INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Subject of the course is a social history of music, with special focus on the 18th and 19th century. In
this period, the status of both music and musicians rose to unprecedented heights. The key to
understanding the sacralisation of music, which turns music into an alternative religion and brings
the musical man of genius into the position of its high priest, is closely related to the development
of the public sphere and bourgeois capitalism.
The course relies on a book written by the English historian Tim Blanning, an internationally
acclaimed expert in the field. It is titled:
The Triumph of Music: Composers, Musicians and Their Audiences, 1700 to the Present
(London, 2008)
American edition:
The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art
(Cambridge, Mass., 2008)
The book contains five chapters:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Status: You Are a God-Man, the True Artist by Gods Grace

Purpose: Music Is the Most Romantic of All the Arts
Places and Spaces: From Palace to Stadium
Technology: From Stradivarius to Stratocaster
Liberation: Nation, People, Sex

Chapter 1 (on Status) will be dealt in depth with. Special topics will be selected from the remaining
chapters.

Status

THE MUSICIAN AS SLAVE AND SERVANT

For most of recorded history
sharp discrepancy between:
status of music high
status of musician low

STATUS OF MUSIC

ANTIQUITY

Mythology
belief that music is of divine origin
Egypt:
Osiris as composer of the traditional chants
any alteration strictly forbidden
Ancient Greece:
Orpheus, legendary singer and musician:
divine ancestry: Apollo and the muse Calliope
alternative version: son of the Thracian king Oeagrus
divine power of his singing and playing
charming wild beasts, diverting the course of rivers,

Philosophy
music as a main preoccupation
Plato (428/427 BC -348-347 BC)
affinity between music and mathematics
Harmony of the Spheres (Pythagoras)
music as an essential part of education
theory of the ethos music affects the character (soul)
good versus bad music
blueprint of the ideal state (totalitarian utopia?)
music strictly regulated to avoid anarchy, disorder and moral degeneration
only Dorian and Phrygian modes permitted (courage, temperance)

MIDDLE AGES

Substantial cultural shift

Antiquity: mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body)
Middle Ages:
man as a sinful creature
salvation only through God and a pious life
Evil and the Devil as a permanent threat

Persistent influence of the platonic teachings:

strong opposition body-soul, material-spiritual
dichotomy good versus bad music

Saint Augustine (354-430):

era of the Church Fathers (early Christian writers)
Confessiones (Confessions)
under the spell of Ambrosian chant in Milan
o enjoying the music in itself = mortal sin
o music reinforcing the Word of God = divine gift

RENAISSANCE BAROQUE EARLY MODERN EUROPE

15th 18th century
Cultural changes:
self-awareness of man
theocentrism (theo-)anthropocentrism
process of secularisation
Antiquity sets the example
Growing royal power (absolutism; Louis XIV)
development of a court culture:
Italy (Florence, Milano, Mantua,)
Duchy of Burgundy (Brussels, Philip the Good)
Paris
Baldassare Castiglione, Il libro del cortigiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528):
music = a holy matter
harmony of the spheres
soul affected by music
Shakespeare , The Merchant of Venice (mid-1590s): the sweet power of music

Reformation:
16th century
attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church
establishment of the Protestant Churches
Calvin (1509-1564):
uneasy about power of music
unaccompanied congregational singing of psalms
aversion of instrumental music
Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531): total banning of music
Martin Luther (1483-1546):
music as magnificent gift of God
song of the congregation
hymn Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress is our God)

Healing qualities of music

Robert Burton (1577-1640), Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

Conclusion
Blanning, p.11:
In short, with the exception of the grim Franco-Swiss reformers, Europeans have always
cherished music especially when performed collectively (whether by Athenians, Jews,
medieval monks, Protestant congregations or whomever).

