Abstract
Recent scholarship has studied the ideology of virtuosity as it appears in the late eighteenth century. This chapter shifts our focus from virtuosity to mediocrity. In doing so, I expose ideological contradictions in the music education of girls. In particular, I consider the illogical attitude that artlessness is the pinnacle of a girl’s performance, but that this artlessness can be achieved without mechanical practice. My chapter examines the anxiety experienced by music professionals when mediocrity is a student’s goal. In such cases, master teachers are not required for students to achieve basic competency, and standardized lessons are more cost-effective than individualized ones. Finally, if we accept that the regimen of practice is a safe zone for the development of female assertiveness (given that the work of achieving mediocrity is a socially sanctioned, private space of female labour), I ask why women writers of pedagogical novels, epistolary fictions, and educational tracts—even those whose backgrounds include work with music professionals—do not address the potential of music in a girl’s developmental process. Primary texts include works by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Madame de Genlis, Adelaide O’Keeffe, music training works by Charles Dibdin and others, and pamphlets debating the merits of Logier’s chiroplast, a mechanical contraption for teaching piano keyboard skills.
The excellence of musical performance is a decorated screen, behind which all defects in domestic knowledge, in taste, judgment, and literature, and the talents which make an elegant companion are creditably concealed.
—Hannah More, Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1808–1809, rpt. 1995, Bristol: Thoemmes, 111)
Mrs. W. is constantly urging us to take pains, and pay every attention to whatever we attempt to acquire; but she is very anxious that we should distinguish between mere accomplishments, and that sterling knowledge which furnishes and enlarges the mind. Even accomplishments, she says, are chiefly to be valued as they tend to refine the taste, and extend the views: and I have often heard to observe, that life is too short to allow us to devote much of it, to any thing that may not directly or indirectly become useful to ourselves or others. She once knew a young lady, who had devoted her whole life to learning to play on the harp. She succeeded, as might be expected, in her object—that of playing on the harp better than any of her friends: but what then! ‘What a terrible mistake,’ said Mrs. W, ‘for a being sent into the world to prepare for immortality!’
—Mrs. Ann Taylor and Jane Taylor, Correspondence Between a Mother and Her Daughter at School (1817, London: Taylor and Hessey, 56)
I thank the Northern Arizona University Faculty Grants Program for supporting my research on this essay.
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- 1.
Two persistent philosophical theories of emotion and music are expressivism (music expresses the emotional intentions of the artist) and arousalism (music arouses emotions in listeners). See Andrew Kania, ‘Music,’ The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 3rd edition, ed. Berys Gaut and Dominic McIver Lopes (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013): 404–14.
- 2.
Gillen D’Arcy Wood, Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, 1770–1840: Virtue and Virtuosity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 152.
- 3.
See D’Arcy Wood’s discussion of the rational educators’ response to virtuosity in Romanticism and Music Culture, especially 151–65. For a classic discussion of music and British domestic culture, see Richard Leppert’s Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
- 4.
Maria Edgeworth and Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Practical Education. 2 vols. (London: Johnson, 1798), 304.
- 5.
Jane Austen is a case in point. She practiced piano daily, performed for her family in the evenings, and had a circle of amateur musician friends with whom she exchanged music. At her death she owned about 1500 pages of music, some half of it copied in her own hand. See D’Arcy Wood, Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, 153.
- 6.
Geoff Colvin overviews multiple studies on the importance of practice time versus innate talent in Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else (Penguin: New York, 2008), especially 17–19. Grade five music listed in the ABRSM standards include pieces such as J. S. Bach’s ‘Prelude in E Minor’ and Mozart’s ‘Allegretto’—this music requires a high level of skill but not extraordinary talent. http://us.abrsm.org/en/our-exams/piano/piano-grade-5/ ABRSM is the UK’s largest music education body and the world’s leading provider of music exams, offering assessments to more than 630,000 candidates in 93 countries every year.
