Togetherness

Abstract

This chapter provides some working definitions of chamber music. The importance of playing music together, as an ensemble with one player per part and no conductor, is argued to be core to the chamber-music ethos. The early history of chamber is traced from sixteenth-century madrigals and instrumental consorts to the establishment of the sonata and string quartet in the eighteenth century. The metaphor of conversation, which grew in popularity during the Enlightenment as a way to explain how musicians interact in chamber music, is explored from the perspective of modern-day sociologists and psychologists. The tendency to think of chamber music as a democratic mode of music-making is introduced.