anon., 1835c)

A more positive account of Kuhlau’s work is given in the rival paper, telling the reader that

[t]he masterly ouverture to the Elverhøj opened the concert; it gains each time it is reheard. A stormy instrumentation has seldom been put to such flawless use with so much reason. Kuhlau had a great deal of similarity with Weber, without being his imitator, and the ouvertures to the Elverhøj and Lulu can, according to our conviction, fully measure up with Der Freischütz and Oberon’s. Should they in some compositional detail be their second, they would in others, e.g. completeness and execution, outrank at least the latter. (anon., 1835d)

In the latter quote, mentioning the works by name and the use of the pronoun ‘it’ has an objectifying effect, though the main way of describing the music is as a compositional craft or activity. As an example of the much less common way of describing the musical work in objectifying technical terms is the review of a staging of Gluck’s Armide, which informs the reader that 

this masterwork, … although not so rich in varied melodies as certain newer composers’, must nevertheless charm the true connoisseur by its gorgeous harmonies, the truthfulness of its paintings, and the colossal in the actual tone masses. No effort seems to be saved, on the part of the Directorate, in order that the whole should give an impressive effect. (anon., 1835e)

But still, after mentioning some general aspects of the composition, the focus is redirected towards the execution of the music, ‘the whole’, albeit this time curiously explained in terms of its administrative (‘Directorate’) conditions.

Whereas many of the articles on music in 1835 are but short notices, sometimes mentioning no more than the name of the performer and sometimes also of the work performed, the review of Adolf Fredrik Lindblad’s opera Frondörerna on May 19 is an impressive exception in its sheer size. The daily paper Aftonbladet devotes almost an entire page to the première performance at the Royal Opera (a major event about which the competing newspaper Dagligt Allehanda remains curiously silent).[18] Of this space about two thirds are spent on summarizing the plot. The remainder is divided into a review of the performance and a summary judgement about the composer. The latter, wherein one can discern a few comments about the music, begins with lofty statements about some unspecified advantages of the genius composers Mozart and Beethoven, and only after this name-dropping detour does the critic announce his judgement upon Lindblad and his opera:

… the bizarre is not entirely tantamount to the ingenious, and a beauty, which must be calculated by numbers, is irrefutably none. … [T]he whole [is] therefore constituted such that one must hear it three, four times to get a grip on it. We have not hereby wanted to deny that the author possesses genius, all this affectation [sic.] notwithstanding, and enough so to be able, with all his conceptions of fine art, to write something truly beautiful. May he count the art for less artificial and [so too] his next work, since we hope this is just a beginning… . (anon., 1835f)  

In these comments on Lindblad as composer the tone is similar to those on Kuhlau and Weber. What we read are the verdicts of superior judges in trials of taste and compositional craftsmanship, verdicts that in hindsight read more like eager self-legitimations than informative criticisms (an observation in accord with Widestedt’s analysis and with a significance that I will say more about in the following).

All in all, the kinds of event mainly covered by the Stockholm daily papers in 1835 are opera performances and vocal solo recitals. Instrumental orchestra performances are relatively rare. This should be seen in relation to Widestedt’s remark that only ten percent of the music performed in London, Paris and Vienna during the first part of the century was devoted to the classicial style (Widestedt, 2001, p. 111).[19] The comment that ‘Beethoven’s Sinfonia Eroica, clever as all the works by this master, and which was given in two sections, with other numbers in between, was rather coldly received’, should therefore not be a surprise, nor the comment by the same critic, that the Eroica ‘is not as splendid, as many other of Beethoven’s masterworks’ (anon., 1835g).

To the extent that music was written about—and by extension also heard—as an aesthetic object in Stockholm in 1835, it was hardly at all in terms of works existing autonomously ‘as such’ or ‘in themselves’.[20]  Rather than in reifying formal or technical terms, music is conceived of as an aesthetic object in general and superficial terms concerning the compositional activity of the composer, and even more commonly in terms of how well the music was executed by the performers. Moreover, when details are referred to as observable characteristics of the composer’s activity (that is, the way the music is composed), the primary function seems to be an elevation of the status of the critic in relation to the public, by showing off the critic as the composer’s equal in terms of technical skill, and even as superior in matters of taste. That this simultaneously implies a targeting of the listener’s attention to these same details seems to be an unintended side effect, rather than a conscious intention. Is there any difference in these matters if we look forward, to the years 1855 and -85, and into the 20^th century, to 1905?

