The Music of the Spheres: Music and the Gendered Mind in Nineteenth-Century Britain
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THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES: MUSIC AND THE GENDERED MIND IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Anna Peak August, 2010 Examining Committee Members: Dr. Sally Mitchell, Advisory Chair, English and Women‘s Studies Dr. Peter M. Logan, English Dr. Steve Newman, English Dr. Ruth A. Solie, External Member, Music and Women‘s Studies, Smith College ii © by Anna Louise Peak 2010 All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT This interdisciplinary study examines how nineteenth-century British ideas about music reflected and influenced the period‘s gendering of the mind. So far, studies of Victorian psychology have focused on the last half of the century only, and have tended to elide gender from the discussion. This study will contribute to a fuller picture of nineteenth-century psychology by demonstrating that the mind began to be increasingly gendered in the early part of the century but was largely de-gendered by century‘s end. In addition, because music was an art form in which gender norms were often subverted yet simultaneously upheld as conventional, this study will also contribute to a fuller understanding of the extent to which domestic ideology was considered descriptive or prescriptive. This work makes use of but differs from previous studies of music in nineteenth- century British literature in both scope and argument. Drawing throughout on the work of contemporary music historians and feminist musicologists, as well as general and musical periodicals, newspapers, essays, and treatises from the long nineteenth century, this dissertation argues that music, as a field, was increasingly compartmentalized beginning early in the century, and then unified again by century‘s end. This division and re- unification reflected changing conceptions of the mind, and coincided with the waxing and waning of domestic ideology. Analyzing a range of literary texts, both canonical and non-canonical, in this context demonstrates that music was portrayed increasingly negatively over the century as it became harder and harder to contain the increasing threat iv that music posed to traditional gender norms, a threat based in a view of music that began to imply mental equality between men and women. This implication was embraced by some, particularly homosexuals, and feared by others, who tried to rescue traditional norms by displacing gender ambiguity onto foreigners and Jews. Thus, the rise and fall of domestic ideology as well as end-of-century changes in the manifestation of xenophobia and anti-Semitism are related not only to industrialism and Evangelicalism and other historical events but also to changing ideas about the gender of the mind, reflected in and influenced by changing ideas about music. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My interest in this project began when I was an undergraduate at Rosemont College. Dr. Richard Leiby of the history department first suggested that I study the history of music. Dr. Mary Ann Macartney, my advisor of four years, encouraged my interest in music and literature. She, Dr. Jackie Murphy, and Prof. Timothy O‘Hara have supported me throughout my academic life in more ways than they can know. My friends Alisa Doyle (class of ‘01) and Judith Graeter Cayer (Head Reference Librarian at Rosemont) have provided me with constant friendship, making this whole process much easier. The members of the Victoria listserv and the listserv of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism took time to suggest many useful texts to me. Heather Bowlby, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia, suggested I look at Vernon Lee. Dr. Keely McCarthy of Chestnut Hill College provided me with employment when I most needed it. My dissertation chair, Dr. Sally Mitchell, has helped me in innumerable ways. Her scholarship, her wisdom, and her constant kindness made my entire experience in graduate school better – I do not know if I could have done it without her. I am very fortunate to have had in her the best dissertation director I could possibly have had, as well as a role model for how to be a scholar and a mentor. Dr. Steve Newman constantly gave his time to help me as both a teacher and a scholar. His comments on this project were always helpful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking. Dr. Peter Logan similarly lent his sharp eye to the work and provided valuable comments and criticisms. The members of Temple‘s British Writing vi Group also provided useful criticisms that helped me rethink what became the second chapter of this project. These past seven years would have been much rougher without the friendship and support of my fellow graduate students. In particular, I was fortunate to have three insightful friends and fellow students of the nineteenth century in Dr. Andrea Cabus, Dr. Margaret Godbey, and Dr. Kathy Malone. We shared many experiences together as students of Sally Mitchell and teaching assistants to Steve Newman, and going through the program alongside them has been as much a pleasure as it was an honor. Their comments on my work, too, were as helpful as they were generous – even in the midst of finishing their own dissertations, they took time out to read my work and to offer support and helpful criticisms, and I‘ll always be grateful. Last but not least, I have two other exceptional people to thank. My mother and friend, Rebecca Peak, taught me to read and to love reading. My husband, Andrew Dixon, not only asked thoughtful questions and helped me to think through this work, but encouraged me in every way; he has made me think better of myself as a person than I ever thought possible. vii DEDICATION To my dear husband. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... v DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................. ix CHAPTER 1. A LAND OF MUSIC ....................................................................................................... 1 2. THE IMPROVISATRICE ............................................................................................. 41 3. THE LISTENING ANGEL ........................................................................................... 73 4. MUSIC AND MANLINESS ........................................................................................ 121 5. MUSIC AT THE FIN DE SIÈCLE ............................................................................. 156 CODA ................................................................................................................................... 189 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 206 ix INTRODUCTION Plato calls music an imitation; and if it does not imitate the strong, it must the weaker propensities of our nature: and accordingly there are grave, religious, inspiring sounds which ennoble us; there are gay notes which make the spirit dance with exhilaration; but there are ―softly soothing‖ Lydian measures which, laden with emotion, travel lightning-like to that undiscovered bourn where similar emotions can be awakened – to that ultima thule of the human microcosm where emotion and mind, the two irreconcilable powers, meet, and where emotion is strong enough to disturb the equilibrium of mind. ~ Edward John Tilt, Elements of Health, and Principles of Female Hygiene1 No one today will win any points for originality by calling music a universal language; the phrase is a commonplace. The usual narrative surrounding the origins and history of this phrase, when the phrase is remembered to have a history at all, is this: American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first to call music ―the universal language of mankind,‖2 and the phrase became a truism for the nineteenth century and the twentieth: [b]elief in universal traits of music was characteristic of nineteenth-century scholarship…. and even some teachers of music appreciation in North America as late as the 1980s might have been quite prone to consider music as a ―universal language.‖ In contrast to the languages of the world, which were mutually unintelligible, musics of all kinds were thought intelligible to anyone.3 1 Edward John Tilt, Elements of Health, and Principles of Female Hygiene (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1853), 215. 2 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, rev. ed. (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1893), 197. This attribution of this phrase to Longfellow began early and has continued late. For an early ascription of this phrase to Longfellow, see Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, rev. ed. (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1896), 405; for a recent one, see pioneering ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl‘s The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-One Issues and Concepts, 2nd ed. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 42. 3 Nettl, 42. x The first challenge to this universalization of Western musical standards came in the 1940s with the advent of ethnomusicology, continues the narrative, although that challenge faded in the