Music, Morality, and Social Harmony in Women's Writing, 1740-1815

COMPOSING THEMSELVES COMPOSING THEMSELVES: MUSIC, MORALITY, AND SOCIAL HARMONY IN WOMEN'S WRITING, 1740-1815 By LESLIE RITCHIE, B. MUS., B. ED., M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature McMaster University © Copyright by Leslie Ritchie, October 2000 DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2000) MCMASTER UNIVERSITY (English) Hamilton, Ontario TITLE: Composing Themselves: Music, Morality, and Social Harmony in Women's Writing, 1740-1815 AUTHOR: Leslie Ritchie, B. Mus., B. Ed., M.A. SUPERVISOR: Dr. Peter Walmsley NUMBER OF PAGES: ix, 334 11 Composing Themselves: Music, Morality, and Social Harmony in Women's Writing, 1740-1815 This interdisciplinary thesis examines rare poetic, didactic, fictional, and musical texts written by women in latter eighteenth-century Britain for instances of and resistance to contemporary perceptions of music as a form of social control. The opening chapter defines and historicizes the term "social harmony," by discussing neoclassical views of musical affect as productive of beneficial social behaviours and gender definition. By delineating canonical aesthetic theorists' influence upon women writers and musicians and assessing music's place in women's moral education, this chapter complicates the idea of separate public and private spheres of cultural achievement and introduces expanded views of women's agency as composers and performers. Next, the thesis appraises women's engagement with charity, musically enacted, through formal musical and textual analysis of hymns, songs, and benefit performances and publications. It marks the productive intersection of patronage and charity for women, who could articulate divergent responses to such idealized or stereotyped objects of pity as prostitutes and madwomen and benefit materially from so doing. The third chapter considers women composers and writers' employment of imitative and associative aesthetic practices in nature's musical representation, including neoclassical and realist pastorals, the picturesque, and the sublime. It traces development of a hybrid aesthetic of natural representation that enables performative and compositional separation of femininity from nature in forms including the novel, song, and pastoral drama. The final chapter identifies contemporary anxieties concerning the depiction of political, moral and gender-role stability within an increasingly international musical discourse. It analyzes women's musical conceptions of cultural difference and national identity in ballad operas and pastiches in light of these conflicts. By crafting works consonant with societal ideals of charitable, natural, and national order-or by re-imagining their participation in these musical aids to social harmony-women composers, lyricists and performers contributed significantly to the formation of British cultural identity. 1ll Preface and Acknowledgements I began taking music lessons as a small child. My piano bench was filled with the striped books of The Conservatory, which claimed to clamp between their covers all that was best of Western music. In one of these books, there was a piece by one Jean Anderson. As a child growing up in Pierre Trudeau's bilingual Canada, I assumed that Jean Anderson was a half-French, half-English man. I did not remember making this assumption until nearly ten years later, when I found myself sitting in her music theory class at the University of Western Ontario. Certainly, I had been told that there were, or probably were, some women composers (Mozart's sister; Schumann's wife). I had even played the famous flute sonata by Cecile Chaminade as an audition piece for entrance into music school. By this point, I had read Virginia Woolf s A Room of One 's Own, and had a new set of assumptions- women had been socially and psychologically prevented from writing music in the past. I was still disturbed that I had made such a mistake, but reasoned that I had jumped to conclusions about Jean Anderson's gender because in the past, very few women had been composers, and because women composers were under-represented on examination lists (this situation has improved). This seemed probable. I began work on my PhD in English at McMaster University, and decided to combine my interests in music and literature in an interdisciplinary study of eighteenth century women's writing. In the Research Collections of Mills Library, I investigated two collections of songs, each of which contained a number of songs with music or lyrics by women. I then began a search for secondary resources written about these women whose names I had never before heard. I found a small book with a promising title: Woman in Music. Its contents infuriated me. George Upton's smug assertion that woman "will always be the recipient and interpreter, but there is little hope she will be the creator" (31) of music, was completely at odds with my rich findings in Research Collections. Women had contributed to the popular musical culture of Britain in the eighteenth century, both as composers and as performers. I determined to write a thesis that would showcase some of these compositions, and discuss and represent them accurately in their historical milieu. It was important to me to write a work that was scholarly, but one which still would be of interest to an amateur musician. I hope I have succeeded in this task. IV I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the doctoral fellowship which enabled me to do this research, as well as the McMaster University Faculty of Graduate Studies, which funded many of my research related travel expenses. To the staff of Research Collections, McMaster University, many thanks for your kindness and help over the past four years. To my thesis committee members Peter Walmsley, Sylvia Bowerbank, and Grace Kehler, your perceptive comments and close reading of my work were a constant and valuable source of encouragement. To my husband, Brian Ritchie, your enthusiastic support during this project was a treasured comfort. But most of all, I would like to dedicate this project to my music teachers, whom I can never thank enough: Mom, who taught me my note names Dad, who taught me how to whistle Lillian Hynna (piano) Penelope Clarke (flute) Sister Elizabeth (theory) Norma McLeod (piano) Sister Marilyn Rose (theory) Deborah Buset (piano) Sister Immaculata (piano) iJJ Gayle Raulston (violin) Diane Garrett (orchestra) c~ Captain Norman Slongo, L.S.S.R. (marching band) Marcella Smithers (band) Phillip Cotton (concert band; stage band) Anne Thompson (flute) U.W.O. Faculty of Music, 1988-92 and to my own flute and piano students (especially Charlotte and Madeleine, who drew the pictures), who teach me so much. Thank you all. Leslie - 'The Queen.' Detail from 'The King and Queen of Music.' pencil sketch by Charlotte Gow, pianist, age 8 v Table of Contents Title page 11 Descriptive Note 111 Abstract iv Preface and Acknowledgements VI Table of Contents vm List of Illustrations I. Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 i. Woman in Music ............................................................................ 3 ii. Harmony ...................................................................................... 13 iii. Neoclassical Understandings of 'Ancient' Music's Social Role ...... 21 iv. Discipline and Practice ................................................................. .41 II. Caritas; or, Women and Musically-Enacted Charity........................... 75 i. Magdalen Songs ........................................................................... 78 ii. Poor Objects of Sentiment & Sensibility ........................................ 90 iii. Madwomen ................................................................................. 103 iv. Pathetic Incidents Taken From Life ............................................. 115 v. Women's Benefit Performances and Projects ............................... 121 vi. Conclusion .................................................................................. 13 2 ID. Arcadia; or, Women's Strategic Use of the Pastoral.. ....................... 134 1. "Some airs put us in mind of the country": Imitation and Association ................................................................................. 143 ii. The Moral and Social Dangers of Pastoral Realism ...................... 160 iii. Perils of the Picturesque .............................................................. 173 iv. Cultivating the Musical Sublime .................................................. 178 v. Musical Pastorals on Stage: Rosina, Marian, and Country Coquets ...................................................................................... 192 vi. Conclusion ................................................................................. 213 IV. Britannia; or, Women and Songs of Nation and Otherness .............. 215 i. Britishness, Musically Defined ....................................................... 219 ii. Burney, Schmeling, and the Barber of Bristol: Aggregate British Musical Identity ........................................................................... 227 iii. Music for the British Heroine ...................................................... 239 VI iv. Britannia and "Other" Women ..................................................... 248 v. Performance Practice, Nation and Identity ..................................

Load more