POETICS

ELSEVIER Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108

www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic

Between history and commodity:

The production of a musical patrimony
through the record in the 1920-1930s

Sophie Maisonneuve

European Universi(y Institute, Florence, Italy; Centre de Sociologic de l’lnnovation, Paris, France;
&Cole des Hautes hudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

Abstract

In the interwar period, the gramophone rapidly spread as a medium for music. This devel-
opment accompanies a shift in the social relation to ‘classical music’. This shift was sup-
ported by many agents, the interest for past music and its history grew as it became increas-
ingly associated with an unprecedented commodification of music. Relying on the double
meaning of the term of patrimony - both a heritage from the past and a possession that can
be enjoyed - we call this double process patrimonialisation of classical music. To analyse it,
it is necessary to take into account the various concrete agents of its formation: music lovers,
musicologists, marketing agents, but also objects, domestic practices and concrete aesthetic
experience. Giving back their importance to material culture and ordinary amateurs, it is sug-
gested that the driving principle of this process is to be found in the specific articulation of all
these agents in an unprecedented network that configured a new setup for the appreciation of
music. ‘Classical music’ was thus redefined in and through the record. It became, not a mon-
ument of steady works, but a reality relying upon the various ‘setups’ that configured it. Tak-
ing over recent works on canon and patrimony, new directions in the history of music and in
the sociology of art and culture are suggested. 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights
reserved.

1. Introduction

The interest and taste for past music and its history undoubtedly precedes the
appearance of the record as a medium for music. Weber (1992) has shown the scat-
tered emergence in eighteenth-century Britain of the notions of ‘ancient music’ and
canon, and the progressive formation in Europe throughout the nineteenth century of

* E-mail: sophie.maisonneuve@iue.it

0304-422X/01/$ - see front matter 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: SO304-422X(01)00029-8
90 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108

a fixed repertory under the name of ‘classical music’. However, the production of a
musical patrimony appears with the convergence of a series of elements specific to
the phonographic world. ‘Patrimony’ is not only the constitution of a monument of
musical works of the past, or the mere preservation of a heritage: it is also, and at
the same time, the production of a modem signification and value for that monu-
ment, of a desire to enjoy it, to ‘use’ it in the present. In this sense, the record cre-
ated a situation conducive to the appearance of a patrimony in the realm of classical
music, and at a moment when the world of classical music was ready to welcome it.
Being at once a medium for music and a commercial object, a modern industrial
prodiction and a medium to reach things past, a personal -and domestic commodity
and a medium for universal works, the record created a new situation and stimulated
a new relationship to music.

2. Method and orientation

In this paper, I present the main agents of classical music’s ‘patrimonialisation’ in

the twentieth century. Focusing on such sources as record catalogues,’ educational
writings* and various objects and other manifestations involved in the production,
conservation and consumption of classical music on record,3 I analyse their role and
signification as part of a new patrimonial world. The first kind of sources, the record
company catalogues, illustrate the evolution of the recorded repertoire, in terms both
of the importance of the monument of music made available by the record and of the

’ Comparative research on France and U.K. highlighted both general trends and national specificities
concerning the constitution of a recorded patrimony of music. Catalogues of various record companies
(His Master’s Voice and Columbia for the United Kingdom; Pathe, Columbia, Odeon and the Compag-
nie du Gramophone for France) were consulted for each country for the period, 18981970. The long
time frame was chosen so as to be able to consider of patrimonial practices as they changed and devel-
oped and, as it turned out, became more concentrated, over time.
z Handbooks intended for the gramophone listener, or, more accurately, for the person listening to
music on the gramophone. See bibliographical list below (‘Birth of the listener’). This list, which has
been constituted from a keywords-search in the British Library catalogue (‘listen’, ‘listener’, ‘listening’),
reveals that these terms suddendly emerged in the literature, and spread from the 1920s on. The rare
occurrences found in earlier periods do not relate to music listening, but to religious matters instead.
These terms, and hence the issue of both listening and of the formation of a listener, are obviously linked
with the gramophone as a medium: both are associated in most titles, and even more frequently in the
books contents. The appearance of this link, at the beginning of the 192Os, goes together with an increase
of the publications on the topic: 4 publications in the 191Os, 11 in the 1920s - a peak period - and 8 in
the 193Os, a figure that remains stable later. This contiis the idea that there is a triple link between the
dissemination of the gramophone, the issue of ‘listening’, and the production of a specific culture com-
ing along with it. Books published in the USA and in Canada were retained in this list: if they are listed
in this catalogue, they were probably also available in Great-Britain. For an analysis of this phenomenon,
see Maisonneuve (2000).
3 The sources give access to quite varied objects and practices: advertisements published in catalogues
or in periodicals intended for amateurs (the most interesting one being The Gramophone, published from
1923 on), and which praise objects pertaining to collection practices (record cases, luxury albums, etc.);
accounts or requests by amateurs in the various correspondence sections of the periodicals.
 S.1Uaisonneuve/Poetics29(2001)89-108 91

relative weight of certain kinds of works, composers or periods of music history.

From these sources, the companies’ editorial and commercial practices can be
grasped as well: punctual commemorations and creation of various kinds of historical
collections. Analysing these catalogues over a long time period brings into relief
some of the links between these policies and the evolution of tastes, practices and
demands of the public (e.g., unsuccessful editorial policies are not renewed). Educa-
tional writings which abound in the form of handbooks intended either for school
pupils or, very often, for individual ‘lay’ listeners are equally important: they reveal
discourses which were unprecedented, ones that were strongly linked to the medium
studied here, the gramophone. Indeed, these handbooks appeared when the gramo-
phone spread as a medium for music of a new type and endowed with an unprece-
dented accessibility. The striking increase of the number of publications of this type
from the 1920s on, when the gramophone became widespread, shows their appeal to
the listener and shows how they partake in, and contribute to, the changing relation-
ship to music analysed here. Finally, the advertisements for objects related to collec-
tion practices, which are displayed in periodicals and catalogues, as well as discourses
referring to material pleasures and practices of the same kind, allow, by their conver-
gence, to grasp the emergence of a hitherto unprecedented patrimonial culture.
In this study, I have purposedly used sources of heterogeneous origins and char-
acters; My aim is to link objects, amateurs and professionals. I consider both the
activity and objects that proliferate around and from the new medium - the record -
and suggest that they partake in a new configuration of music appreciation. As part
of this perspective, I am trying to illuminate a network that includes discourses and
body practices, institutions or ideologies and technology, aesthetic and economic
issues, the transmission of canons by an established culture and ordinary amateur
practices, ‘spiritual’ and material cultures, immaterial heritage and present consump-
tion. I hope to demonstrate that all these components are part of an aesthetic setup
(in which the relationship to music is at stake), and each element in this setup plays
a role that articulates with the others and has its role renewed when the gramophone
appears.
Therefore, while drawing upon earlier studies for inspiration, this article, by its
specific approach and methods, hopes to suggest new perspectives to the research
streams in which it is rooted. So far, work on the history of the gramophone (Gelatt,
1967; Martland, 1997; Read and Welch, 1976) has dealt primarily with the techni-
cal, industrial and economic aspects of the development of this object, and has
neglected the users: when they appear, they are typically linked to a history of the
object ‘in itself’ or they are inserted into large-scale economic and technical policies
and issues. Technology and material practices of the users, industries and cultural
practices, editorial decisions of the companies and amateurs’ tastes are thus insuffi-
ciently confronted. The massive success of the gramophone as a medium for music
and the deep-seated change that it effected in music relations are therefore left in
shadow. To illuminate this change it is necessary to examine the conjunction of
interests and practices within a ‘hybrid’ gramophonic world.
The interest for the issue of canon, usually grasped through studies on the
repertoire, is relatively recent (for music, Weber, 1989, 1992; De Nora, 1995; for
92 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89408

