Music and Eighteenth-Century Spa Culture

This essay collection offers a comprehensive study of music and culture in eighteenth-century spa towns in Europe and beyond. The key themes covered in this volume include artistic production, performance practices and individual musicians, with attention also given to the surrounding cultural, urban or socio-economic environments of music making. The interconnectedness of social conventions, artistic performances and aesthetic reflections, from which the balneo-musical space emerges, is also analysed. The book is divided into five parts: Spa Cultures and Leisure Towns Music and Healing Music in the Spa Transcultural Connections and Mobility Nineteenth-Century Continuations. While Europe forms the central geographical reference point, with case studies on England (especially Bath), Germany, France, Bohemia and Italy, the influence of other cultures and traditions is also explored with two chapters on East Asia (Japan and the Chinese Borderlands). This book offers new insights into the musical life of eighteenth-century spa towns and enhances previous knowledge of spa culture as well as the interaction between healing, recreation and mobility.