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.

examines the period from 1949-1961, the first decade of the GDR. The chapter explores Marxist perceptions of jazz from both sides of the Atlantic that informed socialist-realist doctrine, contextualizing these views in the years before and after Joseph Stalin’s death. During this a newly-formed State Commission for the Arts (STAKOKU) sought to shield German cultural values against supposed American cultural decadence, restrictions that contributed to widespread dissent that peaked in a broader uprising in 1953. Analyzing the East German musical discourse of the 1950s that sought to rehabilitate jazz, this chapter explores its links to the 19th-century tradition of Hausmusik, including the prolific West Berlin jazz scene that sought to attract fans from East Berlin and beyond. Critically, at this time the STASI initiated its surveillance of the jazz scene, recruiting secret informants that proved pivotal in shaping East German jazz life. Ultimately, galvanized by political pressures and rising defections to the West throughout the 1950s, East German leadership responded by building the Berlin Wall. Dividing the city and country sorely impacted the spread of jazz activities, and resulted in the formation of a jazz scene specific to the GDR.