Les concerts historiques as manifestation of the “co-creative” phenomenon of enlightenment (as exemplified by Charles-Valentin Alkan’s Petits concerts)

The tradition of les concerts historiques as a form of popularizing musical legacy of the past dates back to the period between the second quarter of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The article deals with the origin of the named phenomenon in France (F.J. Fétis), Germany (I. Moscheles), England (E. Pauer) and Russia (A.G. Rubinstein, S.V. Smolensky, S.N. Vasilenko, and M.F. Gnessin). Based on the critical articles in the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, an episode of the artistic biography of Charles-Valentin Alkan (an outstanding French composer of the time of Romanticism), namely his six-year cycle Petits concerts (1873–80), may be taken as a unique example of “musical co-creation.”