Serenading the City: Night Music in Basel, 1700–1800

As part of the NightMuse project, my PhD dissertation will focus on the secular night music of Basel in the 18^th century. The nocturnal history of Basel has not been studied from a musicological perspective before and thus a study about its music through the lens of the day and night rhythm is particularly intriguing. The key questions of my project are: How, where, when was music played and heard at night in Basel from 1700–1800? What functions of nocturnal music can be identified and which musical traits does the music show? How does gender factor into music making at night?

In a first step, I intend to define the cultural meaning of the night by analyzing a vast array of sources, such as diaries, city mandates, bell schedules and travel reports. For the analysis in the second step, collections such as the music library of Lucas Sarasin, night watchmen songs, and music printed in Basel will be crucial sources for this study. By covering various spaces and social milieus, such as music in private homes of wealthy families, outdoor concerts, musicians on watchtowers and communal singing in guild halls, I want to bring light into the dark corners of early modern Basel and draw attention to the city’s nocturnal song.

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Helen Gebhart is a PhD candidate in the SNSF-funded project The Night Side of Music. Towards a New Historiography of Musicking in Europe, 1500–1800. She  holds a master’s degree in Musicology and Anglophone Literature. Following her studies in Basel and Vienna, she worked as managing director for the Swiss Musicological Society and as journal manager for the Swiss Journal of Musicology. Her previous positions include roles at the Paul Sacher Foundation, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, Gare du Nord (as director’s assistant), and the University of Basel (as a tutor). As a music critic and author, Helen has contributed to bz Basel, Schweizer Musikzeitung, Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival, and Kammerorchester Basel. Her research interests include nocturnal music of the early modern era, music during and between the world wars, and music criticism.

Helen is a member of the vocal ensemble Les Voix Basel and enjoys playing the violin.

‘Les charmes de la nuit’: Secular Nocturnal Musicking in Paris, c.1750–c.1815

This project, which spans the final years of the ancien régime up to the close of the First French Empire, will explore the full gamut of secular music-making heard between dusk and dawn in France’s capital city. Several questions will lie at the heart of this investigation: for instance, what secular music was performed in Paris during the evening/at night, and how did this differ from that heard by day? How was Parisian nocturnal musicking affected by factors such as the season, people’s class and social status, and so on? What impressions of the night emerge through song texts, and how do these align with other sources about nightlife at the close of the eighteenth century? Was night-themed secular music actually intended for nocturnal performance, or did it merely evoke this time?

In order to explore these (and other) questions in sufficient depth, information from a wide array of sources will be collected and analyzed. Examples of surviving music will naturally figure among these, ranging from vocal compositions with night-themed texts (cantatilles, romances, hymns…) to instrumental works like serenades or other pieces intended ‘pour jouer la nuit’, and encompassing works by all manner of composers (from celebrated figures like Grétry and Gossec to less familiar ones like Louis Lemaire). Study of these musical works will be complemented by close examination of iconographical and written sources, among them periodicals such as the Mercure de France, diaries (like Henriette Campan’s well-known memoirs), newspapers, and city statutes. Taken together, the amassed data will ultimately help to provide a new perspective on one of the most fascinating and turbulent periods in French history, as well as on the music written and performed during that era.

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Alexander Robinson is a graduate of Oxford University, King’s College London, and the Paris-Sorbonne University, where he completed his doctorate in 2015 on music at the court of Henri IV of France (1589–1610). From 2022 to 2024, he was a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the CESR in Tours, France, researching the music of Renaissance Avignon (c.1500–c.1630).

Robinson’s research primarily focusses on early modern music, especially from France, although he has also worked on the use of early music in film and TV. He has contributed articles to Musica Disciplina, French History, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Revue de musicologie and The Musical Quarterly (forthcoming) as well as chapters for various volumes. He is co-editor of History as Fantasy in Music, Sound, Image, and Media (Routledge, 2024, with James Cook, Alexander Kolassa, and Adam Whittaker) and Marginalised Voices and Figures in French Festival Culture, 1500–1800 (Brepols, scheduled for 2025, with Marc W. S. Jaffré and Bram van Leuveren). He is also editor of the volume Vie musicale et identité urbaine dans la France de la Renaissance (c.1500–c.1650) (Classiques Garnier), which is scheduled to be published in 2025.