"To Think And Judge Independently": The Birgit Krohn Albums And Amateur Music Making In Late-Nineteenth-Century Norway

In the mid-1890s, a young woman named Birgit Krohn left her home in Bergen, Norway, and traveled north to enroll as a student at Nikka Vonen's Pigeinstitut (female institute). Once described as the home of "young women who dare to think and judge independently," this famous school advanced a progressive model of education with a special emphasis on musical training. Krohn documented its musical life in three binder's volumes of print and manuscript music, all heavily marked with marginalia and annotations. The printed materials represent both Norwegian composers and foreign editions specially prepared for the Nordic market; many of these constitute the only surviving copies of these works. The manuscript music, which includes transcriptions and original compositions, reveals interest in a range of styles and subjects.

With the exception of a few prominent figures, women's musical activity has rarely been considered in studies of the Nordic fin de siècle. Although Krohn and her fellow students were amateurs, these young women were highly sensitive to their broader artistic context. Despite—or perhaps because of—their relative isolation in the rural North, music provided a means through which these students could establish their relationships to one another and the larger world. As a result, Krohn's volumes offer a representative example of the ways in which music allowed amateur women in fin de siècle Norway to define social hierarchies, to cultivate shared tastes, and, perhaps most importantly, to explore their own position within a complex cultural environment.