The Eclectic Careers of Eva and Juliette Gauthier Anita Slominska

Interpreting success and failure: The eclectic careers of Eva and Juliette Gauthier Anita Slominska Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal April 2009 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ©2009 Anita Slominska Abstract My dissertation explores the eclectic singing careers of sisters Eva and Juliette Gauthier. Born in Ottawa, Eva and Juliettte were aided in their musical aspirations by the patronage of Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier and his wife Lady Zoë. They both received classical vocal training in Europe. Eva spent four years in Java. She studied the local music, which later became incorporated into her concert repertoire in North America. She went on to become a leading interpreter of modern art song. Juliette became a performer of Canadian folk music in Canada, the United States and Europe, aiming to reproduce folk music “realistically” in a concert setting. My dissertation is the result of examining archival materials pertaining to their careers, combined with research into the various social and cultural worlds they traversed. Eva and Juliette’s careers are revealing of a period of transition in the arts and in social experience more generally. These transitions are related to the exploitation of non-Western people, uses of the “folk,” and the emergence of a cultural marketplace that was defined by a mixture of highbrow institutions and mass culture industries. My methodology draws from the sociology of art and cultural history, transposing Eva and Juliette Gauthier against the backdrop of the social, cultural and economic conditions that shaped their career trajectories and made them possible. Abstract Ma thèse de doctorat explore les carrières éclectiques des chanteuses Eva et Juliette Gauthier. Nées à Ottawa, ces deux sœurs ont été supportées par le Premier Ministre Wilfred Laurier et sa femme Lady Zoë dans la poursuite de leurs aspirations musicales. Toutes deux ont suivi des cours de chant classiques en Europe, Eva passant quatre ans à Java où elle étudia la musique locale qu’elle a ensuite introduite dans son répertoire de concert en Amérique du Nord. Elle devint ainsi une des interprètes principales de la chanson de l’école moderne. Pour sa part, Juliette est devenue chanteuse de musique folk canadienne, donnant des concerts tant au Canada et aux Etats-Unis qu’en Europe, dans le but d’en donner une représentation « réaliste » à l’intérieur même d’un concert. Ma thèse est le résultat de l’analyse des documents d’archive portant sur leurs carrières et de la recherche des divers milieux sociaux et culturels qu’elles ont traversés. Les carrières d’Eva et de Juliette sont révélatrices d’une période de transition dans le domaine des arts et, de façon générale, dans l’expérience sociale. Ces transitions sont reliées à l’exploitation des peuples non-occidentaux, à l’usage du « folk » et à l’émergence d’un marché culturel défini par le mélange des institutions établies et des industries de la culture de masse. Ma méthodologie puise dans la sociologie de l’histoire de l’art et de la culture, mettant Eva et Juliette Gauthier en relief dans le contexte des conditions sociales, culturelles et économiques qui ont marqué et rendu possible la trajectoire de leurs carrières. Acknowledgements First and foremost, this dissertation would not have been possible without the continual encouragement of my supervisor, Will Straw. I thank him for his enthusiasm about my project and his confidence in me. I also benefited from the support of my department in general, particularly from Darin Barney, Carrie Rentschler and Jenny Burman. I am grateful to the McGill Centre for Teaching and Research on Women who awarded me a Margaret Gillett Graduate Research Award to help fund some of my archival research in New York City. I also thank the Research Grants Office of McGill for an Internal SHHRC research grant, the McGill Faculty of Arts for a dissertation completion award, as well as the SSHRC for awarding me a doctoral fellowship. The writing of my dissertation was supported by the warm friendship of Jennifer Varkonyi and Crystal Beliveau. Crystal also helped me decipher Eva and Juliette’s illegible handwriting and offered her expertise in French translation. I would also like to thank Anne Chudobiak and Katy Fenn for their solidarity, and John Lasater and Erik Sass for their friendship and hospitality in New York City. Thank you to Valerie Howes for proofreading and improving my prose. My parents Ken and Helen Saunders deserve significant recognition for the their willingness to support me at all times, at any costs. Their love, encouragement, and presence in my life have made the writing of this dissertation possible. My love and gratitude goes to my partner Prem Sooriyakumar for being with me through the highs and lows of daily challenges. I owe much to his nurturing presence and constant care. I have the deepest gratitude for our son Sasha, who is pure sunshine and a constant source of joy, hope, and amusement. Finally, I dedicate my dissertation to the memory