literature, Guillory, 1993). By asking the question of the permanence of the ‘clas-
sics’ and that of the formation of the taste for them, this interest profoundly renewed
the history of music. The introduction of institutions, ideologies and cultural prac-
tices into music history disrupted the then current analysis of the aesthetic relation
and the very definition of music (which passed from a perennial and monumental
object to a hybrid and moving entity). In what follows, I employ these contributions
but take them further: I propose to focus more explicitely on amateurs and material
objects, in order to also root ideologies and institutions in an ordinary, everyday,
material and concrete setup which contributes to their existence and weight. In so
doing, I reconsider the balance of the various components of the object of music his-
torical study, allowing an importance to material culture and amateurs - stimulated
by the obvious technical dimension of the medium and by its widespread domestic
use. Simultaneously, I seek to reconsider the role of objects and ordinary practices in
the configuration of aesthetic setups.
Finally, the concern with patrimony has taken inspiration from. Poulot’s (1997,
1998) analysis of the emergence of a patrimonial concern towards monuments,
sculptures and paintings under the French revolution and during the first half of the
nineteenth century, In particular, Poulot reminds us that the idea of patrimony does
not only consist in taking over a heritage, but also in actively producing it, accord-
ing to present needs, expectations and policies. Concern for patrimony pertains to the
definition of a specific relationship to past and history: selecting works, condensing
history, shifting, adapting, copying and reproducing works are present operations by
which a perennial value is allowed to the past, to a past configured in this way.4
Focusing the analysis on the uses and practices by which this patrimony is produced,
paying attention to the production of mediators which contribute to the growth of the
patrimonial relationship to the past (museum guides) and, altogether, of an “ethics of
free enjoyment” (Poulot, 1997: 347) resorting to intimacy - all these perspectives
are highly relevant to what follows. Finally, relating this process to (national or uni-
versal) identity issues as well as to the new concern with authenticity constitutes a
relevant question in the case of music.5
Starting from these points, in what follows I employ a modified focus on patri-
mony and its formation, in particular, I seek to emphasize the importance of the
‘mere amateur’ and of commercial mechanisms. This modified focus frees the
notion of patrimony from an analysis centered on political, institutional and iden-
tity issues and strengthens the links between individual and collective, consump-
tion and canon, ideology and material culture. Along with this focus I do not
neglect the role of objects as shaping aesthetic and cultural setups. They are not
considered as mere vehicles of mutations originating elsewhere (in institutions or
ideologies), but as co-producers of these mutations. In other words, material
culture is not only a sign, it is also an agent of mutation. In short, my focus is on

4 On the meaning and use of the past in the present, see also de Certeau (1975) and Lowenthal(1985).
s Following the recent concern of musicians themselves, in their performance practice, with the issue
of authenticity, that notion has become central in scholars’ studies of the interest for past music
(Taruskin, 1988; Kivy, 1995; Leppard, 1988).
 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89408 93

concrete situations of consumption and enjoyment, and on the role of material and
technical objects in these situations.
To this end, I focus on the 1920s and 1930s. This period has particular significance
for the phenomenon of patrimonialisation here discussed: while the phonograph was
invented in 1878 and first commercialised in the 189Os, it remained a mere curiosity
until the first decades of this century. One third of British households owned one in
1913 (Martland, 1997: 68) and two thirds at the end of the 1920s. Its diffusion as a
common medium for music is attested by the fact that, in 1919, its sales surpassed
those of the piano (Ehrlich, 1990: 186). Concurrently, the production of recordings
dramatically grew in the 192Os, resulting in an enlarged repertory - an evolution
which was also sustained by various technological innovations. All these mutations
create a situation favourable to the production of classical music as a patrimony.

3. Record catalogues: producing a repertoire of ‘classical music’ and patrimo-

nialising it through practices of commemoration and collection

3.1. Producing a repertoire

The rapid growth of the recorded repertoire in the 1920s is striking: the Pathe cat-
alogue, for instance, expands from around 2,500 references in 1898 to 12,000 in
1904 and 50,000 in 1926. This leap forward is due to the positive economic context
of the 192Os, to the growing interest for the gramophone as a medium for music, and
to technological innovations such as the double-sided record and, above all, the elec-
tric recording and reproduction of sounds. Thanks to these innovations many more
works and more various musical genres (symphonic music, ancient music) could be
recorded, with an affordable price for most potential buyers (prices decreased during
this period as well).
In this way, the ‘classical repertoire’ became a material entity. The new availabil-
ity of this large amount of musical works stimulated new practices and ways of lis-
tening, in the same way as the printed book did in the Renaissance (Eisenstein,
1991: 19-20 and passim). Indeed, while music had previously been an ephemeral
event, available only through scattered and particular performances, it became a
material and fixed reality which could be reproduced, preserved, distributed, trans-
mitted, compared, inventoried as a list. These qualities in turn contributed to the con-
stitution of a canon and, through their links with the notions of history and identity,
to the constitution of a patrimony. This new musical materiality modified the ama-
teur’s relationship to musical works, to the past and to the ‘repertoire’ itself (or even
the appearance of the very idea of repertoire). It stimulated the desire to choose, clas-
sify, preserve musical works, and to commemorate past composers of this newly
available repertoire. The reciprocal influence of new objects (records, collections,
catalogues) and practices (commemoration, collection and preservation), the joint
effect of a disposition to collect music and to consider it as a canon and of a new par-
adigm for collecting, preserving and canonising, progressively built a phonographic
patrimony of music.
94 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108

Concurrently, the phonographic world reinforced the meaning and realm of

‘classical music’ : catalogues progressively listed it separately, as they split the ref-
erences into two parts (‘serious music’ and ‘others’) and introduced a specific par-
adigm for the first one, referenced in alphabetical order of composers, with an
index of composers’ biographical dates, sometimes grouping composers by cen-
tury. A specific regime of authority, such as analysed by Foucault (1969), was thus
created for classical music, and catalogues constituted the material expression of
this authority. In the same way, as we shall see below, handbooks and various ama-
teur practices developed a specific status for ‘classical music’: specific ways of lis-
tening, specific discourses, specific tools to ‘appreciate’ it - in a word, a new liter-
acy. ‘Classical music’, then, is not a monument of eternal, stable and immaterial
works, but is rather a historical and moving configuration of objects, practices and
discourses.

