From Old World to New Shores
From Old World to New Shores
This chapter presents a brief history of the accordion, from its experimental beginning in the early nineteenth century to its phenomenal rise as a truly global commodity, emphasizing the social predicament that relegated this instrument to a marginal position within the (educated) musical world. While the accordion at first was an expensive and hence exclusive instrument in upper-class drawing rooms, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century it had spread to the middle and working classes. The accordion of the nineteenth century was a symbol of progress and modernity as well as of mass culture and industrialization. This dichotomy is one of the reasons for the elite's ambivalence towards and uneasiness with the accordion.
Keywords: accordion, musical instruments, nineteenth century, upper class, working class, middle class
Illinois Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.