Chamber Music: 1830–1850

Abstract THE practice and enjoyment of chamber music was widespread during the first half of the nineteenth century. Among its most influential patrons in Germany, Austria, and Russia were aristocratic dilettanti of the kind who helped to make possible the achievements of Beethoven’s last decade. Their beneficent tradition was kept alive beyond the mid-century by such enthusiasts as Count Mateusz Wielhorski, the Polish-Russian amateur cellist to whom Mendelssohn dedicated his D major Sonata, Op. 58, and Schumann his Piano Quartet, Op. 47. But the most rapid growth of interest was now to occur among the middle classes, with their accumulating wealth, their social aspirations, and their increasing artistic sensibility. Domestic music-making was a prominent feature of the Biedermeier scene, where families and friends gathered to read through duos, trios, quartets, and quintets for their own pleasure or for the entertainment of guests. Their activities created an insistent demand for new compositions, especially those that made no unreasonable calls on technique or comprehension, a market that prolific and industrious composers toiled to supply.