3.2. Commemorations: Commercial event and creation of a new taste for the past

Once ‘classical music’ was reinforced in its specific identity and once its unprece-
dented availability stimulated, among amateurs, the disposition of ‘patrimony’
(through collection, preservation, lists), it became possible for record companies to
apply in earnest a specific patrimonial treatment to music. Commemorations, which
first appeared in this realm in 1923, were a crucial component of it.
Commemorations of composers were not invented by the phonographic world.
They date from the end of the 18th century and developed steadily during the
19th century (Weber, 1992). But with the record, they experienced a new turn:
the very fact of choosing to cut on records what is considered to be the more sig-
nificant works of a composer gave them an unprecedented importance: through
the ‘print’, they acquire a perennial value. Moreover, the record companies, with
their international structure and marketing techniques, gave them an unprece-
dented visibility. These commemorations involved the whole phonographic world
and even the larger musical world: in 1927, a date when they become a central
feature of the phonographic world, a decisive impulse was given to Beethoven’s
commemoration.
To commemorate the centenary of his death, Columbia organised a ‘Beethoven
week’ in March, including, at an international level, a series of broadcast confer-
ences dedicated to him; the company also published a large part of his work,
amounting to 100 records (while a rival firm, HMV, issued 52 of them). The fol-
lowing year, the centenary of Schubert’s death provided an opportunity for reiterat-
ing the operation: Columbia issued 70 of the composer’s works and organ&d a con-
test to complete his Unfinished Symphony. Meanwhile, HMV issued a booklet with
a portrait of the composer, his dates, and a text on his ‘life and work’ including all
the biographical components of a genius’ life (cf. Elias, 1991; Heinich, 1991; Kris
and Kurz, 1987; Zilsel, 1993), followed by a catalogue of his works recorded by
the company.
These examples show how commemoration meant, simultaneously, exploiting a
‘real’ event and creating it, or, in other words, stimulating rediscoveries of existing
 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108 95

works and producing them as a new relevant entities, together with producing autho-
rial figures, figures endowed with a function (authority), with an attribute (the work),
and with a ‘discursive posterity’ (the other productions made possible by this author
- cf. Foucault, 1969). The phenomenon is specular (De Nora, 1995: 29 and passim
for an analysis of these kinds of mechanisms in the theory of reception): the com-
memoration confers a historical importance to the composer, but very often the com-
poser chosen is chosen because he is already renowned. Thus, the phonographic
industry used fame to produce fame, founded the historical importance of ‘its’ reper-
toire and ‘its’ composers on a tradition and a recognition already established. In the
same vein, the commemoration project here associated the launching of a new tech-
nical product (the electrical recording) with the commercial launching of a com-
poser: although he is of course already renowned, he became the composer of a
Work, the massive character of which was constituted by its listing in the catalogues,
its unprecedented material presence and synchronous availability. Indeed, it is not
insignificant that the only integrally recorded genre in the Beethoven series was the
symphony, a genre which was difficult to record (and hence rarely recorded) at the
time of the mechanical technique; similarly, both events were associated in the title
of the HMV/Schubert booklet: ‘Schubert centenary/HMV electrical recordings’.
This duplicity is precisely what characterises the patrimonialisation of music in
the phonographic world. Typical and unprecedented are the intertwinning of past and
present, the production of the past as a modem matter of interest (de Certeau, 1975;
Hennion, 1997), the use of the past in its difference as a principle of modem taste
and consumption, and its reorganisation, with this aim, under modem principles or
its reconstruction with modem objects (catalogues, collections, records to be con-
sumed thanks to modem technology). In other words, to make a composer enjoyable,
one emphasizes his its historical dimension, using a series of modem resources:
handbooks, historical discourses written by modem musicologists, collections pro-
ducing a new coherence of scattered works, and the stimulated desire of enjoying
again and again this work thanks to a modem medium. This double dimension is the
very specificity of the new relationship to the past produced by the record. I call it
patrimony because this notion includes both the idea of a heritage - of a continuity
with the past - and the organisation of this heritage according to modem interests
combined with the enjoyment of this heritage in the present: patrimony is thus both
heritage and ownership in the form of a series of commodities which can be
‘enjoyed’ (iouissunce).
The particular status of the phonographic world in this construction of a patri-
mony of classical music is due to the specific properties of the record: a commercial
object to be sold and consumed, enjoyed again and again in the present. The record
calls for the construction of a desire and a taste for such a patrimony, through medi-
ations as varied as marketing strategies (creation of an ‘event’) or a resort to history
both as an end in itself (a very matter of enjoyment and desire), and as a means to
‘understand’ or ‘appreciate’ the past (this is the role of musicologists, to which I will
return later). In this production of a patrimony of classical music, the joint role (and
interests) of companies and musicologists (following dispositions of music lovers) is
thus to be emphasized.
96 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108

3.3. Collections: How to create a material patrimony

Commercial collections appeared at the beginning of the 1930s. They were of

three types: historical collections presenting a sound panorama of the music history,
often produced with the contribution of musicologists; collections of masterworks,
which are often the integral recording of a composer’s work presented in an album
(the album of records was precisely invented at that time); coherent production of
specialized companies or societies, often dedicated to early or rare music.
Here again, the appearance and success of collections was the result of many
factors :

- First, the commercial interest of the companies in selling all in one a larger quan-
tity of records or in creating the desire to complete progressively one’s ‘collec-
tion’ (the very idea of collection is by no means self-evident but is always an arti-
ficial - albeit possibly coherent - grouping of scattered works under the heading
of a composer, a genre, an instrument or a ‘historical evolution’);
- Second, a new literacy and relationship to music which developed among
‘gramophiles’ during the preceding decade (the 1920s). More particularly, the
idea of, and taste for, listening to music for its own sake, as a cultural product
with its history (and its schools, styles, genres), spread dramatically. In this per-
spective, the collection, and more particularly the historical collection, was a
means of building a coherent world in a now abundant production; it also allowed
the listener to lay out a series of marks helping him to find his bearings in this
new world of taste that he had to construct for and by himself (he had to choose
his records, to build his collection and his own world of taste);
- Third, technical innovations such as the development, during the 192Os, of dou-
ble-sided records and above all the improved recorded length of a record’s side
(from 3-4 to 14 minutes): all this permitted the recording and listening to a whole
movement of a symphony without being interrupted. It also permitted more easier
storage of entire works or series of works.
- Last but not least, the growth of the market and the improved possibilities of
repertoire recording allowed small companies to exist and to develop a specific
editorial line - music of the past, historical rigour through the collaboration with
musicologists.