STATUS OF THE MUSICIAN

ANTIQUITY
musicians often slaves
Aristotle, Politics:
music = essential part of education (moral improvement)
professional performers (payment) = vulgar

MIDDLE AGES

Boethius
ca 480 ca 524
De institutione musica
division into three types:
musica mundana
musica humana
musica instrumentalis
music as a science:
music = a science of numbers (part of the quadrivium)
true musician = philosopher (clerics!)
performers and composers (!) driven by instinct

Lay musicians
Jongleurs (jugglers):
perform tricks, tell stories, sing or play instruments
itinerant
precarious living
low status
Minstrels:
more specialized musicians (from 13th century on)
itinerant
often employed at court or city
varied backgrounds (former clerics, sons of merchants and craftsmen, knights
Troubadours / Trouvres:
poet-composers in medieval France (12th 13th century)
supported by the many castles and courts all over the country

Blanning: most came from the margins of polite society

Christopher Page: study of 15 troubadours:
5 clergymen
4 poor knights or their sons
3 sons of townsmen
2 former artisans

Burkholder, Grout & Palisca on troubadours and trouvres

social background:
nobles
e.g. Guillaume IX, duke of Aquitaine (1071-1126)
sons of servants at court
e.g. Bernart de Ventadorn (ca 1130 ca 1200)
families of merchants, craftsmen, or even jongleurs
acceptance into aristocratic circles because of:
accomplishments in poetry and music
adoption of the value system and behaviour practiced at court
actual performance often entrusted to jongleur or minstrel

German Minnesinger (Minnesnger):

12th 14th century
knightly poet-musicians
e.g. Walther von der Vogelweide
(ca 1170 ca 1230)

EARLY MODERN EUROPE

musicians growing self-confidence
e.g. Josquin des Prez (ca 1450 - 1521):
career in France (Louis XI) and Italy (duke of Ferrara, house of Este)
independent in his behaviour
important factor = music print
Ottaviano Petrucci (1466-1539), Venice
compare to the visual arts:
higher prestige
importance of visual representation
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
o Il Divino (The Divine One)
o first Western artist whose biography published during his own lifetime
(Giorgio Vasari / Ascanio Condivi)

basic problem for musicians

fickleness, capriciousness of princely patrons

Claudio Monteverdi
1567-1643
music director at the court of Mantua:
1607: Orfeo
1612: Vincenzo Francesco Gonzaga
abrupt dismissal
1613 maestro di capella in Venice, St Marks Basilica
1620
Mantuans try to recover him
Monteverdi refuses and makes his point in a famous letter:
income, regularly paid out
permanent appointment (security)
control over his musicians and singers
respect

working in a Republic > serving a princely patron?

Johann Sebastian Bach
1685-1750
Weimar 1708-1717:
court organist / Konzertmeister (1714)
no perspective of further promotion (Kapellmeister)
attractive offer by prince of Anhalt-Cthen
gets imprisoned / unfavourable discharge
Anhalt-Cthen 1717-1723:
prince Leopold
Kapellmeister (music director)
1721 Leopold x Fredericka Henriette of Anhalt-Bernburg
Leipzig 1723-1750:
cantor of the St Thomas Church
employed by the town council

moving from West to East

examples of artistic despotism

Prussia
Frederick the Great (1740-1786)
Gertrude Elizabeth Mara (1749-1833):
1774: London offer
1780: illness
weight of slavery
O Libert!

Russia
society:
tsarist autocracy
magnates
serfdom
serf = unfree person, bound to the land
musicians:
serf troupes maintained by magnates
position often complicated and ambiguous:
o relatively well-paid
o emancipation
o corporal punishment
Sheremetev family:
> 8,000 km of land
compare Belgium: 30,528 km
200,000 registered serfs (approx. one million in real terms)
Saint Petersburg palace (Fountain House)
(> 300 servants)
splendid theatre buildings in the summer houses (French opera!):
o Kuskovo Palace (east of Moscow)
burns down in 1789
o Ostankino Palace (north of Moscow)
opens in 1795
room for 260 spectators

Conclusion
Blanning, p. 15:
the subservient status of even the greatest singers and composers was the rule in courts
large and small.

Further illustrations

Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780)

manual for her son Archduke Ferdinand (1754-1806):
table illustrating social hierarchy
musicians at the very bottom (along with beggars and actors)
advice to Ferdinand, then governor of the Duchy of Milan, on Mozart (1771):
you dont need a composer or any other useless people (gens inutiles)
it brings service into disrepute when these people roam around the world like beggars
(comme gueux)

