Music and Vanity
The Musical Ensemble as Symbol of the Institution
Mathias Spohr
Nowadays the most ephemeral of all arts, music, has been sacred, in our Western tradition, the most imperishable: a strange paradox, that one might not necessarily perceive, since this evolution came about very gradually and is loaded with numerous taboos. Here we will focus primarily on the ambitious bourgeois affirmation that even constituted institutions, most of all in political and economic fields, are nothing imagined or absconding, but attest both durability and reality. Music – so it is argued in this text – is thereby nothing important, rather at best the model of organisation of musicians.
