Steibelt’s Rumours: Publicity, Attention, and the Remnants of Fame

ABSTRACT This essay explores the interaction between the spread of historical rumour and the documentation of history through an analysis of the corpus of negative rumours concerning the composer/pianist Daniel Steibelt (1765–1823). At the same time that Steibelt was internationally revered, securing important patronage, and writing successful musical works, he was the frequent subject of scandalous rumours. It is argued that these rumours are remnants of a process animated by the emergent economy of attention. There is more to these stories than debunking them: they were loved and they continue to be used today, which points to a more complex situation where the psychological and emotional needs of the past reverberate throughout history and continue to animate historical discourse. Rumours about Steibelt provide a way to theorize the interaction between an extant eighteenth-century rumour-interest ecosystem and its collision with a rising celebrity infrastructure around the turn of the nineteenth century.