Listening in Paris

A Cultural History

James H. Johnson

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520206489
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520918238
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Beginning with the simple question, "Why did audiences grow silent?" Listening in Paris gives a spectator's-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James H. Johnson recreates the experience of audiences during these rich decades with brio and wit. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the political, musical, and aesthetic factors that produced more engaged listening. Johnson shows the gradual pacification of audiences from loud and unruly listeners to the attentive public we know today. Drawing from a wide range of sources—novels, memoirs, police files, personal correspondence, newspaper reviews, architectural plans, and the like—Johnson brings the performances to life: the hubbub of eighteenth-century opera, the exuberance of Revolutionary audiences, Napoleon's musical authoritarianism, the bourgeoisie's polite consideration. He singles out the music of Gluck, Haydn, Rossini, and Beethoven as especially important in forging new ways of hearing. This book's theoretical edge will appeal to cultural and intellectual historians in many fields and periods.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Musical Examples
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE. The Rendezvous of the Rich
• 1. Opera as Social Duty
• 2. Expression as Imitation
• PART TWO. A Sensitive Public
• 3. Tears and the New Attentiveness
• 4. Concerts in the Old Regime
• 5. Harmony’s Passions and the Public
• PART THREE. The Exaltation of the Masses
• 6. Entertainment and the Revolution
• 7. Musical Experience of the Terror
• 8. Musical Expression and Jacobin Ideology
• EPILOGUE TO PART THREE. Thermidor and the Return of Entertainment
• PART FOUR. Respectability and the Bourgeoisie
• 9. Napoleon’s Show
• 10. The Théâtre Italien and Its Elites
• 11. The Birth of Public Concerts
• 12 In Search of Harmony’s Sentiments
• 13. The Social Roots of Silence
• PART FIVE. The Musical Experience of Romanticism
• 14. Operatic Rebirth and the Return of Grandeur
• 15. Beethoven Triumphant
• 16. The Musical Experience of Romanticism
• Afterword
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index