1855—the work as exclusive masterpiece vs. the simplicity of song

Perhaps the most striking difference in comparison with those of 1835 is that the musical reviews of 1855’s daily press are markedly longer. 1855 (a year not covered by Widestedt) is a year witnessing Rubenson and colleagues battling out their ideas in the journal Ny tidning för musik (cf. n. 2), and as such motivates special attention. The expert journal is frequently referred to and advertised in the major daily Aftonbladet. On occasion an entire review can be reprinted (as in Aftonbladet on august 8).[21]  On the other hand the journal is hardly mentioned at all in the rival Svenska tidningen.

Of the years surveyed, 1855 is remarkable for the striking difference in attitudes towards music between the two papers, a difference that the coverage of the professional journal indicates. The focus on the work as performance is still there in both dailies, whereas in Aftonbladet the work as compositional activity gives way, however sparingly, to descriptions indicating a view of musical works as abstract objects existing independently of their composers and performances. For instance, in the extensive review of the première performance of Hermann Berens’ opera Violetta, after recounting the plot at length, and after usual disapproval of certain aspects of Berens’ composing, certain other aspects receive positive comment—but then in terms of the work ‘itself’, whereby the composer is only indirectly credited (anon., 1855a).

A similar case is the review of the première of Lindblad’s second symphony. The same Lindblad that composed the opera Frondörerna in 1835 had already debuted as a symphonist a few years earlier, with a composition that gained critical acclaim by Schumann upon its performance in Leipzig under Mendelsohn (Hedwall, 1983, 105f.). Lindblad’s second symphony, requested by court conductor Jacopo Foroni, nevertheless received lukewarm response. In a first anonymous review the symphony—appearing on a program along with Beethoven’s ninth symphony, interspersed by a vocal section with excerpts from Spohr’s Faust, Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Mozart’s Titus— is mentioned very briefly, commenting on some wanting details, although concluding that ‘the total effect has unity, whereas the composition is seamless’ (anon., 1855b). In a second review a week later (by the signature –s.), the composition gets a lengthier assessment in positive terms, whereby the symphony’s movements are accounted for separately as more or less autonomously existing (i.e. without reference to the compositional activity of the composer, nor the performance), although in extramusical rather than formalist terms (anon., 1855c). The article, like the previous, ends with a lengthy tribute to Beethoven and his ninth symphony.

Notable for this year’s reviews is that unreserved appraisal is exclusively saved for deceased masters. Not only is ‘father Bach … one of the most original geniuses that ever visited our world’ (anon., 1855d), and Mozart’s Jupiter symphony a ‘splendour painting, in richness, wholeness, and consummate beauty commensurable only to itself’ (anon., 1855e), these masters are canonized and frequently held up as contrastive quality markers against contemporary and local wannabes (cf. Pettersson, 2004). The evaluative jargon used in these cases is not the technical vocabulary used to pick out flaws in anyone’s compositional technique, but a blend of programmatic allusions and aesthetic terminology—including catchwords such as unity, organism, originality.

The consecration of Austro-German classical masters is repeated in Svenska Tidningen, albeit in different aesthetic terms. In an unsigned article at the beginning of the year (with the title ‘Letter from Paris’), complaints are levelled against what is taken to be a ‘stagnation’ and ‘regression’ in the ‘world of the tone poem’. The ideal music has given way to an ‘ignoble material art’ of which the ‘surface charms’ lacks corresponding ‘inward power’. The contemporary ‘talents and petit-genies’ lacks the gift of the true ‘classics’, which is the power to unite ‘the limbs’ of the artwork into a ‘living body’ wherein the ‘separate beautiful parts sanctify each other’ (anon., 1855f).

