THE ‘GREAT DIVIDE’ IN MUSIC James O. Young Several prominent philosophers of music, including Lydia Goehr and Peter Kivy, maintain that the experience of music changed drastically in about 1800. According to the great divide hypothesis, prior to 1800 audiences often scarcely attended to music. At other times, music was appreciated as part of social, civic, or religious ceremonies. After the great divide, audiences began to appreciate music as an exclusive object of aesthetic experience. The great divide hypothesis is false. The musicological record reveals that prior to the great divide music was often the exclusive object of aesthetic experience. The belief that the experience of music radically changed in about 1800 is now a commonplace of musical aesthetics. According to this commonplace, prior to the ‘great divide’—the term is Peter Kivy’s—music was not, or was not exclusively, an object of aesthetic contemplation. Prior to the divide, music was performed in a variety of social settings. In these settings, music was typically only one of several objects of attention. The other objects of attention might be a religious ceremony, dinner, dancing, or the act of playing or singing. In a limiting case, music was virtually ignored. After the divide, we are told, the concert hall became the primary venue of musical performance and music the exclusive focus of aes- thetic attention. I will call this the great divide hypothesis. This hypothesis is false. Prior to 1800 music was often, and in a variety of contexts, an object of intense and exclusive aesthetic attention. After 1800, music was frequently played in a variety of contexts where it was only one object of attention and often not the most important. Lydia Goehr was among the first philosophers to adopt the great divide hypothesis. She has written that, in the eighteenth century, Usually musical performances were background affairs within a church or court. As ac- companiment either to serious or frivolous activities, they were rarely the immediate focus of attention. That fact was obvious given the behaviour of their audiences. Even the term ‘audience’ is misleading here, for music was not so much listened or attended to, as it was worshipped, danced, and conversed to. 1 1 Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 192. British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 45, No. 2, April 2005 doi: 10.1093/aesthj/ayi019 © British Society of Aesthetics 2005 175 at University of Victoria on May 17, 2012 http://bjaesthetics.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from