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DEBATING FEMALE MUSICAL PROFESSIONALISM AND ARTISTRY IN THE BRITISH PRESS, c. 1820–1850*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2015

DAVID KENNERLEY
DAVID KENNERLEY*
Affiliation:
Worcester College, Oxford
*
Worcester College, Oxford, ox1 2hb[email protected]
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Abstract

The entrance of women into the male-dominated spheres of the professions and the arts has been a major theme of women's and gender history in nineteenth-century Britain. In general, historians have located this development primarily in the second half of the century and depicted it as an important corollary to the political aims of the wider women's movement. In contrast, this article contends that an overlooked earlier context for the formation and emergence of ideas of female professionalism and artistry were the debates surrounding female singers in the press between c. 1820 and 1850. In this era, writers in newly emerging specialist music periodicals increasingly advocated a view of female singers as both professionals and artists. Such views did not dominate discourse, however. There remained a great deal of ambivalence even in specialist publications about just how far female singers should pursue the lifestyle of the professional artist, while in the mainstream press very different attitudes towards female singers prevailed. Although female musical professionalism and artistry therefore remained contested concepts, this article highlights the significance of these debates about female singers as an important source for the new ideas about women's professional and artistic work emerging in nineteenth-century British society.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 987 - 1008
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding the research upon which this article is based. I would also like to thank Bob Harris, Kathryn Gleadle, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of the Historical Journal for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

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2 See Cyril Ehrlich, The music profession in Britain since the eighteenth century: a social history (Oxford, 1985); Deborah Rohr, The careers of British musicians, 1750–1850: a profession of artisans (Cambridge, 2001).

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17 De Bellaigue, ‘Teaching as a profession for women’, p. 965. De Bellaigue cites Magali Sarfatti Larson, The rise of professionalism: a sociological analysis (Berkeley, CA, 1977), and Rolf Torstendahl, ‘Essential properties, strategic aims and historical development: three approaches to theories of professionalism’, in Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl, eds., Professions in theory and history: rethinking the study of the professions (London, 1990), pp. 44–61.

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20 Some of this work has been undertaken elsewhere: David Kennerley, ‘“Flippant dolls” and “serious artists”: professional female singers in Britain, c. 1760–1850’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 2014), chs. 3–5.

21 Leanne Langley, ‘The English musical journal in the early nineteenth century’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1983), pp. xx–xxi, 18–31, and Langley, Leanne, ‘The musical press in nineteenth-century England’, Notes, 46 (1990), pp. 583–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 587–8, and note 16.

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23 Langley, ‘The English musical journal’, pp. xx–xxi, 51, 219–20.

24 Ibid., pp. 169, 171–2, 185–6, and 190.

25 Langley, ‘The musical press in nineteenth-century England’, pp. 585–7; Leanne Langley, ‘Victorian periodicals and the arts: music’, in Rosemary VanArsdel and J. Don Vann, eds., Victorian periodicals and Victorian society (Aldershot, 1994), p. 103.

26 Bacon wrote a regular column entitled ‘Report on music’ for the London Magazine from 1820 to 1825, Ayrton contributed to the Morning Chronicle between 1813 and 1826 and the Examiner from 1837 to 1851, and Davison held the post of music critic at The Times between 1846 and 1879, as well as writing for several other newspapers.

27 See, for example, Partem, Audi Alteram, ‘To the editor’, QMMR, 7/27 (1825), pp. 288–92Google Scholar; ‘A hint to singers’, Musical World, 1/3 (1 Apr. 1836), pp. 41–4Google Scholar; and ‘On musical expression’, Harmonicon, 2/19 (July 1824), pp. 128–9Google Scholar.

28 Audi Alteram Partem, ‘To the editor’, p. 289.

29 Vetus, ‘To the editor’, QMMR, 4/13 (1822), p. 1Google Scholar.

30 ‘On the differences in the singing of professors and amateurs’, QMMR, 6/23 (1824), pp. 318–23Google Scholar.

31 Cohen, Michèle, ‘Language and meaning in a documentary source: girls' curriculum from the late eighteenth century to the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1868’, History of Education, 34 (2005), pp. 77–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 80, 87–92.

32 Ibid., pp. 89–92; Richard Leppert, Music and image: domesticity, ideology and socio-cultural formation in eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 28–45, 147–68; Kennerley, ‘Professional female singers’, ch. 1.

33 Hannah More, Essays on various subjects, principally designed for young ladies (London, 1777), p. 135. Five new editions were published between 1810 and 1850.

34 Mrs [Hester] Chapone, Letters on the improvement of the mind, addressed to a young lady (2 vols., London, 1773), ii, pp. 43–4. Seventeen new editions appeared between 1810 and 1850.

35 Erasmus Darwin, A plan for the conduct of female education, in boarding schools (Derby, 1797), p. 12.

36 Mrs [Sarah Stickney] Ellis, The daughters of England, their position in society, character & responsibilities (London, 1842), pp. 106–7.

37 Ibid., pp. 233–4.

38 Ibid., p. 238.

39 Ibid., p. 244.

40 As is pointed out by Mechling, Jay, ‘Advice to historians on advice to mothers’, Journal of Social History, 9 (1975), pp. 44–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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51 ‘English’ and ‘Italian’ are here used (following the conventions of contemporary debate) to refer to all singers from the British Isles and all foreign singers at the Italian opera, respectively.

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61 Mediator, ‘Gran gusto. To the editor’, QMMR, 7/27 (1825), pp. 286–7Google Scholar.

62 Anglicus, ‘To the editor’, p. 407.

63 [Editorial], Musical World, 11/65 (28 Mar. 1839), p. 191Google Scholar. 6/5 and 9/4 are musical time signatures; the first is theoretically impossible and the second is very unusual.

64 Langley, ‘The musical press in nineteenth-century England’, p. 588.

65 ‘Miss Paton’, QMMR, 5/18 (1823), p. 192Google Scholar.

66 ‘The King's Theatre’, p. 269.

67 The advocacy of female violin-playing in the specialist periodicals was even more striking in this regard. Traditionally, the posture required for violin-playing was considered too ungraceful for women, but the Musical World defended female violinists by stating: ‘The grace which belongs to violin-playing is audible rather than visible, residing in the effect more than in the means; nor ought we to be such cormorants of pleasure, as to demand that the person who is filling our ears with rapture shall, at the same time, be enchanting to the utmost our eyes’ (‘Female performers on the violin’, Musical World, 12/72 (16 May 1839), pp. 34–5)Google Scholar. See also ‘Mara, Billington and Catalani’, QMMR, 1/2 (1818)Google Scholar, footnote to p. 171.

68 ‘Miss Stephens’, The Drama: Or, Theatrical Pocket Magazine, 1/3 (July 1821), pp. 108–9Google Scholar.

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79 Jordan, Women's employment, ch. 5, especially pp. 92–8, and pp. 112–14 and 147.

80 Ibid., ch. 8.

81 George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, ed. Graham Handley (Oxford, 1984), especially chs. xxiii, li, and liii. For discussion of Eliot's depiction of female singers, see Susan Rutherford, ‘The voice of freedom: images of the prima donna’, in Viv Gardner and Susan Rutherford, eds., The New Woman and her sisters: feminism and the theatre 1850–1914 (New York, NY, 1992), pp. 100–3.