M Head Music for the Fair Sex File

Transcription

American Musicological Society
"If the Pretty Little Hand Won't Stretch": Music for the Fair Sex in Eighteenth-Century
Germany
Author(s): Matthew Head
Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 203
-254
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
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"If the Pretty Little Hand Won't Stretch":
Music for the Fair Sex in EighteenthCentury Germany
MATTHEW HEAD
"Whatis so strong as her soft delicatehand?"
J. C. Lavater,Physiognomy(1775-78)
smattering of French, an eye for tracing silhouettes, a clear bright
voice, and acquaintancewith geography-the femaleaccomplishments
are part of the mythology of the eighteenth century. The accomplishmentsconsoled in "ruffledor lonely hours." as one Englishwriterput it;
they entertaineda companyof familyand friends,and as signs of position and
gentilitythey renderedthe executantsuitableand availablefor marriage.'In a
well-known passagein Senseand Sensibility(chap. 7), JaneAusten comments
ironicallyupon the lack of attention paid to MarianneDashwood's musical
performance:
SirJohnwasloudin hisadmiration
at the end of everysong,andasloudin his
conversationwith the otherswhile everysong lasted.LadyMiddletonfrequentlycalledhim to order,wonderedhow anyone's attentioncould be divertedfrommusicfora moment,andaskedMarianne
to singa particular
song
whichMarianne
hadjustfinished.
The image of the young lady at music is not contained, however, by the
period she epitomizes: she circulates in a nineties screen vogue for Jane
Austen, as a book cover or postcard, and as a topic of scholarship.In each
case, she belongs doubly to the present and the past, informing our sense of
both. In the flickeringshadows of costume drama, Marianne Dashwood's
musical accomplishment offers glimpses of what is sometimes nostalgically
construed as a bygone age in Europeanmannerswhen relationsbetween the
sexes were uncontested. In transformingthe scene from Senseand Sensibility
above to the screen (dir. Ang Lee, Columbia Pictures, 1995), Emma
1. The referenceto "ruffledor lonely hours" is from John Bennett, Lettersto a YoungLady,
on a Varietyof Useful and Interesting SubjectsCalculated to Improve the Heart, to Form the
Manners, and Enlighten the Understanding (Warington: the author, 1789), 1:243; cited in
RichardLeppert, TheSight of Sound:Music,Representation,and theHistoryof theBody(Berkeley
and Los Angeles:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1993), 67.
[Journal of the American Musicological Society1999, vol. 52, no. 2]
? 1999 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. 0003-0139/99/5202-0001$2.00
204
Journal of the American Musicological Society
Thompson drops Austen's irony for a clearer emphasis upon the effect of
Marianne'smusic on Colonel Brandon,who is held, spellbound, in the door
frame.
In culturalcriticism,the lady at music proves fundamentalto the theorization of art as a social practice.This role is paradoxical,given that she is rarely
mentioned in officialhistoriesof music. For Roland Barthesshe epitomizes a
phase in history when music was something people did ratherthan just listened to. In the context of an exaggeratedreport on the vanishing of music
making, Barthesrefersaphoristicallyto "the piano, the young lady,the drawing room, the nocturne" as signs of bourgeois participationprior to an era
dominated by professionaland electronic reproduction.But Barthes'sappeal
to the lady at music is ambivalent.On the one hand, she is the subject of a
nostalgiafor preindustrial,manualreproductionof music that faintlyalludesto
a critiqueof a capitalistconsumer society. On the other hand, Barthesis unable to resistconventionalblusteragainst"the democracyof the bourgeoisie"
and defamingthe activityof the lady at music as "an insipidsocial rite."2Such
contradictionsattest fraughtissues of valuationsurroundingwomen in music,
issues to which I shall return in exploring a specific eighteenth-centurysite,
north Germanyin the latereighteenth century.
The cover of a classicbook by Janet Wolff, The SocialProductionof Art,3
reproducesJacob Ochterveldt'spainting TheMusicLesson.This image is not,
however, discussed by Wolff; it speaks to the subject with presumed selfevidence. All art is a social product, Wolff asserts, not the mysterious, autonomous product of creativegenius transcendingsociety and time. In this
context, the lady at music is a suitabledust jacket because she never was subject to discoursesof genius; her practicewas alwaysacknowledgedto be primarilysocial, diversionary.In this light, it would have been more challenging
to choose an image of Wagner or Beethoven for the cover, which would
conjurea contraryassertionof artisticgenius and musicalautonomy;or to set
images of the male composer-geniusalongside those of the lady at music in a
destabilizing constellation inviting reconsiderationof the binary opposition
between aestheticand social/diversionarymusicalproduction.
Scholarlycritiqueof the eighteenth-centuryiconographyof the lady at music has proceeded to date largely in the criticalgroove of female "containment," a term that marks the disciplinary effect of music upon female
subjectivityand social position. RichardLeppert'sextensive, groundbreaking
writingson the English iconographyat once illustratethis emphasisand, particularlyin the more recent TheSightof Sound,point to severalways in which
containment might be criticallynegotiated.4For danger lurksin the idea of a
2. Roland Barthes,"MusicaPractica,"in Image, Music, Text,trans.Stephen Heath (London:
Fontana, 1977), 149-54, at 148.
3. Wolff, TheSocialProductionofArt, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan,1983).
4. Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology, and Socio-Cultural Formation in
Eighteenth-Century
England (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1988), chaps.2, 7, 8, and
passim;and Leppert, TheSightof Sound,chap. 4 and passim.
Music for the Fair Sex
205
disciplinaryfunction of art on women and female subjectivity.As a critical
tool, containment potentially freezes the historical subject in official discourses; the rhetoricalstatus of such discourses, the contradictionsthat attended them, or the possibilitiesof resistanceare barelyacknowledged.5In the
images consideredby Leppert,the function of music as a form of containment
is undeniablypresent. But are such images representationsof a practicethat
precedes them or official rhetoric running parallelto that practice?Do they
reflect the practice of music, or did they seek to produce and control that
practicethrough an ideal, fantasizedimage?Can it be assumedthat "music"as
performanceproved as effective a disciplinaryinstrument as the iconography
of accomplishmentsuggests?6
At stakehere is a broaderquestion raisedin the wake of recent musicological writingson music as a culturalpractice.If music encodes discoursesof race,
gender, sexuality,and class, how are such codes (re)constitutedthrough performanceand listening?If music is a culturalpractice,then is it consistentwith
this premiseto read its content from the score, like a story from a book?There
is a differencebetween music as culturalpracticeand music as culturaltheory.
For the historian,the challenge of "music as a culturalpractice"is to situate
the new storiesmusic is heard to tell within a specificmaterialworld inhabited
by musicians and listeners who themselves produced those stories through
performanceand interpretation.
This move from text and representationto embodied musicalperformance
is not one from containment to unbounded agency. Following Foucault,
power and disciplinein the Enlightenment acted primarilyon and through
the body. Located in the "manipulated,shaped, trained"body, musicalpractices exemplifiedthe "disciplines"that newly operatedin the bourgeois sphere
not through explicit force, slavery,vassalage,renunciation, and submission
(though these older modalities of discipline undoubtedly continued), but
through manipulationand trainingof the body that maximized both docility
and efficiency.Music for the fair sex epitomized the "subtle coercion" of a
control that operated at the level of the individualand the bodily mechanism
to determine "movements, gestures, attitudes,rapidity."In both cases, however, disciplinarymechanisms "are not univocal; they define innumerable
points of confrontation,focuses of instability,each of which has its own risks
of conflict, of struggles, and of an at least temporaryinversionof the power
relations."7
5. Susan McClary avoids these pitfalls by insisting upon and exploring the possibilitiesfor
female "agency,resistance,or alternativemodels of pleasure"in the practice of music. See her
Feminine Endings:Music, Gender,and Sexuality(Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press,
1991), 29.
6. My critiqueof accomplishmentis inspiredby Vivien Jones, "The Seductions of Conduct:
Pleasure and Conduct Literature,"in Pleasurein the EighteenthCentury, ed. Roy Porter and
MarieMulvey Roberts (London: Macmillan,1996), 108-32.
7. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan
(London: Allen Lane, 1977), 136, 137,27.
206
Amateurism, Fashion, and Luxury
From the mid-eighteenth century, a stream of music variouslydedicated (as
geography and custom dictated) to "ladies,""the fair sex," "le beau sexe,"
"all'uso delle Dame," or "fir das schone Geschlecht" trickled from the
European presses. In England, arrangementsof songs from Handel's oratorios appearedto the end of the century under such exalted titles as TheLady's
Banquet.8The prestige of such collections could be enhanced by the confession of an exclusive,aristocraticsource:H. Wrightissued Handel's "celebrated
vocal duets" as works "composed for the privatepracticeof Her Majestythe
late Queen Caroline."9In the English middle-classhome, such gestures of
aristocraticemulation were largelythe task of women, a division of labor that
left open possibilitiesfor the official middle-classcritique of the aristocracy,
and for the masculineaffirmationof civic and familyvaluesin contradistinction
to the reportedmoralindolence of the sybariticaristocrat.10
In Germany,keyboardsonatasand Liederfor the fairsex appearedboth in
collections of printed music and in women's periodicals (see Table 1).
Christoph Nichelmann (second harpsichordistat the court of Frederickthe
Great) issued two sets of sonatas with the Niirnberg publisher Balthasar
Schmid around 1745: Sei brevesonateda cembalomassimeall'usodelleDame
and Sei breve sonate all'uso di chi ama il cembalo massime delle dame."
Nichelmann's titles ("chiefly for ladies" and "for lovers of the harpsichord,
chiefly for ladies") drew upon a historical association of women with keyboard instrumentsin amateurand domestic circles.A Frauenzimmer-Lexicon
8. Handel's TheLady'sBanquetwas issued in six books by publishersJ. Walsh and J. Hare
around midcentury(RISM H1451-56). Ariasfrom Handel's oratorioswere frequentlyincluded
in TheLady'sMagazine, for example "SoftlySweet" from Alexander'sFeastin the issue of April
1790. The designation "forladies"is more frequentlymet in collectionsof vocal than instrumental music: Amusementforthe ladies,beinga selectionoffavourite catches,canons,glees, and madrigals, book 7 (London: Longman and Broderip,ca. 1790); Six easyanthemsfortwo voices,chiefly
adaptedfor ladies,byan eminent master(London, ca. 1770); Eight canzonets,peculiarlyadapted
for ladies,with an accompanymentforthepianoforteor harp(London: Longman and Broderip,ca.
1780); and GiuseppeAntonio Paganelli,Amusementforthefair sex, orsix sonatines,for theharpsichord(London: A. Hummel, ca. 1763). Songs of adviceto the fairsex were issued in the second
half of the century,such as the anonymouspublication"Whenthe Shepherdsseek to woo. Advice
to the fairsex. Sung by Mrs. Hudson" (London: R Falkener,ca. 1770), along with responsesand
vindications:"The goodness of women some men will dispute. The fairsex vindicated.Sung by
Mr. Vernon," in The UniversalMagazine 46 (1769): 97; and "Though women by frailmen are
scorn'd. Advice to the sex, or an answerto the caution, by a lady"(London, ca. 1740). The latter
song was found in a late eighteenth-centurycollection of engravedsongs, A Collectionof English
Balladsfrom the beginning of the presentCenturywhen theywere engravedand published,vol. 7,
BritishLibrary,G.312. (184).
9. Handel's celebratedvocal duets, composedfor the private practice of Her Majestythe late
Queen Caroline(London: H. Wright,n.d.).
10. On the middle-classcritiqueof the aristocracyin eighteenth-centuryEnglandsee Thomas
A. King, "Performing'Akimbo':Queer Pride and EpistemologicalPrejudice,"in ThePoliticsand
Poeticsof Camp,ed. Moe Meyer (London: Routledge, 1994), 23-50, esp. 24-26.
11. The suggested date is from William S. Newman, The Sonata in the ClassicEra (3d ed.
[New York:W. W. Norton, 1983], 445) and is based on the publisher'splate numbers.
207
Table 1 A Selection of Music for the FairSex by Eighteenth-Century German Composers
Title
Composer
Publisher
Published Collections of Instrumental and Vocal Music
Christoph Nichelmann
Johann FriedrichWilhelm
Wenkel
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Ernst Christoph Drefler
Johann FriedrichReichardt
Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg
Johann ChristianGottfried
Graser
P. J. von Thomas
Sei brevesonateda cembalomassime Niirnberg: BalthasarSchmid,
all'usodelleDame
ca. 1745
Sei brevesonateall'usodi chi ama
Niirnberg: BalthasarSchmid,
il cembalomassimedelle dame,
ca. 1745
Op. 2
Clavierstiickefir Frauenzimmer
Leipzig: BernhardChristoph
Breitkopfand Son, 1768
Fortsetzungder Clavierstiicke
fur
Hamburg: Michael Christian
Frauenzimmer
Bock, 1771
Sonatesa I'usagedesdammes
Amsterdam:Johann Julius
Hummel, 1770
MelodischeLiederfiurdasschone
Frankfurtam Main:W. N.
