We need to step away from the foregone value judgements associated with the term Biedermeier, domestic music, and mass production – all encapsulated in the pejorative use of the term Hausmusik during the nineteenth century. This book uncovers the varieties music-making connected with the domestic music of this era – which are invariably left behind by modern musicologists in favour of a focus on individual, canonic, and original compositions. To understand opera in the Viennese home, it is helpful to consider the values that became attached to Biedermeier domesticity, especially social formation, domestic stability, and wholistic education. In revaluing Viennese opera arrangements of this era, it is also worth considering how they inspired public-sphere agency extending beyond domesticity. This chapter discusses quantitative aspects of piano-opera arrangement culture in Czerny’s Vienna and reasons for the boom in pianos, pianists, and associated publications. It then turns to qualitative considerations, looking at the ways in which these piano-opera arrangements promoted the agency of listeners, arrangers, performers, and women in particular.

This study takes a novel approach, privileging opera arrangements over original operatic compositions, and the perspectives of amateur performers over those of composers. Several studies of opera arrangements from the era in question have already been published, which focus on particular composers or particular arrangement forms; and the emphasis lies on arrangements’ function as reception documents. This study differs in considering arrangements’ multiple functions, and ‘end users.

Music publishing historian William Arms Fisher asserted in 1933 that “The great music publishers were primarily great music-lovers.” Composer Amy Beach was fortunate to work with a dozen of these music-loving publishers during her career; among them were the leaders of several of America’s greatest houses, including Arthur P. Schmidt Company (Boston), G. Schirmer, Inc. (New York), Theodore Presser Company (Philadelphia), and Oliver Ditson Company (Boston). She knew many of her publishers personally, and their partnerships were rewarding and mutually beneficial. Beach’s compositions gained a wide public and provided a good income, and her publishers benefitted not only from estimable musical additions to their catalogues, but also by the fact that she was a woman and-equally important in the World War I era-an American. “Amy Beach and Her Publishers” examines Beach’s relationships with her publishers, as well as their commitment to publishing her music while also keeping an eye on customers’ wants and changing economic conditions.

In recent decades scholars have done much to bring Clara Schumann from the peripheries into a more central position in music studies. Alongside developments in archival research and biographical studies, there have been increasing waves of critical engagement with her activities as performer and teacher, together with a flowering of analytical interest in her music. This chapter takes stock of these developments vis-à-vis the changing landscape of women in music, by way of setting the scene for the essays that follow.

The preface briefly outlines the evolving situation of women in music since 1900, and also explores the development of women in music studies/feminist musicology since the 1980s. The Cambridge Companion to Women in Music since 1900 is situated within this field. An overview of the contents of the volume – which considers women in classical music, women in popular music, women and music technology, and women’s wider work in music (including music education and the music industries) – is provided. The preface concludes with a short section of acknowledgements.