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.

Chapter 3 examines one of the most high-profile and widely used animal products of the Victorian era: ivory. Employed to make all manner of consumer goods, ivory was heavily sought after in the nineteenth century and was worked on an industrial scale. In the early nineteenth century, much of the ivory consumed in Europe came from historical stockpiles, gathered over centuries by African societies and purchased – or more often seized – by Arab traders for sale on the international market. By the 1870s and 1880s, however, these stockpiles had been exhausted, and elephants began to be slaughtered in large numbers for their tusks – with devastating consequences for the species. The chapter explores the complex networks that brought ivory from the African savannah to the cutlers of Sheffield and piano-makers of London and considers the severe environmental impact of the ever increasing demand for ivory. It goes on to examine the measures taken to protect the African elephant, which ranged from hunting licences and game reservations to export bans on underweight tusks. The final part of the chapter assesses various schemes to domesticate the African elephant, converting it from a supplier of ivory to a beast of burden.