De diepgang van 'Damespraatjes':over de sociale en culturele inbedding van muziek in de negentiende eeuw

This essay analyses the feuilleton 'Damespraatjes' from the Dutch colonial newspaper Java-Bode, written by Dutch author Thérèse Hoven (1860–1941). It argues that in portraying the life style of a well-to-do young lady from The Hague Hoven shows how the experience of music was always embedded in the wider context of social life, which has wider relevance for the history of listening in the nineteenth century. The feuilleton also highlights the importance of gender in analysing audience experience and suggests that the notion of the 'cultural omnivore', which is primarily associated with late twentieth-century cultural life, applies equally well to nineteenth-century music audiences