Project overview
This study closes a significant gap in our conception of English musical life around 1800 by examining music-making in domestic settings. Based on a representative selection of diaries and letters by members of the genteel and middle classes, it assesses the frequent, if often fleeting, descriptions of music-making found in these sources. In so doing, the study surveys how individuals used music-making to establish their identities within specific social and domestic contexts. Furthermore, it assesses the role music-making played in the negotiation of class structures as individuals sought to breach socially-established boundaries of taste.