Overview

By carefully piecing together musical and documentary evidence, Amateur Musicians in the Nineteenth Century reveals the musicians that have so far been largely invisible in histories of music. Musical amateurs occupy an indistinct, low-status, peripheral place in musical life today. Often defined by what they are not and compared unfavorably to professionals, amateurs are found to lack expertise, qualifications, and status. This book critiques these exclusionary ideologies, interrogating the historical amateur as a clear identity, role, and status within musical life. The focus of this edited collection spans across Europe and out to New Zealand and Australia, covering a wide range of repertoire and genres and providing a comprehensive survey of amateur music-making and its significance in the broader musical culture of the nineteenth century. Rather than being opposed to professionals, amateurs were considered to overlap with them in terms of skill. Far from learning by rote a narrow selection of canonical studies and works, such amateurs cross-trained on various instruments, freely adapted popular tunes to their own purposes and skills, improvised on scores, and composed afresh. In not just an exploration of the past, but of the future, Amateur Musicians in the Nineteenth Century offers insights that are relevant today, particularly to the project of raising the status of amateurism in the best sense.

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Reviews

This book delivers a real boost to the study of the amateur. By thinking of music-lovers as consumers with expectations and clout, the editors and authors of this collection offer readers a new approach to thinking about musical agency in the 19th century. Moreover, in doing so they take the reader across continents, across musical high/low divides, and across class and gender divides. Broad in scope and fresh in outlook, if this book doesn't finally bury the old chestnut of the musical amateur as nothing more than a pale imitation of the professional, perhaps nothing will. * Katharine Ellis, Professor of Music, Cambridge University, UK * While amateurs have long performed the essential work of playing, teaching, and sustaining music, their contributions have largely remained overlooked by scholars. Amateur Musicians in the Nineteenth Century not only addresses this omission but also situates amateurs as agents of significant cultural influence. Ambitious in scope and rich in detail, this collection introduces little-known repertoires, uncovers intimate and distant locales, examines complex marketplaces, and explores emerging technologies in ways that blur conventional boundaries between amateur and professional. In doing so, it reveals a more nuanced, multifaceted world of nineteenth-century music-making. * Jonathan Kregor, Academic Program Director and Professor of Musicology, College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, USA *

Author Information

Nancy November is Professor of Musicology in the University of Auckland's School of Music, New Zealand. Combining interdisciplinarity and cultural history, her research centers on chamber music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, probing questions of historiography, canonization, and genre. She is the recipient of a Humboldt Fellowship (2010-12); and three Marsden Grants from the New Zealand Royal Society. Recent books include Opera in the Viennese Home from Mozart to Rossini (2024) and Haydn Studies 2 (2025). Imogen Morris is a post-doctoral fellow and instrumental teacher at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where she recently completed her PhD. Her research interests include recorder performance, history, repertoire, and pedagogy; Historically Informed Performance; and Creative Practice Research. As a performer, Imogen is active both as a soloist and in a variety of ensemble settings, and has performed in Germany, Austria, and South Korea as well as her native New Zealand. Outside of her researching and teaching commitments at the university, she teaches recorder to students of all ages and coaches recorder ensembles across Auckland.

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