Shopping Sounds: The Rahrs’ Dutch Music Shop, Its Customers, and Their Tastes, ca. 1835–1900

Much has been written about how, in the nineteenth century, a music market developed that responded to the needs of new groups of music consumers. Compared to publishers and composers, we know far less about music shops, even though they, too, were essential for the dissemination of music in the private sphere. Shops played a major role in the functioning of musical networks, and strongly influenced the development of taste and processes of canonization. To find out more about such patterns and processes, this article focuses on the Rahr family’s music shop in the Dutch city of Utrecht during the second half of the nineteenth century. The music shop’s extraordinarily large archives contain precise information about customers, their purchases, and sales. To study these sources, we employ a unique methodology. Scholars are often reluctant to research the creative sector from an economic perspective. We show how, through combining qualitative and quantitative techniques, musicologists and historians can better understand the role of retailers in nineteenth-century music culture. Data analysis enables us to map and understand taste developments, both at an individual level and more systematically. Our article thus reveals the variability and diversity of music customers and their tastes in the nineteenth century.