Joseph Haydn and the Esterhzy family

Joseph Haydn(1732-1809):
Rohrau (south east of Vienna)
son of a wheelwright
1740: choirboy in St. Stephens Cathedral (Vienna)
Esterhzy family:
Hungarian magnates
main residence: Eisenstadt
(50 km south of Vienna)
1761 Haydn is appointed deputy director of music (Vice-Capel-Meister)

employment contract between Prince Paul Anton and Haydn

detailed enumeration of Haydns duties:
exemplary conduct
strict dress code for performances:
o white stockings, white shirt
o powdered
o wig
o identical appearance
servant-composer
The said Vice-Capel-Meister shall be under permanent obligation to compose such pieces of
music as his Serene Princely Highness may command, and neither to communicate such new
compositions to anyone, nor to allow them to be copied, but to retain them wholly for the
exclusive use of his Highness; nor shall he compose for any other person without the
knowledge and gracious permission of his Highness.
complete unbalance in the clauses regarding the ending of the contractual relation
Haydn:
o probationary period of 3 years
o 6 months notice before leaving
Prince: free at all times to dismiss him from service

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relation Haydn - Prince Esterhazy

feudal bond between lord and vassal:
personal (moral) relation
paternalism
submissive language
substantial payments in kind
(wine, firewood, wheat, beef, candles, cabbages, a pig)
real contract
presupposes equality between the parties to the contract

music for baryton:

derived from the viola da gamba
cumbersome and difficult to play (Blanning)
favourite instrument of Prince Nicholas (1762-1790)
126 pieces (1765-1778)

Farewell Symphony
symphony no 45 in F sharp Minor (1772)
context:
Esterhza summer palace
Versailles of Hungary
opera house (500 spectators)
in the middle of nowhere
musicians living there without their families
closing adagio: musicians one by one snuffing their candle and leaving the room
return to Eisenstadt
Haydn revolutionary:
good-natured, easy-going (Papa Haydn)
grown up and socialized in the society of the Ancien Rgime
(masters and servants)
Haydns greatest frustration
= isolation / restrictions on his freedom of movement:
frustration grows as time goes on
examples of self-pity (1790):
Esterhaza = my wilderness
It really is sad to be a slave, but Providence wills it so.

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HANDEL, HAYDN AND THE LIBERATION OF THE MUSICIAN

HAYDN AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Haydn
1790 Nicolas Anton
= characteristic critical moment of succession:
disbanding of the court orchestra and opera company
Haydn takes advantage:
o lifelong, comfortable pension
o permission to travel

London journeys, 1791-1792, 1794-1795

offer from the impresario Johann Peter Salomon (1745-1815)
England:
collapse of royal absolutism (Stuarts)
Glorious Revolution, 1688
Bill of Rights, 1689
constitutional monarchy
parliament
free enterprise
society of movers and doers
dynamism
London:
Blanning: the Eldorado of musicians
one million inhabitants
London Season:
o parliamentary sessions
o concentration of elites (upper class) and wealth

Haydns situation = ambiguous:

isolation as court servant of the Esterhzys
notoriety, even fame in London
Blanning, p. 18:
Haydn was fortunate that his career coincided with a massive expansion of music printing
and publishing. Although printing had been possible since the late fifteenth century, not until
the middle of the eighteenth did something approaching a mass market begin to develop.
This was an integral part of a much wider phenomenon the emergence of a public sphere.

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elements:
expansion of towns / promotion of urban values
rise of consumerism / commercialisation of leisure
proliferation of voluntary associations (reading clubs, choral societies, masonic lodges,)
improvement of communications and postal services
result = a new kind of cultural space into which musical entrepreneurs eagerly moved

mushrooming of publishing houses after c. 1750:

1745
Breitkopf (Leipzig)
technical innovations (movable type process)
commercial techniques
(catalogues, advertising, distribution networks, mail-order)
> 100 workers
1767
Artaria (Vienna)
1770
Schott (Mainz)
Haydn:
1763
[]
1779
by the 1780s

harpsichord divertimento in Breitkopfs catalogue

music published and sold in Paris, Amsterdam, London
revision of contract (removal of restrictions)
international reputation:
composing for patrons all over Europe
(e.g. 6 Paris Symphonies, ordered by the Loge Olympique)
music readily available for sale across Europe

Francisco Goya (1746-1828):

portrait of the Duke of Alba (1795)
holding a Haydn score (Four Songs with Pianoforte Accompaniment)
efforts at self-promotion:
flattering portrait by Johann Ernst Mansfeld (1738-1796) (1781)
engraved, reproduced, advertised for sale by Artaria

Blanning, p. 24
In short, by the time Haydn really did reach London on New Years Day, 1791, the musical
public was ready and waiting.