- 7.
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, and Co. 2008), 47–48.
- 8.
Reprinted in Colvin, 63.
- 9.
Jane Taylor, Sketches from a Youthful Circle. 2nd ed. Preface. Ann (Taylor) Gilbert (London: Darton, 1836), 173.
- 10.
For a discussion of Rousseau’s music philosophy and its connection to his other writings, see John T. Scott, ‘The Harmony between Rousseau’s Musical Theory and his Philosophy,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 59.2 (April 1998): 287–308.
- 11.
Casimir Baecker, one of Genlis’s adopted children whom she had instructed since the age of eight, was a renowned harpist and composer. Baecker’s and Genlis’s harp performances inspired M. Alexandre de Laborde’s 1806 publication Lettre à madame de Genlis sur les sons harmoniques de le harpe. For a detailed analysis of Genlis’s many connections to professional musicians, see Denise Yim’s ‘An Early Nineteenth-Century Correspondence between Two Friends: the Unpublished Letters of Madame de Genlis to her English Admirer Margaret Chinnery,’ Australian Journal of French Studies 35 (1998): 308–32, especially 316–18. For discussion of Genlis’s influence on British pedagogical writers, see Donelle Ruwe’s ‘The British Reception of Genlis’s Adèle et Théodore, Preceptive Fiction, the Professionalization of Handmade Literacies,’ Women’s Writing 25.1 (2018): 5–20.
- 12.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Barbara Foxley (London: Dent, 1993), 427.
- 13.
Anon. The Power of Music. In which is Shown, by a Variety of a Pleasing and Instructive Anecdotes, the Effects it Has on Man and Animals (Harris: London, 1814).
- 14.
Mr. [Charles] Dibdin, Music Epitomized: A School Book: In Which the Whole Science of Music Is Completely Explained. 8th ed. revised and corrected by J. Jousse (London: Goulding, [18--]).
- 15.
Madame la Comtesse de Genlis, Adelaide and Theodore; or Letters on Education. Trans. anon. 2nd ed. (London: Bathurst, 1784), 1: 54–55.
- 16.
Reprinted in Denise Yim, ‘Madame de Genlis’s Adèle et Théodore: its Influence on an English Family’s Education.’ Australian Journal of French Studies 38 (2001): 141–57. 155.
- 17.
John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education and of the Conduct of the Understanding, ed. Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarkov (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996), 150–52.
- 18.
Charles Allen, The Polite Lady, or a Course of Female Education in a Series of Letters, from a Mother to her Daughter (Philadelphia: Printed for Matthew Carey, 1798 [1760]), 21, 24. Elizabeth Natalie Morgan discusses Allen’s insistence on submissive behavior for girls in her dissertation ‘The Virtuous Virtuosa: Women at the Pianoforte in England, 1780–1820’ (UCLA, 2009), 44–46.
- 19.
Allen, The Polite Lady, 23–24.
- 20.
Reprinted in Howard Irving, ‘Music as Pursuit for Men: Accompanied Keyboard Music as Domestic Recreation,’ College Music Symposium 30, no. 2 (1990): 126–37. 136.
- 21.
Erasmus Darwin, A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools (Derby: Johnson, 1797; Fascism ed. New York: Johnson, 1968), 13.
- 22.
Plate from The First Companion to the Royal Patent Chiroplast, or Hand-Director: a New Invented Apparatus for Facilitating the Attainment of a Proper Execution on the Piano Forte, printed for the author, no date.
- 23.
Logier’s detailed schedule of fees in this 1818 pamphlet includes the following suggestions: for two days a week, a pupil in a party of 12 paid 10 guineas per quarter; in a party of 16, 7 guineas; in a party of 24, 5 guineas. Entrance cost 1 1/2 guineas, and ladies who did not wish to purchase a chiroplast could hire them for a guinea per quarter.
- 24.
