Looking for victorian/salon music?

[richtea]

I have always had a fascination in the Victorian era and I am looking for some piano pieces which were popular during this time among amateur pianists. The kind of music that they would have played in their parlours at parties or family gatherings etc.  I have been told 'A maiden’s prayer' was a very popular salon piece back then just for example.

Have you got any suggestions?

[stevebob]

I don't know how much music you're interested in (i.e., the number of suggestions of individual works) or how much delving you'd want to do on your own, but the Henselt Library is trove of nineteenth century piano music that's now in the public domain.

Most of Henselt's own works are for advanced pianists, and composers of similarly virtuosic music (Thalberg, for example) are represented on the site as well.  However, there is also a great amount of salon music at the Henselt Library of merely modest difficulty.  (Everything is organized by composer, so it's helpful to have some names in mind when you're exploring.)

[thalbergmad]

It seems to have been customary amongst the rich in Victorian times to have your individual sheets stiched into personalised leather covers.

I have bought a few of these from Antiquarian book dealers and the vast majority contain works by Herz, Hunten, Czerny, Favarger, Bertini & Leybach along with anonymous easy transcriptions of operas and popular tunes of the day. You might get a single movement of a Beethoven, Mozart or Clementi sonata, but never the whole thing.

Thal

[remy]

I have always had a fascination in the Victorian era and I am looking for some piano pieces which were popular during this time among amateur pianists. The kind of music that they would have played in their parlours at parties or family gatherings etc.  I have been told 'A maiden’s prayer' was a very popular salon piece back then just for example.

Have you got any suggestions?

Some people make a distinction between Parlor Music and Salon Music.

What you describe would be Parlor Music, music for amateurs to play in their homes. The pieces are usually fairly easy to play.

Salon music is usually virtuosic and meant to be performed in a salon or concert hall. Examples would be opera fantasies and all those thousands of Grande Valses Brillante, Variations Brillante, and Grande Sonates Brillante that were so popular in those days.

Here are some links:

https://www.mindspring.com/~lesmuskey/OLD/     (Parlor Music)

https://www.mindspring.com/~lesmuskey2/OLD2/

https://www.sydneysmitharchive.org.uk/smithscores.html   (Salon Music, mostly)

https://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hasm/browse    (American Parlor and Popular Music)


remy