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A NEW HANDEL?
Haydn Handel
London musical public willingness to embrace German-speaking musicians

GEORG FRIEDRICH HNDEL

1685-1759
London period
Georg Frederick Handel
1710-1759
Blanning:
Handel = an early demonstration of how a musician could become rich and famous through the
public sphere

musical entrepreneur
paying public
wealth + social status

A Statue in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

Handel-statue:
Louis-Franois Roubiliac (1738)
homage by Jonathan Tyers
Orpheus-posture
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens
c 1660 1859
Kennington (South of the Thames)
free entrance until 1785
food and drink for sale
main venue for fashionable society:
to see and be seen
walks
concerts, balls, fireworks
rococo structures (pavilions):
o Turkish tent (1744)
o chinoiserie style
o fashionable drinks: coffee, tea, hot chocolate

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Jonathan Tyers (1702-1767):

John Barrell, Times Literary Supplement, 25 January 2012:
Vauxhall pleasure gardens, on the south bank of the Thames, entertained Londoners and
visitors to London for 200 years. From 1729, under the management of Jonathan Tyers,
property developer, impresario, patron of the arts, the gardens grew into an extraordinary
business, a cradle of modern painting and architecture, and... music.... A pioneer of mass
entertainment, Tyers had to become also a pioneer of mass catering, of outdoor lighting, of
advertising, and of all the logistics involved in running one of the most complex and profitable
business ventures of the eighteenth century in Britain.
1749: rehearsal of Handels Music for the Royal Fireworks
audience of 12,000
Imitations:
Paris (1760s)
Brussels (1781, Parc de Bruxelles)

Handel as a national hero to the English

Handels tomb in Westminster Abbey, London
Statue by Louis-Franois Roubiliac, 1761
Westminster Abbey:
coronation, wedding and burial site for the English (British) monarchs
tombs of famous British subjects
Pantheon in Paris
Handels tomb
= indication of:
personal status
sacralisation of his art

Handel does never fall into oblivion:

first book-length biography devoted to a musician
John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760)
1784: 5 commemorative concerts
o Westminster Abbey / Pantheon (Oxford Street)
o main event attended by the royal family (George III)

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THE BEST OF TWO WORLDS

HAYDN IN LONDON
17911792 / 1794-1795
warm welcome:
newspapers
invitations for dinner
financially rewarding:
6,000 guilder in 6 months
net profit: c. 15,000 guilder
compare annual salary at Esterhzy court: 1,000 to 1,200 guilder
Hanover Square Rooms:
1775
first purpose-built concert hall in London
private enterprise
Sir John Gallini (1728-1805)
Swiss-Italian dancing-master
mover and doer
Johann Christian Bach / Carl Friedrich Abel
subscription concerts

SACRALISATION
music:
functional valued for its own sake
religion art
sacralisation of music
concert hall church building:
audience seated as if it were a congregation
orchestra in a chancel-like space:
o platform fenced off by a rail
o organ taking the place of the altar

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COMMERCIALISATION
commercialisation impact on the content of an art form

size of the orchestra:

o Esterhzy court: 14-22 players
permanent charge for the prince
o London concerts: 50 to 60 players
unique context of the metropolis
musicians recruited from a much larger pool
hired by the season or even the concert

stimulating interaction between composer and his audience

H.C. Robbins Landon:
The music reflects the atmosphere of fin de sicle London: assured, disputatious, intriguing,
eccentric, open-minded yet sensitive

PUBLIC RECOGNITION
Oxford:
honorary doctorate, 7 July 1791
on the proposal of Charles Burney (1726-1814)
Sheldonian Theatre (Christopher Wren)
Symphony no. 92 in G (Oxford) (1789)
emblematic of his emergence as a celebrity

HAYDN RETURNS TO THE ESTERHZYS!