I use the word ‘piano’ as a generic term encompassing the piano and its precursors, the forte-piano and piano-forte.
- 25.
Music teaching and performance had become a recognized profession with a professional organization founded in 1813, the Philharmonic Society of London. This society sponsored concerts and commissioned new works by major composers. As the anti-Logier pamphlets indicate, the society also attempted to police the profession.
- 26.
Henri Monti, Strictures on Mr. Logier’s System of Musical Education (Glasgow: Turnbull, 1817), 3. All further references to Monti appear parenthetically.
- 27.
England suffered from discordant pianos to a greater extent than other European countries. Continental tuning methods were more accurate, but England did not adopt these methods until later in the nineteenth century.
- 28.
In England in 1750–1850, the routes to becoming a professional musician, such as apprenticeships or chorister training, required musical studies beginning at an early age. The most widespread method was the private lesson, but cost and availability made extensive private study unavailable to most aspiring musicians. See Deborah Rohr’s The Careers of British Musicians, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), especially 62–85.
- 29.
Johann Bernhard Logier, A Refutation of the Fallacies and Misrepresentations Contained in a Pamphlet, Entitled ‘An Exposition of the New System of Musical Education,’ published by a Committee of Professors in London (London: Hunter, 1818), 3.
- 30.
Anon. Advice from an Eminent Professor on the Continent, To a Nobleman in this Country, on the Manner in which his Children should be Instructed on the Piano-forte, translated by a Lady of Rank (1818), 26.
- 31.
Camille Saint-Saëns recalled using a chiroplast in Kalkbrenner’s studio. Important musicians who adopted the chiroplast include Louis Spohr, inventor of the violin chin rest, and Johann Gottlob Friedrich Wieck, father of Clara Schuman. The contemporary pianist and historian of piano technique, Natalia Strelchenko (1976–2015), notes that the chiroplast encouraged a classical-era finger technique characterized by fluidity and a light touch that favored the action of the Viennese piano. This technique was superseded by ones associated with high Romanticism and the Beethoven Broadview piano in which the weight of the arm is used to produce sounds associated with dramatic, emotive works. See Natalia Strelchenko’s demonstration of the chiroplast, ‘Lecture-Recital Part 3—Chiroplastic Machine. Wrist Technique,’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8wfCGALLIE
- 32.
W. Nixon, A Guide to Instruction on the Piano-Forte: Designed for the Use of Both Parents and Pupils; in a Series of Short Essays, Dedicated to the Young Ladies of the Musical Seminary (Cincinnati: Drake, 1834).
- 33.
Ibid., 6.
- 34.
Ibid., 11.
- 35.
Maria Edgeworth, Moral Tales for Young People. 2 vols. (London: Johnson, 1802).
- 36.
Jane Taylor. Display: a Tale. 11th ed. (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1823).
- 37.
Mary Lamb, ‘To a Young Lady on Being too Fond of Music,’ in Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb, Poetry for Children: To Which are Added Prince Dorus and Some Uncollected Poems by Charles Lamb. ed. Richard Herne Shepherd (New York: Scribner, 1889), 154. Emphasis in original.
- 38.
Ibid., 153.
- 39.
More, Coelebs, 110.
- 40.
Maria Edgeworth and Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Practical Education 305.
- 41.
Ibid., 303, 305.
- 42.
Ibid., 304.
- 43.
Ian Woodfield, ‘The Calcutta Piano Trade in the Late Eighteenth-Century,’ in Music and British Culture, 1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich, ed. Christina Bashford and Leanne Langley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1–21.
- 44.
Ibid., 5.
- 45.
Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, fascism. ed. (1787; Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1995), 42.
- 46.
Ibid., 43.
- 47.
Thomas Day, The History of Sandford and Merton (Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2010).
- 48.
[Charles] Dibdin, A Letter on Musical Education (London: Printed by Dibdin, 1791), 7, 10.
- 49.
Ibid., 9.
- 50.
