The concert hall as a gender-neutral space : the case of Amalie Joachim, née Schneeweiss

Abstract

Every musician recognizes the importance of spaces for performing and listening to music, as well as for the conception of individual works. Spaces are not, however, an objective given. As the sociologist Martina Low has stressed, they are created through actions "in which intentionality, emotionality, perception, and unconscious motifs or ideas become intermixed." What always arises from this, according to Low, is a gender-specific construction of space. The following observations, based on Low's concept of dynamic space, explore the role that concert singing in the nineteenth century and its associated modes of performance and repertoires played in female singers' career possibilities and the arguments with which the stage and concert hall were distinguished from one another. My point of departure is the career and the cultural negotiations of the alto Amalie Joachim (1839-99), because she offers an instructive example of the close relationship between gender, the social history of performers (both male and female), the history of public concert life, the economic interests of publishers, political factors, and the gender-specific construction of spaces.