{"id":9911,"date":"2020-02-28T09:41:03","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T09:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/?p=9911"},"modified":"2020-03-05T14:42:28","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T14:42:28","slug":"domestic-parlour-music-and-beyond-in-the-nineteenth-century-and-its-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/music-matters\/2020\/02\/28\/domestic-parlour-music-and-beyond-in-the-nineteenth-century-and-its-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Domestic Parlour Music and beyond in the nineteenth century and its literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the\u00a0Alice in Wonderland<\/em> project by the Music department this year, the programme to the performances includes an essay on domestic music-making during the nineteenth-century by Dr Siobhan Harper. An alumna of the University of Kent and former Music Scholar, Siobhan read English Literature at Kent and graduated in 2009; she obtained her PhD in Victorian Literature at the University of Durham, and in the essay examines the role of music, and its portrayal in literature, during the era in which Alice in Wonderland<\/em> was first published. Her essay, which features in the programme accompanying the performance of the\u00a0Musical Dream Play<\/em>, appears here in its entirety.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018<\/strong>A sound of music issued from the drawing-room<\/strong>\u2019: Domestic Parlour Music and Beyond in the Nineteenth Century and its Literature<\/strong><\/p>\n

England in the nineteenth century was known as \u2018Das Land ohne Musik\u2019 \u2013 the land without music. This is, of course, a ludicrous claim, and one that was heavily contested by musicologists at the time; there is \u2018no doubt that professional and domestic music-making was an important part of daily life\u2019.[1]<\/a> So much so, indeed, that \u2018much of the literature of the period is rich with musical scenes and themes\u2019, with \u2018novels throughout the century [\u2026] brimming with scenes at the piano\u2019.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The British were, however, \u2018musical and not musical, depending on the speaker\u2019[3]<\/a> \u2013 and, more importantly, the subject. Music was for \u2018women, foreigners, industrial workers, and professional musicians\u2019, to the extent that it was considered an \u2018emasculating [and] debasing activity for men of the aspiring middle classes and nobility to practise\u2019; men of these classes were the audience only, always distanced.[4]<\/a> Music was, then, \u2018largely gender specific\u2019, since it \u2018was one of the few fields in which most middle- and upper-class girls were educated, and boys were not\u2019.[5]<\/a> As such, it was inextricably tied up with \u2018perceptions of ideal femininity\u2019.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

It was domestic music that dominated the first half of the nineteenth century, and \u2018any household that could afford one was likely to possess a piano\u2019.[7]<\/a> But owning a piano was about far more than the instrument itself: it indicated that \u2018not only can the family afford a piano, sheet music, lessons and leisure time, but the choice of instrument, the piece being played, and [the pianist\u2019s] manner of execution all communicated her genteel taste, or lack thereof\u2019.[8]<\/a> The piano, its player, and all of the accoutrements therefore \u2018visibly and audibly demonstrated a man\u2019s respectable social standing and financial well-being to those who shared the same cultural capital\u2019.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Theodore Robinson, Girl at Piano, circa 1887<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The quotation above specified \u2018her<\/em> genteel taste\u2019 with good reason \u2013 for it was always her<\/em>. The piano was the middle-class luxury \u2018most significant in the lives of women\u2019; it was \u2018an emblem of social status\u2019, a \u2018gauge of a woman\u2019s training in the required accomplishments\u2019, and \u2018its presence afforded women a particular distinction within domestic culture\u2019,[10]<\/a> as girls and women \u2018performed for select gatherings of peers after dinner\u2019.[11]<\/a> And while men of this class certainly sang \u2013 think of Frank Churchill in Jane Austen\u2019s Emma<\/em> (1815), who is \u2018accused of having a delightful voice, and a perfect knowledge of music\u2019, and Mr Rochester in Charlotte Bront\u00eb\u2019s Jane Eyre<\/em> (1847), who \u2018has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music\u2019 \u2013 this was generally only when accompanied by, and often duetting with, a woman. The most prominent male pianist exhibited in the literature of the period is Herr Klesmer, in George Eliot\u2019s Daniel Deronda<\/em>\u2019s (1876), who is at once both foreign and a professional musician and music teacher; an outsider in two respects.<\/p>\n

