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From Salon to Center Stage: Jewish Musical Participation in 19th Century German-speaking Europe

Mon, December 16, 10:30am to 12:00pm, Hilton Bayfront San Diego, Sapphire 410B

Abstract

During the 19th century, Western art music simultaneously flourished, expanded, and fractured due to increasing cross-boundary migration, the development of modern ideas of statehood and national identity, and the rise of historicism that solidified the concept of a canonic repertoire. As composers sought to take up the mantle of Beethoven, new allegiances to style and musical form arose as well as increased philosophic conversations surrounding music and identity. The rising middle class became conspicuous consumers of culture broadly and music in particular. For Jews in Western and Central Europe, emancipation—and its companion phenomena acculturation and assimilation—opened up the opportunities for participation in art music as composers, performers, patrons, and audiences in ways that had hitherto been impossible.

This paper, in addition to giving a brief overview on the role of German-speaking Jews in 19th century art music, presents a case study on the influence of one Jewish woman, Hungarian-Austrian singer Caroline von Gomperz-Bettelheim (1845–1925). Rebecca Cypess and Nancy Sinkoff’s edited volume on the Jewish salonnière, Sara Levy, has brought scholarly attention to Jewish women in 18th century musical circles. Levy’s influence firmly established the trend of participation in secular musical pursuits for enlightened and emancipated Jewish women. With increasing access to public space and opportunities for public contribution afforded to Jews in the 19th century, Gomperz-Bettelheim was able to move fluidly between private and public spaces, as well as Jewish and non-Jewish spheres. Furthermore, she served as an inspiration for titular character of the most popular opera in Vienna during the final decades of the century, DIE KOENIGIN VIN SABA (THE QUEEN OF SHEBA, 1875), composed by Hungarian Jewish composer Carl Goldmark on a libretto of Salomon Hermann Mosenthal. Although she never performed the role, Gomperz-Bettelheim’s participation in European musical life gave voice to Jewish women and her success embodies the new cultural access gained by assimilated Jews during this period.

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