The collection was thus a way of organising and writing history. Selecting works
out of an important amount of past productions conferred outstanding value upon
them. As such, they were given access to the status of patrimony. Moreover, in the
case of historical collections, this selection was organised chronologically by the
creation of links of heritage and influence. This set, in its newly created coherence,
was in turn produced as a heritage for the music lover and even the ‘humanity’ of the
day. A kind of ‘gallery of portraits’ representative of the whole music history was
thus produced, a condensation of history similar to the one to be found in the early
nineteenth-century museums (Poulot, 1997: 298, 306). Such a chronological group-
ing - like the concept of ‘collection’ discussed above - is all but ‘natural’; on the
 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108 97

contrary, it is fully constructed according to a certain ‘culture’ that has itself been
built: that such collections appeared after fifty years of record history and related
constructed practices attests it. Again we see that this patrimony was at the same
time a heritage of a past and its modem reorganisation according to present needs,
taste preferences and states of knowledge. In the historical collections of the 193Os,
a bigger or lesser importance or visibility was allowed to this or that composer,
genre, country or period according to these various parameters. There was almost
nothing on early and even baroque music except for Bach and Handel who since the
nineteenth century were much revered and appreciated. Similarly, some ‘big’ names
determined the distribution of periods and served as references even for the period
preceding them. Here we see at stake the reflexive links between taste of the time
and construction of history and patrimony.
In the collections dedicated to a particular genre and/or a particular period (‘early
pieces of the fifteenth century’, ‘three centuries of organ music’), the past character
of the pieces constituted their commonality. In turn, such a grouping produced a his-
torical way of listening in which the relationship to a work was oriented above all
towards its past character: this gave the music lover a reinforced consciousness of
listening to music ‘of the past’.
The second kind of collections - series of masterworks - was first launched in
1924 by Columbia (the ‘Columbia Fine Arts Series of Musical Masterworks’) and
developed dramatically during the 1930s. The title itself was eloquent; it placed the
project into the cultural realm of the ‘Fine Arts’, and presented it as the musical
counterpart of the museum for the plastic arts and the library for literature. Again, as
much as it represented a collection of masterworks, it constituted them as such, in a
performative way. Selecting works (which were hence produced as rare and chosen),
preserving them, constituting them as a coherent material and aesthetic entity, allow-
ing them an outstanding value, presenting them in a luxury case and diffusing them
massively as ‘masterworks’ clearly helped make ‘classical music’ (or at least this
selected part of it) a patrimony. Indeed, contrary to the theory of the ‘aura’ (Ben-
jamin 1991), and according to what Haskell has shown for sculpture in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries, the massive diffusion of a work through its copies is
an efficient resource of increasing its value and its reference status (Haskell and
Penny, 1988: 58, and their reading in the perspective of music by Hennion, 1998;
Hennion and Latour, 1996 : 237-239).
Of course, this particular form of presenting music did not imply that people lis-
tened to it in the way suggested by such a device: following de Certeau (1980: 24),
we can assume that music lovers practised ‘braconnage’ (‘poaching’). But the suc-
cess of these series, and therefore their relevant significance for record lovers is tes-
tified by their continuing presence in catalogueues throughout the period and also by
the publication of specialised catalogue.
These collections, as well as those published by subscription societies, existed at
the interstices of national and personal patrimony. In the first case, this situation was
clearly a selling resource. It orbited around the idea that one would wish to acquire,
to have at home and to enjoy by oneself a patrimony presented as universal and
consensual. I shall develop that below. In the second case, the very existence and
98 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89408

success of such enterprises was granted by the dual nature of the patrimony
(national/personal). At issue was to construct, actively, a patrimony (to transform a
heritage into a patrimony, in the sense given by Poulot), and to salvage for posterity
a national or even ‘universal’ heritage thanks to the individual action of isolated
amateurs, whose interest was twofold: firstly, to appropriate a universal patrimony
by buying it and thus opening the possibility of enjoying it; secondly, to grant the
survival of this common patrimony by a personal contribution, by making it one’s
own as well. The strong intertwinning of material-personal and universal-immaterial
patrimonies is testified by the fact that all these recordings were of the highest qual-
ity and were presented in luxurious albums: they arc part of an exceptional series to
be preserved, be it because of the works’ quality and the composer’s greatness or
because of that of the performers, but in any case, the material finish reinforced the
patrimonial dimension of the series.
It bears mentioning that, although such enterprises were limited (most albums
were issued at a maximum of 500 to 1,000 items), they were nevertheless a signi-
ficative part of this new relationship to music built by the phonographic world. Strik-
ing too was how this entire phenomenon was attached exclusively to classical music:
its very realm was even reinforced in its specificity by all these practices, since the
other kinds of music (which at that time did not yet have a generic name and exis-
tence such as today’s ‘varieties’) were excluded of any enterprise of this kind.

4. Handbooks and education: Classical music as appreciation and culture

4.1. A new situation for listening to music

Various discourses emerged in the 1920s which conferred upon recorded classical
music a crucial patrimonial value. They came from amateurs or, more frequently,
from musicologists and teachers. The appearance of such dispositions can be
explained by the fact that for the first time, as for the printed book in the Renais-
sance, the record enabled music’s standardization and mass distribution. Because
works were durable and readily available, it was possible to discuss and analyse
them, to preserve them, to link them to other works - all components of a process of
patrimonialisation.