The performers of choice in the middle- and upper-class home were unmarried daughters, to the extent that \u2018it seems that the greater use of amateur music was to obtain a good marriage\u2019.[12]<\/a> After all, as William Makepeace Thackeray\u2019s Vanity Fair<\/em> (1848) espouses, what else could cause young people \u2018to labour at pianoforte sonatas, [\u2026] and to play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows, [\u2026] but that they may bring down some \u201cdesirable\u201d young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs?\u2019. After-dinner or social performances in the parlour \u2018presented potential suitors with an opportunity to watch a young lady\u2019s graceful and beautiful movements, [\u2026] and\/or to note her father\u2019s social status which allows her enough leisure to practise music\u2019.[13]<\/a> But it was just as important for these young women to play appropriately as it was to play well: daughters playing \u2018rigorous works which required virtuosic skill [\u2026] brought censure\u2019,[14]<\/a> and being \u2018too technical is equated with being unladylike\u2019.[15]<\/a> Not least of the reasons for this was because \u2018most male audience members were musically illiterate\u2019,[16]<\/a> and desired a wife with musical skill in order to relax and soothe, as Tertius Lydgate, of George Eliot\u2019s Middlemarch<\/em>\u2019s (1873), muses that the society of a wife should be like \u2018reclining in a paradise with sweet laughs for bird-notes\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Chamber Music Concert, Jules Alexandre Grun, circa 1885-90<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to the music itself, the instruments that women were allowed to play were carefully regulated. The \u2018model young lady sang and\/or played the piano, the harp, or the guitar\u2019; these instruments \u2018were thought to display the player\u2019s posture and movements advantageously\u2019, and so \u2018assisted the family\u2019s upward mobility\u2019 by way of their daughters\u2019 advantageous marriages.[17]<\/a> Violins were objected to on the grounds that \u2018the players looked unattractive\u2019,[18]<\/a> and \u2018the flute was especially problematic because of its shape\u2019, which had been \u2018a favourite symbol of masculinity\u2019 during the eighteenth century. Given the disapproval of the flute for female musicians, we can only assume that the clarinet would have met with even worse favour due to the angle at which it is played; the bassoon due to its size; and the cello due to its unfortunate positioning between the legs. History does not relate the culture\u2019s opinion of the piccolo, and one wouldn\u2019t care to speculate whether its size would have made it more or less acceptable in the eyes of those who thought the flute too suggestive.<\/p>\n

Despite the limited range of instruments available for amateur middle- and upper-class women, and although the piano held \u2018indisputable prevalence \u2026 in the home\u2019,[19]<\/a> it is important to note that domestic music comprised more than just this instrument. String quartets also found a place in the parlour, principally made up of male amateurs or male professionals, and some with accompaniment from a female pianist.[20]<\/a> A writer in 1924 \u2018[deplored the] public\u2019s ignorance of wind chamber music\u2019 in the preceding century,[21]<\/a> so it seems that this was much less popular for a home environment. These examples are few; but while it\u2019s certainly true that domestic music remained firmly under \u2018the smothering influence of the parlor piano, the ubiquity of which is impossible to deny\u2019,[22]<\/a> their existence does demonstrate that this was not a hegemony.<\/p>\n

As the century wore on, however, the consumption of and knowledge surrounding music began to change. The school curriculum widened in 1839 to formally include music lessons.[23]<\/a> The lower classes experienced wage increases, particularly in the 1860s to 1890s, while, concurrently, \u2018music for the masses grew at unprecedented rates\u2019.[24]<\/a> Band competitions started in 1853 with the Belle Vue Contest, choir festivals began in 1855 in Manchester (excluding the notable history of Welsh choir competitions, of course), and \u2018by the end of the century, there were thousands of brass bands and choral societies in Britain\u2019.[25]<\/a> More people were able to \u2018participate in music-making\u2019, and, importantly, \u2018concert attendance rose mid-century as rural and urban workers took advantage of this newly available entertainment\u2019.[26]<\/a> An 1860 article in Macmillan\u2019s<\/em> magazine examined this phenomenon as it happened:<\/p>\n

Not many years ago an orchestral symphony or a stringed quartet [sic<\/em>] were luxuries hardly to be indulged in by those Londoners whose guineas were not tolerably numerous. Times are changed for the better; and not a week passes, even in the dullest season of the year, that some good music is not to be heard at a cheap rate in London.[27]<\/a><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gaskell\u2019s North and South<\/em> (1855) alludes to this phenomenon as it affected northern cities; the fictional town of Milton (modelled on Manchester) has \u2018good concerts\u2019, though Fanny Thornton complains that they are \u2018too crowded\u2019 since \u2018the directors admit so indiscriminately. But one is sure to hear the newest music there\u2019.<\/p>\n

