ABSTRACT
The fields of music history, sociology and history proper (“plain” history, as a musicologist once said) have been relating with one another more closely and effectively in the last twenty years. Just as interest in music history has spread among historians, so larger social and cultural problems have captured the interest of musicologists. I will never forget when a Los Angeles graduate student challenged me for not mentioning the Industrial Revolution after I gave a talk on nineteenth-century concert programming. Rethinking the ideas of Bourdieu has recently provided a fluent language by which fields communicate with one another, thanks mostly to publications by DiMaggio, Bennett, Fulcher, Steinmetz and Charle (discussed during the course of this chapter). The concepts of “habitus,” “eclecticism” and “legitimation” have helped bring new perspectives on matters of the past as well as the present, most importantly regarding the hoary problem of social class (Weber 1979). How did the middle and the upper classes relate to one another in their musical interests? Can we speak of eclectic musical tastes in the nineteenth century? Discussing such patterns in Europe and the United States can help understand listening habits in recent decades.
