Res#19+: Research Projects

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel developed into a laboratory for ideas on music education and performance. This new educational model, largely shaped by François-Auguste Gevaert (1828–1908), was supported by the establishment of an instrument museum, a research library, and an active Société des Concerts dedicated to the performance of early music. Gevaert’s vision of the conservatory as part of a public space conceived as an “instructive picturesque museum” coincided with an unprecedented flourishing of Belgian musical life during the late Romantic period.

But how did Gevaert’s ambitious School of Arts translate to young orchestral musicians in training? In the Brussels horn class of Louis-Henri Merck (1824–1900), this period was marked by profound changes in repertoire selection, instrument use, performance practice, and pedagogical methods. This Brussels approach led, in the final decades of the nineteenth century, to the emergence of a wide diaspora of Brussels-trained musicians in orchestras and educational institutions both in Belgium and abroad.

The present project examines the incentives, socio-cultural context, pedagogical repertoire, stylistic evolution, teaching methods, and dissemination of these developments from the perspective of students in the horn classes during the “long” Romantic period, with a particular focus on Gevaert’s directorship. 

This project investigates female saxophonists in the United States and Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. Both Black and white women were strongly drawn to Adolphe Sax’s revolutionary invention. The project demonstrates how women embraced the instrument’s subversive status to express their identities while simultaneously challenging established musical conventions.

Contrary to dominant narratives, the project hypothesizes that early saxophone culture was not exclusively dominated by white male performers from France. Instead, women either reinterpreted the French performance paradigm or developed their own distinct saxophone practices. In doing so, they became focal points of public imagination and criticism within a normative cultural climate.

To explore this central hypothesis, the project examines the reception of first-generation female saxophonists in light of historical notions of musicality, gender, and race; analyses the individual performance practices and saxophone aesthetics of prominent artists; and culminates in a historically informed performance of their repertoire.