There was at this point so much \u2018performed music \u2026 available to an increasingly mobile [\u2026] audience by the middle of the nineteenth century\u2019[28]<\/a> that it was almost inevitable that the number of players of music would increase in a similar fashion. Pianos began to be \u2018affordable by families further down the social scale\u2019,[29]<\/a> which was unacceptable to the classes of women for whom the piano had been theirs<\/em>; there was suddenly \u2018a need to secure a respectable domestic instrument for women from the upper social classes\u2019 as a result.[30]<\/a> By the 1870s, the violin\u2019s grace overruled the unattractive appearance of the players, and women were permitted to take up this instrument.[31]<\/a> Similarly, the flute was deemed acceptable for women once the phallic symbolism was overcome by supporters of female flautists encouraging focus \u2018on the flute\u2019s sound rather than the flautist\u2019s picture\u2019.[32]<\/a> And \u2018the cultural unacceptability for women to learn string instruments\u2019 as a whole \u2018finally crumbled around 1870\u2019, and \u2018many middle- and upper-class women took up the violin, viola, and cello\u2019 as a consequence.[33]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Victorian music-making<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Domestic music did not wane, but music consumption outside of the home widened and diversified hugely. The first performance of Alice in Wonderland: A Musical Dream Play for Children and Others<\/em> in 1886 is situated in the centre of this expansion of music in the period. The musical choices made for this performance echo, without mimicking, the forms that domestic, amateur music-making took in the period; while remaining faithful to the musical styles of the period, these musical choices also succeed in evoking the changes that were occurring musically as the nineteenth century progressed. The small instrumental ensemble is reminiscent of the piano-accompanied performances, while the presence of the flute, clarinet, and bassoon are representative of the diversification of instruments and types of performance that occurred outside of the home, particularly in the last four decades of the period. Moreover, that the flute and bassoon are played by women gives more than a passing nod to the \u2018cultural unacceptability\u2019[34]<\/a> of these instruments for female performers \u2013 even, or perhaps especially, in a private, domestic setting \u2013 only 150 years ago.<\/p>\n

It is surely impossible to give an impression of a whole century\u2019s musical fashions, endeavors, and habits; such an expanse would not be easily captured. The musical choices made here are, however, both gloriously resonant of the enduring and venerated domestic parlour performances, and evocative of the sweeping and significant musical expansion that marked the last half of the nineteenth century. All this pouring forth from \u2018Das Land ohne Musik\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Dr Siobhan Harper January, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/u><\/p>\n

Baron, John H., Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide<\/em> (New York: Routledge, 2010).<\/p>\n

Bashford, Christina, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 291-360.<\/p>\n

Burgan, Mary, \u2018Heroines at the Piano: Women and Music in Nineteenth-Century Fiction\u2019, Victorian Studies 30.1 (Autumn 1986), pp. 51\u201376.<\/p>\n

Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa, Angelic Airs, Subversive Songs: Music as Social Discourse in the Victorian Novel<\/em> (Ohio, Ohio University Press, 2002).<\/p>\n

da Sousa Correa, Delia, George Eliot, Music and Victorian Culture<\/em> (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).<\/p>\n

Gray, Beryl, George Eliot and Music<\/em> (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989).<\/p>\n

Weliver, Phillis, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900: Representations of music, science and gender in the leisured home<\/em> (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2000).<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Weliver, Phillis, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900: Representations of music, science and gender in the leisured home<\/em> (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2000), pg. 19.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Clapp-Itnyre, Alisa, Angelic Airs, Subversive Songs<\/em>, pg. xv.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 20.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 19.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 21.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 1.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Gray, Beryl, George Eliot and Music<\/em> (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989), pg. 1.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 33.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 33.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Burgan, Mary, \u2018Heroines at the Piano: Women and Music in Nineteenth-Century Fiction\u2019, Victorian Studies 30.1 (Autumn 1986), pp. 51\u201376, pg. 51.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 33.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 33.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 33.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 34.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 36.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 37.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 47-8.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 48.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Bashford, Christina, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 291-360, pg. 303.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Bashford, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, pg. 307.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Baron, John H., Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide<\/em> (New York: Routledge, 2010), pg. 94.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Bashford, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, pg. 312.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 28.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 27.<\/p>\n

[25]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 28.<\/p>\n

[26]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 28.<\/p>\n

[27]<\/a> \u2018Classical Music and British Musical Taste\u2019, Macmillan\u2019s<\/em>, quoted in Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 29.<\/p>\n

[28]<\/a> Gray, George Eliot and Music<\/em>, pg. 1.<\/p>\n

[29]<\/a> Bashford, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, pg. 317.<\/p>\n

[30]<\/a> Bashford, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, pg. 317.<\/p>\n

[31]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 48.<\/p>\n

[32]<\/a> Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860\u20131900<\/em>, pg. 50.<\/p>\n

[33]<\/a> Bashford, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, pg. 294.<\/p>\n

[34]<\/a> Bashford, \u2018Historiography and Invisible Musics: Domestic Chamber Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain\u2019, pg. 294.<\/p>\n