The key to this programmatic declaration is the word ‘tone poem’, which should be understood not as referring to Liszt’s novelties and its likes (cf. the reference to the ‘classics’), but rather to the plain and simple expression of the national soul, or Volksgeist, through song. Together with the mentioning of Shakespeare, the article rather indicates a debt to Johann Gottfried Herder. This is also what one gathers in the ensuing reviews, all published under the heading ‘Letters on art’ and signed A. M. (the initials of composer and critic Abraham Mankell). A case in point is the verdict that

[t]he most beautiful numbers in Violetta are indisputably those, wherein Mr Berens succeeds in elevating his musical setting to the simplicity of song, yes sometime he even manages to reach up closely to the melody of the folk. (Mankell, 1855a)

Lindblad’s symphony is likewise laudable because its singable themes marks a ‘return to music’s lost peace’ (Mankell, 1855b). In a review of a musical soirée, the best piece on the program is the simple folk melody Du gamla du friska (which was later turned into the Swedish national anthem), of which it is said that ‘the Scandinavian north owns its original melody [urmelodi]’ (Mankell, 1855c). And as yardstick for this ‘the true song’ is held up no one less than Jenny Lind (Mankell, 1855d).

The expression of the national soul, or Volksgeist, through song is mandatory also when the composition is an instrumental work such as Beethoven’s seventh symphony (Mankell, 1855e), and does not unreservedly welcome the formal complexities of a Bach fugue, where ‘reason outweighs the heart’ (Mankell, 1855f). Given the Herderian ethos of Mankell’s criticism—which was widespread in Sweden during the 19^th century (and which in Mankell’s case also had a pronounced Moravian tinge, see Volgsten, 2013; cf. also Gramit, 2002, 41ff.)—any objectifying tendencies of the vocabulary must be weighted against the inclusive and all-encompassing practice of collective singing. Musical beauty is not judged at a contemplative distance to a musical object, but experienced as sympathetic devotion (andakt) and attunement with one’s fellow men. Thus

… these simple, picturesque melodies, which delight the deepest interiors of man, this music, which anyone understands, these telling motives, on whose rich grounds the great tone poets built their temples. (Mankell, 1855g)

1855 is thus a year remarkable for both the generous space allotted to music criticism, and to the diversity of aesthetics stances articulated in the daily press. Since Widestedt does not survey this year, any journalistic explanations for this diversity must be left aside. What it means for the notion of a listening public I will get back to in the concluding section. However, the state of criticism would not remain unchanged.

1885—the work lost in the social event

In 1885 the role of the daily press critic is reduced to a reporter of public spectacle wherein performer and audience constitute the main focus of interest. Musical works are seldom mentioned and the judgement of the critic is of marginal importance. Music as aesthetic object has given way to music as social event and collective experience (in a rare report of an instrumental performance the reader is told about Beethoven’s Kreuzer sonata, that it is so well known it needs no further mention, see anon., 1885a). Widestedt explains the change as a result of the press now having become a mass medium, aiming for a wider audience than the actual concertgoers (Widestedt, 2001, pp. 66, 115f.). Striking are the recurring reports of star singer Kristina Nilsson’s many performances abroad and at home. What she sings is of lesser importance. Instead it is the massive acclaim of her audiences that are reported to the reader. In addition there is an abundance of items mentioning international music events, in Paris, London, Berlin and elsewhere.

Given that symphonic concerts are becoming more common than in earlier years, it is noteworthy that they are so scarcely reported. An Easter Sunday concert for full house, with Franz Berwald’s ouverture to Estrella de Soria and Beethoven’s ninth symphony on the program, gets but a small notice (anon., 1885b). One particular event stands out this year, covered in extensive articles by all the major newspapers in the capital city. This is the memorial concert for the recently deceased composer and court conductor Ludvig Norman. The concert is devoted entirely to Norman’s oeuvre, with a première performance of his third symphony in d-minor as the obvious highlight (at least from a retrospective point of view). Characteristic of the criticism in this year, however, is the review in Dagens Nyheter, which says nothing about the work ‘as such’, and only mentions the conductor’s contribution to the performance (anon., 1885c). Aftonbladet’s critic claims, with a similar disinterest, that he does not like ‘post-classicist’ symphonies, although admitting the symphony is ‘doubtless’ Norman’s best piece (anon., 1885d). More genuinely positive seem the reviews in Nya Dagligt Allehanda and Svenska Dagbladet. The former acknowledges the composer’s ‘warm inspiration and powerful creativity’ (words scarcely used by Swedish critics for their fellow countrymen composers), while the latter assigns to the music ‘a modest and pure simplicity’ (anon., 1885e,f). In particular the g-minor allegretto seems to have attracted the critic, as well as the audience: ‘an enchanting piece, swinging in a light rhythmic dance, a true Nordic composition, with something transparent, slightly bewitching [trollskt] in motive and mood’ (anon., 1885f).

