Palmer, Fiona
(2016)
Conductors and Self-Promotion in the
British Nineteenth-Century Marketplace.
In:
The Idea of Art Music in a Commercial World, 1800-1930.
Boydell Press, Woodbridge, pp. 130-149.
ISBN 9781783270651
Abstract
Today, serving the globalized and media-driven society of our time, major
orchestral institutions strategically control commercial ‘message-making’ on
behalf of their conductors. Now the function of conductor is synonymous with
leadership, celebrity, power and the embodiment of interpretative wisdom – a
change of image that came about in continental Europe during the second half of
the nineteenth century following the deaths of Wagner and Brahms.1 In Britain,
however, it was only as recently as the twentieth century that this personalitydriven
and centralized concept of the conductor’s role became normalized. This
chapter focuses on two previously underexplored individuals and examines the
commercial aspects surrounding conductors and their roles as mediators of art
music during this time of change. It probes the ways in which two prominent
musicians in Britain, Julius Benedict (1804–85) and Frederic Cowen (1852–1935),
exploited, valued and promoted the function of conductor within their careers,
thereby revealing a clearer sense of the extent to which they led and shaped
their own progress as conductors. The ways in which their overall contributions
mirrored current traditions, while also contributing to the genesis of the function
itself within the scope of the commercial marketplace in which they operated,
provide insights into the changing status of conducting as an art.
| Item Type: |
Book Section
|
| Keywords: |
Conductors; Self-Promotion; British Nineteenth-Century Marketplace; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > Music |
| Item ID: |
7729 |
| Depositing User: |
Fiona Palmer
|
| Date Deposited: |
11 Jan 2017 17:31 |
| Publisher: |
Boydell Press |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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