Geschlecht
Haueisen, 1771
VI Concertspour le Clavecin a
Amsterdam:Hummel,
1774a
I'usagedu beaux Sexe
Berlin:FriedrichWilhelm
GesdngefiirsschoneGeschlecht
Birnstiel, 1775b
Wiegenliederfiirgutedeutsche
Leipzig: GerhardFleischer
Mutter
the Younger, 1798C
Sammlung neuer Klavierstiickemit Cassel:WaisenhausGesang,fiir das deutsche
Buchdruckerei,1783d
Frauenzimmer
ZweiteSammlung neuer
Defiau and Leipzig: author,
Klavierstiickemit Gesang,fiir das 1784
deutscheFrauenzimmer
Gesdngemit Clavier-Begleitungfiir Leipzig: Carl Ludolph
Frauenzimmercomponirt
Hoffmann, 1785
XXVleichte LiederbeymKlavier, Leipzig: F. G. Baumgartner,
vorzglich fiir das schoneGeschlecht 1792
Songs for Girls
ChristianFriedrichSchale
Anonymous
Neue Melodienzu G. W Burmanns Berlin:C. F. Matzdorf, 1774
kleinenLiedernfiir kleineMdgdchen
LiedereinesMdgdchensbeymSingen Munster:Philipp Heinrich
und Claviere[sic]
Perrenon, 1774
Anonymous Manuscript (Lost)
Burmanns kleineLiederfiir kleineMadchen,in MusikgesetztvonJ. G. H.e
aDate from J. F. Reichardt, "Chronologisches Verzeichnis der offentlich im Druck und Kupferstich erschienenen musikalischen Werke von Johann Friedrich Reichardt," in MusikalischesKunstmagazin, ed.
Johann FriedrichReichardt (1782-91; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1969), 207.
bDate from ibid., 208.
CDatefrom tide-page engraving.
dTwo songs reproduced in Max Friedlaender, Das deutscheLied im 18. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Georg
Olms, 1970), vol. 1, pt. 2, items 205 and 207.
'Advertised by the music copyist and distributorChristianUlrich Ringmacherin the LeipzigerZeitungen,26
April 1774, p. 363, as noted in Libraio Catalogo de' Soli, Duetti, Trii ... che trovano in Manoscrittonella
Officina musica di Christian UlrichRingmacher Libraio in Berolino(1773; reprint, with a foreword and index by BarryS. Brook, Leipzig: Peters, 1987), editor's commentary, 17.
208
(Ladies'Dictionary) from the beginning of the century significantlyincluded
entriesfor the clavier,lute, and voice (among discussionsof how to pot ham,
darn socks, and make soap), but omitted referenceto brass,woodwind, and
bowed instruments.12These historical associations of particularmedia and
genres with the sexes, along with the assumption(met as earlyas the sixteenth
century) that music for women should be concessively"easy,"furnishedthe
basicvocabularyof the later-eighteenth-centurycollectionsfor women.13
Given the gendered associations of the instruments, genres, and styles
concerned, there was a degree of redundancyin the dedicationto the fairsex.
Music so dedicated representedonly a fractionof the repertoryaimed at and
practicedby women.14 On one level the dedicationwas just a marketingdevice: it targeted the product more precisely without significantlyreducing
the pool of potentialpurchasers."Forthe fairsex,"with its connotation of gallantry,also prettifiedthe act of buying and selling, and made a music book all
the more suitable as a courtship gift, a sign of romantic love (the context in
which music is given as a gift in Austen).15
The product's promise to meet specificallygendered needs rested, however, upon a generalization,the universalizingdedication to "women." The
florid and sentimental excesses of Mme. Herz and Mlle. Silberklang in
Mozart's diva-intermezzo Der Schauspieldirektor
(The Impresario)of 1786
indicate that quite contrary discourses surrounding professional female
music-making circulated alongside the stereotypical "easiness"of amateur
ladies'music. Mozart's divasdisplaypreciselythat "eruption"of femalemusicmakingthat musicalaccomplishmentsought to ward off.'6
Music dedicated to the fair sex epitomized the feminine connotations of
amateur,domestic music making. The categoriesof the musicalamateurand
the feminine intersectedin ideals of naturalness,songfulness,instinct, the untutored, and the gently moving ratherthan the learned.At the same time, mu12. Amaranthes [pseudonym of Gottlieb Siegmund Corvinus], Nutzbares,galantes und
curioses
worinnen...allesdasjenige,
waseinemFrauenzimmer
vorkommen
Frauenzimmer-Lexicon,
kannundihmnithg zu wissen... erkldretzufinden
(Leipzig,1715).
13. August N6rmiger's Tabulaturbuch(1598) was advertisedwith the promise that the contents were sufficientlystraightforwardthat "forthe most part, Duchess Sophia of Saxonycan play
them" ("Sophia, Hertzogin zu Sachsen, meistenteils [die Stiicke] schlagen kann"). See Georg
Schiinemann, "Ungarische Motive in der deutschen Musik," UngarischesJahrbuch4 (1924):
67-77, at 69.
14. Much music not explicitlydedicatedto women was nonetheless understood to be suited
to their particularpractice.Both ChristianFriedrichDaniel Schubartand Carl FriedrichCramer
observed that the melodic charmof JohannBaptistVanhal'skeyboardsonataswould attractamateurs and ladiesin particular(Newman, Sonata in the ClassicEra, 45).
15. When Jane Fairfax receives the anonymous gifts of a fortepiano and music, Frank
Churchill (the anonymous benefactor) remarks,"True affection only could have prompted it"
(Emma, chap. 28). MarianneDashwood receivesmusic (an opera) from Willoughby,a fact that is
only retrospectivelyrevealed(Senseand Sensibility,chap. 47).
16. "The fear of music is a fear of feminine eruption, of a musical 'she' who ceases to charm
us, who in effect denaturalizes'herself,'losing 'her' simplicity,becoming complex, astonishing,
and more like a man" (Leppert, TheSightof Sound,69).
209
sic for the fairsex, by inscribinga sex-specificrole within the amateursphere,
produced, if only by default, the possibilityof masculineinvolvement in that
sphere.17But more than this, music for the fair sex sought to establish sexspecificboundariesamidstmusicalpracticesin which distinctionsbetween the
sexes were blurred.The dedicationto ladiesintervenedin these practicesin an
attempt at clarification.Men enjoyed the freedom of playing both their own
instrumentsand those, such as the keyboard,to which the fair sex was officiallyrestricted.This masculinefreedom to mediate between, and exhibit mastery in, both male and female domains is easily overlooked. So, too, are the
implicationsof this situation for how male and female musicalpracticeswere
constructed. The female musicalrealm was not fundamentallydifferentfrom
the male, but representeda segment in a masculineuniverse of possibilities.
This is not to deny the gendered element in the binary oppositions of, say,
public/private, professional/amateur,orchestral/solo, and flute/clavier, but
ratherto highlight the mobility accorded to men within them. Music for the
fair sex intervened in this complex situation, seeking to clarifya specifically
feminine practicein accordancewith the broaderlate eighteenth-centuryattempt to distinguish the feminine and the masculine as opposite, if complementary,terms and to map these onto the categories of private and public
respectively.
As a newly articulated(if not literallynew) genre, music for the fair sex
arose in the 1740s in response to multiple social and economic stimuli. Such
music was a medium of, and commerce in, a new category of gender: "femininity." As I have discussed elsewhere, "femininity"augmented the earlier
eighteenth-centurydiscussionsof gender in Germany that were focused on
men alone and that pivoted on the terms masculinity and effeminacy.
until
"Femininity"(which did not enter German dictionaries,as Weiblichkeit,
the 1770s) was a class-basedideal of female leisure;it signified an absence of
and unsuitabilityfor physicallabor.As such it accordswith the familiargrand
narrativeof eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women's history. As Anne
McClintocksummarizesthis narrative:
At some point duringthe eighteenthcentury,the storygoes, the spindleand
loom werepriedfromher fingersand all the "bustlinglabor"of the previous
the tailoring,millinery,straw-weaving,
century-the candleand soap-making,
lace-making,
cardingandwool-sorting,flax-beating,
dairyandpoultryworkwereremovedpiecemealto the manufactories.
The topics of amateurismand domesticity within and around music for the
fair sex rhetoricallyconsign woman to a newly articulatedprivate sphere in
which idleness was taken on as, in McClintock'swords, a "characterrole."18
Such withdrawalwas the flip side of the utopian but ultimately patriarchal
17. See Erich Reimer, "Kenner-Liebhaber-Dilettant,"
in Handworterbuchder musikalischen
Terminologie,ed. H. H. Eggebrecht (Wiesbaden:FranzSteiner,1972-), 3.
18. McClintock, ImperialLeather:Race, Genderand Sexualityin the ColonialConquest(New
York:Routledge, 1995), 160-61.
210
Enlightenment ideal of the "bourgeois public sphere" (influentiallyif contentiouslyexpounded by Habermas)in which individuals-primarilyeducated
men-debated matters of collective, civic interest in the public domains of
clubs, coffeehouses, and print culture.19
Music for the fairsex performeda double disciplinaryfunction. On the one
hand it invited women to the practiceof music as an alternativeto the false
pleasuresof, and moraldangersposed by, the socialworld. On the other hand,
it sought to prescribethe nature of that musicalpractice,to deprofessionalize
it, to tether it to ideals of female character,and to inscribewomen's primary
roles within the patriarchalfamilyas wife, mother, and daughter.The disciplinary focus of this music thus moves promiscuouslybetween the practiceof
music specificallyand questions of women's characterand their place in the
world. These metonymic shifts between music and female characterare facilitated by a centraleighteenth-centurymetaphor:the body as a strung instrument or clavier.20
Within song texts this proved an irresistibleconceit. J. F. W.
Wenkel opened his second set of Clavierstiicke(1771) with a rhetoricalapostrophe to Das Clavier(Ex. 1). In stanza3 the femalenarratoreschews unspecified "falsepleasure"in preferencefor "sweetharmony."The metaphorof the
body as clavieris pursuedin a play on "rein,"a referenceto both moralpurity
and equal temperament.Music was not simply a means of discipliningthe female subjectbut a metaphorthrough which femininitywas produced as a discursiveideal.
Nichelmann and the Rhetoric of Easiness
Reflecting their early date of composition, Nichelmann's sonatas remained
largely unaffected on the level of musical style by assumptions concerning
female characterand taste. Indeed, his ambiguous dedication ("chiefly for
ladies") leaves open the possibility of male performance and in so doing
complicates the rhetoric of separate female and male spheres deployed by
subsequent collections aimed exclusivelyat women.21 Similarly,in arranging
the sonatas in a pedagogic ascent from "easy" to increasingly "difficult,"
Nichelmann did not succumb to an essentializedconnection between music
19. JiirgenHabermas, TheStructuralTransformationof the Public Sphere:An Inquiry into a
Categoryof BourgeoisSociety(1962), trans.Thomas Burger(Cambridge:Polity, 1989). For commentarysee WilliamOuthwaite, ed., TheHabermasReader (Cambridge:Polity, 1996); and Craig
Calhoun, ed., Habermasand thePublicSphere(Cambridge:MIT Press, 1992).
20. See, for example, Denis Diderot, La Suite d'un entretien entre M. D'Alembert et M.
Diderot,in Diderotoeuvreschoisies(Paris:Editionssociales, 1962), 3:19-20.
21. I consulted the first London edition: Six Short Sonatas or Lessonsfor the Harpsichord
Designed for the Improvement of all Loversof that Instrument but Chieflyfor the Ladies by
CristofforoNichelmanin the Serviceof his SacredMajestytheKing of Prussia(London: Longman,
Lukeyand Co., n.d.). A referenceto CarlFriedrichAbel's recentlypublishedovertureson the title
page would date this volume to the 1760s or 1770s, corroboratingthe suggested date of 1770 in
the BritishLibraryCatalogueof PrintedMusic.
211
Example 1 J. F. W. Wenkel, ClavierstiickefiirFrauenzimmer(1771),no. 1, "Das Clavier"
Munter
____
_
er- to-
SiB
yn^
_
nen-des
ir
i^
8
I_J
_
?
Cla- vier!
j
i ;<8
1
F
7i m
:
11
che Freu- den schaffstdu
Wel-
1
hj^
L=
j^
3
mir!
15
(-
In
J+
22
sam- keit
ge- bricht
mir
ich selber
will,
es
an
Er-
bald
Er-
r.+ _f-r.'1J- :h
-g6- tzen nicht.
9
der Ein-
Ti?p
Du
bist was
i r7
iLEl
r
I
It
"o,
I
~L~n,
i
(^
If'^^^
sb;j i
-weck- ung und
bald Spiel,
y(r7ritzfILTF7
bald
J
Er- weck-ung
11
undbald Spiel.
rRT
SiiBertonendesClavier!
Welche Freudenschaffst du mir!
In der Einsamkeitgebricht
Mir es an Ergotzennicht.
Du bist was ich selber will,
Bald Erweckungund bald Spiel.
Sweet soundingclavier,
Whatjoy you bring me!
In loneliness
It does not fail to delight.
You are, what I myself would be,
Now rousing and now play[ful].
Scherz ich, so ertonetmir,
Ein scherzhaftesLied von dir.
Will ich abertraurigsein,
Klagend stimmstdu mit mir ein.
Heb ich fromme Lieder an
Wie erhabenklingst du dann!
If I jest, then you sing to me
A playful song.
But if I want to be sad,
Then you join with me dolefully.