4.2. The theme of appreciation: Classical music as part of the humanities

Moreover, the possibility brought about by the record to listen to a work again and
again encouraged practices of literacy and reinforced the concern with the notion of
‘appreciation’. Culture came to be seen as a condition for enjoying good music. A
new interest developed toward music as a matter of culture and aesthetic pleasure.
The very idea of listening to music for its own sake and for the sake of one’s indi-
vidual pleasure became central in educational discussions. Listening, as an issue,
was stimulated by the double novelty of the concrete situation of listening introduced
by the gramophone, listening to music being doubly problematic for the listener: on
 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 8%108 99

the one hand, he or she gained access to a kind of music that was previously inac-
cessible (‘serious’ music experiences a broader diffusion) while on the other hand,
the very experience of listening was radicalised (it became essentially aural, since
the performer could not be seen anymore). The publication of numerous handbooks
teaching how to listen to music on the gramophone ran in tandem with discussions
among amateurs, be it in the ‘correspondence’ section of the specialised periodicals
or within gramophone societies (Maisonneuve, 2000, 2001).
Such a disposition merged with the so-called ‘appreciation movement’ which had
developed from the last third of the nineteenth century. The new medium, with its
specific resources, gave this movement a decisive turn and emphasized ideas of
music as enjoyment and shared patrimony. With the gramophone, such ideas were
translated into practical experience for a wide population.
From the late 1920s onwards, music was presented as being - finally - able to
reach a cultural status equal to that of the humanities: it became, among others, a
new discipline of school education - singing lessons could be replaced by an initia-
tion to music history, after the model of literature. References to literature, or even
to history as national culture, became frequent. Now, presenting (classical) music as
a history meant placing it into the realm of arts and humanities - the typical realm of
patrimony. Again, ‘varieties’ (light music, ‘concert’) were excluded. While the inter-
est for music as a history was not new (it goes back to the eighteenth century in
Britain and to the early nineteenth century in other European countries), it received
here a new meaning: music of the past and the history of music explicitly became a
national and educational concern.

4.3. Music at school: The ‘classics’ as national or universal patrimony?

Therefore, as early as 1920 in Britain (and the 1930s in France), the gramophone
entered the classroom. Specialised teachers (P. Scholes can be considered as their
leading figure) wrote handbooks for school teachers and pupils to accompany a
series of records specially issued in this end by such companies as HMV or Cohun-
bia. The interest of companies in such projects is worth underlining here: HMV
opened an ‘educational department’ for its British branch as early as 1920 and regu-
larly issued catalogues for its specialized publications. Upgrading music’s status
equivalent to that of the ‘humanities’, forming a massive audience to listen to it
(through educational departments as well as through handbooks for isolated adult
beginners) and attaching a national dimension to this repertoire by presenting it as a
‘patrimony’ was indeed an effective means of garnering a steady audience (Frith
1987).
By entering the classroom, classical music was treated as part of ‘the classics’
(Milo, 19&l-1992), that is, part of the set of reference works (art and literature)
taught in a classroom. Classical music’s patrimonial dimension was thus reinforced,
as well as its value as a cultural realm to be transmitted. In this way, a musical cor-
pus was constituted as (or reinforced as) a canon (Guilloty, 1993; Weber, 1992), and
the historical discourses which were produced to accompany it constituted music
as a primarily historical domain. Dividing music into clearly separated periods
100 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108

corresponding to individualised styles and constituting commentary cards for each of

them, as for literature, organized music as a history. The new necessity or will to
transmit music through school lessons led to the development of academic categories
hitherto unknown in this context. Likewise, composers were integrated into the pan-
theon of school authors, making music an unavoidable part of a national patrimony.
In the same way as literature, music became a cultural heritage, and, as such, the
transmission of its ‘classics’ was a crucial issue.
Other institutions developed the same kind of discourses and practices, although
sometimes in different perspectives. In France, the ‘Causeries musicales de propa-
gande’, broadcast from 1929 onwards, evidenced similar politics: introducing the
masses to a shared taste and heritage, cementing a community through a shared cul-
ture, be it national or ‘universal’ were, as the title suggests, at the core of this series.
It may be that foreign composers were primarily included in such programmes. Were
they considered as foreign, as ‘universal’, or as part of the French culture? As
Fulcher (1999) has shown, the answer varies according to the ideological convictions
of the speaker, from the nationalist to the pacifist or the idealist. One thing is clear:
such issues are crucial in this period, and commemorations, the constitution of
school programrnes, and the very way of writing music history are by no means
politically (and culturally) innocent.
The numerous handbooks published in this period (‘How to listen to music by
means of the gramophone?’ ‘A listener’s short history of music’, etc.), the various
conferences organised in many cities, or, in Britain, the dynamic Gramophone Soci-
eties and their varied activities, also aimed to introduce the ‘layman’ to classical
music through the record and historical summaries. But the level at which the notion
of patrimony was rooted may be more complex here: perhaps because of a more
active part taken by the amateurs themselves in them, these productions often asso-
ciated the idea of a shared cultural heritage with the personal pleasure to be taken out
of a more intimate relationship with this music, including its possession and the pos-
sibility of listening to it at will. Moreover, the ‘shared’ dimension of the patrimony
here took many forms, from a national sentiment (rather rarely) to a more vivid feel-
ing of shared tastes, culture and practices among peers.

5. Domestic practices: The intertwinning of personal and collective patrimony

5.1. The birth of the ‘discothkque’

The idea of preserving and classifying one’s records appears with the conjunction
of some innovations and changes in the phonographic world, which are for the most
part the same as for commercial collections. The possibility of such practices is
offered to the amateurs as early as 1906, with the ‘Victrola’, a luxury gramophone
and piece of furniture including shelves for the records. But in the first decades of its
existence, the record remained a temporary object for entertainment, and it was com-
mon to dispose of it after a few weeks of use or to return it to the manufacturer, who
would then recycle the material. Listening to a record was initially modelled after the
 101

reference practice of that time, concert going: listening to a piece of music was an
experience isolated in time, an event not to be repeated so far. Unlike the book, the
record was not considered as a personal object of possession. The very practice of
collecting and preserving records did not really develop until the 192Os, in con-
nection with the rapid expansion of ‘discophilie’ (recordloving) as a cultivated
practice and with the constitution of a dynamic phonographic world. The appear-
ance of the ‘discotheque’ or ‘library of records’ (there is no generic term for it in
English) was the private counterpart of the general development of a patrimonial
culture of ‘classical music’ in the phonographic world. It pertained to a disposition
toward individual pleasure, a pleasure which was as much material as spiritual. Of
course, the contemporary development of commercial collections stimulated its
diffusion, and, in turn, its success among amateurs encourages the companies’ new
publishing policy: both are manifestations of a similar disposition among amateurs
and publishers.
Although it is difficult to estimate the size of private libraries of records and their
diffusion in a country, it is possible to retrace the emergence of such a practice
through indirect clues such as recurrent collection-related issues found in amateur
periodicals or the appearance of related words (‘discotheque’, ‘record collector’,
etc.). As for the second, and regarding the history of the term in France: its appear-
ance around 1928-1929 and stabilisation as a term of common use in the early 1930s
attest the diffusion of the object it designates. Moreover, related institutions such as
the International Record Collector’s Club (1932) or the first historical discographies
appeared in the same period: they confirmed the new turn occurring in amateur prac-
tices. Finally, the proliferation of objects linked to a collection practice (shelves,
files, indexes, etc.) and the change in the advertisement rhetoric for such items -
from luxury to convenience, from the standing of pieces of furniture to a utility
focused on the record itself - also attested to a new disposition toward collection: it
was not an exclusive element of status any more but became a means for constitut-
ing one’s own world of taste and pleasure.

