Music and the City

Stefanie Beghein is Research Fellow at the Centre for Urban History (University of Antwerp). Bruno Blonde is Research Professor at the Centre for Urban History (University of Antwerp). Eugeen Schreurs is Lecturer and President of the Academic Board at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp (Artesis Plantijn Hogeschool, University College Antwerp).

• Table of contentsMusic and the city. Musical cultures and urban societies in the Southern Netherlands and beyond, c. 1650-1800Stefanie Beghein & Bruno BlondéI. The urban stage -; staging the city“Les operas etaient en vogue”. Opera in a city in crisis: Antwerp between 1682 and 1794Timothy De PaepeOpera in a different language. Opera translations in the Dutch Republic in the eighteenth centuryRudolf RaschMusic-making ghosts: eighteenth-century Rome as operatic memory machineBruno FormentII. The church and the streetsMusic and funeral practices in Antwerp, c. 1650-1750 Stefanie BegheinChurch music and minstrel music in the Southern Netherlands, with a special focus on AntwerpEugeen SchreursThe church, the street, the tower, and the home as sites of religious music-making in urban Baroque GermanyTanya KevorkianIII. Private musicSerious songs, musical practices and sociability in Paris at the end of the seventeenth centuryAnne-Madeleine GouletApollo's gifts. Dutch songbooks for the urban youth of the eighteenth centuryLouis P. Grijp

The objectives of the conference 'Sounds of the City' were to approach music from a non-institutional perspective (but aren't theatres institutions?), and to demonstrate the permeability of repertories and better locate the place of music in urban social life. Although the geographic variety of the subjects addressed in the proceedings hinders their progress towards the second objective, they nevertheless bring to light interesting lines of enquiry that deserve further attention.Henri Vanhulst, (translated by Chris Murray), Music and Letters, Volume 96, Issue 1, Pp. 123-124.