If I offer devout songsThen what sublimityin your sound!
Niemals 6ffne meine Brust
Sich der Lockung falscherLust!
Meine Freudenmiissen rein,
So wie deine Saiten sein:
Und mein ganzes Leben nie
Ohne siB3eHarmonie.
My breastnever opens
To the temptationof false pleasure!
My joys must be as pure,
As your stringsare:
And my whole life never
Withoutsweet harmony.
i
212
for women and musical"easiness"(whateverthat might be). On the contrary,
such arrangement asserts that facility increases with practice. Minor keys
(sonatas nos. 2, 4, and 6), chromaticism(sonata no. 4, second movement)
and such formal refinementsas the slow movement in an enharmonicallyrelated key elided into the finale (sonata no. 5, second and third movements)
partake of the serious, intellectual realm of the north-German connoisseur
(Kenner). "Difficult"or unusual keys are cultivatedto an eccentricdegree in
Sonatano. 5 in El (Ex. 2). The slow movement is set in B major,an extremely
rare key in the mid-eighteenth century. Furthermore, the slow movement
ends, or ratherdoes not end, with a transitioninto the finalein which the El
tonic is approachedenharmonicallythrough D# minor. Such artfulharmonic
techniques,appealingto the intellect and more at home in the improvisedfree
fantasiathan the sonata for ladies, are far from the aestheticallyfeminized
sphere of the later-eighteenth-centuryamateur.22The esoteric enharmonyof
Nichelmann's fifth sonata was beyond the range of materialsthat were later
stereotypicallyassociatedwith the lady at music. When Diderot wrote to Carl
Philipp Emanuel Bach and FriedrichMelchior Grimm requesting sonatasfor
his daughter to play, he specificallyrequested works in "difficultkeys," explaining that his daughter was genuinely talented. The fact that such comments were necessarysuggests an ingrained associationof female executants
with "easy"works. Diderot also expresseshis fearsthat marriagewill bring his
daughter's musical development to a prematureconclusion: "I believe that
she will be a good player,but I am practicallycertainthat she will be a musician, and that she will learnthe theory of this art well, unless some futurehusband should ruin everything, spoil her figure, and take away her appetite for
study."23
After Nichelmann, collections of sonatas, keyboardpieces, and songs for
women by Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Wenkel, Ernst Christoph Drefiler,
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Johann Rudolph
Zumsteeg, Johann ChristianGottfriedGraser,and P. J. von Thonus addressed
themselves to both traditionalassumptionsabout woman's place and emergent ideas about female character,taste, and physicalnature (see Table 1).24
22. See Reimer,"Kenner-Liebhaber-Dilettant,"
3.
23. The correspondenceis collected in Hans-GiinterOttenberg, Carl PhilippEmanuel Bach,
trans.PhilipJ. Whitmore (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress, 1987), appendix2, p. 223.
24. Not included in Table 1 are occasionalcollections addressedto both men and women,
such as the anonymous Belustigungenfur die Frauenzimmer und Jungen Herren (Niirnberg:
JohannEberhardZeh, 1770) and FranzFriedrichSiegmundAugust Reichsfreiherrnvon Boeklin
zu Rust's Neue Liederfiir Liebhaberinnenund Freunde des Gesangsund Klaviers (Strasburg:
Stork, 1789). This study did not aim comprehensivelyto assesswomen's periodicals,severalof
which contain notated songs and keyboard pieces. Examples of such periodicalsinclude Iris:
fir Frauenzimmer(8 vols., 1774-76); Leipzier Taschenbuch
Vierteljahrschrift
fir Frauenzimmer
zum Nutzen und Vergniigen(Leipzig:Adam FriedrichBohme, 1789) (three songs by M. Gaesies:
"An die Natur," 10-11; "Elegie," 13-14; "Lied," 17); Frauenzimmer-Almanachzum Nutzen
und Vergniigen,ed. Franz Ehrenberg (Leipzig, 1786, 1790, 1792, 1794-97); and Amaliens
TeutschlandsTichterngeweiht.Eine Monatsschriftvon Marianne Ehrmann.Mit
Erholungsstunden.
Kupfernund Musik,ed. MarianneEhrmann(Stuttgartand Tubingen, 1790-92).
213
Example 2 C. Nichelmann, Sei brevesonateda cembalomassimeall'usodelleDame (ca. 1745),
Sonatano. 5, first,second, and third movements
I.
I
Allegro
-iB".
"NI ,-,-^ J
*Y
IV
sblrla
CL_-
r-_^
-
f_ ,
il
*1. C} _
j-J &fm"
9-:j
Andante
^-
r | rl r
at
-i
v
r
tr
112.
v
3
3.;-3
--J
;
rr?,
E4_^ tFa
Q
III.
Allegro
J
;
*'
r
r-
P-
214
The easinessof music for ladiesemerges as a prominent threadin these works,
the term easyindicating here keys without many sharps and flats, melodycentered styles, and avoidanceof both figuration(however easilyit might fall
under the hands) and thick, reinforcedtextures.
The English easyembracesseveralrelated terms (lightness, simplicity,clarity, a flowing quality,and charm) in German musical criticismof the period
that denoted, collectively,the naturalnessand accessibilityof galant melodyoriented styles. Johann Mattheson'sremarkson the foundationsof melody in
Der vollkommeneCapellmeister(1739) furnish a close to comprehensiveinventory of what was musicallyat stake in "easiness"in music for the fairsex:
the avoidanceof excessivemelodic embellishmentand of rapidchangesin meter, tempo, and register;restrictionto diatonic harmony; uniformity rather
than diversity;and cultivationof "noble simplicity."A rejection of conspicuous compositional artificeunderwritesthese elements. As Mattheson recommends, "one puts artificeaside, or conceals it well" ("Man setze die grosse
Kunstauf die Seite, oder bedecke sie sehr").25The pleasuresof amateurparticipation areprivilegedover the composer'slearneddemonstrationof art.
In this light, the "easiness"of collections of ladies'music involvesaesthetic
preceptsof later-eighteenth-centurycomposition that were not, in themselves,
either negative or gender specific. Nonetheless, an element of concession is
undoubtedlypresentin their gender-specificdeploymentin this repertory.For
women, easinesswas officiallysanctioned,even compulsory.Music for the fair
sex summoned a rhetoric of deprofessionalizationof female music-making
that was in place even prior to the emergence of the repertory.Already in
the firstdecades of the eighteenth century,we find a distinctiondrawnin the
compilation of the clavierbooks for Anna Magdalena and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach between nonprofessional/female and professional/male spheres
of music making.What distinguishesthese books is not the degree of difficulty
of their contents but theirpurpose, and thus the futuresthey envisagefor their
respective dedicatees. The Klavierbiichleinfur WilhelmFriedemann Bach
evinces not simply a pedagogic purpose, being a combined manual for the
study of performanceand composition, but, specifically,a trajectorythat takes
the student from the rudimentsof notation, ornamentation,and fingeringto
that point where fugue, free composition, and thus professionalappointment
as organist,cantor,and Kapellmeisterare in sight.26The structureof the book
for Anna Magdalena,in contrast,is circularand static:the executant is in the
same social position on the firstpage as when the last page is turned. C. P. E.
Bach recordedhere his earliestsurvivingworks (BWVAnh. 122-25, 129), including dances of the type he would go on to furnishin his own volume of
25. Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommeneCapellmeister(1739; reprint, Kassel:Barenreiter,
1954), pt. 2, chap. 5, p. 140, ?48. I wish to thank KarstenMackensenof Humboldt Universityin
Berlinfor drawingmy attention to Mattheson'sremarks(correspondenceof 19 February1997).
26. Cf. Wolfgang Plath, Klavierbiichleinfiir WilhelmFriedemannBach,vol. 5 of Kritischer
BerichtzurNeuen Bach-Ausgabe(Kassel:Barenreiter,1963), 71.
215
Sonatesa l'usagedes dammes(1770). Suites, minuets, and polonaises offered
"spiritualrefreshment,"to use J. S. Bach's term from the prefaceto his solokeyboardpartitas,two of which he copied out at the beginning of the book
for his second wife.27But the "aesthetichedonism"that EricReimerassociates
with the sphere of eighteenth-centuryamateurmusic making is complicated
by a specificallygendered context in which "hedonism"or aestheticpleasureis
activelypromoted as a form of femalecontainment.28Nor is personalaesthetic
pleasure the only item on the agenda. Chorales, continuing practices of
Lutheran Hausmusik, delegate the task of sanctifying the home to Anna
MagdalenaBach, leavingfatherand son free to pursuetheirprofessionalcraft.
Later collections published for the fair sex recall the book for Anna
MagdalenaBach in their layeringof fashionabledances and piety.Wenkel interspersedhis offering of dances with pious odes addressingGod and nature,
inscribingwoman's role in the home as guardianof morality.The proliferation
of what Johann Adam Hiller calledgalanterie (minuets, rondos, polonaises)
epitomized the lamented ascendanceof fashionable,French taste.29The contents of Wenkel'sfirstvolume of ClavierstiickefurFrauenzimmer(1768) were
just the sort of thing to make serious-mindednorth-Germancriticslike Hiller
blanch:
Menuet I, Menuet II;
Singode;Polonaise;Menuet I, Menuet II; BufJlied;
Polonaise;Singode;Menuet I, Menuet II; Marche;Menuet I, Menuet II;
Polonaise;MenuetI, MenuetII; Polonaise;Singode;MenuetI, MenuetII;
Polonaise;Wiegenlied;
Polonaise;Angloise;MenuetI, MenuetII; Polonaise;
Fuga[a 2 in 3/8].
Such an inventory attests the discursivealignment of fashion, luxury,and the
feminine in eighteenth-century consumerism. Indeed, in the context of
woman's officialwithdrawalfrom production and labor, the terms "woman"
and "luxury"achieveda degree of synonymity.30
For Rousseau,it was woman
who led man into alienatingluxuryand ancienregime decadence.Such associations renderedwoman a potential threat to nationhood (a point Reichardt
discussedbelow). This threatwas not
specificallyaddressedin his Wiegenlieder,
27. "Denen Liebhabern,und besondersdenen Kennernvon dergleichenArbeit, zur
GemiithsErgotzungverfertiget"(J. S. Bach, ClavierUbung,[vol. 1] [Leipzig:the author,
1726]).
28. Reimer,"Kenner-Liebhaber-Dilettant,"
2.
29. See MatthewHead,"'LikeBeautySpotson the Faceof a Man':Genderin EighteenthDiscourseon Genre,"Journalof Musicology
13 (1995): 145-46. The
CenturyNorth-German
ideaof Frenchcultureasa feminizing
influencein Germany
persisted
throughoutthecentury.
30. Severalart historicalstudieshavemore broadlyinformedmy thinkingon musicas a
John Barrell,TheBirthof Pandoraand
genderedcommodityin the marketplace,
particularly
the Division of Knowledge(London: Macmillan, 1992); and John Barrell,ed., Painting and the
Politics of Culture: New Essayson British Art, 1700-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992). On the withdrawalof woman from labor see SilviaBovenschen,Die imaginierte
Weiblichkeit:
und literarischenPrdsentaExemplarischeUntersuchungenzu kulturgeschichtlichen
tionsformendes Weiblichen(Frankfurtam Main:Suhrkamp,1979).
216
lessened by the cosmopolitan gloss of Wenkel's collection, which embraced
the local color of the polonaise, the angloise, and the ultimatelyFrench minuet. Workswith Germantitles (Singode,BufJlied,Wiegenlied,and Fuga) punctuate and framethe collection such that a north-Germanidentificationis not
completelylost. The concluding fugue, in particular,points towardmore serious musicalpractices,though the two-part texture and 3/8 meter renderthis
more a learnedtopic or gesturewithin a diversionarycollection than a genuine
contrapuntalculmination.
The receptionof music for the fairsex was not free of dissent about the veracityof these alignmentsof woman and fashion. In a review of Wenkel'sfirst
collection, Hiller underminedthe credibilityof the dedicationto ladies,claiming that as many gentlemen as ladies shared the preference for galanterie.
Inquiring why Wenkel had omitted works in difficult keys, Hiller suggested
that composers sought to pass off mediocre and insubstantialworks with the
dedicationto ladies.31As an instanceof resistantcriticalreception, Hiller's remarks(publishedin a majorGermanjournal)aresignificantand should not be
underestimated.32
The Limits of Female Improvement
The notion of accomplishmentthat informs recent scholarshipon female art
practicesin eighteenth-century England requires qualificationin a German
context. There the function of the accomplishmentsas signs of gentility and
statuswas more strenuouslyconnected to their educativeand improvingrole.
