| When one thinks of nineteenth-century Britain---that powerful empire on which "the sun never set"---rarely does music come to mind. In fact, since the death of Henry Purcell, Britain was commonly known as the "land without music" due to its lack of composers that achieved the kind of fame of their German and Italian counterparts. The question of Britain's role in nineteenth-century European musical life has been widely ignored in musicology until recently. Most important to British music studies is the recognition that while Britain had no Beethoven, its citizens participated in musical activities daily, making it no-less a musical nation than Italy, Germany, or France. Several recent studies of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British public concert life and musical press certainly reflect this important trend. However, such studies have not adequately addressed the class and gender components of these listening publics, nor do they acknowledge the role of women and class in defining other musical cultures.;Attempting to propose a more nuanced understanding of the role of class and gender in musical activities, this dissertation focuses specifically on British aristocratic and genteel women's representations of music in life writing of the long nineteenth century (1760-1918). Chapters 1 and 2 deal with the most conventional and common type of life writing: diaries, letters, and memoirs. Chapter 1 argues these sources primarily present musical performances as social events that were essential to maintaining one's position in high society. Highlighting a parallel trend to socializing, Chapter 2 demonstrates how women, when actually discussing music they heard, focus primarily on singers, in particular foreign prima donnas. Chapter 3 considers manuscript music collections of English country houses, showing how these rarely-examined archival sources reveal musical taste, and through their marginalia, are a genre of life writing that has not been acknowledged in women's history studies. Chapter 4 examines the letters scrapbook of Katrine, Countess Cowper, arguing such letters reveal remnants of a private patronage system still at work, even at the end of the nineteenth century. Chapter 5 focuses on musical content of diaries, commonplace books, and printed music collections of the Hoare family of Stourhead, recreating a women's musical history for this particular country house. Throughout this dissertation, I compare my findings in primary sources with depictions of music and upper-class women in contemporary novels.;I argue the ways in which these women represent and participate in music highlight an alternative, conservative musical culture that differs widely from that previously acknowledged. Such a clinging to past musical traditions, in a time when British musical life modernized, was a way for upper-class women to display class status and to differentiate themselves from the rising middle-class and its association with modern musical culture. By closely examining life writing-sources from a musical perspective, I shed light on the rarely-recognized role of music in the histories of upper-class women. My project also illustrates how such histories are important to distinguishing the many nuances within British musical culture of the Georgian, Victoria, and Edwardian eras. |
