ABSTRACT
This chapter is about music production in industrial venues. More precisely, it is a study on Berg- und Werksmusik [mining and factory music] in Moravian-Silesian ironworks from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Ironworks flourished at that time, and, as a side effect, became important spaces for music production. Many of them (like other industrial sectors) maintained orchestras, which provided musical entertainment (and diversion) for their workforces as well as for the population in surrounding towns and villages. The orchestras’ fields of activity, however, were not limited to these activities, but fulfilled a number of other performative and social functions. Taking the Gemeinsame Musikkapelle der Ostrauer Gewerkschaften [Joint Music Band of the Ostrava Mining and Steel Companies] and the Witkowitzer Werksorchester [Vítkovice Factory Orchestra] as examples, this chapter analyses these musicians’ working conditions, the music ensembles’ internal organisation and their various functions. As I came across this largely forgotten musical sphere in the course of a research project on musicians’ associations in the late Habsburg Monarchy; furthermore, as a starting point, I take a closer look at this specific historiographical context, considering its important heuristic function for the further investigations.