Female art practices were thus linked more directly than in England to
Enlightenmentdiscoursesof self-improvement.In fact, there is no equivalent
31. "Es ist ein Kunstgriff,den wir noch nicht haben einsehen k6nnen, wenn verschiedene
Verfasservon ihren Werkchenauf dem Titel sagten, sie waren fir Frauenzimmergeschrieben.Es
ist viel Schlechtes unter diesem Titel verkauftworden, und die Frauenzimmerwerden diesen
Herrn Verfasserndoch nicht einraumen wollen, daf das, was fir sie geschrieben wird, nur
schlecht sein diirfe. Warum hat nun Herr Wenkel seine Clavierstiickefir Frauenzimmercomponirt?Vielleicht weil er sie leicht fand; weil sie aus Kleinigkeiten,als Menuetten, Polonaisen,
Liedernu. d. g. bestanden:Ach, es giebt Mannspersonengenug, die an weiter nichts als solchen
TandeleienGeschmackfinden. Aber wie siehet es um die Leichtigkeitaus?Frauenzimmerdie aus
b und es moll spielen, werden gewif auch mehr vertragen k6nnen, als Menuetten und
Polonoisen: wollte der Componist seine Absicht nicht verfehlen, so konnte er diese Tonarten
weglassen" (Johann Adam Hiller, "Clavierstiickeftir Frauenzimmer, von Johann Friedrich
Wilhelm Wenkel,"in WichentlicheNachrichtenund Anmerkungendie Musikbetreffend[Leipzig:
Zeitungs-Expedition,1766-70], 2:390-92 [13 June 1768]).
32. Similarly,a reviewof C. P. E. Bach's Sonateperil ClavicembaloSoloall UsodelleDonne exclaimed, "even men would bring honour upon themselves with them" (Frankfurtergelehrte
Anzeigen 3, nos. 61-62 [2 August 1774]: 514-15; cited and translatedin Mary Sue Morrow,
German Music Criticism in the Late EighteenthCentury:AestheticIssuesin InstrumentalMusic
[Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1997], 27).
217
term in Germanfor "accomplishment"in this sense. Instead, music belonged
to a realmof Bildung (improvementor education).
Nonetheless, this "improvement"resembled"accomplishment"in the limits it set upon female development. Leppert's contention that the principal
function of the accomplishmentswas female "containment"is borne out by
music for the fair sex which worked toward the production of "an ideologicallycorrectspeciesof woman."33The primacyof women's duties in the patriarchalfamilyis kept in view by song texts that dwell upon courtship,marriage,
and mothering. The inclusion of songs and simple keyboard pieces in
women's journals such as Amaliens Erholungsstunden,the Frauenzimmerfur Frauenzimmeris indicativeof
Almanach, and the LeipzigerTaschenbuch
the contradictoryrole of musical accomplishmentin relation to Enlightenment discoursesof self-improvementand education as they were hesitantlyapplied to women.34With a few exceptions, these periodicalsrepresentedonly a
superficialapplicationof the rhetoricof personalimprovement,since they discouragededucationfor women as a means of purelypersonaldevelopment.As
Sabine Schumann observes, the new literarygenre of women's journals responded to and propagated the notion of improvement and development
(Bildung) for women, and "the literaryhousewife [became] a favoriteimage."
But female improvementwas policed by the publicationsthat fostered it. As
Schumannwrites:
A hostile attitude to women and the Enlightenmentis undoubtedly
present.... "Femaleaccomplishment"
[Bildung],an oft-heardcatchphraseof
the period,permittedwomenonly so muchdevelopmentas wouldtransform
themfromsimplehousekeepers
to cultivatedhousewives,withouttheirtransgressingthe domesticsphere.The trulyeruditewoman,an equalof men,was
anextremelyodd ideaat thistime.35
At worst, the accomplishmentswere a means of erasingthe perceivedmenace
of female nature with a series of predictableand thus manageablebehaviors.
An essayappearingin the MonatsschriftfiirDamen of 1787 describedwomen
as a menace, a danger, by nature unfathomable. Only through instruction
could her God-given positive characteristicsbe developed, only then would
33. Leppert,TheSightofSound,69.
34. Thisstudyfocuseson publishedcollections"forthe fairsex"andhasnot undertaken
a
searchfor musicin women'speriodicals.
The extentof this repertorycan be
comprehensive
Das deutsche
Liedim 18.Jahrhundert
ascertained,
however,by referenceto MaxFriedlander,
(Hildesheim:GeorgOlms, 1970), vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 379; andSabineSchumann,"Das'lesende
in Die FrauvonderReformation
zurRomantik,ed. Barbara
Becker-Cantarino
Frauenzimmer,"'
available
(Bonn:BouvierVerlagHerbertGrundmann,
for
1980), 138-69. Selectedperiodicals
consultation
includedthe Leipziger
Taschenbuch
zum Nutzenund Vergniigen
fir Frauenzimmer
aufsJahr1789(Leipzig:A. F. Bohme,1789), whichincludesthreesongsby "M.Gaesies"("An
dieNatur,"pp. 10-11; "Elegie,"pp. 13-14; and"Lied,"p. 17) thatareclosein styleandsubject
to themusicconsidered
here.
35. Schumann,
"Das'lesendeFrauenzimmer,"'
139, 154, 139-40.
218
she become "gentle, timid, pleasant, sympathetic."36Paradoxically,if predictably,self-improvementand education were the means to more effective
control-a vivid illustrationof Foucault's thesis of education as a disciplinary
technology.37
A conduct book by AndreasMeier from 1773 spelledout this highly qualified applicationof an Enlightenmentrhetoricof improvementand relatedthe
accomplishmentsspecificallyto the classand status-signifyingpracticesthat fell
to woman in the home ratherthan to issuesof purelypersonaldevelopment.38
Meier rejected the extremes in which a young woman either learns nothing
but housework or straysinto the realm of masculinelearning:"If the first is
her husband's maid, the second is a fool, who wants to rule him with her
knowledge."39The balance Meier sought to strikewas one in which a wife
possessedsufficienteducation to distinguishher from the lower order of maid
but not so much that she would break the frame of female knowledge and
startdiscussing"Wolfor Newton" with her husband.40Indeed, in the country
and small towns, a knowledge of sewing, embroidery,and housekeepingwas
deemed sufficient.41The need for greater accomplishmentwas felt in larger
towns. Here Meier recommended "knowledge of history and geography,"
"musicand drawing,"and "a daintyand pleasantstyle of handwriting."42
That
he
those
recommended
that
enhanced
is,
accomplishments
polite society (the
writing of invitations,conversation,the entertainmentof song).
These broaderissues of female cultivationand its limits bear directlyupon
the practiceof music. Meier recommended music to the fairsex with particular warmth on the grounds of woman's innate affinityfor its expressiveand
gently moving tones: "Among the galant arts that are expected of a young
lady I figuremusic most of all.-'Tones,' writesMr. Batteux, 'arethe organ of
the heart:they move, they please, they persuadeus, and effortlesslytouch the
36. "Sanftmiithig,furchtsam,gefallig, mitleidig" (Monatsschriftfir Damen [zum Bestendes
RoseninstitutsfurWittwenund Waisen][Berlin and Niirnberg, 1787]; cited in Schumann, "Das
'lesende Frauenzimmer,'"155).
37. Significant older studies in German of the notion of female improvement include
U. Nolte, "Frauenbildund Frauenbildungin der GeschlechterphilosophieI. Kants,"Zeitschrift
fir Pddagogik9 (1963): 346-62; ElisabethBlochmann, Das "Frauenzimmer"und die "Gelehrsamkeit': Eine Studie iber die Anfdnge des Mddchenschulwesens
in Deutschland,Anthropologie
und Erziehung 17 (Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer, 1966); and GerdaTornieporth,Studienzur
Frauenbildung:Ein Beitrag zur historischenAnalyse lebensweltorientierter
Bildungskonzeptionen
(Weinheimand Basel:Beltz, 1977).
38. Meier, Wie soil ein junges Frauenzimmer sich wiirdig bilden? (Erlangen: Wolfgang
Walther,1773).
39. "Wirddie Erste die Magd ihres Gatten;so wird die Zweite eine Narrin,die ihn mit ihrer
Gelehrsamkeitbeherrschenwill" (ibid., 39).
40. Ibid., 38.
41. Ibid., 58.
42. "Kentnisseder Geschichte und Geographie";"Musik [und] Zeichnen"; "eine zierliche
und angenehme Schreibart"(ibid., 41-43).
219
heart.' 43 Michaelis made a similar point in 1782, again invoking female
sensitivityto musical expression.44Such views are reflected in the style and
characteristicaffectionsof music for the fairsex. "Gentle, timid, pleasant,sympathetic"-the qualitiesimputed to woman (in her civilized,disciplinedstate)
by the MonatsschriftfiurDamen above furnishedthe expression and performance directions of this repertory.These "feminine"musical elements were
always both aesthetic and social in register, at once abstractand bound to
embodied musical practices. Heinrich Christoph Koch's remarks in his
KurzgefafltesHandworterbuchder Musik (1807) indicate that in the first
decadesof the nineteenth century,"femininemusic" assumedthe statusof an
autonomous aesthetic-compositionalcategory (though one that hardlyconcealsits social basis):
Feminine [weiblich].As an aesthetic term, defining something characteristicof
compositions,feminineindicatesa predominanttendernessand gentlenessin
the shapingandexpressionof anidea.Femininemusicstirsthe heartmorethan
the imagination,
it is moregentlymovingthaninspiring.45
The recommendation of music to women went hand in hand with attitudes (contradictedby the realitiesof eighteenth-centurymusic making) that
women could not achieve great things in it-that they lacked "genius."An
edited by Reichardt,saw
anonymous author in the MusikalischesWochenblatt,
fit to cite Rousseau's letter to d'Alembert to this end, despite the fact that
both the editor'swife and his daughterwere publishedcomposers.Rousseau's
descriptionof creativeinspirationas a violent ravishmentof the heart and soul
linked savagery,the irrational, and the uncivilized with masculine genius.
Inspirationwas off-limits for woman, "whose writings or products are cold
and pretty like their authors."The "lightnessof spirit,of taste, and of grace"
exhibited by the "littleworks"produced by women connects these assertions
about the limits and characterof female creativitywith the stylesand genres of
music for the fair sex (see, for example, the inventory of Wenkel's Clavierstiickeabove).46
43. "Unterdie galantenKtinste,die manvon einemjungenFrauenzimmer
erwartet,rechne
ich hauptsachlich
die Musik.-'Die Tone' sagtHerrBatteux'sinddie Organedes Herzens:sie
ansHerz"'(ibid.,46-47).
riihren,siegewinnen,sieuberreden
uns,undgehenohneUmschweife
44. See Paul Sieber,Johann FriedrichReichardtals Musikdsthetiker,
seineAnschauungeniiber
Wesenund WirkungderMusik (Strassburg:Heitz, 1930), 134 n. 450.
45. Heinrich Christoph Koch, Kurzgefafites Handwirterbuch der Musik fur praktische
Tonkiinstler
undfiirDilettanten(1807; reprint,Hildesheim:
GeorgOlms,1981), 390 and219,
The translations
arefromHead,"Genderin Discourseon Genre,"167, wherethe
respectively.
originalGermanis givenin n. 65.
46. "'Lesfemmesen generaln'aimentaucunart,ne se connoissenta aucunet n'ontaucun
genie.Ellespeuventreussirauxpetitsouvragesqui ne demandentque de la legereted'esprit,du
Maisce que celeste,
gout, de la grace,quelquefoismemede la philosophieet du raisonnement.
sublimesquiporquiechauffeet embrasel'ame,ce geniequiconsumeet devore,-ces transports
tent leursravissements
jusqu'aufonddes coeurs,manqueront
toujoursauxecrits(produits)des
femmes;ilssonttousfroidset joliscommeelles.Ilsauronttantd'esprit
quevousvoudrez,j'amais
220
However patronizing,these remarksalso embody the idea that woman was
the more intenselycivilizedof the sexes, a proposition that underwrotemoral
and spiritualinvestmentsin female musicalpracticesin the home. The medical
doctor Jacob Fidelis Ackermann pointed to the delicacy of both woman's
physique and her nervous fibers in demonstration of this point-though
Rousseau would not have agreed with his conclusion that woman was best
suited to intellectual and academic pursuits, man to physical labor.47This
idea informed the spiritual-moralvalue placed upon women in the latereighteenth-century home, where she stood as a sort of totem warding off
the evil she might, in other contexts, be seen to embody. In Goethe's Elective
Affinities,for example,this civilizingfunction of woman is evidentin the effect
of Ottilie's arrivalat the Hall upon Edwardand the Captain:"Both were altogether more sociable.... they became gentler and generallymore communicative."48The sight of female beauty harmonizesthe male viewer,pacitfing
him and returning him from his alienation to himself: "Whoeverlooks on
beautyis immune againstthe adventof any evil;he feels in accordwith himself
and with the world."49The moralizingpiety of songs for the fairsex should be
seen in this context; femininitywas a form of secularreligion, and its rituals,
undertakenby women, were felt to safeguardthe entire familialcongregation.
A Courtly Genealogy
If socialstatusis a less conspicuousconcern than educationin discourseon female art practicesin Germany,it is also clear from Andreas Meier's remarks
above that education and statuswere ultimatelyinextricable.This intersection
of agendasof classand gender helps to explainwhy the practiceof music was
so widespread.If music's disciplinaryfunction in relationto women were not
in some way tied to other socialvaluesin which the executantshad a personal
stake,the popularityof music might be difficultto explain.Indeed, the notion
of an intersectionof class and gender may fall short of the criticalmark:for
"femininity"was an ideal posited upon and signifying leisure, a withdrawal
from physicalwork, an absenceof labor. Music for the fairsex celebratedthis
remove from the physical and intellectual effort of professional musical
production.
d'ame'etc" ("Nachtragzu den zwei Aufgaben:Uber Weiberund Blasinstrumente,"Musikalisches
Wochenblatt14, in Studienfiir Tonkiinstlerund Musikfreunde,ed. J. F. Reichardt[Berlin:Neue
Musikhandlung,1793], 105).