References to individual musical works, such as in the reviews of the Norman memorial concert (most notably in that of Svenska Dagbladet), are the exception in 1885. The main focus of criticism—and this goes for all four dailies this year, whereby accounts of individual critics’ aesthetic stances (as in 1855) becomes superfluous—is on the everyday circumstances of star performers and on the audience’s experiences of the events.[22]

1905—the work as tone-painting and extra-musical experience

When we enter into the 20^th century things have changed radically. Widestedt speaks about ‘the revenge of the independent critic’ (Widestedt, 2001, p. 77). The critic, no longer anonymous, has become an unquestionable expert who judges high from low, not only when it comes to specific works and performances (as in 1835), or in confirming the superiority of the classics (as in 1855), but also of what kinds of music be considered art and what are to be dismissed as lowly and popular. The space devoted to music criticism has also increased considerably. Lengthy critical reviews are the norm now. A national self-confidence can also be noted. Works by Swedish composers are reviewed, and whereas brief items in 1835 considered foreign affairs, in 1885 this had changed to a focus on the fame of Swedish artists. By contrast the international attention in 1905 is given to Swedish composers. An example is the report of Helena Munktell’s concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, according to which her Sonat för violin och piano ‘was received with thunderous applause’ (anon., 1905a).

Curious as it may seem (though with a possible reason, which I will get to), the comments on the compositional activity of the composer and on the performance of the musician now rarely involve formal or technical details, as they occasionally did in 1835. A review of a performance of Berwald’s Piano trio in d-minor, pairing the two thematic subcategories (composition and performance) side by side, is a good example. The composition—dedicated to Swedish engineer John Ericsson (inventor of steam engines, propellers and the first submarine)—’wherein the ingenious composer so successfully characterizes the powerful and conceptive in this Swedish giant’, benefitted from the performance of the piano part ‘executed pre-eminently and sensitively by Mr Wilh[elm] Stenhammar, while the violin- and violincello-parts were equally handled by Mssrs Aulin and Claeson’ (anon., 1905b).

When the composers’ compositional activities are tied to technical detail, it is almost exclusively in negative critiques of their work. For instance when the Organ-symphony by Otto Olsson is said to be

… one of the most pretentious and patience-testing works of music this writer has been exposed to in a very long time. For a full fifty minutes the composer treats his—victims, I guess one must say, with the cheapest improvisational material without idea, without shape, without mood, only with the commonest sounds interspersed and a brutally tasteless alternation between a crashing fff and a fluting ppp. The form can in itself not be called symphonic, since this requires real thematic groundmotives [sic] and thematic groupings; the composer’s way of writing is so confused and unplastic that not even in a movement called ‘fugue’, could this writer find those for this form distinctive traits: subject, answer, development and interludes, not to mention such features as stretti and thematic variations. (Peterson-Berger, 1905a)

As in 1835, the reference to technical detail seems largely to serve the critic’s own needs, rather than those of the composer or the audience. But this does not mean the public was not capable of hearing what the critic commented upon. More interesting than references to composition and performance as activities is therefore the way new compositions by contemporary composers are positively reviewed, a way of describing noticeable already in 1855 but absent in 1885. In positive reviews the reference to the composer’s activity is more or less gone (for reasons I will shortly suggest), leaving the public with a description that eventually seems to grapple with the work ‘as such’ and ‘in itself’. A case in point is the review of Hugo Alfvén’s second symphony in D major and the symphonic poem En skärgårdssägen (A legend of the skerries) by the same composer, the latter in première performance.

