Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance (review)

Very little is known about women's musical composition in eighteenth-century England, and this excellent book makes a solid foundation for the subject. Leslie Ritchie's argument, in a nutshell, is that "women composed, performed, and wrote about music in nearly every imaginable place, and in every available genre" (219). She pulls together information on many lesser known women composers, and makes the startling revelation that far from publishing anonymously, as many as 75 per cent of the women who registered musical compositions at Stationer's Hall did so under their own names. She reproduces quite a number of musical texts here—for those who read music—with title pages bearing women's names. The book also covers well-known women performers and their influence; Ritchie observes that "in Britain, the eighteenth century was the century of the performer. Broadly stated, it was the era of Garrick, not Shakespeare" (15). She treats songs and song collections, reminding us that music is not defined by "great works" alone. She has amassed information about where the songs came from, that young ladies played and sang for the entertainment of others, how many were written by women (either music or words), and what were their subjects and accompanying instruments. In doing so, she has uncovered proof of women's musical talent that does not show up any other way, for there are no records of royalties for women nor commissions nor bills for lessons. She also documents women's authorship of words for songs, as lyricists and librettists, and analyzes the kinds of songs women wrote and the themes they favoured.

Ritchie's informative, highly intelligent sentences are a pleasure to read, and the book is beautifully researched, with an extensive bibliography separated usefully into three listings: musical sources, eighteenth-century sources, and other "critical, historical, and bibliographical sources." But Ashgate has not edited this text adequately (and who among us does not need editing?) for a typo appears on the first page, and solecisms remain such as "infers" for "implies" (20, 160) and "empirical" for "imperial" (177).

After the introductory chapters about problematic issues for women in music—its sensual power as well as its discipline, public performance, class (music requires literacy and leisure)—the organization of the book reverts to the thematics of women's musical compositions, with a chapter on songs of charity, pity, and love, another chapter on pastoral subjects, and the last chapter on songs celebrating Britishness, either with patriotic sentiment or invoking the empire. Women were drawn to compose pastorals, for example, those "comic afterpiece[s] concerning country life, presented in spoken dialogue interspersed with airs" (159). The most famous of these was Frances Moore Brooke's Rosina, music by William Shield, first performed in 1782 and played 201 more times before the end of the century. Ritchie does not mention Charlotte Lennox's pastoral Philander, with music by James Oswald, chamber musician to George iii, but it is another bit of evidence for her thesis that pastoral was a genre hospitable to women.

There is another important theme in this book, to be gleaned here and there although never pulled together thoroughly, about the affinity between women and song in the eighteenth century. Women wrote music as well as words for a great many of the songs that accomplished young ladies sang for their families and friends. Ritchie has found many examples of women songwriters throughout the second half of the century, such as Elizabeth Turner, whose A Collection of Songs with Symphonies and a Thorough Bass With Six Lessons for the Harpsichord sold by subscription in 1756; 21 per cent of her subscribers were women, and many professional musicians were on her list as well as professors of music from Oxford and Cambridge, Master of the Boys of the Cathedral of St. Paul's, not to mention Garrick and...