Transforming Women's Education: Liberal Arts and Music in Female Seminaries by Jewel A. Smith (review)

Jewel A. Smith's Transforming Women's Education: Liberal Arts and Music in Female Seminaries is an impressive display of archival and primary-source research that outlines music education in American female seminaries. Though she admits the book was meant to cover the antebellum period, the scarce availability of sources meant different seminaries required slightly different timeframes in the greater nineteenth century. The schools studied in depth are Litchfield Female Academy (Litchfield, Connecticut), Troy Female Seminary (Troy, New York), Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (South Hadley, Massachusetts), and Music Vale Seminary (Salem, Connecticut).

Seminaries provided educational opportunities for women before colleges offered them degrees and are an outlet that has been underrepresented generally in histories of American women's music education. Educators in female seminaries argued that women were intellectually equal to their male counterparts and deserved a liberal-arts education beyond just finishing schools. Women of the era were not expected to perform publicly, which might explain the historic neglect and most certainly explains the pedagogical choices of these institutions. Music was seen as more than just social accomplishment. It was "an academic subject with physical, mental, and emotional benefits" (p. 173) that had the potential of refining the sentiments of young ladies.

Smith's book is ideally suited for an upper-level or graduate course on women in music. The opening chapters provide a good overview of the field, with ample footnotes to other sources that can be sought out by interested researchers. In chapter 1, Smith outlines the changing expectations or women's roles in society and their education in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and identifies key advocates for greater educational opportunities beyond what was available at the time. She introduces concepts like "true womanhood" (p. 22) and "Republican Motherhood" (p. 19), explaining how those influenced the perception of women and their access to higher education. In chapter 2, Smith narrows the focus to discuss how female seminaries saw music not as an ornamental subject but as its own academic subject whose significance was "beyond that of an accomplishment" (p. 25). She summarizes the benefits of music education (physical health, emotional well-being, intellect, refinement, and employment) as well as common arguments for and against women's music education in the nineteenth century.

The next three chapters reconstruct the histories of these seminaries broadly. Chapter 3 looks at integral leaders in each of the four seminaries (Sarah Pierce, Emma Willar, Mary Lyon, and Orramel Whittlesey). Chapter 4 compares the schools' structures, staffing, student demographics, and expenses, while chapter 5 details curricula and examination schedules. Smith argues that the emphasis placed on ornamental versus academic subjects, alongside examination exercises, illuminates the schools' views of women's education.

Chapters 6 through 8, arguably most important for music scholars, focus on music instruction as well as on instrumental and vocal repertoire. In chapter 6, Smith begins comparing the four institutions' music instruction overall—the instructors, courses and lessons offered, and performance opportunities. In chapter 7, she discusses instrumental repertoire, mostly focusing on piano repertoire, which she then breaks down into popular trends of the period: character pieces, battle pieces, marches, rondos, transcriptions, dances, and so on. Since most students studied piano or voice, an emphasis is placed on those repertories, but violin, organ, harp, and guitar pieces are also mentioned briefly. Smith argues, based on programs and extant song books, that most students were of an intermediate or advanced level and were able to perform popular music of the time. While they would not go on to professional performance careers, music was an outlet for "young women to achieve their utmost potential" (p. 115). Finally, in chapter 8, Smith looks at vocal repertoire—sacred, secular, popular, art, and parlor songs—with representation from both European and American composers. All...