… an artwork by rank is this symphony, in the content of its thoughts, the solidness of its form and broad lines, the intensifying moods, from the moderato movement’s idyllic delight and through the andante’s gravity rising and the bitter ridicule of the scherzo, up to the dramatic finale, which wrestles with the impending death itself and audaciously fugues its choral motive. (anon., 1905c)

The evening’s new symphonic poem ‘En skärgårdssägen’, which likewise received a fine execution, indicates by its name a sufficiently indefinite program to enable the tone images by themselves to act in a purely musical direction. It is an imaginative tone-piece with fine and saturated colours, where both haze over wide horizons and approaching storms are sensed, a rather forceful pathos developing out of a melancholy-drenched idyll, with preserved motivic unity in the seemingly free movement of the whole. (anon., 1905c)

In sum, what we can see at the beginning of the 20^th century is a way of writing about music whereby the activities of the composers and performers are increasingly being separated from the work, the music ‘itself’. Two things should be noted, though. First, in negative reviews, the composition is still tied to its composer in performative terms. Music is the outcome of a (substandard) compositional activity. Talk about the musical work in composer-free terms, as it were, seems rather to be a way for the critic in a small city like Stockholm to talk positively about novel works by contemporary ‘colleagues’, without having to indulge in personal flattery (which would inexorably reduce the critic to the composer’s second on the musical arena). To the extent that this seems to be a social fact of the matter (an hypothesis in need of further support, no doubt), the second point to be noted concerns the music ‘as such’ and ‘in itself’.

Although the review above of Alfvén’s second symphony and of his symphonic poem does not involve the composer and is not set in terms of a compositional activity, it is far from a formalist account of the work. To the contrary, it is a fairly programmatic description (not unlike what we have seen in Hanslick’s review of Brahms three decades earlier). In this it is representative for much of the daily music criticism in the Stockholm papers in 1905. This does not mean that everyone would have agreed with Alfvén’s rival colleague, the composer, critic, and music philosopher Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, who in a review the same year, claimed that ‘all good music, yes, all music we seek instinctively to enjoy as program music’ (Peterson-Berger, 1905b).[23] But it would be equally if not more wrong to say the opposite, that the main view was anything like a Hanslickean (formalist) constraint of music to tonally moving forms. Given the assumptions about the reciprocal relationship between criticism and listening, we may therefore assume that the Stockholm audience, when listening to Alfvén’s A Legend of the skerries, heard something—a sounding object rather than an activity—largely corresponding to Peterson-Berger’s description: a ‘tone-painting of waves lapping and sun glittering over wide waters’, a work containing ‘a lot of noteworthy and brilliantly crafted details’ (Peterson-Berger, 1905c).[24] And as with Alfvén’s piece, so similarly with other works of music.    

Concluding remarks

Before summing up this exposé of listening and criticism in Stockholm during the long 19^th century, let me return to the question raised earlier, whether the diversity of aesthetics stances articulated in the daily press during 1855 has any consequences for the notion of a listening public. Wouldn’t a diversity of stances in the press imply a corresponding diversity of listening publics?

In a discussion of how ‘music created a public’ in London between the 17^th and the 19^th centuries, literary historian Harold Love stresses ‘the [simultaneous] existence of a considerable number of discrete publics and the fact that these publics were usually also members of other publics’ (Love, 2004). In many ways the Swedish case resembles the British as described by Love (given the usual delay of some decades, cf. above).[25] My concern is not so much the historical background uncovered by Love as the possible existence of a number of intersecting musical publics in Stockholm during the period investigated.[26] I have already mentioned the existence of Kenners and Liebhabers and the possible subsets of these categories along Rochlitz’ lines. But whereas these early 19^th century categories pertain mainly to those actively engaging in playing and singing, the daily press addresses—indeed must be able to address—also the non-playing and non-singing lay listener (especially when the press increasingly turns towards a mass audience at the end of the century).[27] This means that the public audience discussed here—which I have variously described as lay listener and average concertgoer—might not have been as homogenous as my methodological treatment may indicate. Still none of the aesthetic stances that can be identified in the press accords with any formalist Platonic work concept (some brand of Aristotelianism would be a safer bet across the board, cf. Volgsten, 2012a).

