From the middle to the late eighteenth century, England prospered due to growing number of industries and revenues from foreign trade. Being economically available, people valued quality of lifestyle, including having amateur musical performances in social gatherings. Popular musical productions at the time, other than solo music, included also chamber music, such as accompanied keyboard sonatas. In these types of works, the performers could invite the guests to join in the performance, yet also demonstrating his or her own tastes and skills. František Kocžwara¡¦s (1750-1791) The Battle of Prague was one of the most favored piece of works by the English amateur musicians. Due to its moderate level of required performance skills and magnificent effect of the sounds, the amateur musicians were able to perform well in front of their guests, while bring the atmosphere of musical gathering to a high peak. This paper consists of three sections. The first section discusses the development of English music, its influences from local social factors, ands the rise of amateur musicians. The following section discusses the musical form which is mostly favored by amateur pianist in the late eighteenth century - accompanied keyboard sonatas - with depth into its historical background, social functions, and music arrangement. The final section discusses the life of Czech musician, František Kocžwara, and his accompanied keyboard sonatas published in 1788 The Battle of Prague. Through detailed description of the musical style and relationship between the main and the accompanying parts, a better understanding may be formed regarding the non main-trend composers and the elegant lifestyle of the English amateur musical life.

This thesis researches the construction of gender ideals for the new Middle Class and women’s involvement in the same by analysing fashion magazines published in Germany and Sweden between 1786 to 1827 and 1818 to 1844, respectively. The analysis consists of two parts: first, the share of women’s involvement in the public sphere as defined by Habermas as well as the justification of the inclusion of female-written texts and second, the nature of gender ideals in relation to the separate spheres’ framework. They show that the highest percentage of female contributions to fashion magazines was 5.3 % for the Swedish magazine from 1840 to 1844, while the lowest percentage of female contributions was 2.1 % for the German magazine from 1820 to 1827. Furthermore, the inclusion of texts written by women was often justified through their domestic virtue or the statement that they never wanted their texts to be published. The publication was thus against their will, which firmly anchors the female authors in the private sphere. In the second part, this study shows that women authors in the fashion magazines mainly advocated for the separation of the public and private but, in comparison to gender ideals shared by male authors, did not advocate for the submission of women. Regarding the stereotypes of emotionality and rationality, I find that women were mostly portrayed as emotional by men but would contest these negative portrayals of their sex. At the same time, men were portrayed as emotional and rational by both female and male authors, which is surprising considering the prominent male ideal of rationality.