Music, politics, and the public sphere in late eighteenth-century Berlin

This dissertation examines the structural transformation of the public sphere for music in Berlin from the time of Frederick II ("the Great") to the Prussian Reform in the early nineteenth century. It addresses two main issues: the first concerns the relationship between music culture at court and in the public sphere. The dissertation argues that the popularization of the music culture that can be observed at the time was catalyzed by the increased importance that representational culture played at the court of Frederick II and Frederick William II. The second issue concerns the changing role of music for the governance of the state. This dissertation argues that while in previous decades music was used as a tool for political representation, the early nineteenth-century Prussian state understood music as a tool for cultural policy, a decidedly modern conception that emphasized the moral and educational potential that music possessed in the eyes of politicians.;The first part of this dissertation focuses primarily on the political function that music played at the Hohenzollern court and how musical associations and societies that developed in the public sphere were modeled after the musical institutions at court. Chapter one argues that politics and music were closely intertwined and carefully coordinated during Frederick's reign (1740--1786). Chapter two analyzes how the music societies of the 1750s followed the structural model that was set at court. The final chapter of the first part looks at a hitherto understudied area of the Berlin music culture: the numerous garden and restaurant concerts that emerged during and after the Seven Years War (1756--1763). The chapter demonstrates that these concerts constituted a popular replacement for the public music entertainment at court, which had fallen off considerably during this time of crisis and war.;The second part of this dissertation opens with a chapter on the overall popularization of music culture in Berlin during the 1780s and 1790s. This chapter discusses the emergence of new concert venues and a metropolitan music culture that developed in these new spaces for music making. The chapter also explores the various legal and regulative frameworks that helped govern musical performances in the public sphere. The fifth chapter of the dissertation investigates the demise of representational culture, in particular the growing importance of the Nationaltheater for audiences around 1800 and the pronounced impact that popular taste had on court culture during those years. The concluding chapter of the dissertation examines the contemporaneous critique of this popular music culture and traces the origins and consequences of the music reform that was undertaken in the early nineteenth century under the auspices of Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758--1832) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767--1835).