47. Ackermann, Ueberdie kirperlicheVerschiedenheit
desMannesvom Weibe... uebersetzt...
vonJosephWenzel(Koblenz:JohannKasparHuber, 1788), 144, 149.
48. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, ElectiveAffinities,trans. David Constantine (Oxford: Oxford
UniversityPress, 1994), 41. The novel was completed in 1808-9.
49. Ibid., 41.
221
In his prefaceto the GesiingefiirsschoneGeschlecht
(1775), J. F. Reichardt
underlinedthis absenceof laborin a revealingfantasyof the performer'sphysical delicacyand tiny hands. Many of the smallernotes are optional, he assured
the executant, and the essentialnotes are in large type to help avoid unattractive squintingor a furrowedbrow:
Withdue consideration
for the sensitiveeyesandsmallhandsof the fairsex, I
havewrittenthe middlevoicethatis workedinto the texture,in smallnotes,so
thatyou [thefairsex]maymoreeasilydistinguishthe notesthatareto be sung
fromthosethatareonlyfor the clavier,andalsoso thatyou willbe ableto determinemore readilywhichnotes you can leaveout, if the prettylittlehand
won't stretch,and you would ratheronly playthe vocalline [with the right
hand].Thisalsoappliesto the smallnotesin the bass,so thatyou canfindthe
realbasslinemoreeasily,becauseI wastrulyworriedaboutenvious[neidische],
red,andsquintingeyes.Gentlemen,on the otherhand,oftenhavehandsthat
canreachthreeor fournotesbeyondthe octave.50
From the standpointsof both gender and class, much is at stake in these
gallant concessions. The promise of easiness is tied to the premium placed
upon the executant'sphysicalbeauty;Reichardtfantasizesa face upon which
the gentle pursuit of music has left no mark. This unmarkedface represents
the ideal convergence of female health and beauty, but also a class idealrecordingno physicaleffort, it bespeaksa withdrawalfrom labor.Similarly,the
"prettylittle hands" of the performer,unsuited to even the effort of reaching
to the octave, emulate those of the aristocrat.They testify to the economic
successof the husbandor fatherwhile their exaggeratedtininessmagnifiesthe
gentlemanan inch or two beyond his naturalsize. As a class-emulatingactivity,
female music-makingrepresentedan appropriationof an ultimately Renaissance courtlyideal of naturalgraceand ease. Just as BaldassareCastiglione,addressing courtiersof both sexes, had advisedthat all that involves movement
(fencing, dancing, singing, drawing) should be performed as if "without the
guiding of any studie or art,"so, in the earlyeighteenth century,a male author
admonishedyoung ladiesto play music "not like a Businessbut carelessly,like
a diversion."51The untutorednaturalnessof the ladyat music was her ultimate
artifice.
50. Reichardt, Gesangefurs schoneGeschlecht(Berlin: FriedrichWilhelm Birnstiel, 1775),
afterword (Nachricht) to the preface. For the original German, see Appendix A below. Freia
Hoffmann also discussesthe role of music in "the presentationof the ideal [female] body" in
Instrumentund Korper:Die musizierendeFrau in der biirgerlichenKultur (Frankfirt am Main
and Leipzig:InselVerlag,1991), 39-71, at 39.
51. BaldassareCastiglione, The Bookof the Courtier,trans. Thomas Hoby (London: J. M.
Dent and Sons, 1928), 49; the translationis that of the first English edition (1561). [William
Kenrick], The WholeDuty of a Woman,or a Guide to the FemaleSex. From the Age of Sixteento
Sixty,3d ed. (London, 1701), 48-49; cited in Leppert, TheSightof Sound,68. The evasiveje ne
sais quoiof eighteenth-centuryfemininityis part of a courtly genealogy.As Darcy expressedit in
Pride and Prejudice,to be consideredaccomplisheda woman must "possessa certainsomething
in her airand mannerof walking,the tone of her voice, her addressand expressions,or the word
222
Pleasures of (Non)conformity
Such remarksmay appearoppressivefrom a modern vantage point, but raise
issues of female pleasure and of women's historicalinvestments in practices
of music. "There are pleasures,"write the authorsof a book on women reading magazines, "which confirm personal identity and integrity rather than
challenge.Familiarity,comfort, affirmation,integration... are pleasurable."52
Such affirmationcorrespondsto what Barthes defines, in ThePleasureof the
Text,as ego-confirmingplaisir-a pleasure"linkedto culturalenjoyment and
identity,to the culturalenjoyment of identity,to a homogenizing movement
of the ego."53At the same time, this enjoymentis not an escapefrom ideological pressuresbut is in fact constituted by them. Terry Eagleton argues that
within the emergent bourgeois society of eighteenth-centuryGermany,power
operated in precisely this way through its internalization as a paradigm of
pleasure,one linked to ritualsof piety and sentiment:
The ultimatebindingforceof the bourgeoissocialorder,in contrastto the
coerciveapparatus
of absolutism,will be habits,pieties,sentimentsand affections.Andthisis equivalentto sayingthatpowerin suchan orderhasbecome
aestheticized.
It is at one withthe body'sspontaneousimpulses,entwinedwith
sensibilityand the affections,livedout in unreflectivecustom.Poweris now
inscribedin the minutiaeof subjectiveexperience,andthe fissurebetweenabstractdutyandpleasurable
inclinationis accordingly
healed.54
Eagleton's remarksare particularlysuggestive for the female practice of
music because they identify an aestheticizationof power and its operations.
Eagleton may underestimatethe possibilitiesfor resistance,however,in noting
that, insofaras the law is identified"with the human subject'sown pleasurable
well-being," its transgression"would signify a deep self-violation." In late
eighteenth- and earlynineteenth-centurynovels (Austen, Goethe, Choderlos
de Laclos),femalemusic-makingis associatedmore with outwardthan inward
conformity.Music was a respectableemploymentwhich, becauseof its link to
subjectivityand emotion, was put to unconventional,secretive,and transgressive uses in discoursesof romantic love. Music was thus a means to both the
pleasuresof conformity ("sheerunthinkinghabit" in Eagleton's formulation)
will be but half deserved"(chap. 8). Similarly,Castiglionerecommended to courtiersthe cultivation of "a certainegrace, and (as they say) a hewe" (p. 33). The idea that women are particularly
susceptibleto music as a form of physicaland emotional pleasureis expressedin remarkablysimilar
terms by Castiglioneand Reichardt.See Castiglione, TheBookof the Courtier,75; and cf. Johann
FriedrichReichardt,VertrauteBriefeausParis,geschrieben... 1802-3 (Hamburg, 1804), 249.
52. Ros Ballaster,MargaretBeetham, Elizabeth Fraser,and Sandra Hebron, "Theories of
Text and Culture," in Women'sWorlds:Ideology,Femininity and the Woman'sMagazine, ed.
Ballasteret al. (London: Macmillan,1991), 35.
53. Stephen Heath, introduction to Image, Music, Text,by Roland Barthes, trans. Stephen
Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), 9.
54. Eagleton, TheIdeologyoftheAesthetic(Oxford:Blackwell,1990), 20.
223
and the "self-violation"that Eagleton puts off-limits to any but the most
uniquelydefiant.
In Austen a distinction is made between the practice of music as a sign
of status and that as a mediation of female subjectivity.In MansfieldPark
(chap. 2), the snob-valuemusic holds for Fanny Price'scousins is sharplycriticized. In accordancewith Austen's radicalfeministproposition that men and
women be held to the same standardsof conduct, the whole idea of female accomplishment is thrown into doubt-it is seen to impede the development
"of the less common acquirementsof self-knowledge,generosity,and humility.""In everything but disposition,"the narratorremarkssavagelyof Fanny's
cousins, "they were admirablytaught." With MarianneDashwood (in Sense
and Sensibility)and Jane Fairfax(in Emma), however, music is not an accomplishmentin this same sense, but ratheran index or "expression"of character.
It is no coincidence,for example,that MarianneDashwood cultivatesmusic (a
sign not simplyof statusbut of sensibility),while her more self-possessedsister
Eleanordraws:the opposition is one of hearingand emotion versussight and
reason. The role of music in the new discoursesand experiencesof romantic
love is symptomaticof an only outward compliance attached to musical accomplishment,for romanticlove grantednew kinds of freedom to women in
the choice of partnersand admitteda degree of authorityand responsibilityto
women's decisionsin determiningtheir future happiness.The idea that music
was a means of polite courtship,of acquiringa husband, is more familiarthan
the fact, underlinedby both Austen and Goethe, that it may mediate, foster,
and serve to conceal attachmentsdeemed inappropriateor transgressive,in
which women (in complicitywith music) act at once inside and outside of the
social convention such musicalactivityis thought to secure. In the unwitting
presenceof Emma Woodhouse, JaneFairfax'ssecret engagement is spoken of
through music. From Willoughby,Mariannereceivesthe gift of printedmusic
(an opera);the musicalobject is a fragmentof their intimatediscourse.
In Goethe the links between music and female nonconformity are more
marked.When in ElectiveAffinities Ottilie and Edwardperform a duet, she
at the piano, he playingthe flute, we might seem to be dealingwith an image
of conventionalsocial music-making.But Ottilie, Edward'sstepdaughter,has
secretlypracticedher part in preparationfor such an opportunity.Her facility,
skill, and sympathyin accompanyinghis less expert solo line prefigure,in a
disquieting, subliminal manner that registerswith the company, the future
of an attachment between the performers that leads to the breakup of his
marriage.55
Some of the social values preached in the texts of songs for the fair sex,
particularlythat of female virtue, become less secure as the role of music in
55. Goethe, ElectiveAffinities, 54-56. Cf. Choderlos de Laclos, LesLiaisonsdangereuses,ed.
YvesLe Hir (Paris:GarnierFreres,1961), esp. letter 5, pp. 14-16. In the earlylettersof this epistolary novel, Cecil Volanes describes how her sexual awakening comes about through playing
duets with Danceny, who places his first love letter to her between the strings of her harp. I am
gratefulto MarianRead for the reference.
224
romantic love is explored. An innocuous example of this is found in the first
song of Drefiler's MelodischeLieder (1771), "Die Zufriedenheit" (Ex. 3).
Here the narratorpiously chooses God, virtue, and the clavierover mixed assemblies and the social world. The clavier,at once a renunciationof pleasure
and a form of solitaryenjoyment,is the true path to contentment. The doleful
largotempo, however, makesthis retreatinto music (here a metamusicalconceit) potentially less attractivethan the gay assembly the song eschews. Or
does not eschew: for every enjoyment is detailed and thus made availableto
fantasy.The claviercannot conceal its enthusiasmat the mention of covered
tables, boy-girl seating, and games of cards(stanza 3, lines 2 and 4), breaking
here into a more animated,pungent bass accompaniment.The last four measures of the song (mm. 9-12), enclosed in a binary repeat, form a highly
equivocalaffirmationof the greaterjoys affordedby the clavier.The vocal line
employs the animated sixteenths of the clavieraccompanimentin measures
5-6, seeming thereby to confirm the sentiment that virtue is its own reward.
But within the withdrawalsignaledby the largotempo, the phraseconjuresup
the contredansewith its 2/4 meter, eighth-note upbeat, and repeated-note
melody, invoking the most popular social dance of the period. Such topical
referenceundermines the courage of the narrator'sconviction and impartsa
Cinderellaflavor.As Vivien Jones remarksof conduct literature,the "moral
discourseof chaste conduct evokes preciselythe desiresand fantasiesit claims
to police."56
Not all the discoursessurroundingand threateningvirtue in this repertory
are as innocuous as Drefiler'swishful renunciation of social entertainment.
More menacing elements complicatethe accomplishmentideal and bring the
novelistic figure of the rake or seducer into the orbit of the lady at music.
Reichardtinvoked that perennialthreatto eighteenth-centuryfemalevirtue in
a cautionarymoment in the prefaceto his Gesdnge:
Regardingthe conversationbetween fatherand son ["Vaterund Sohn,"
pp. 19-20]-this can alsohavean excellentuse for you, my dears!Onlysing
thepenultimate
force
line-["Darum, Zwanglehret,boshaftseyn,""therefore,
teachesmalice"]-everytimemotheris present-it maypierceherheartreally
it arenot withoutfeeling-perhapsshe
forcefully-thenoteswhichaccompany
will then allowyou to go with yourfriendsand acquaintances
to the ball,so
thatyou willnot in subsequentwintersentrustyourselfto a seducerin orderto
go to the ballin secret,whosepleasuresyou wouldotherwisebe ableto enjoy
without being secretiveand with a good conscience.Then the song To
Hermenfried
["AnHermenfried,"
p. 25]. Ha! Shouldthe fairsexnot knowas
wellaswe thathumanbeingsareasmaliciousanddangerousasthorns?
