Women, music, and the salon tradition: Its cultural and historical significance in Parisian musical society

The importance of the three-hundred-year-old French salon tradition is revealed in the present study as it pertains to the musical life of Paris. Because of the salon's central position in the lives of the nobility and upper classes, these society elites were in the position to contribute directly to the development of culture through their activities, beliefs, and opinions by acting as arbiters of taste in etiquette, language, philosophy, literature, the arts, and politics. After the French Revolution, salons came under the influence of bourgeois culture, and music acquired new significance, becoming a means of social identity and advancement.;From its inception as an institution in the early seventeenth century to its demise by the mid-twentieth century, women acted as leaders of this tradition and were active contributors to the creation and sustenance of musical culture, especially by the nineteenth century. Salonnieres provided musicians with financial and emotional support, while their salons functioned as a locus for premieres of new musical works, or for the debuts of performers. Private patronage of music and of composer-performers via the salon provided many musicians with independent sources of income. Salons became perfect venues in which to advertise one's skills and expertise while gaining the publicity necessary to generate business prospects. Evidence of the importance and proliferation of music salons in the nineteenth century is overwhelming--virtually all musicians during this time depended on salon activities, in varying degrees, for their livelihoods.;Despite the salon's incontrovertible prominence in Parisian musical life, misconceptions and negative connotations surrounding salons and their relationship to music have abounded, propagated mainly by nineteenth-century historians' prejudices against women. This has unjustly contributed to the continuing belief that music salons were inconsequential and insignificant to the development of "serious" musical culture.;By highlighting notable salons, their leaders, their representative musicians, their repertoire, and the instruments used in salon performances within each century, the salon's rich cultural and historical contribution to music and musicians are illustrated. Issues are presented with important social and political background information in order to provide a broad spectrum in which to view this institution's unquestionable role in Parisian musical society.