1 - Exhibiting Music

Summary

The painter's hues stand visible before us

In power and beauty; we can trace the thoughts

Which are the workings of the poet's mind:

But music is a mystery, and viewless

Even when present, and is less man's set,

And less within his order; for the hand

That can call forth the tones, yet cannot tell

Whither they go, or if they live or die,

When floated once beyond his feeble ear.

— L.E.L. [Letitia Elizabeth Landon], Erinna (1827).

‘This’, wrote the Musical Times in 1873, quoting Landon, ‘is why music has hitherto had no place in artistic exhibitions’. For as long as exhibitions had been held in Britain, there had been vigorous debate in the musical press about the position, representation, and use of music in such spaces. Yet it was exactly that fleeting quality – the intangibility of form that made it so attractive to poets – that made music's inclusion in the physical exhibition space elusive. This outcome, however, the Musical Times felt was ‘not inevitable’.

In purporting to display all branches of human achievement, over the decades, many exhibition organisers attempted to include music in their designs. But how to do it? Musical instruments – the physical products of a manufacturing industry – could be easily put on display. Yet many commentators argued that silent instruments could never adequately constitute an exhibit of ‘music’; that these were merely representations of the mechanical means by which music could be produced. Performances of the ‘great works’ could be given, as if to exhibit their qualities, but these too were considered insufficient as they lacked the permanence of visual art displays. A physical art-object could be on show for six months at an exhibition: hardly comparable to a single performance of a musical work. Additionally, music was considered entertainment, and many visitors came with the intention of listening to music and enjoying themselves, without any particular concern for music's represen some urgency, as music's presence – and the difficulty of putting it ‘on display’ – called into question the all-encompassing rhetoric that claimed exhibitions as universal showcases of human industry and culture.

The historical precedent for ‘exhibiting’ music at international exhibitions was first set in London with the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was continually re-established through the exhibitions of the 1860s and ‘70s that followed.