University of Dayton eCommons English Faculty Publications Department of English 2010 Reading Music: Representing Female Performance in Nineteenth-century British Piano Method Books and Novels Laura Vorachek University of Dayton,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eng_fac_pub Part of the Gender and Sexuality Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Music Commons, and the Reading and Language Commons eCommons Citation Vorachek, Laura, "Reading Music: Representing Female Performance in Nineteenth-century British Piano Method Books and Novels" (2010). English Faculty Publications. 4. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eng_fac_pub/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Laura Vorachek Reading Music: Representing Female Performance in Nineteenth- Century British Piano Method Books and Novels The editorial content of piano method books published in the nineteenth century contributed to the gendering of the domestic piano by targeting a middle-class female audience. At the same time, these tutorials circumscribed the ability and ambition of female pianists, cautioning women against technical display or performing challenging pieces in company, thereby reinforcing the stereotype of the graceful, demure woman who played a little. However, this effort was complicated by both the tutorials themselves and contemporary fiction. The middle- class women reading these tutorials also read novels—a fact the method books occasionally acknowledge—which often presented a very different picture of women’s musical abilities.