5.2. The book as model: Possession, pleasure and culture

In this mutation, the reference to the book, which was attested from the very
beginning of the history of the record, became omnipresent. While in the first years
this model had been proposed by specialists and functions as a utopia - the dreamed
possibility of constructing a universal library of all works ever composed and played
- in the 1920s it was appropriated by the amateurs, who gave it a new meaning.
Clearly, the reference to the book as a cultural item pertaining to the ‘humanities’
and contributing to them continued in the interwar period. But other qualities of the
book were now referred to in the discourses of the amateurs. First of alI, the belong-
ing of this cultural item to the ‘for privk’ (‘the private world’), was highlighted. Most
amateurs insisted on the new possibility of listening again and again to a work in
order to study it, or for one’s own pleasure, whenever one wished, and at home. The
appearance of intimacy, which was also the possibility of entering in closer contact
with the ‘great human productions’ and with the heritage of ‘long-lived’ tastes and
102 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108

appreciations, was considered crucial for the aural experience and led to an identifi-
cation with the world of book and reading:
“
is there anything in life more desirable than the repetition of its pleasure? Suppose for one fantastic
1..

moment that you had the power just to command the recapitulation of L’AprPs-midi d’un Faune,
instantly, before the stifling curtains had had time to meet and decree the end. That, musically speaking,
is brought within your reach by the gramophone.
In the studied seclusion of your own room, belonging to you, evocative of you, with nothing extra-
neous, nothing disturbing, no risk of interruption on the part of temperamentally alien surroundings or
people, you may dredge your soul to its depths, drown your senses and cultivate, as cruelly as you care,
your thoughts, master of the music that plays at your will and at your pleasure.
[Moreover, the gramophone allows to hear the great performers:] [Thanks to the gramophone,] I was
enabled to listen to [Galli-Curci’s] wonderful voice, and, having heard it, could buy record after record
of her singing to place in my library and take down and listen to whenever I wish, just as a bibliophile
handles his volumes.” (Novello, 1924: 256)

Mentioning the book meant referring to the places of this culture - the pleasure of
the seclusion, of the privacy- as well as to its characteristic gestures: the material
pleasure of manipulating a record - classifying it, choosing it, putting it on the
gramophone, taking care of it - was an integral part of this new pleasure of listening
to music discovered and cultivated by the amateurs. This is explicitly confirmed by
another of them:

“[Wireless gives the satisfaction of finding waves, hunting, zapping. On the contrary, the pleasure of the
record amateur] is complex. First, it is made of a feeling similar to that which creates the book lover’s
joy. He becomes attached to a record of which he likes the qualities. He handles it with a kind of respect
because of the sound mystery that enriches it. He takes care of it, he frees it of its dust, carefully slides
it into its wrapping and methodically files it into its archives.
[. . .] Some fame is reflected on us. We have contributed to the performance by giving a crankstart to
the automotive music and by carefully pushing down on the record’s edge the soundbox of which small
steel ploughshare begins to delicately till the grooves. [, . .] All that gives us the sensation of better pos-
sessing a masterwork, of inspecting it, of fingering it by exploring all its windings, its reliefs, its planes,
its sheens and its volumes. We hold it deep in our palms. It is more ours than when we only inhale its
remote fragrance in a theatre or concert hall.” (see L’kdition musicale vivante, 1928: 11-12)

This account allows to grasp the importance of material pleasure and to under-
stand that listening, like reading, is not a mere ‘hearing’ of a ‘ready-made’ piece of
music: it means creating an event, a situation to let aesthetic emotion arise. And
this particular set up is made up of a series of gestures, objects, habits, etc. As for
the booklover, the pleasure of the recordlover resides in possessing a collection
whose constitution has its own history, in choosing a record, which has itself a per-
sonal history, and in choosing the time, place and lighting for this event. In this
sense, the record adds the dimension of pleasure and consumption to the relation-
ship to music: as I have observed, a ‘patrimony’ is also something private that one
can enjoy and use. By bringing about the possibility of collecting and immediate
consuming into the home and life of the music lover, the record encouraged the
development of this new patrimonial disposition toward music. This immediacy of
consumption constrasts with that which a score - the previous main medium for
music enjoyment at home - can bring. The score has to be read and played, and this
 S. Maisonneuve 1 Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108 103

requires a combination of sufficient technique and an adequate instrumental setting.

Moreover, with scores, except for transcriptions, a whole part of music could not be
performed at home (e.g. operas, symphonies, concertos, oratorios, etc.).
In fact, both dimensions of patrimony - private enjoyment and collective heritage
- merge in this practice developed by amateurs from the 1920s. As these citations
also indicate, the pleasure of a material possession is closely intertwinned with the
pleasure of a privileged access to a common cultural patrimony: the record, like the
book, allowed one to ‘possess a masterwork’. And indeed, many suggestions were
submitted for constituting one’s own ideal library of records: they consisted of a
selection of ‘the classics’, of lists of recordings that ‘the sufiuge universe1 would
like to see appearing as classical works in the ideal library of records’ (L’kdition
musicale vivunte, 1929: 28). The object mediated a double pleasure and lay at the
divide of the two patrimonies: the personal material patrimony and its private plea-
sure, and the common cultural patrimony, through which that pleasure could be
communally and historically contextualized, and thus be reinforced. Constituting at
home a personal collection of universal value was placing one’s personal patrimony
into a collectivity in which one found a confirmation of one’s taste. Such a patri-
mony was “private by its nature, collective by its audience” (Babelon and Chas-
tel, 1994: 54). Every personal patrimony (of records) was thus part of a larger pat-
rimony, constructed through a continuous exchange between personal tastes and
shared practices (transmitted by periodicals, gramophone societies, handbooks, and
advertising).
In this perspective, the reference to the book also had its importance for the ama-
teurs: this medium represented, in one object, a particular patrimonial possession
and a medium transmitting a common cultural heritage. The record allowed for the
study of great works and for their storage in one’s own library. As Couesnon in an
interview once put it (Couesnon, 1928 : 11):