What we can assume is that the public audience in 19^th century Stockholm generally listened for nice melodies, well performed by beautiful voices, vocal and instrumental. To the extent that the audience wanted formal organization of complex works, it was hardly an aesthetic end in itself, but a means for highlighting beautiful melodies. And whereas the Stockholm audience in 1835 most likely conceived of the music heard as an activity executed by a performer or a composer (or both), by 1905 music is heard much more as an aesthetic object  ‘as such’—corresponding to a change in criticism, for which I have suggested a social reason (i.e. an objectifying rhetoric functioning as a means to commend musical compositions without making use of personal flattery) in addition to changes in theory and aesthetics.

But we must not understand this as a radical shift from one extreme point of view (hearing music exclusively as an activity) to its diametrical opposite (hearing music exclusively as object). It is rather a shift of emphasis, whereby an objectifying vocabulary is used less in 1835 and more in 1905. When music was written about independently from its performance or its composer, towards the end of the century, it was mainly in programmatic and ‘extramusical’ terms, not in the formalist terms that would help the audience to individuate works that exist independently of ever being ‘performed or listened to at any given time’ (Goehr, 1992,  p. 2, see also n. 11). Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that an abstract work concept along Goehr’s lines prevailed among listeners already in 1835, but it gives no indication that if so it was of any importance for what was heard, either at that time or in 1905 (and as such it is questionable). Remaining to be answered is why, in 1885, music as aesthetic object gives way to music as social event and collective experience, especially since in 1855 music seems to have been up for considerable debate and multiple aesthetic perspectives: was it just a matter of the daily press becoming mass media (as Widestedt implies), or are there factors of a musico-aesthetic kind to be found?

And what about Rubenson and Boman? Were they no more than adventitious ripples on the crest of the historical tide, leaving no traces at all in the life of music? Reading the fifty-two weekly issues of Ny tidning för musik from 1855 shows that Rubenson was a radical writer in his promotion of romantic aesthetic ideals (Boman less so).[28] Wilhelm Bauck, who was the chief editor of the journal as well as main critic in Aftonbladet can be said to have held a middle ground between Rubenson and his allies (among which one can count composers J. A. Josephson, Norman and to some extent Berwald) on the one hand, and Mankell of Svenska tidningen on the other (see Volgsten, 2013). Bauck shared a formalist bent with the former, but like Mankell he despised the new music of the Leipzig romantics (‘the symphonic genre in Germany is but an experimental field’, anon., 1855b). Nevertheless, when Rubenson, in 1859, writes that

[i]nstrumental music is comprehended by different listeners in two distinct ways. Some appreciate mostly or exclusively music’s only true content, the beautiful tonal forms: others more the feelings that music is considered to produce. … But music can only be grasped and judged as music. It does not have its original model in nature, and the musical art work’s material, content, form and purpose is nothing else than tones, toneforms, tonebeauty. (Rubenson, 1859)

he is not only imposing an exaggerated disparity between listeners; he is articulating radical thoughts, bordering on the extreme, in line with Hanslick’s famous tract from 1854. In his home country Rubenson was ahead of his time, but he did not cause any dramatic paradigm shift (to the extent it occurred, the change came slowly and gradually),[29] just as Hanslick’s theoretical pamphlet did not affect his daily criticism in any revolutionary way (cf. Grimes, 2013, pp. 1ff.).[30] Listening remained for the majority of the Stockholm audience a more or less ‘extramusical’ experience, and would so remain in the 20^th century, when an abstract formalist work-concept was promoted by new legal and commercial standards (see Volgsten, 2012a; 2013).  Whether, and to what extent, Stockholm differed to any considerable extent from other cities on the European continent remains very much an unanswered question. Should it turn out to be an anomaly in this case, this would call for further explanation.

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