The Many Faces of Everyday Musical Life. Approaching Music History from “Below”
The Many Faces of Everyday Musical Life. Approaching Music History from “Below”

Summary/Abstract: Is it useful to write history on everyday musical life? And how can we do it? T is article introduces a historiographical concept initiated by historians such as Carlo Ginzburg, Alf Lüdtke and Richard van Dülmen already in the 1970s, in an at empt to renew the writing of history. Instead of the reconstruction and interpretation of grand narratives and deep structures in society, economy and culture, these historians offer close descriptions of ‘average citizens’ with their daily musical routines, motivations and preferences, and the result is of en a cluster of fascinating and wide-ranging insights into dif erent forms of contact with music. Following this general approach, I hope to of er a panorama of everyday musical culture in Hamburg in the early eighteenth century. T e sources used for this study include dif erent musical genres such as opera, cantata and instrumental ‘table music’, as well as books, newspaper reports, subscription lists, diaries, behavioural guides and archival documents. This material permits insights into the uses made of musicians such as Johann Mattheson, Georg Philipp Telemann and Reinhard Keiser, as well as into the social lives of the Hamburg citizenship.

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