Dudley was well received though its sales were not astounding. See sales figures in the Longman ledgers, available in the Corvey Project database British Fiction, 1800–1829 [http://www.british-fiction.cf.ac.uk/publishing/dudl19-52.html, accessed 2004]. In 1824 a French translation by the Baroness de Montolieu was published, which O’Keeffe found to be ‘too freely translated’ (340). Adelaide O’Keeffe, ‘Memoir,’ in O’Keeffe’s Legacy to His Daughter, edited by Adelaide O’Keeffe (London: For the Editor, 1834), xi–xxxviii.
- 51.
Adelaide O’Keeffe, Dudley, 3 vols. (London: Longman, 1819), 2.148. Henceforward, all citations to Dudley are in-text citations.
- 52.
The French translation gives the two children equal billing: Dudley et Claudy, ou, L’lle de Ténérife, which further connects the book to Adelaide and Theodore. Adelaide O’Keeffe, Dudley et Claudy: ou, L’lle de Ténérife. Trans. Madame de Montolieu (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1824).
- 53.
See Irving, ‘Music as Pursuit,’ 126–37.
- 54.
La Belle Assemblée found the unevenness in the masculine and feminine qualities of Dudley and Claudy to be the novel’s main flaw: ‘the union brought about between the robust, romping Claudy, and the little sickly Dudley’ is not ‘to be found amongst the chapter of probabilities.’ Review of Dudley, by Adelaide O’Keeffe. La Belle Assemblée 20 (Oct 1819): 184–85 (184).
- 55.
More, Coelebs, 111.
- 56.
For a full discussion of Adelaide O’Keeffe’s works and pedagogical approach, see Donelle Ruwe, British Children’s Poetry of the Romantic Era: Verse, Riddle, and Rhyme (Houndmills: Ashgate, 2014), especially 108–38. O’Keeffe might have known Dibdin’s writings on music. Dibdin was still working in the theatres in the early 1780s, about the time that John O’Keeffe’s career began, and John O’Keeffe had performed in some of Dibdin’s plays in Dublin. See Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 357. In his Recollections, John O’Keeffe discusses attending Dibdin’s one-man entertainment in the Strand in 1792, the ‘Sans Souci,’ in which Dibdin told stories, sang songs, and created characters with humorous accents. Adelaide was 16 and living with her father at that time.
- 57.
Nancy B. Reich defines the artisan class in ‘Women as Musicians: A Question of Class,’ Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship. ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
- 58.
For a recent study indicating how music classes help with self-esteem, see Nikki S. Rickard, Peter Appelman, and Richard James, ‘Orchestrating Life Skills: The Effect of Increased School-Based Music Classes on Children’s Social Competence and Self-Esteem,’ International Journal of Music Education 31, no. 3 (2013): 292–309.
- 59.
Thomas Williamson’s traveler’s handbook East India Vade-Mecum recommends that young women should learn to repair and tune their own keyboard instruments. See Woodfield, ‘The Calcutta Piano Trade in the Late Eighteenth-Century,’ 15.
- 60.
Wollstonecraft opens Chapter 5 of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with an attack on Rousseau’s education of Sophy: he gives ‘mock dignity to lust’ and ‘guarantees a system of cunning and lasciviousness.’ See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Carol H. Poston. 2nd edition (New York: Norton, 1988), 78. See Mitzi Myers’s analysis of Rousseau’s opposition to female-associated tasks such as socializing children in ‘Little Girls Lost: Rewriting Romantic Childhood, Righting Gender and Genre.’ Teaching Children’s Literature: Issues, Pedagogy, Resources. ed. Glenn Edward Sadler (New York: MLA, 1992), 131–42.
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Ruwe, D. (2018). Mediocrity: Mechanical Training and Music for Girls. In: O'Malley, A. (eds) Literary Cultures and Eighteenth-Century Childhoods. Literary Cultures and Childhoods. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94737-2_9
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