Advantages ( Monteverdi in Venice):
comfortable income
security
control
prestige
In sole command of large musical establishment of high quality:
instruments
space
library
orchestra
unlimited rehearsal time
Prince Nicholas Esterhzy, discerning and tolerant:
room for artistic experimentation
Sturm und Drang symphonies
(late 1760s early 1770s)

17

Haydn manages to have the best of both worlds: aristocratic + public

cultural icon of the Habsburg monarchy:
national anthem Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser
(God Save Emperor Francis)
God Save the King
1797
threat of revolutionary France
27 March 1808, University of Vienna
gala performance oratorio The Creation
birthday present
Prince von Trauttmansdorff
reception committee: Prince Lobkowitz, Prince Esterhzy, Beethoven
orchestra conducted by Antonio Salieri

Blanning, p. 29:
At the beginning of his career, Haydn became famous because he was the Kapellmeister for
the Esterhzys; by the time he died, the Esterhzys were famous because their Kapellmeister
was Haydn.

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MOZART, BEETHOVEN AND THE PERILS OF THE PUBLIC

SPHERE
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
1756-1791
painful struggle for recognition and emancipation

Biography:
1756-1773: childhood / travelling as child prodigy
1773-1781: employment at the Salzburg court
1781-1791: freelance composer-performer in Vienna

SALZBURG PERIOD
Salzburg
Court of archbishop Hieronymous Count von Colloredo
relation patron-servant bad luck
Colloredo = narrow-minded and unappreciative
chain of humiliations
e.g. eating with the valets and cooks

Mozarts revolt
Mozart Haydn:
generation younger
extensive travelling as a child prodigy
encouraged in social aspirations by his ambitious father Leopold
lively temperament
June 1781 Count Arcos notorious kick on the arse
servant freelance composer and performer
revolutionary step:
socially:
personally:

leap in the dark, or at least the unknown

sharp conflict with his father Leopold

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VIENNA
4 sources of income:
commissions for new works
ticket sales from concerts as a pianist
royalties from publishers
music lessons
1787: appointment as imperial chamber composer (800 guilders annually)
Mozart, gifted and energetic, lives well in Vienna:
comfortable accommodations
horse and carriage
wardrobe of an aristocrat
Major flaw in his condition
dependency on the (high) nobility:
private concerts in their palaces
main presence at public concerts:
o Academies
o subscription concerts
noble connoisseurs:
exceptionally high level of musical education
receptive to innovative music of high quality
Countess Thun
Count Cobenzl
Prince Galitzin
Archduke Maximilian Franz (brother of Joseph II)

nobility diplomatic corps

Gottfried Freiherr van Swieten
( 1733 Leiden 1803 Vienna):
son of Maria Theresas personal physician
Jesuit college
diplomatic career
prefect of the Imperial Library (1777)
Councillor of State under Joseph II
freemason
1786 Gesellschaft der Associierten:
society of music-loving nobles
veneration for the old masters
silence

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one of Mozarts main patrons:

salon of Countess Thun
conductor at the Gesellschaft (1788)
financial support
introduces Mozart to the music of Bach and Handel
counterpoint

late 1780s
Mozart confronts financial problems:
moves 4 times in 18 months
loans from friends
explaining elements:
1786:
1788:
1787-1790:

Le Nozze di Figaro
illness Constanze
war with the Turks:
exodus of noble army officers
contraction of cultural life in Vienna
Europe-wide economic recession

from 1790 on
recovery
1791: La Clemenza di Tito / Die Zauberflte
international reputation
invitations from London to St. Petersburg
1791: Mozart dies of rheumatic fever

Caution!
Mozarts alleged poverty and falling into oblivion
to a large extent the product of romantic imagination
creation of a legend
financial problems = shortage of liquid assets (short term)
recovery had started
achievement recognised in public and private
memory venerated

21

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

1770-1827

builds on the achievement of Haydn and Mozart

raising the status of both music and the musician to unprecedented heights

PUBLIC SPHERE COMES TO AGE

19th century breakthrough of a substantial market for music:
improvements in music print: use of steam engines
manufacturing industry of musical instruments (piano)
middle class demand in cities
Beethoven to Franz Gerhard Wegeler
29 juni 1801:
My compositions earn me a great deal, and I can say that I have more orders than is possible
for me to fulfill, and for every piece, I have 6, 7 publishers and more if I wanted to, and one
does not negotiate with me, anymore, I demand and one pays, you see, that this is a beautiful
situation,

