The Salon

In nineteenth-century Paris, new music was tried in drawing rooms before it met a concert hall.

Related

RomanticNocturneMazurkaPiano

In nineteenth-century Paris new music was tried in a drawing room before it met strangers in a concert hall.

Time and place

Paris in the 1830s and 1840s, in the houses of aristocrats and wealthy burghers. Chopin often played in the evening, a Pleyel piano standing in a corner of the room; a singer such as Viardot tried new songs in the same kind of space. Twenty to fifty guests sat under lamps, a few steps from the performer.

What happened

The hostess ran the salon, choosing guests, repertory and hour. Composers, critics and aristocrats sat together, and conversation was itself a filter, reaction arriving on the spot. Programmes mixed piano solos, art songs and movements of chamber music, with conversation and refreshments between. Composers played new works here first, for informed listeners, and revised after the reaction; performers built a reputation by word of mouth before facing a public concert. The room was small, so no one had to shout, and soft playing and fine changes of colour could be heard.

What changed

The salon was the testing ground of public musical life, and many genres were written to its scale: nocturne, mazurka, short character piece and art song all suit the room. Women gained real power in the circulation of music as hostesses and performers, and the piano became the centre of sociability. Recitals and halls later took over these functions and the salon became a nostalgic setting, but the practice of trying a work before a small audience survived.

Listen for the turn

Begin with Chopin's Nocturne Op. 37 No. 2, never loud, its melody winding through ornament, dependent on touch rather than volume. Then Viardot's Les filles de Cadix, voice and piano on equal terms with a Spanish colour, a piece that could win a drawing room at once. Finally Liszt's sixth Consolation, simple and songlike, with no display. Before the turn such music was written for a room; afterwards the same pieces moved into larger halls and demanded another way of playing, where a whisper became a hint carried across distance.

Related

The turn belongs to Romantic; its drawing-room genres are the Nocturne and the Mazurka, and its central instrument the Piano.

Sources

• Grove Music Online 的 Salon 条目，用于核对巴黎沙龙的音乐活动
• James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris（University of California Press），用于核对听众与场所的变化

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.