The Reception of Women Pianists in London, 1950-60
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City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Lim, Lemy Sungyoun (2010). The Reception of Women Pianists in London, 1950-60. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University London) This is the unspecified version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/1210/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Reception of Women Pianists in London, 1950-60 Volume I Lemy Sungyoun Lim Ph. D in Music Department of Music City University, London September 2010 Table of Contents List of Illustrations iv Abstract v Preface vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1. The Subject of Women and the Piano: an introduction 16 This study and its predecessors 18 Gender study as critical musicology 21 Women and the piano: a critical history 25 Music as a profession: the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s 29 First-wave feminism and the Society of Women Musicians 35 Two British women pianists: Arabella Goddard (1836-1922) and Fanny Davies (1861-1934) 38 London concert life: the late-nineteenth century to the 1930s 41 Chapter 2. Concert Life in London, 1950-60: venues and repertoire 47 The Royal Festival Hall (RFH) 48 The phenomenon of the (piano) recital and the Wigmore Hall 55 Early solo-recitals in London 57 The Wigmore Hall and Emmie Tillett (of Ibbs and Tillett) 61 Piano concert-programming of the 1950s 66 Chapter 3. Six Individual Critics: backgrounds and attitudes towards gender 78 Frank Howes 80 Clinton Gray-Fisk 84 Sir Jack Westrup 86 Andrew Porter 88 Joan Chissell 91 Diana McVeagh 95 Chapter 4. The Performance of Beethoven by Women Pianists 101 The spiritual realm: historical background and the 1950s reviews 102 Beethoven’s image as ‘hero’: a theoretical framework 105 Beethoven Hero 109 Op. 111 112 Op. 106, the Hammerklavier Sonata 115 Op. 57, the Appassionata 117 The three sonatas of Op. 2 122 Chapter 5. Woman’s Perceived Unworthiness to be a Pianist 125 The ‘feminine’ woman pianist 127 Her ‘nimble’ fingers 127 Her ‘body’ 134 Her ‘lack of drive’ and/or ‘passivity’ 139 The ‘unfeminine’ woman pianist 146 The ‘manly’ and/or ‘violent’ woman 146 The ‘androgynous’ or ‘sexually ambiguous’ woman 153 The evaluation of femininity by the critics 157 Chapter 6. A Study of Specific Pianists 161 Dame Myra Hess (1890-1965) 169 Harriet Cohen (1895-1967) 179 Eileen Joyce (1908-1991) 193 Gina Bachauer (1913-1976) 206 Margaret Kitchin (1914-2008) 214 Dame Moura Lympany (1916-2005) 225 A comparison of the six 233 Bibliography 243 Volume II Appendices: Women Pianists Reviewed in 1950-60 in MM, MO, MT and The Times Notes to Appendices 3 Table: reviews of women pianists in MM, MO, MT and The Times 4 Music and Musicians 1952-60 20 Musical Opinion 1950-60 29 Musical Times 1950-60 52 The Times 1950-60 58 List of Illustrations Musical Examples 1. a) Beethoven, Sonata Op. 2 no. 2, first movement, opening 123 b) Beethoven, Sonata Op. 2 no. 3, first movement, opening 123 Figures 1. The Crystal Palace, Hyde Park 43 2. Concerts reviewed October-November, 1950 in major venues 56 3. The number of reviews in MT, 1958 71 4. Myra Hess 172 5. Harriet Cohen 190 6. Eileen Joyce and Christopher Mann 201 7. Gina Bachauer 209 8. Margaret Kitchin 216 9. Moura Lympany with Aram Khachaturian 229 iv Abstract This study investigates the reception of women pianists in London in the decade 1950-60, based on reviews published in three music journals, Music and Musicians, Musical Opinion, The Musical Times, and one national daily newspaper, The Times. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women pianists, both amateur and professional, suffered from the notion that women were innately unable to engage with a superior art form such as music: thus argue scholars including Katharine Ellis, Richard Leppert, Ruth Solie and Judith Tick. Yet, such attitudes did not prevent a strong tradition of women pianists from being formed. In Britain, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Arabella Goddard was at the forefront of the London musical scene; she was succeeded by Fanny Davies and Adelina de Lara and, later, Dame Myra Hess and Harriet Cohen, whose career successes came in the 1920s. While the situation of women pianists in Britain between the mid-nineteenth century and the late 1920s has been assessed by scholars such as Therese Ellsworth and Dorothy de Val, an in-depth study dealing with the reception of women pianists in post- WWII Britain has yet to appear. This study does not attempt to assess the technical or musical accuracy of the reviews considered; instead, it asks, what were