STATUS
1809 Beethoven gets an attractive offer from Jerome, king of Westphalia (Kassel)
3 aristocrats coalesce to keep Beethoven in Vienna
lifelong annual income of 4,000 guilder
prince Lobkowitz
prince Kinsky
archduke Rudolph (brother Francis I)
Observations:
Beethoven clearly recognised as a man of genius
relation more akin to friendship than patronage
Beethoven only wants to be treated on equal terms
dedications as friend, not as supplicant
e.g. archduke Rudolph (piano concerto no 5, Archduke trio, Missa Solemnis)
Beethoven thinking of himself as being the son of Frederick II

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Beethoven has attitude

appearance
behaviour
deafness
first musician to become the centre of a cult, a legend in his own time
Beethoven worshipped by fans all over Europe (fanatic)
admirers want to know how their hero looked like
unprecedented visual access
Franz Klein
life mask 1812 portrait bust
Blanning: passionate, indomitable, exciting, untamed, above all original

BEETHOVENS DEATH AND FUNERAL

artists standing manner in which his death is marked
Mozart 1791
anonymous grave

Beethoven 1827
Beethoven 1827:
sense and awareness of an historical moment:
autopsy
locks of hair
drawing and death mask by Josef Danhauser (1805-1845)
last words: Pity, pity too late!
(Schade, schade, zu spt)
funeral: grand and formal event:
formal invitations
school holiday declared by the authorities
funeral procession:
o 36 torch bearers (Schubert)
o 10,000 30,000 onlookers
Whring cemetery:
o oration written by dramatist Franz Grillparzer
o only deity recognised = music per se
Beethoven as its high priest
sacralisation of music

23

BEETHOVEN AND 19TH-CENTURY STATUOMANIA

Bonn
Beethoven-monument (1845)
Ernst Julius Hhnel (1811-1891)
Mnsterplatz
Involvement of Franz Liszt
Vienna
Beethoven Monument (1880)
Kaspar von Zumbusch (1830-1915)
Beethovenplatz

RELATION TO THE MUSICAL PUBLIC

Beethoven:
sense of aristocracy
distanced from the general public

developments
noble connoisseurs (Lichnowsky, Lobkowitz) subject to substantial financial pressures:
o wars 1787-1815
o dissolution of their musical establishments
growth of population
emerging public sphere (middle classes)
larger musical public
cultural participation as social pressure
keeping up appearances
public concerts
impresarios
profit

Blanning p. 44
These paying audiences were given what they wanted, and that was easy listening in the
form of plenty of variety, good tunes, regular rhythms and pieces that were not too long or
demanding.
pot-pourris
popular overtures, operatic arias, dance tunes
at best a single movement of a symphony or concerto
Haydn/Mozart/Beethoven Italians
complex music simple enjoyment
complaint of vulgarisation
Beethoven: It is said vox populi, vox dei- I never believed it

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ROSSINI, PAGANINI, LISZT THE MUSICIAN AS CHARISMATIC

HERO
GIOACCHINO ROSSINI
1792-1868

Stendhal (1783-1842)
Vie de Rossini (1824)
Light, lively, amusing, never wearisome, but seldom exalted Rossini would appear to have
brought into this world for the express purpose of conjuring up visions of ecstatic delight in
the commonplace soul of the Average Man
stupendous success
popular adulation
middle classes
in Italy even popular among layers of the working class
public sphere has come of age
musician enters spheres previously reserved for kings and generals

Stendhal:
Napoleon is dead; but a new conqueror has already shown himself to the world; and from
Moscow to Naples, from London to Vienna, from Paris to Calcutta, his name is constantly on
every tongue. The fame of this hero knows no bounds save those of civilisation itself; and he
is not yet thirty-two! The task which I have set myself is to trace the paths and circumstances
which have carried him at so early an age to such a throne of glory.

In the rich mans world

1829 Rossini retires
1855 Rossini settles in Paris:
protagonist of Paris society
jours
cultural, diplomatic, financial elite
atmosphere of luxury, fashion and opulence
gourmand
tournedos Rossini (foie gras, truffle)

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Rossini as charismatic musician

charisma:
original meaning: gift from God
19th century secularisation
purely internal quality
derived exclusively from the personal qualities of the individual
archetype of the modern charismatic leader = Napoleon Bonaparte
extraordinary force of his personality, charm, authority, sense of destiny, self-assurance
1804 places the imperial crown on his own head
power of personal myth in the cultivation of public opinion

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