The figure of the seducerdoes not remainsafelyoutside the collection, externalto the femalepracticeof music. In the second song, "An einem gefrornen Bach" ("To a Frozen Brook"), references to Philomele and Daphne
56. Jones, "The Seductionsof Conduct," 108.
Example 3
A
225
E. C. Drefiler,MelodischeLieder(1771), no. 1, "Die Zufiedenheit"
Largo
I
t 4I
i
Geht SchwesRicht eu-
y'
I
I
L
p
nur
Gleich-
tern,
res
k
-i
zur
en
I
L
Ij
bunten As- sem- bl1e,
bey Ca- ff6 und Thee
In
und
' r C ]
I,t
'
(-H-
-'rT' I
bunbey
ten
ge-
I,
Reihschaft-
i-
en
ger
an ge- deck-ten
Hand- e Kar- ten-
v 11
Tisch- en;
misch- en;
9
1
I
Mir
-
'
tont in- de- ssen meinCla-vier
.1I:1. |1
|
,1
~
2
weitschon-re Lust und
IJ
r
Freu-den vor.
I1'
Geht Schwestern,nurzur bunten
Assemblee,
In buntenReihen an gedecktenTischen;
Richt eures Gleichen bey Caff6 und Th6e
Und bey geschaftigerHande Kartenmischen;
Mir tont indessen mein Clavier
Weit schonreLust und Freudenvor.
Go, Sisters, [if you will] only to mixed
assemblies,
[seated]Boy-girl-boy-girlat laid tables;
Turnto your own kind for tea and coffee
And shuffle cards with busy hands;
Meanwhile my clavier offers me
Far more lovely pleasureandjoy.
Eilt immerhinvermummtzum Carneval
Vertantz,wie's oft geschieht, ein fernes
Leben;
Ich bleibe beym Kamin;mir wird der Baal
Doch nie solch seeliges Vergniigengeben,
Als Gott und Tugend mich erfreun,
Wenn YOUNG und GELLERTbey mir seyn.
Rush off to the carnivalin disguise
Dance your distantlife away, as so often
happens;
I remainby the fireplace;the ball would never
Give me such untaintedjoy,
As my delight in God and virtue,
When Young and Gellertare with me.
226
(figures of classicalmythology who, respectively,sufferedsexual enslavement
and narrowlyescapedit) usher in the seducerin antique disguise.57Since classicalmythology fell within the boundariesof female erudition, it is reasonable
to assume that referencesof this kind brought with them subtexts-or rather
intertexts-that could be decoded by the executant. In hindsight, such references reverberatein the underworlds of Enlightenment sexuality;"purity,"
Angela Carterobserves, "is alwaysin danger."58Injunctions to virtue in this
music were part of complex and contradictoryfantasies.In the novel, such
injunctions were not the plain-speakingvoice of a transgenericeighteenthcentury moral authority unquestioningly heeded by the executant. Rather
they were part of an imaginativeworld that could be opened, savored, and
closed like any other book.
Resisting Containment
Many complications to the accomplishment ideal and to the disciplinary
rhetoricof music for the fairsex have alreadybeen admitted, and it is the purpose of the remainderof this article to identify a range of furtherproblems
that attend containmentas a criticalterm. This involvesa considerationof several related issues, broadlyclassifiedas (level 1) internalcontradictionsin the
musicaltext; (level 2) the mediating processesof performanceand reception;
and (level 3) the existence of counterdiscoursesand dissent in the culture in
which this music circulated.Together, these three levels of critiquepoint up
historicallyconcrete possibilitiesfor resistanceto the disciplinaryrhetoric of
music for the fairsex and, more broadly,resistthe notion of accomplishment
as an all-encompassingrubricfor the amateur,female practiceof music in the
period. These interpretativemoves, engaging dually with the past as something one writes about today and as it is recordedin documentarytracesfrom
"back then," are in part inspired by literarytheory, particularlyan essay by
Vivien Jones on English conduct literature.But they are sufficientlymodified
here by applicationto music that it may be worth detailingtheir genealogy,at
leastwithin the netherworldof the long footnote.59
57. On Philomele see Ovid, TheMetamorphoses,
trans. Mary M. Innes (London: Penguin,
1955), 146-53.
58. Carter, The Sadeian Woman:An Exercisein Cultural History(London: Virago, 1979),
73.
59. Resistancehas been a persistenttheme in feministliterarycriticismfrom at least the time
of Judith Fetterley'sstudy of Americanliterature,TheResistingReader:A FeministApproachto
American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978). For Fetterley,resistanceis a
conscious dissentfrom the patriarchalthematicsof fiction:"The firstact of the feministcriticmust
be to become a resistingratherthan an assentingreaderand, by this refusalto assent,to begin the
processof exorcisingthe male mind that has been implantedin us" (pp. xxii-xxiii). Subsequently,
as Vivien Jones tracesin an innovativeessayon eighteenth-centuryEnglish conduct literatureparticularlyrelevanthere, theories of resistancehave drawnupon both Foucault and reader-response
227
Level 1: textual contradictions
With regardto the first,textuallevel of critique,the authorityof both implicit
and explicit disciplinaryrhetoricsis troubled by the fact that such injunctions
are rhetorical,textual events. They are not the pronouncementsof an official
voice of eighteenth-centurysocial "reality"that transcendedthe particulartextuality and context in which the injunctions were made. As textual events,
their relationshipto sociological "reality"and to the subjectivityof the reader
is necessarilyunclear.As Jones has argued,disciplinaryrhetoricsmust be scrutinized in terms of their generic motifs and their narrativestrategies.If, for example, they partake of the strategies of fiction and the novel, this has
implicationsfor readingpracticesand reception.60
A second set of questions belonging to this textuallevel of critiquefocuses
on the presence of internal contradictionand stress in disciplinaryrhetorics.
Are music, poetry, prefatorymatter, and engraved frontispiecespersuasively
and uniformlycoordinatedin volumes of music for the fairsex, or does a degree of incoherence necessarilyattend the marshalingof such disparateforces
and media, often involving three differentauthors(composer,poet, engraver)
and the input of the publisher?Are volumes uniform and focused in their content, or are they haphazard,multifaceted,inconsistent?61What of individual
songs and keyboardpieces:Do they send mixed messages?Do text and music
betray or support each other? In short, does the repertoryreveal contradictions that may have underminedits effectivenessas a disciplinaryinstrument?
Level 2: performance and reception
The second level of critiqueaddressesthe mediatingroles of performanceand
reception. Admittedly, performance practices in later-eighteenth-century
Germany,particularlyin the amateurcontext, are less well documented and
criticism.Studiesof readingpracticesdocument "women's sceptical,ironic, or simplyunexpected,
readingresponses;using psychoanalytictheory, they point out that fantasyoffers multiple,potentiallycontradictory,positions of identification;... and they stressthe ways in which meaningsand
pleasuresshift acrossdifferentreadingcontexts" (Jones, "The Seductionsof Conduct," 115, with
referenceto Ballasteret al., eds., Women'sWorlds,8-42).
60. Jones, "The Seductionsof Conduct," 108-17 and passim.
61. In passing, it should be noted that Reichardt's Gesdingeoften involve male narrators.
There is a degree of incongruity in female performanceof such songs, but their inclusion in the
collection is not alwaysillogical. Indeed, Reichardt'spaternalisticadvice to his younger sister in
the ninth song epitomizes the instructiveambianceof the collection as a whole. The suitability,
however, of Reichardt'sthoughts on the value and consolation of masculinefriendshipin face of
the torments of love (no. 10) is dubious, as is the relevanceof the dialogue between father and
son (no. 16). In the prefaceto the collection, Reichardtwas defensiveabout these latternumbers,
ultimatelymusteringno more persuasiveargument for the suitabilityof their inclusion than that
of his "disappointment"had they not made their way into the volume (a disappointment,he suggests, the fairsex would have shared).Reichardt,Gesainge,
preface,iv-v (see AppendixA below).
228
researchedthan those surroundingpublic performancesin, say,Vienna, or for
that matter in court and church in Germany during the time of J. S. Bach.
Proposalsin this areaare provisionaland likelyto be subjectto immediatedisagreement and qualificationby the reader.But it is preciselythe possibilities
for such disagreementbetween text and reader upon which such proposals
insist. In the case of music for the fairsex, each and every condescension and
prescriptionabout women making music inscribed in the text is vulnerable
to negation in performance.A skillfulperformance,with varied repetitions
of notated melody in a strophicsong or variedreprisesof movements possessing binaryrepeats,would leave the imputed lack of art in a trail of dust and
transcendthe compulsory easiness. Such variationsmight have drawn upon
C. P. E. Bach'stheoreticaland practicaldemonstrationsof the variedreprisein
keyboardmusic. A disaffected,bored, or indifferentperformancewould trouble the presumedfemalewillingnessto be put on show, as well as the assumption that finding a husband was an all-consumingpreoccupation.An ironic,
playful, or flirtatiousperformance, perhaps inspired by the cheeky maid of
opera buffa,would wrinkleidealsof femalesincerity,modesty,and naturalness.
Mozart's remarksto his fatherabout MargaretheMarchand's"archand coy"
manner of singing and the need to disciplineher into a more direct and sincere performancestyle can be seen in this context.62A range of performance
styles associatedwith variousgenres and social contexts were availablefor imitation. Vocal style and physicalgesture were not necessarilyrestrictedto the
most obviously "appropriate"choice.
In any case, what was the "appropriate"choice?Wenkel'ssecond collection
of songs and solo keyboardpieces, Fortsetzungder Clavierstiickefr Frauenzimmer (1771), ends with a fugue (pp. 26-27) and contains a recitativeand
arioso, "Der Greis"(p. 11), that (like the choralesin the clavierbook for Anna
MagdalenaBach) requirea figured-bassrealization.The discursivealignment
of female taste with naturalness,easiness, and untutored melody-centered
styles ultimatelybelongs to this repertoryas part of its fiction or topical universe:it is not an absolute feature of the music "itself,"nor should it delimit
the appropriateperformancestyle. A rhetoricof untutored and naturalfemale
performanceis invoked by the texts of Reichardt'ssongs, but the musicalsetting sometimes underminesthis. "Vergniigetmich" from Reichardt'sGesange
(Ex. 4) begins with conventionalapostrophe,or rhetoricaladdressto the art,
62. Letterof 31 October 1783 from W. A. Mozart to Leopold Mozart: "Pleasegive a special
message to little Greta [currentlyLeopold's student in voice and clavier],and tell her that when
she sings she must not be so archand coy;... only sillyassesare takenin by such devices.I for one
would ratherhave a country lout, who does not hesitate to shit and piss in my presence, than let
myself be humbugged by such falsetoadyings,which afterall are so exaggeratedthat anyone can
easilysee through them" (Emily Anderson, ed. and trans., TheLettersof Mozart and His Family,
3d ed. [London: Macmillan,1985], 859-60). The concern of the letter, however,is preciselythe
danger of not seeing through such coquetry, or of seeing through it but still being taken in.
Mozart is presumablyreacting againstthe airsand affectationsladies assumed,with more or less
encouragement,within the ritualsof displayand courtship.
Example 4
J. F. Reichardt,GesangefiirsschoneGeschlecht(1775),no. 1, "Vergniigetmich"
. PI
;'j1
(iblBlp,
229
I LrLi
8-
Ver-gnu- get mich ge- lieb- te Say- ten, und treibtdie Sor- gen
fern von mir:
der
5
('Pblig^
^r
jun-
^
_
^
gen Un- schuld Froh-lich-keit- en, er- hab- ne
(ri LJ Lr. i^r^rr
Ton- kunst, weih' ich dir. Komm,
rQrr
9
Do-ris!
Komm, Do-ris!
fro- he
Lie- der
ich des Friih-lings
kling- en, soll
14
1r ..
1
:
IJ
~
^'
IJ .
8p
Lob er-hohn,soil ich des Friih-lings Lob er-hohn;und kanst du gleich nicht kiinst-lichsing-en, ein
'
(9:
'
' 1I7
F
P e
,
19
-( ~'A
scho-
giner Mund singt all'-
:L =h--{
i'
zeit
11
g
schon ein scho-
r
ner Mund singt all'-
iLr
Entertainme, beloved strings,
And drive sorrowfar away:
The young innocentjoys,
I cry to you, sublime artof music!
Come Doris! Sound happy songs,
Should I raise the praise of Spring?
And if you cannot sing with art,
A prettymouth always sings prettily.
-+
zeit
schon.
.
230
invokingmusic'smythicalpower over the emotions, its abilityto restore,calm,
and drive awaysorrow.In this particularcontext, the call is also to the female
practitionerof the song, an addressconsistent with the role of woman in the
middle-classhome as, in Sabine Schumann's words, an "aesthetic balm for
the husband."63The last two lines of text (mm. 17-22), with their incongruous slip of registerfrom the mythologization of female song to a condescending reassuranceabout its assumed deficiencies, encapsulatethe patronizing
untutored aestheticsurroundingthe female amateur:"and if you cannot sing
with art/ a prettymouth alwayssings prettily."64
This epigramshould not, however, be taken at face value. The musicalsetting of the imputed artlessness(mm. 17-18) is paradoxicallyartful:leapsof an
octave, sixth, and seventhput the agilityof the voice on show at the song's climax. The composer has chosen here to paint the word "artful,"not the imputed artlessness,which is located in the level of textualfiction, its truth-value
undermined by the style of delivery. Reichardt'ssubtitle to this collection,
"kleine Cantaten,"bearsupon the Baroque melodic style, the long-breathed
continuityof phrasing,and thus the "appropriate"mannerof performance.In
measures 13-16, sequential, melismatic figures reminiscent of late-Baroque
vocal writing impart formalityand dignity:the harmonicrhythm is slowed to
a repeated bass-note pulse, above which the voice paints "Spring" and
"praise"in intricate,artfulneighbors and consonant skips.At such points, it is
easy to hear the support of the continuo and string-accompanimentalparts
that Reichardtadvertisedon the flyleaf of the volume.65Genericallymixed,
and treating characteristicsimputed to female music-makingas fictionalconceits to be savoredand enjoyed, Reichardt's"Vergniigetmich" warns us not
to readrhetoricas the direct disclosureof eighteenth-centuryattitudes.
