Social Inclusion and Exclusion in Nineteenth-Century Dutch Music “Salons”

This chapter explores the understudied role of music in Dutch private social life during the long nineteenth century. Examining a wide variety of cases and sources, it reveals that many of the country’s diversified early modern private musical practices persisted until the outbreak of the First World War. The chapter shows how music functioned as social and cultural capital in the way it shaped the agendas and identities of both hosts and guests. By tracing contemporaries’ expectations and experiences related to the social functions of music, the study highlights how they internalized intersecting societal ideas with regards to social groups. It shows that the Dutch were divided into various emotional-musical communities that shared emotional as well as musical norms, preferences, and behaviors. Uncovering processes of social exclusion as a key characteristic of Dutch private music sociability, the chapter concludes that “salons” were not as harmless as often assumed.