Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

108 Anne Reese Willén
and people could find it interesting. However, consisting mostly of Haydn’s
and Romberg’s symphonies the repertoire did not achieve this purpose.
The use of music as a magnet to attract an audience to the theatre also
reveals its changing influence. This was especially noticeable when visiting
artists such as the ones mentioned above were engaged during the 1860s.
The question of the role, or meaning, of the entr’acte music was a debated
topic for a long time in the nineteenth century. Albert Rubenson, for example,
wrote about its harmful effects in TfTM in 1859:
[…][that] the unnecessary and in many ways harmful entr’acte music
during the spoken dramas be abolished. These pieces of music, with no
connection to the drama, distract the audience and reduce the musical
art to a simple way of passing the time; and there is no reason for a
theatre like our Royal Swedish <strong>Opera</strong>, which does not engage young
musicians who could use the entr’acte music as practice for orchestral
performance, to force the musicians to do things that undermine their
artistic abilities. Such mechanical work tires them out and deprives them
of the joy of engaging in more useful work in the best interest of the art.
(Rubenson 1859) 24
The harmful effect of the entr’acte music in terms of lowering the musical
tone and demoralising the musicians is connected to an idealised notion of
the status of musical art. According to Rubenson, taking the music out of
context and using it just to fill the time between the acts, and disregarding
the music itself, denigrated music as an art form. He was not the only one
who felt this way. Similar criticism had appeared in NTM a few years earlier:
Franz Liszt, in a republished article translated into Swedish, mentioned
many of the same aspects (Liszt 1856). It is not unlikely that Rubenson fell
under the influence of this article, which contributed to a larger discussion
on the status of music in general and the use of entr’acte music. In the context
of the Royal Swedish <strong>Opera</strong> in the mid-nineteenth century, this (both
of the above quotations) is indicative of the general changes in the status of
24 […] den obehöflig och i många afseenden den skadliga mellanaktsmusiken vid
talstycken upphäfdes. Dessa, utom all förbindelse med det uppförda dramat stående,
musikstycken distrahera publiken och nedsätta den musikaliska konsten till ett simpelt
tidsutfyllnadsmedel; och för en theater, som, i likhet med vår kungliga, ej vid sin orkester
engagerar unga s. k. accessister, för hvilka mellanaktsmusiken kunde betraktas som
öfning i orkesterspel, finnes intet skäl, att, äfven utan afseende på nödvändigheten
af minskande göromål, nödga sina orkestermedlemmar till en sysselsättning, som på
deras konstnärsegenskaper utöfvar ett demoraliserande inflytande, i det den, genom
sin hantverksmässighet, tröttar och utledsnar dem samt beröfvar dem håg och lust till
ett, för konstens bästa, mera nyttigt arbete.”