Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges" (review)

Musical Women in England, 1870- 1914: "Encroaching on All Man's Privileges." By Paula Gillett. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. [ix, 310 p. ISBN 0-312-12156-3. $49.95.]

In the 1980s, feminist musicology tended to focus on "compensatory history": the recovery of neglected compositions by women composers that could potentially find a place in current performance repertories. In musicology more generally, the 1990s saw a paradigm shift away from composer-centered research (indeed, partly generated by feminist research) that in turn offered broader and more relevant roads for feminist musicology to travel. The new sociological focus--how music of all kinds is used at home, in institutions, in the gray areas between the public and the private--gave legitimacy to the study of areas in which most women lived and worked. Musical Women in England takes its inspiration from, and contributes to, constructions of alternative histories of women's music, but it also moves the debate over to one of the most difficult areas to scrutinize. At the heart of this book lie these questions: What was it that enabled women to move from the domestic sphere to the world of professional musicmaking between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? What were the social contexts in which these changes occurred? How were women musicians perceived by their contemporaries? Too often, studies of women's musicmaking are rawly polarized, concentrating on either the public or the private sphere, on composers or performers. Paula Gillett steers a wise course through such polarizations, fleshing out musical and social contexts and avoiding simplistic conclusions by drawing on an unusually broad range of sources for her discussions: case histories, journals, articles in women's and girls' newspapers, letters, novels, and short stories.

Late-Victorian philanthropy provided one arena for a shift from private to public, Gillett argues. Because upper-class women could dedicate themselves to moral improvement through musical performance, they were allowed to occupy public platforms to "educate" the poor to love music, considered an agent for moral uplift. Two chapters examine the contexts of this belief, providing examples of upper-class women who traveled across a vast social chasm to the East End slums of London in the hope of bringing "enlightenment." In doing so, these women created public platforms for their own performances that they otherwise could never have enjoyed: the "morally improving" situation militated against the possibility of social disgrace. Thus, like the poor they visited, upper-class musicians can be seen to have experienced a form of social deprivation: they could not aspire "beyond" their class to a life of professional musicmaking. Gillett also examines the other side of the picture: those who were "helped" by philanthropy. A complicated and often veiled interchange of values is implied by the British class system; Gillett avoids the temptation to provide clear-cut conclusions, though in doing so, she sometimes sidesteps the complex issues surrounding notions of class, particularly as associated with gender.

Gillett examines female violin playing in the next two chapters, focusing on why the instrument was considered unsuitable for women at the beginning of the period and how it became possible for women to overcome that ban. This has never been satisfactorily explained. Gillett identifies two factors: the violin's association with the devil, sin, and death on the one hand, and its resemblance to the female form on the other. The instrument's inclusion in small ensembles suitable for musicmaking in the home domesticated its devilish associations, thus removing the taint of evil; but at the same time, women's questioning of received wisdom on the restriction of their roles in society allowed them to follow the example of the famous (and foreign) violinist Wilma Neruda. Coupled with this was the piano's ubiquity in the homes of the lower classes, which eroded its status; the upper classes wanted something more novel. If the violin also represents the female...