372Chapter 20
music: The development of the sonata, the symphony,
the string quartet, and the concerto so changed musical
composition that the name classical musicremained long
after the classical era.
Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century
In recent decades, cultural historians have paid closer
attention to the culture of the lower classes, as distinct
from the high culture of the elite. The distinction is not
absolute, because high culture and popular culture are
often remarkably similar. In the eighteenth century, the
plays of Shakespeare were popular with the agricultural
classes of rural England, who welcomed the touring
troops of actors who brought drama to the countryside.
In London, David Garrick’s famous theater on Drury
Lane was as popular with the artisans and laborers who
flocked to the cheap seats as it was with the wealthy
who bought the boxes. In the capitals of opera such as
Milan and Vienna, few shopkeepers could afford to at-
tend the lavish productions. But Mozart had a popular
following, too, and versions of his operas were pro-
duced in lower-class music halls.
Popular culture and high culture also intersected
for the converse reason: The well-bred, well-educated,
and well-off also frequented the robust entertainments
of ordinary folk. The world of popular culture—a world
of rope-walkers, jugglers, and acrobats of village bands
and workers’ music halls; of folktales and folksong; of
races, fights, animal sports, and gambling; of mari-
onettes, pantomimes, and magic lantern shows pro-
jected on smoke; of inns, taverns, public houses
(“pubs”), cafes, and coffeehouses; of broadsheets and
limericks; of carnivals and fairs; of entertainment in
public parks and on the village commons—was not the
exclusive province of the laboring classes who gave
these their meanings and values. High culture honored
this intersection by regularly borrowing from popular
culture, from the folk theme that reappeared as a leit-
motif in a symphony or the tales of oral culture that
reappeared in learned anthologies.
A good illustration of the parallels in high culture
and popular culture can be seen in two of their centers:
the salon (high culture) and the coffeehouse (popular
culture). The salon, a social gathering held in a private
home where notable literary, artistic, and political fig-
ures discussed the issues of the day, characterized the
educated world of high culture in the eighteenth cen-
tury. Salons were typically organized and directed by
women of grace and style who shaped European culture
by sponsoring rising young talents, protecting unpopu-
lar opinions, finding financial support for impoverished
writers, and sometimes fostering political intrigues (see
illustration 20.3). The salons glorified conversation—
about the republic of letters, the arts, politics and poli-
cies, scandal and gossip, and wit and flirtation. Salon
hostesses were sometimes the wives, daughters, or
mistresses of powerful men, such as the duchess de
Maine, the mistress of Philippe d’Orleans, the regent of
France; some were prominent intellectuals in their own
right. Their ranks included women such as Madame de
Lambert, the author of Advice of a Mother to Her Daughter
(1734), which advocated university education for
women. Another salon hostess, Louise d’Epinay, won
the French academy’s prize for 1774 for her Conversations
with Emile.
The habit of organizing salons originated in the
French aristocracy, but it was adopted by other ele-
ments of the educated classes and spread across Europe.
By the middle of the century, salons were flourishing in
London, Berlin, Vienna, Rome, and Copenhagen, usu-
ally assuming a national character somewhat different
from Parisian salons. In England, they ranged from the
formal salon of Elizabeth Montagu, the granddaughter
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who forbade such
frivolity as playing cards, to the less formal salon of
Mary Monckton, the countess of Cork, which included
such prominent figures as Samuel Johnson. Salons in
the German states provided an opportunity for Jewish
families to win social acceptance previously denied
them. Moses Mendelssohn began the habit of holdingIIllustration 20.2
The Parisian church of St. Mary Magdalen, known as la
Madeleine, was begun in 1764 and redesigned several times. The
final version, a neoclassical temple with imposing Corinthian
columns, bears a striking resemblance to temples built two
thousand years earlier.