the musical perspectives of the reviewers and, specifically, what were their views on women pianists? First, it presents six important critics, Frank Howes, Clinton Gray-Fisk, Sir Jack Westrup, Andrew Porter, Joan Chissell and Diana McVeagh, all of whom contributed to the four sources cited above. Then it assesses the extent of the prejudice embedded in the reviews examined (written by many more than the six above), which invoke such varied issues as masculinist repertoire and female anatomy. Following this, it examines the careers of six leading women concert pianists of the time: Dame Myra Hess, Harriet Cohen, Eileen Joyce, Gina Bachauer, Margaret Kitchin and Dame Moura Lympany. Their successes reveal the extent to which women musicians of the highest status were considered exempt from the prejudices to which others were subjected. It is hoped that such a study will illuminate aspects of musical life unique to London in the 1950s, partially fill the void in the historiography of women pianists in Britain after Davies, and also alert those women who perform, as well as all who listen and assess women performers, to the complex and often covert issues ‘beyond the notes’. v Preface While my musicological aim is to provide a much-needed ‘critical’ study of women pianists in post-WWII London, I also have a personal motivation for investigating issues concerning women pianists. My MA thesis surveyed a number of written studies and recorded collections (on VCR and DVD) with titles incorporating the word ‘great’, such as the ‘great’ pianists and the ‘great’ Romantics. The pianists awarded this appellation were generally male: Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Anton Rubinstein, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Josef Hofmann, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Wilhelm Kempff and Rudolf Serkin, amongst others. As well as studying the concept of ‘great’ pianists, my thesis considered the omission of women pianists from the noted list. I made considerable reference to Christine Battersby’s seminal study, Gender and Genius, which convincingly argues that, in the nineteenth-century, the term ‘genius’ was associated chiefly with male creative activity.1 Another pertinent gendered term examined in my thesis was ‘virtuoso’ (from the Latin ‘vir’, meaning ‘man’) which also served to prohibit (many) women pianists from the Pantheon. Naturally, the performance style of the nineteenth century’s greatest virtuoso, Liszt, came under scrutiny in my MA thesis. My subsequent regret was that my preoccupation with the notion of greatness resulted inevitably in the examination of, mostly, male pianists: women pianists were somewhat left out. The question that I, as a trained pianist, have been asking ever since completing my MA degree is, what are the politics involved when a female of the twenty-first century plays the piano in public? There is little doubt that 1Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius (London: The Women’s Press Ltd, 1989). vi keyboard instruments are often associated with women: from the virginal players of the late-seventeenth century through the heroines of Jane Austen’s novels, to Renoir’s paintings of innocent young girls at the piano, and even to the controversial and sometimes distorted heroines of twentieth-century literature (such as the female character in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Klavierspielerin), all these indicate that the piano is intrinsically related to our (female) cultural and social lives.2 Even though the piano has often been (and still is) associated with women and given that aspiring female piano students generally outnumber males even now, male pianists still maintain the lead in international competitions, awards, the concert circuit and even teaching at the highest levels (the Leeds International Piano Competition, for instance, produced its first female winner only in 2009). Because certain kinds of teaching have historically been viewed as a female avocation, men’s dominance here may seem puzzling. However, advanced levels of teaching in Britain, such as at most universities, were confined to men until the twentieth century.3 Growing up in Seoul, South Korea, I attended a great number of concerts generally given by male pianists from the West. When I was a teenage piano student at the Paris Conservatoire in the late 1980s, there were two female piano professors and five male professors. Ten years on in London, where I studied on post-graduate courses at both the Royal Academy 2Refer to Arthur Loesser’s early study, Men, Women and Pianos, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1954), 188-203.