Abstract

This paper explores two themes in the writings of ETA Hoffmann, Carl Maria von Weber, and Robert Schumann: music as idealized woman, and philistinism amongst actual female musicians. It argues that these writers deploy these tropes as part of a general campaign to raise the aesthetic value of music, and, along with it, the social standing of musicians. In the context of the changing patterns in labour and domestic life during the early nineteenth century, the activities of composition and instrumental performance were discursively positioned as inherently masculine as a means to secure their desired status of middle-class professional.

For the background to the paper, see my previous blog post

Introduction

In the long crescendo of the nightingale's song, the beams of light condensed into the figure of a beautiful woman - and this figure was a divine, magnificent music.[fn 1]

In the blog post that follows this I plan to publish a paper I wrote back in the last millennium, so I thought it might be useful to give a little context as to why I’m doing this. And as it’s several times longer than my usual blog posts as it stands, I decided to do that in a separate post so as not to make it even longer.

The paper started off as a spin-off from my PhD – a set of themes I noticed as I worked on the section about gendered discourses in music theory and aesthetics in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It had no place in my actual thesis, but the ideas coalesced into a separate argument that I took to a couple of conferences in 1994 and 1995. I spent some time over the next few years, when I was teaching at Colchester, developing it with a wider evidence base, and submitted it for publication to a major journal in 1999, shortly after moving to Birmingham.

I’ve had a few conversations recently about the principle that a performer should feel the emotions that the music they perform will evoke in their listeners. It’s a widely-promulgated view; I came across it recently in Joszef Gat’s Technique of Piano Playing, and a friend shared a quote from CPE Bach which I suspect might be one of the earlier examples, articulating what was then the new aesthetic of sensibility. It was readily absorbed into the Romantic tradition in formulations such as ETA Hoffman’s idea of music ‘speaking directly from the heart to the heart’, and, like much of that tradition has become pretty much a truism in general conceptions of musical performance today.

The principle articulates an aesthetic of authenticity, or honesty, in performance, the idea that the performer means what they are saying. It conceives of the act of performance as one of communication, as a transmission of meaning from one consciousness to others, and assumes that meaning is of a type that is personally engaging and generates mutual sympathy. If you have been involved in making or listening to music in the west in the 20th or 21st centuries, this will all sound sensible and very much what performance is about.

It’s quite a few years since I last mused at length on the subject of key lifts, but my attention has returned to it in the wake of a couple of conversations I’ve had recently with barbershop friends. Interestingly, one was with someone who had come to the conclusion that she was done with them: she had heard too many, to the point that they just sound formulaic and are rarely well enough sung to transcend the cliché. The other was with someone who was keen to have one in an arrangement I was doing for his quartet, in a song which I felt not only didn’t need one but whose expression would be impaired by one.

As conversations are wont to do, I found the dialogues clarified my own ideas, and I have emerged with a more developed set of opinions than I had last time I blogged on the subject. Though, looking back, I don’t disagree with that post – I have merely had extra thoughts that inflect when I am likely to want to include or not include them in any given arrangement.

I have been reflecting on what makes a transformative learning experience, having had the joy to be involved in a number of them over the first part of this year - some as teacher, some as learner. Enough of them that it’s worth teasing out some patterns to see what they might have in common.

I’ve also experienced a bunch of perfectly normal, everyday learning experiences, of course, where you make useful progress but don’t feel things have fundamentally changed. These provide a useful comparator for the transformative experiences, of course, but I think they’re also key an important part of their context. You wouldn’t want – couldn’t cope with – every learning experience making fundamental changes to how you relate to your praxis. The regular week-in, week-out work is what sets you up for the great leaps forward, and what allows you to consolidate them and embed them in your musical identity.

Key elements to these experiences include:

I have been re-reading Joszef Gat’s The Technique of Piano Playing, which I last read in its entirety age 20. I have dipped it into it maybe a couple of times since, but it’s safe to say there’s a lot in there that I had completely forgotten about. It is that curious mixture of, ‘Oh, that’s interesting and insightful,’ and, ‘Really? You’re kidding me!’ that you often get in the writings of practical musicians, and as such is a very rich reading experience.

Anyway, as you’d expect in a book on this subject, he talks about legato, which is a notorious challenge for pianists. In common with many writers, he holds up singing as the ideal model for this, contending that even string instruments can only achieve a partial legato. Whilst on the one hand (literally!) the bow offers continuity, on the other, the act of forming pitches by stopping strings means you are effectively playing a different string for every note, as each is a different length.

Arriving for coaching on Sunday: LABBS media team capture the Reservoir Dogs moment...

This past weekend saw The Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers hold its quartet prelims weekend. As in its now standard model, there was the contest on Saturday, with many quartets staying on for coaching on the Sunday. This year Sunday also saw the mixed quartet competition in its new, more permanent, home in the British barbershop calendar. Though as I had commitments elsewhere that day I can’t tell you how it went – I’m sure if you head back over to social media though you’ll get some news and some nice pics.

I remarked last year that the LABBS quartet scene was sounding in healthy shape, and you’d have to say the same this year, with the top 11 quartets all achieving scores of 70 and above, and the next 9 or so still in the upper 60s. I was struck as a listener that the standard felt consistently solid: you could spend a lot of the time just relaxing into the performances and not having to listen carefully to help keep things on track. (It’s not just me feels like this when things are a bit wobbly, is it?).

Traditional warn-up pic

I had an adventure up to the Scottish borders at the weekend to work with One Acchord, based in Bowden. Like many LABBS choruses, they are preparing for this year’s Convention with a mix of well-established members with some prior contest experience, and a sizeable post-pandemic intake who will be on the big stage for the first time this autumn.

Our work was therefore based around both developing the musical and vocal skills their songs needed and understanding the processes of mental and emotional preparation to make the most of significant performance occasions.