Salon Culture and Music Making in American Parlors 1850-1950

The cultural practice of running or visiting a salon was part of a broad spectrum of domestic sociability among the middle classes and, in Europe, among the aristocracy as well. Various features of this kind of sociability can be discerned on both sides of the Atlantic. However, a considerable modification concerned the concrete location in which the socio- cultural practice took place. In US homes there were generally no rooms called salons or gute Stuben, and there were drawing rooms only in highly exquisite homes. The typical space in which social activities in the domestic environment took place was the parlor. Nonetheless, this particular place held a specific importance for 19th-century society, which differed from its European prototypes. It was regarded as a representation of two virtues that were of the highest rank for the US-American (upper-)middle class: gentility and domesticity (Grier 1997). The project will examine the function and use of the parlor through house floor plans from womens magazines and house guidebooks. In addition, contemporary etiquette literature will be studied to investigate the cultural practices typical of US salon gatherings, the genteel performances (Halttunen 1982), with a particular focus on music-related practices making and listening to music as well as dancing. The source material indicates that genteel performances are a direct cultural transfer from Europe, which means that overall two types of (music-)cultural transfer will be investigated: First, the transfer of the practice of running a salon from Europe to the United States, and second, the (music-)cultural exchange within the respective salon. The thorough examination of four concrete case studies of US salon culture - Octavia Walton LeVert (1810-1877), Mobile, AL - Clara Kathleen Rogers (1844-1931), Boston, MA - Louise (1879-1953) and Walter Arensberg (1878-1954), New York, NY - Salka Viertel (1889-1978), Los Angeles, CA forms another significant pillar of the project and complements the rather normative source material of magazines and etiquette literature. This enables the respective weaknesses (normativity vs. exceptionality) to be balanced and the bird`s-eye view on US salon culture to be combined with details on the ground.