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Lecture En écoutant du Schumann. Musical Experience at les ** and la Libre Esthétique in Fin-de-Siècle BrusselsBy Stijn Paredis
Small concert hall
At the fin de siècle (c. 1880–1914), Brussels witnessed the emergence of a semiprivate concert culture in which the inward turn of musical listening intersected with a persistent desire for social cohesion. Interiority—central to contemporary understandings of both aesthetic experience and the private domestic sphere—gained new prominence in the context of urban modernity, even as art was expected to counterbalance growing social fragmentation. Semiprivate venues such as the exhibitions of Les ** and La Libre Esthétique, La Maison d’Art, and the home of Anna Boch cultivated this duality by combining the intimacy and sociability of salon culture with the attentive listening practices and press coverage of the public concert scene. Testimonies from reviews, letters, and memoirs reveal an appreciation for this hybrid environment, where subjective experience and shared engagement coexisted. The phenomenon is further illuminated through the lens of Wagnerism, whose concepts of l’art social, Wahn, and interiority shaped local discourse on music’s social function, alongside the reception of Robert Schumann, whose work likewise foregrounded interiority. Rather than opposing aesthetic camps, these perspectives converged in an ideal of musical experience that reconciled individual subjectivity with socio-aesthetic coherence.
This event is part of the Polyphonic Performance Spaces research festival. More info on: https://www.kcb.be/en/pps2026
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Event venue
Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, Kleine Zavel 5, 1000 Brussel, België, Ixelles, Belgium
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.