As Reichardt'ssubtitle "kleine Cantaten"further suggests, the context of
performancefor this repertorywas flexible, with consequences for the status
of the performanceas public or private,as undertakenfor purelypersonalenjoyment, for the entertainmentof family,or, with more or less formality,for a
wider group of acquaintances.The metaphor of the domestic "sphere"(recently the subjectof feministcritique)failsto account for the inevitablerange
of performance contexts and the varying constitution, experience, insights,
and prioritiesof the audience.66The status of social female music-makingas
63. "Asthetisches 'remedium' fir den Ehemann" (Schumann, "Das 'lesende Frauenzimmer,"' 141).
64. Representationsof bird song in this collection similarlyframed female music-makingas
naturaland untutored. For more on representationsof bird song and femininity see Matthew
Head, "Birdsongand the Originsof Music,"Journal of theRoyalMusicalAssociation122 (1997):
1-23, esp. 22-23.
65. Though titled Gesange,these works are described as Ileine Cantaten on the flyleaf.A
note before the preface announces the availabilityof accompanimentalparts: "Die Stimmen zu
diesen kleinen Cantatensind bei Herrn Westphalund Comp. in Hamburg zu haben."
66. On the metaphor of the domestic "sphere" see Linda K. Kerber, "SeparateSpheres,
Female Worlds,Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," TheJournal of American
History75 (1988-89): 9-39.
231
"performance"must similarlyhave been unstable:now a more or less formal
and featured event, now simply one of many ongoing social activities,now
something in between, like playactingor the telling of a story.Relatingdirectly
to the question of reception, these variablesdetermine the registeroccupied
by musical activityand thus the range of pleasuresand significancesattached
to it.
Reichardt'sVI Concertspour le Clavecina l'usagedu beauxSexe(1774) attest these ambiguities(Fig. 1). At the fundamentallevel of genre they complicate, without blatantlycontradicting,the central narrativesof the repertory:
the nonprofessionalcultivationof music, the domestic sphere, and the feminine taste for light keyboardworks and songs. The concerto was a concert
genre-whether at court, in music societies, or in public concerts-and it
possessed masculine stylisticconnotations, particularlyin the north-German
circles in which Reichardt was active.67Violinistic figuration and pulsing
eighth-note bass lines in the allegrofirstmovements of Reichardt'sconcertos
evoke something of the "bold elan," the "power and vigor," and the "agitation" of which Koch spoke in his definition of "masculinemusic."68These
works are certainlyscaled down from the Berlin concertos of C. P. E. Bach
and Nichelmann in terms of keyboardfigurationand formal complexity,and
in this sense the concerto is domesticated. But the two- and three-part
melody-bass textures are not themselves exceptional in the north-German
concerto of the 1770s, and there is no reason to assume that we are dealing
here with a concession to the dedicatees.
The north-Germankeyboardconcerto of the 1770s differedfrom that of
Mozart in Vienna in the 1780s in the greater extent to which it mediated
between public and privaterealms.69Flexibilityof performanceresourceswas
literallywritten into the notated parts.70Reichardtwrote the chamberaccompaniment for two violins and violoncello into the keyboardpart, permitting
the soloist to play along in the tutti sections or to be her own accompaniment
in the absence of an ensemble. The directions "solo" and "tutti"in the keyboardpart could serve either as cues to the coordinationof an ensemble or as
invitationsto fantasy.As the latter,these directionssuggest that the works offered the jouissanceof an imaginaryconcertizing performance.Jouissance,to
referbackto Barthes'sThePleasureof the Text,is that transgressivethrillwhich
(in Stephen Heath's words) "shatters-dissipates, loses-cultural identity,
ego."71In this sense, the promise of a concertizingperformanceis an escapist
67. See Head, "Genderin Discourse on Genre," 145-47, 153-54, 161-67.
68. Koch, KurzgefafitesHandwirterbuch der Musik, 219; discussed in Head, "Gender in
Discourseon Genre," 167.
69. See Hugo Daffner, Die Entwicklung des Klavierkonzertsbis Mozart (1906; reprint,
Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1973); Hans Engel, Das Instrumentalkonzert:Eine musikgeschichtlicheDarstellung (1932; reprint, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1971); and Pipa
Studies(Oxford: Clarendon,1980).
Drummond, TheGermanConcerto:FiveEighteenth-Century
70. C. P. E. Bach had already used this procedure in his Sei Concertiper il Cembalo,H
471-76 (1771).
71. Heath, introductionto Barthes,Image, Music,Text,9.
232
Figure 1 Title-page engraving of J. F. Reichardt, Six Concertspour le Clavecin a l'usage du
beaux Sexe (London: J. Betz, ca. 1774); first published in Amsterdam in 1774 by Hummel.
Reproducedwith permissionof the BritishLibrary.
or utopian element (and thus typicalof luxury commodities). But Reichardt
and his publisherwould not haveprintedinstrumentalpartsif they did not anticipatesales,and the possibleuses of these works should not be criticallyprescribed.Farfrom confirmingthe confinementof femalemusic-makingto the
amateur/domesticsphere,these works testifyto the problemsin definingand
delimitingthat "sphere."
233
The frontispiece of the volume, a detail from an earlier publication of
keyboard music by Gottlieb Muffat, engages with these ambiguities about
the place and nature of female music-making.72The mythologization of the
mother-muse and her cherubic infants is a conventional gesture. As Leppert
notes, mythologization was a prevalentand highly equivocal form of female
representationalescapism in the eighteenth century, one that did not challenge official discourses of woman's place.73The engraving accompanying
Reichardt'sconcertos is a thinly disguised invocation of the composer's biirgerlicheMuse(middle-classmuse), who sits at (or ratherturned awayfrom) the
keyboardwith quill in hand. Her face-heaven-turned, transfixed,inspiredtaps into Renaissanceand Baroquerepresentationsof religiousconversionand
ecstasy.As an allegoryof music in the domestic sphere,the engravingpromises
an escapefrom the dysphoriaof that sphere:in place of routine, inspiration;in
place of straineddiscipline,harmony;in place of shriekinginfants, a cherubic
ensemble. In this light, the engravinghas a criticalelement only insofaras it
implies the topics of domestic dysphoriaobliquely,through the medium of a
correctivefantasydirectlymapped onto (and thus assuming)these topics.
In a couple of details,however,the engravingcould be seen to question the
mythologies of the female amateurin a more profound way.The most significant of these is that the keyboardistpens the music in which she performs.
Though explicable in terms of her personificationas muse, this image resonates both with the presence of female composers in Reichardt'simmediate
familyand with his acknowledgmentin his songs for the fairsex publishedin
the following year (1775) that women do compose and write poetry, and that
they thus transgressthe narrowly defined boundaries of musicianship this
repertory ascribedto them: "Does one not know of women and girls who
love solitude and who in their solitarycell have a desk and a piano and compose and sing?Do we not have [Anna] Amalia,Graifinn[Agnes au] Stolberg,
[Juliane] Benda?"74The referencehere to "Benda"is to Johann Friederich's
wife Juliane,nee Benda, who published songs in three volumes of Oden und
Lieder ... mit MelodienbeymKlavier zu singen (Berlin: J. Pauli, 1779-81)
72. Gottlieb Muffat, Componimentimusicali per il cembalo(Augsburg: Johann Christian
Leopold, 1726). An intermediaryor common source for the engravingcannot be ruled out since
the recyclingof frontispieceswas commonplace. Nonetheless, Muffat's Componimentiis a fitting
source for the frontispieceof Reichardt'sconcertos. Muffat'svolume was publishedwith a preface
promisingamusementand simplicity,and explainingsuch issuesas the choice of clefs,which notes
to take with which hands, and when to change finger on a held note. Apologizing for the lightness of content, Muffat states that the volume contains all kinds of "caprices, or so-called
galanterie" ("Capriccid'ogni Spezie, volgarmente Galanterie").At the same time, Muffat makes
no referenceto the fair sex, indicating that discoursesof musical amateurismand pleasurepreceded their alignment with women. The preface is cited from the edition of Muffat's
Componimentiby Guido Adler in Denkmdler der Tonkunstin Osterreich,ser. 3, pt. 3, vol. 7
(1896; reprint,Graz:AkademischeDruck- und Verlagsanstalt,1959), 7.
73. Leppert,Musicand Image, 194.
74. Reichardt,Gesinge,preface,v (see AppendixA below).
234
edited by her husband, and who issued her own Liederund Klaviersonatenin
1782 with the publisherBohn in Hamburg.75The genres concerned indicate
that conventions of gender and genre providedwayswomen composerscould
negotiate the press, not simply ways in which their musical practiceswere
prescribed.
Significantly,then, Reichardtacknowledges the existence of female composers and poets, but he locates their activityat a point of furthest remove
from public light-the "solitary cell." Composition is thus described as a
carceral,even punitive, occupation, as though composition were a punishment. Reichardt'sdescriptionresonateswith the ascendanceof the enclosed
disciplinaryspace, the prison and asylum,in later-eighteenth-centurysociety.76
This fantasyof female creativewithdrawal,in which authorshipand isolation
are renderedvirtuallysynonymous,representsan attemptto distanceand control an activitythat was threateningfrom the standpointsof both male identity
and business.But the withdrawalReichardtfantasizesis not sociologicallyreliable. To choose an exampleclose to home, it is not borne out by the musical
life of Reichardt'sdaughter,Louise. She organized and rehearsedpublic concerts in Hamburg, taught voice, and was extensivelypublished as a composer
of songs.77At this point, however, the argument has alreadycrossed to the
thirdlevel of critique.
Level 3: social contexts and dissent
The third level of critique of the notion of female musical containment explores the socio-cultural context in which music for the fair sex was performed. The quaint dedication to ladies, as suggested above, was not
innocent. Music for the fair sex, particularlythe publications from the last
quarterof the century,was situatedwithin an emergent feministcontestation.
The element of hostility to female education that Sabine Schumann notes in
women's periodicalsbespoke a backlashagainstthe extent to which such education alreadypressured the structures of inequality.78Marianne Ehrmann
founded an initiallyoutspoken periodical,Amaliens Erholungsstunden,
"dedicated to Germany'sdaughters,"earlyissues of which questioned ideas about
woman's nature and place in a sharp,satiricaltone.79The year 1792 saw the
publication of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel's Uber die biirgerlicheVerbes75. Franz Lorenz, Die MusikerfamilieBenda:Franz Benda und seine Nachkommen(Berlin:
de Gruter, 1967), 101; Krille, Beitrige, 174-75; Nancy B. Reich, "JulianeReichardt,"in The
New GroveDictionary of WomenComposers,ed. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel (London:
Macmillan,1994), 386.
76. Foucault, Discipline and Punish; and Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A
History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York:Vintage Books,
1988).
77. Nancy B. Reich, comp., LouiseReichardt:Songs(New York:Da Capo, 1981), ix.
78. Schumann,"Das 'lesende Frauenzimmer,'" 154.
79. Ibid., 156-58.
235
serungder Weiber,a direct challenge to Kant'santhropology of the sexes and
Rousseau's ideas on female education.80 Hippel highlighted the paradox
whereby a rhetoric of emancipationthrough education was applied only to
men; he questioned the notion of an innate difference between men and
women, and describedofficialviews of female characternot only as means of
oppressionbut as products of classconsciousness.In the following year,Mary
Wollstonecraft'sA Vindicationof the Rights of Womanwas issued in German
translation.81By the time ofReichardt's Wiegenlieder(1798), as discussedbelow, the inscriptionof woman's role as mother had taken a defensiveand selfconscious turn. A case study of these worksoffersthe opportunityto elaborate
on this third level of critiqueas well as reengage with issues of textual instability and performance(levels 1 and 2 above).
Lullabies and the National Breast
The artificeof the composed, notated lullaby is easily overlooked. Lullabies
intervene in the mother-infant relationship and compositionally script the
maternalvoice, but they portray this voice and relationship as natural and
unmediated. Reichardt'slullabies are particularlypersuasivein this regard.