“Rare symphonic concerts, personal performances which are unfortunately powerless: these are the only
documents that friends of music often own in the province. To study it, to understand it in the same way
as a cultivated man knows and understands literature, these are, you must admit, poor means.
With the gramophone, everything is changed. Through the record, the full orchestra, the famous con-
ductor, really are the ones who bring music into the amateur’s home. Beethoven conducted by Mengel-
berg, Gaubert, Weingartner and by many other illustrious conductors, enters the house of the quiet
inhabitant of a small city and settles in his library of records in the same way as Comeille, Racine and
Victor Hugo settled in his library a long time ago [. . .]
The public, even the general public, is remarkably attracted by beautiful music; one buys one, then
two, then three, then all the nine symphonies and carefully preserves them at home.
Every record sold represents many hearings in so many distant residences [...I, far away from any
music centre. Will you again deny the fact that the record is the true book for music?”

Here again we see the common cultural patrimony becoming a personal material
and cultural patrimony. The materiality and easy availability of the record reinforced
the interest for classical music, the taste for it, the desire to possess it in order to bet-
ter enjoy it and the idea of thus sharing a common taste and heritage. In its materi-
ality, the record transformed musical heritage into a cultural patrimony which could
be transmitted, chosen, and considered as a coherent monument. Under this aspect,
104 S. Maisonneuve / Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108

it was distinguished from the wireless, which was often compared to a periodical
(and not to a book): it is a medium characterised by its ephemeral manifestation.

6. Conclusion

The record and the practices constructed around it brought into the musical world
an unprecedented conjunction of history and interest for the past, and of market, con-
sumption and pleasure. This conjunction affected the very signification and indeed
material existence of music. In the interwar period, under the impetus of a rapidly
growing market for the record and the progressive diffusion and institutionalisation
of an amateur culture for it, ‘classical music’ was further transformed into a ‘patri-
mony’. The particular relevance of this ‘patrimony’ is due to the unprecedented pos-
sibility of a cultural heritage incarnated as a series of material objects that facilitated
its transmission, appropriation and enjoyment: the musical ‘patrimony’ was simulta-
neously a common heritage massively made available by the record and a possession
of its most relevant items in every personal library of records and, hence, also a
shared culture.
In the same way, the merging of interests of musicologists and musicians inter-
ested in past music, and of companies and marketing agents, by giving the record the
conditions of its rapid expansion, marked with its print both recording policies and
dispositions toward music: consumption and history supported each other in the
taste for past music. History, as a discourse and as a presentation (modem format-
ting) of the past, was a mediation of this past music which was new and strange for
this new listener (both because listening to music on a record was a new experience
and because many listeners had previously not been in contact with such a music).
This new easy availability of music and the desire to listen to it ‘for its own sake’
also made the past, as otherness and as heritage, a crucial resource of enjoyment and
feeling of ‘authenticity’.
Finally, this compound nature of the record and of the music it produces stimu-
lated the proliferation of the levels in which this ‘patrimony’ is rooted: as a com-
modity, the record enabled the constitution of a personal ‘patrimony’, which was
one’s own universe of taste, the result of personal choices and evolutions, and which
was enjoyed as one’s own possession.
This level was connected in turn to a broader one, in that every amateur was also
part of a network through periodicals, advertisements, the available production, and
exchanges with other people (conversations, borrowings, and imitations). Every
amateur thus shared with others (part of) its tastes, recordings and references. The
educational and cultural status given to the record from the 1920s onward also made
it a medium for forming, reinforcing and diffusing a national culture, whose config-
uration changed according to broader ideological positions and political contexts.
Finally, the international structure of the recording industry together with the pre-
vious and long-lived western tradition of classical music helped to perpetuate this
repertoire as a ‘universal’ or ‘western’ heritage. All these meanings coexist, in a
changing configuration, in the phonographic world and the experience of amateurs.
 S. Maisonneuve / Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108 105

This new configuration and signification of ‘classical music’ brought about by the
record, its professionals and its amateurs in the interwar period remains relevant for
us today: the steady increase of this medium’s importance in the musical world and
its progressive domination over it (what Hennion, 1993, called ‘discomorphosis’)
made this new disposition toward music permeat our everyday relationship to ‘clas-
sical music’.
We thus see that ‘classical music’ is not a steady monument of works immutable
in their essence: music exists thanks to the objects and practices which let it happen
every time anew, in a setup which is always reconfigured over time, and according
to the objects and agents which participate in its production and enjoyment. Study-
ing the cultural changes related to the record shows the importance of this hybrid
object by which both a private consumption/enjoyment and the massive diffusion of
a ‘universal’ cultural heritage occurred: it is important to realize the fact that the
relationship to music is rooted in a material culture which evolves according to tech-
niques, objects and agents by which it exists. The very material reality of music, and
hence also its aesthetic potential, are defined and modified by this material setup.
The theoretical, and hence methodological, perspective developed here relies on
an analysis of art and culture in terms of both setups and networks: an approach
which gives back their importance to ‘impure’, ordinary and heterogeneous objects
and practices, and which renews our understanding of cultural phenomena. This
approach, instead of opposing them in fixed categories, thus takes into account both
the links and converging effects of objects, techniques, knowledges, ordinary prac-
tices, cultural heritages, institutions, commercial mechanisms - and the list remains
open: it can and must be modified according to the objects and times under study.
Thus, though tested on a case which invites it, this perspective is not limited to such
cases but may be adopted for studying other historical periods, cultural situations
and art objects, and so may stimulate new questions in music history as well as in the
sociology of art.

