Salon music
Cheerful entertainment music of the 19th century.
What it means
Salon music designates the entertainment music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as sounded in the bourgeois salon, in spa towns, cafés, and hotels. Typical scorings are piano alone, piano trio, or small salon orchestras. The repertoire comprises character pieces, dances, songs without words, arrangements of well-known melodies, and potpourris. Characteristic are catchy melodic writing, manageable forms, and an effective but not overly heavy texture.
Musical use
The genre arose from the bourgeois audience's need for music that is at once accessible and demanding enough to be played and listened to. Publishers issued large quantities of such pieces, often with alternative scoring indications, so that they could be performed with whatever instruments were available. The term was later used disparagingly, which does not do the matter justice: many of these pieces are carefully crafted and demand real skill, especially in shaping. At the same time they are historically informative, because they show which music was actually widespread. The repertoire was mostly spread by publishers in large print runs and set up for domestic music-making.
Performance practice
Take such pieces seriously: they live from tonal culture, timing, and tasteful shaping, not from technical display. Keep dance rhythms dance-like and taut, without taking them heavily. Use rubato with measure, otherwise the music tips into the sentimental. With ensemble versions, check the scoring variants and adapt them to the forces available. Watch the balance in a small room and play more softly than you are used to.
Bear in mind that the disparaging undertone of the term does not do the matter justice: many of these pieces are carefully worked and demand tonal culture and timing that cannot be replaced by technique. Take them seriously. Typical genres are the nocturne, the romance, the song without words, the waltz, and character pieces with poetic titles. Many salon pieces appeared in versions for piano two hands and four hands. Around 1900, salon orchestras in hotels and coffeehouses played arrangements of such pieces.
Tekla Bądarzewska's The Maiden's Prayer of 1856 counts as a model example.