of my sister Shauna Saunders. I have tried to live up to her direction and advice, and to honour her unfailing dedication to my wellbeing and success. She is, and always will be, my inspiration. Table of Contents Abstract Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Chapter I 19 Eva Gauthier: the life history of a “high priestess of modern song” Chapter Two 81 Juliette Gaultier de la Vérendrye: a “perfect folk-lore concert artist” in cultural context. Chapter Three 129 Financial instability and practical choices: how Eva and Juliette Gauthier forged careers in music and folklore, a gender analysis Chapter Four 180 The new, the unfamiliar, the traditional and the primitive: songs of the Other in the repertoire of Eva and Juliette Gauthier Chapter Five 227 The contours of cultural boundaries: explaining high/low, folk/mass and the middle. Conclusion 296 Bibliography 308 Illustrations Introduction My dissertation investigates the careers of two Canadian singers, sisters Eva and Juliette Gauthier. Both were classically trained in Europe but neither pursued a career in opera. Eva (1885–1958) focused on lesser known art song repertoire, finding a place for herself in New York City‘s world of modern music. Her reputation was founded on her interpretations of Javanese music and her innovative recitals. She maintained a high profile as a vocal teacher and supporter of contemporary music even after her stage career ended in the late 1930s. Eva‘s sister Juliette (1888–1972) made a career out of singing Canadian folk music and promoting traditional handicrafts as an amateur folklorist and ethnomusicologist. Though she performed in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, the significance of her career is most obvious within the development of anthropology, emerging nationalism, and folk culture revival in Canada. Eva and Juliette‘s divergent, though parallel, careers shed light on cultural aspects of the early twentieth century. Their life stories offer glimpses of what it was like for Canadian women to pursue artistic careers when financial assistance was limited. As single women from a middle class background, they negotiated the tensions and dynamics of a range of cultural fields, including ethno-performance, popular culture and high art. The events and circumstances that shaped their careers offer insight into the interconnectedness of different elements of modernity, including modernist art, twentieth-century anthropology, feminism, 1 globalization and the rise of mass culture. My biographical study of the Gauthiers explores how economic and social factors, as well as everyday experience, affect the creation, circulation and meaning of cultural forms. Susan Rutherford‘s recent history of the prima donna, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815-1930, explores both the cultural phenomenon of prima donne as well as their status as ―working artists.‖i Her goal is to understand ―the enterprise of becoming, and sustaining a career as, a singer.‖ii Similarly, my aim is to examine the trajectories of Eva and Juliette‘s careers, from their training in the early 1900s, to the apogee of their careers (for both, in the 1920s), and their waning success from 1930s onward. Their careers spanned a variety of social and cultural contexts. Eva, for instance, performed her repertoire in local musical clubs across America, vaudeville theatres, royal courts, private homes of the well-to-do and highbrow New York venues. The continuities and disjunctions of Eva and Juliette‘s careers were shaped by events in their personal lives, as well as by the social, cultural, and political vicissitudes of the historical moments in which they were embedded. For this reason, I attempt to negotiate several threads at once—personal/subjective and cultural/political—and treat these as ―interlaced plots.‖iii This strategy draws from sociological and cultural historical approaches to biography. Sociologist Martin Kohli argues that a life is ultimately a ―social text‖; and, for academic purposes, biography enables the study of the social through the individual. He 2 contends that a ―hermeneutical understanding of individual lives‖ is ―also the privileged way to historical or social reality.‖iv In this vein, sociologist Franco Ferrarotti argues that individual biographies express ―macro elements‖ or ―global characteristics of a precisely dated and experienced social situation.‖v Yet, how do we recognize or map the ―conjectures between historical context and individual life choices‖vi? Paul Thompson defines constructing biography as tracing ―connecting paths‖ between individual biographies and the larger social, political and economic structures that define a particular historical moment.vii In this project, I combine elements of Pierre Bourdieu‘s rigorous sociological theory with a more open-ended cultural historical approach as ―a certain sort of enquiry into the social production of meaning.‖viii Biography, by centering on the individual, foregrounds the importance of subjectivity and notions of self, agency and human purpose.

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