Appendix A: The birth of the listener; Texts listed in date order

1910, Macpherson, Charles Stewart. Music and its appreciation, or the foundations of the true
listening. London: Joseph Williams, XI-166 p.
1911, Dickinson, Edward. The education of a music lover. A book for those who study or
teach the art of listening. New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons, XI-293 p.
1915, (3/1920), Lee, Ernest Markham. On listening to music . . . with numerous musical illus-
trations. In: C.P. Landi, The musician’s bookshelf.
1919, Scholes, Percy Alfred. The listener’s guide to music. With a concert-goer’s glossary by
Percy A. Scholes. With an introduction by W. Henry Hadow. London: Oxford University
Press/I-Iumphery Milford, vii-106 p. [lOth edition: 1961.1
1921, Scholes, Percy A. Learning to listen by means of the gramophone. A course in the
appreciation of music for use in schools, etc. London: The Gramophone Co., Education
Department, 1921, XVI-158 p.
1923, Scholes, Percy A. The listener’s history of music. A book for any concert-goer, piano-
list or gramophonist. Providing also a course of study for adult classes in the appreciation
106 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89408

of music. 2 vol., vol. I: To Beethoven. London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Mil-

ford, XIV-190 p.
1923 (ca.), Hadow, Henry (Sir). The listener’ guide to music with a concert-goer’s glossary
and an introduction. [mentioned in The Gramophone l(3), 61 ‘Review of books’.]
1924, &holes, Percy A. The fiit book of the Gramophone record. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press. [quoted in The Gramophone 2(l).]
1925, Lee, Ernest Markham and M. Montagu Nathan. On listening to music, and the orches-
tra and how to listen to it. London: Waverley Book Co.
1925, Porter, Ernest Graham. Listening-m to music. London: Noel Douglas, 128 p.
1926, Keith, Alice. Listening on the masters. A course in music appreciation. Boston, New
York: C.C. Birchard and Co., VI-III-122 p.
1926, Wilson, H.L. Music and the gramophone and some masterpiece recordings. A collec-
tion of historical, biographical and analytical notes, and data of a generally insteresting
nature, concerning musical works of importance completely recorded for the gramophone.
London, George Allen and Unwin. (for the Gramophone Publications Ltd.), 288 p.
1927, Robertson, Alec, A.R.A.M. How to use the gramophone in school. London: Gramo-
phone Co.
1928, Robertson, Alec, A.R.A.M. The golden treasury of recorded music (other than opera)
on ‘His master’s Voice’ . . . With notes and musical illustrations. London: Gramophone
Company.
1928, Wilson, H.L. Music and the gramophone. London: Gramophone (publications).
1931, Davies, Walford (Sir). The listener’s guide book [mentioned in the Catalogue of Edu-
cational records, HMV, December 19311.
1932, Earhart, Will. Music to the listening ear. New York: Witmark and Sons, XIV-173 p.
1933, Scholes, Percy Alfred. Practical lesson plans in musical appreciation by means of the
gramophone for the elementary and secondary schools. Based on fifty compositions
included in the fist three albums of the ‘Columbia History of Music’, etc. London:
Oxford University Press, 28 p.
1934, Elliot J.H. Music and how to enjoy it. [London?]: Blackie [Quoted in The Amateur
Musician 1, 18 in ‘Some recent books’ as being a book intended for wireless and other
listeners.]
1935, Johnson, William Ward. Intelligent listening to music. A guide to enjoyement and
appreciation for all lovers of music. London: Pitman and Sons, XII-184 p. [2/1939,
3/1943,4/1946, 5/1948.]
1936, Johnson, William Ward. The gramophone in education. An introduction to its use in
school and at home. London: Pitman and Sons, XXVIII-176 p.
1936, Macpherson, Charles Stewart. The appreciation, or listening, class . . . revised edition.
London, 164 p. [J. Williams Series of Handbooks on Music, Vol. 20.1
1936, Mackinney, Howard and W.R. Anderson: Discovering music. [n.d.] 322 p. [quoted in
The Gramophone 8(154), 41 l]
1937, Moore, Douglas Stuart. Listening to music. Revised edition. New York: Norton and
Co., VIII-296 p.
1937, Tovey, Francis. The listener’s guide to Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge [Notes to accom-
pany gramophone records]. London: Columbia Graphophone Co., 15 p.
1939, Horwood, Frederick James. Listening to music. Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons,
XVI-203 p.
1941, Barne, afterwards Streatfield, Marion Catherine. Listening to the orchestra. London:
J.M. Dent and Sons, XVI-205 p.
1942, Howard, John Tasker. This modem music. A guide for the bewildered listener. New
York: T.Y. Crowelle, 234 p.
 S. Maisonneuve I Poetics 29 (2001) 89-108 107

1948, Williams, Wyndham George. Looking and listening. An introduction to musical appre-
ciation. London: John Murray, 47 p.
1949, Ma&non, Dcsmond. The road to music. A guide-book for the listener, etc. London:
W. Paxton and Co, 77 p.
1950, Kars, Gustav. Music for everyone. An approach for the listener to-day. London: Rock-
liff, VI-154 p.
1951, Kelber, Magda. The introspective listener [On listening to music]. London: James
Chuck and Co., 107 p.
1951, Stringham, Edwin John. Listening to music creatively. London: Werner Laurie, 510 p.
[2/1959]
1952, Fiske, Roger. Listening to music. A guide to enjoyement. London: George G. Harrap
and Co., 64 p.
1955, Tischler, Hans. The perceptive music listener. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
XXII-458 p.
1957, Hughes, Patrick Cairns. Famous Mozart operas. An analytical guide for the opera-goer
and armchair listener. London: Robert Hale, 253 p. [There is also a similar guide for Puc-
cini’s and Verdi’s operas.]
1958, Machlis, Joseph. The enjoyment of music. An introduction to perceptive listening. Lon-
don: Dennis, Dobson, XVI-666 p.
1958, Miller, Hugh Milton. Introduction to music. A guide to good listening. New York:
Barnes and Noble, XXVII-260 p.
1961, Tobin, Joseph Raymond. Music and the orchestra for the concert-goer & listener. Lon-
don: Evan Bros, VII-21 1 p.
1963, Long, Noel. Listening to music in secondary schools. Pupil’s book. London: Boosey
and Hawkes.
1965, Randolph, David. This is music. A guide to the pleasures of listening.
LondonJNYfToronto: New English Library/New American Library, 222 p.
1967, Newson, Keith Raymond. Listening to music: with material for classroom lessons.
London, F. Warne, 112 p.
1970, Miller, William Hugh. Introduction to music appreciation. An objective approach to lis-
tening. Revised edition. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, XIX-345 p.

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Sophie Maisonneuve is completing a Ph.D. in history at the European University Institute (Florence,
Italy) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France). After postgraduate diplomas
in musicology and sociology, she has been working in such fields as the sociology and history of music
and techniques, and more specifically on such issues as the history and sociology of listening and taste,
and the patrimonialisation of music. Her last publications are: “Dischi e so&lit&: la nuova cultura
dell’ascolto musicale negli anni venti e trenta de1 novecento”, Quaderni Storici, No. 104, August 2000,
p. 437-467; Figures de l’amateur. Formes, objets et pratiques de l’amour de musique aujourd’hui. Paris,
La Documentation francaise, 2000 (with A. Hennion and E. Gomart); “De la ‘machine parlante’ a
l’auditeur: le disque et la naissance d’une culture musicale nouvelle dam les am&s 1920 et 1930”, Ter-
rain, No. 37 (2001, in press).