Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media

Abstract

of European salon gatherings in the long nineteenth century, and to consider identifiable connections to this musical tradition beyond this geographical and temporal scope. In addition to serving as an approachable introduction for readers unfamiliar with salon culture, the sixteen essays within the volume also display the wide variety of approaches and methodologies used by salon scholars, revealing the importance of salon studies for learning about musical culture in Europe and the United States. The volume’s extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources is one of the first such published compilations of salon scholarship and is a useful survey of the work that has been done on the history of music salons. Though the editors make it clear that the scope of this volume is limited to western European salon traditions, many of the essays raise important questions about salon traditions that occurred beyond the geographical scope of this publication. Kusz’s study of Dohnányi’s salon, for example, briefly mentions the active salon culture Dohnányi encountered in Hungary before immigrating to the United States in 1949, raising questions about the nature of salon life in eastern Europe. Both Kusz’s essay and Katie A. Callam chapter on Clara Kathleen Rogers’s salon in Boston, Massachusetts, explore salons found in the United States. As these two case studies focus on salons in the eastern and southern United States, readers might wonder how salons in the central and western parts of the country compared to those in Tallahassee and Boston. In their introduction, Bunzel and Loges trace the centuries-long history of salon gatherings back to Ancient Greek symposia. Considering such vast temporal and geographical links, discussions of the impact and history of salon culture could clearly extend beyond western Europe and the United States. This volume, then, serves as a useful launching point for future studies that might take a more global approach to the study of salon culture both within and beyond the long nineteenth century.