Paper short abstract:

The late nineteenth-century composer, Joseph Glæser, produced about 120 piano-accompanied songs for amateur musicians, for which he chose texts projecting landscapes both romantic/symbolic and specifically Danish, so as to appeal to his main public: middle-class girls waiting to be married.

Paper long abstract:

Over a twenty-five year period, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Danish composer Joseph Glæser produced a series of approximately 120 romances for a middle-class public where family and/or guests had to be entertained at home. The performers were primarily girls waiting to be courted and married off, and for whom some proficiency in singing and piano-playing was considered an essential part of their education and a preparation for their future social and cultural roles as household managers. The subject matter had to relate to their own needs and aspirations and to those of the young men to be snared. "Romances" were traditionally narrative songs, but came to be identified with "romantic" relationships, in joyous and tragic varieties. While during the first half of the nineteenth century they were mainly used as musical insets in spoken plays, the rise of an educated middle class as the culturally dominant sector of society made amateur musicians the main market.

The music of such songs had to be simple enough for lay musicians to master, but I will be concerned with the scenes and landscapes the words project. Although both the producers and the buyers were, in their vast majority, city people, the setting created is rural and idyllic, the season spring to autumn, the typically Danish elements being the sea or lakeside, the beech tree, the lark. There are, however, often symbolic rather than real landscapes, with evocative elements of nature used to express hope, love, longing, sadness, despair.