In the prefaceto his Wiegenlieder,
the composer appealedto the singer'ssense
of herselfas a mother-under the guise of an appealto self-evidentmaternal
instinct-in order to specifythe appropriatedeliverywith unusualprecision:
Nor will it seem strangethatthe songspossessno tempo,dynamic,or other
The singerwillquicklysensethatallthesesongs,in orperformance
markings.
der to be justwhattheyshouldbe, must be sung in a moderateindeedslow
tempo and with a soft, half-voice.... A good tendermother,who feels and
knowswell thatonlysoftemotionsandgentletonespacifya gentlechild;who
is ableto lendnot only salutarysleep,but alsoa well-orderedfuturelife;who
willneveroverlookthe futurelife,who willneveroverlookthe softnessof tone
whichshe (witheyeslookingdownuponthe tenderchild)feelsonlytoo wellin
herself.82
Contributingto this sense of a naturaland instinctivematernity,the songs
presentimages of mothering as immutable,timeless,outside the boundariesof
historicalprogress (Table 2). They range over soothing invocations to sleep
(nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 9), incitementsto the baby'slaughter(no. 3), a seriesof directives to the growing boy espousing manly civic virtues (no. 8), an allegory of
80. Publishedanonymouslyin Berlin in 1792 by Voss. The 1826 edition has been reprinted
with an introductionby JulianeDittrich-Jacobi(Vaduz,Liechtenstein:Topos, 1981).
81. As MariaWollstonecraft,Rettung der Rechtedes Weibesmit Bemerkungeniiberpolitische
und moralische Gegenstdnde, ed. with an introduction by Christian Gotthilf Salzmann
(Schnepfenthal:Erziehungsanstalt,1793).
82. J. F. Reichardt, Wiegenliederfiirgute deutscheMutter (Leipzig: GerhardFleischer the
Younger, 1798), i-ii (see AppendixB below).
236
Table 2
J. F. Reichardt, WiegenliederfiirgutedeutscheMutter (1798)
Title
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
First Line of Text
Authora
Meter Key
"So schlafenun, du Kleine!"
"Schlummre,Bubchen,
schlummr'im Schog"
"LieblicherKnab',
ich wiege"
"Schlief die Auglein,
holder Kleiner!"
"Schlafe,siiger Knabe"
Claudius
Agnes Gr.
Zu Stollberg
F. L. Gr.
Zu Stollberg
Jacobi
2/4
2/4
F major strophic
G major strophic
6/8
F major strophic
4/4
Ebmajor strophic
F. L. Gr.
4/4
Zu Stollberg
Jacobi
3/8
F major strophic
2/4
F major strophic
4/4
2/4
G major strophic
F major strophic
2/4
G minor strophic
Campe
4/4
F major strophic
Schiller
2/4
Bbmajor throughcomposed
Spruchb
A major single
throughcomposed
verse
F minor strophic
"SchlummreLiebchen,
bist noch klein"
Friederike
Schlaf, Kindlein, schlafe
sanft und sfi3"
Brun
"LieberkleinerEngel schlaf" Burmann
Claudius
"Schlaf,siiger Knabe, sfig
und mild"
"Schlafsiif und hold, mein KISchmidt
trautesKind!"
10 Wiegenliedeiner
ungliicklichen
Mutter
11 Fur Sophieihrer "Schlaf,Kindchen, schlaf"
Puppevorzusingen
12 Das Kind in der "GliicklicherJiingling"
Wiege
13
"LieblicherAbendstern"
Herder, after 4/4
Sappho
14 Wiegenliedeiner
ungliicklichen
Mutter
15 Chansond'une
malheureusemere
"Schlafsanft,mein Kind,
schlafsanft und sch6n!"
Herder, after 4/4
the old
Scottish
Mr. Berquin, 4/4
afterthe
Scottish
"Dors mon enfant, clos
ta paupiere"
16 LadayAnne
"Balow,my babe, ly stil
Bothwell'sLament. and sleipe!"
A ScottishSong
17
"Annchenvon Tharauist
die mir gefallt"
18 Landlied.Schd- "Meine SchafchenMorgens
fruh"
ferin
19 Das Rschen
"Noch nicht entbltit zur
Rose"
20 Hoffnung
"Es reden und traumen
die Menschen viel"
aAsidentifiedbyReichardt.
bSpruch= proverbialphrase.
Anne
3/8
Bothwell
(old Scottish)
Herder, after 3/4
the old Prussian
Herder, after 4/4
the Scottish
2/4
Baggesen
Anonymous 6/8
Form
G major strophic
E minor single
throughcomposed
verse
F minor strophic
F major strophic
F major strophic
F major strophic
F major strophic
237
pregnancyin the long-awaitedunfolding of the rosebud (no. 19), laments of
deserted or otherwise cheated mothers (nos. 10, 14, 15, 16-the latterthree
declaredas translationsof Scottish and French lyrics),and a husband'spledge
of eternaldevotion (no. 17, by Herder, significantly"fromthe old Prussian").
Getting the baby off to sleep-the conceit of functionalitythrough which
Reichardtmarketedthe volume-emerges not as the purpose so much as the
topic (or fiction) of the songs, which paint the rocking of the soporificcradle
in broken-chord accompaniment. This soothing motion occasions the
mother-narrator'sreflection, her mind wandering over maternitypast, present, and future;over fate, hope, and tragedy;love, health, and sickness;the
inconstancyof men. The scope of these reflectionswithin the strophicframework of the songs produces an intimate and hypnotic atmosphere.References
to prayer,God in heaven, bird song, and springflowersbuild up a paradisiacal
nature-Christianitycomplex that reassuringlyenfolds both mother and child.
Night, the moon, and starsare subjectsof devotion and prayer,with a glint of
folk superstition. But these imaginary landscapes are contained within the
miniaturedimensions of Reichardt'ssyllabic,strophic melodies, analogues of
the "quiet, protected little room" ("stilles,beschirmtesKimmerlein") of the
seventh song, "SchlafKindlein,schlafesanftund siiss."
It is preciselyin the peaceful immutabilityof their imagery that the songs
revealtheir rhetoric,however, for this was a time of flux and instabilityin the
discoursessurroundingthe mother. The instabilitylay not in a basicquestioning of the duty of women to bear children, though feministssuch as Sophie
von la Roche and Marianne Ehrmann did dispute the assumed primacy of
this role. Rather,dissent focused on the specificpracticesof nursing and child
rearingin the wake of Rousseau'shighly influentialtreatiseon education and
child development. Emile offered a complete program for the production of
the healthy citizen-one devoted to the common, civic good-and Rousseau's rejectionof the practiceof wet-nursingwas fundamentalto the project
he outlined.83The use of wet nurses was prevalentin Germanyat this time;
breast-feedingand the physicalwork of child rearingwere deemed inappropriate for leisured women. Emile acted as a catalystin an attempt to reassign
these tasks to the biological mother. In this context, the breastwas figured
symbolicallyin relationto nationhood, as well as in relationto the familyand
the role of woman as mother.84Reichardt'slullabieswere situatedwithin and
83. Allan Bloom, introduction to Emile, by Jean-JacquesRousseau, trans. and ed. Allan
Bloom (St. Ives: Penguin, 1995), 3.
84. On the ascendanceof the breastin eighteenth-centurydiscoursesof woman and maternity see Londa Schiebinger,"WhyMammalsAre CalledMammals,"in her Nature'sBody:Gender
in theMaking of ModernScience(London: Pandora, 1994), 40-47. The allegoricalfigure of the
state as nursing mother in RevolutionaryFrance is discussed in Mary Jacobus, "Incorruptible
Milk: Breast-Feedingand the French Revolution," in Rebel Daughters:Womenand the French
Revolution,ed. SaraMelzer and Leslie W. Rabine (New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1992),
54-75; and in Simon Richter, "Wet-Nursing,Onanism, and the Breastin Eighteenth-Century
Germany,"Journal of theHistoryof Sexuality7 (1996): 1-22, at 5.
238
addressedthemselvesto this debate, and they exemplifyMarilynYalom'scontention that "at no time in history-barring our own age-have breastsbeen
more contested than in the eighteenth century."85
Reichardt'slullabies speak in some detail to Rousseau's complaints and
admonishments.Rousseauinveighed againstthe way in which (in his new derisiveuse of the term) "bourgeois"women rejectedtheir role as mother and
turned instead to the sterile and corrupting entertainments of the city.86
Presumablyat issue here are the carnivals,masked balls, and coffeehouses eschewed by the pious narratorof Drefiler's"Die Zufriedenheit"(Ex. 3 above)
in favorof music. Women, Rousseau charged, neglected their first duty; they
handed their children to carelesswet nurses who fed them a foreign milk,
bound them in swaddling,and suspendedthem (so bound) from coat hooks,
so constrictingtheir chests that their faces turned violet and they were unable
to cry out. The potential results of this neglect, Rousseau asserted,were the
alienationof children and parents, the depopulation of Europe, and the degeneration of moral order. Under such conditions of mothering, everything
militatedagainstmoralhealth, strengthand vigor, and the preservationof natural instincts.87Against this backdrop,with characteristically
vivid visual and
affective realism, Reichardt conjured musical-poetic images of a rustic and
eternal mother-infantbond, images that answerto every deficiencyidentified
by Rousseau.
Reichardtwas familiarwith Rousseau'spublished writings at first hand,88
but Rousseau'sideas also circulatedin Germany through translations,commentaries,and practicalapplication.There the reform of child rearingalong
the lines of Rousseauwas advocatedin the 1780s by a group of pedagogues
known as the Philanthropists,centered around Joachim Heinrich Campe in
Hamburg. Together they formed the Society of PracticalPedagogues who
published the sixteen-volume Universal Revision of the Entire Schooland
EducationalSystembetween 1785 and 1791.89As Simon Richternotes, "the
philosophical pillars of this undertaking were German translationsof John
Locke's Some ThoughtsConcerningEducation in volume 9 and Rousseau's
Emile in volumes 12-15, both accompaniedby extensive dialogic commentaryby more than ten scholars."90
Breast-feedingby the biologicalmother was
advocated in this work in essays that dealt both with the salutaryeffects of
maternallactationand with the "vice"of childhood masturbation-topics that
85. MarilynYalom,A Historyof theBreast(London:HarperCollins,1997), 105.
86. The term bourgeoisis particularlydifficultfor eighteenth-centurystudies becauseit brings
with it the anachronisticcontempt of Marxist theory. But it was alreadyused pejorativelyby
Rousseau in Emile to identify people who (alienatedfrom natural,robust emotions) distinguish
their own good from the common good. See Bloom's introductionto Emile,by Rousseau,5.
87. Rousseau,Emile,44-47.
88. Hanns Dennerlein,Johann FriedrichReichardt(Minster: Helios, 1930), 16.
89. See ChristaKersting,Die Geneseder Paedagogikim 18.Jahrhundert:Campes"Allgemeine
Revision"im Kontextder neuzeitlichenWissenschaft
(Weinheim:Deutscher Studienverlag,1992).
90. Richter,"Wet-Nursing,"13.
239
were closely tied.91The Germaninfant sucklingat its mother's breastbecame
a cherished image. Foreign milk was shunned. "Holy! Holy! is the mother
who breast-feedsher own children.... Let fashion say what it will: mother is
mother," exclaimed an anonymous author in the women's periodical Idas
Blumenkorbchen of 1793.92
Such rhetoricwas part of the broaderbacklashagainstfemaleemancipation
in the late eighteenth century.Ruth Perry,one of many recent writersto deal
with the discourses surrounding the eighteenth-century breast, notes how
such rhetoricswere defensivelyaimed against those who demanded equality
for the sexes.93In 1794 it became Prussianlaw that women should breast-feed
their own infants.But, as Yalomnotes, this legislationwas resisted:"If records
from Hamburg are indicativeof wider German practices,few ladies took to
nursingtheiryoung."94
Reichardt'sprefaceto the Wiegenliedertakesup a position in this contestation, advocatingbreast-feedingin its firstsentence and bolsteringthe injunction with an appeal to both nationhood and morality: "Good German
mothers breast-feedand look after their infant[s] themselves and they gladly
sing them to sleep."95Nationhood was itself an emergent ideal at this point in
German history.The Napoleonic occupation of parts of Prussiain 1796-99
had a galvanizingeffect on Germannationalism,in which context the possibility Rousseauheld out for the production of healthy,nationalcitizens through
breast-feedingby the biological mother proved particularlytempting (despite
the Frenchsource of the theory).
The title-pageengravingto Reichardt'sWiegenlieder(Fig. 2) is illuminated
by both the prefaceand the first song of the collection, "So schlafenun, du
Kleine"(Ex. 5). In the engraving,a woman in a moonlit valleyholds a babyin
her lap. The infant's loose garments and the mother's open dress speak to
Rousseau'srecommendations,and though breast-feedingis not explicitlyillustrated, it is implied in the infant's sated sleep and the proximity of the
baby'spuckeredmouth to the mother's barelyconcealed nipple. The picture
impliesa story,and this is preciselywhat the firstsong provides.
91. A perceivedanalogy between the erectile nipple and penis, along with the theory of the
fungibilityof humors, accordingto which the bodily fluidswere transformableone into the other,
underlaythe supposedphysiologicalcorrespondenceof lactationand the emission of fluidsduring
sexual arousal. Breast-feedingwas also inverselytied to masturbationas that good which safeguardedagainstthe lattervice. Onanismwas supposedlyinspiredby the lasciviouscaressesof wet
nurses,whose milk was "the potential conveyor of both infection and depravedmoral character"
(Richter,"Wet-Nursing,"17).
92. "Selig! Selig! Ist die Mutter, die selber ihr Kind saugt! ... Spreche die Mode, was sie
wolle: Mutter ist Mutter" (Idas Blumenkirbchen:
MonatsschriftfiirDamen, vol. 2 [Berlin, 1793];
cited in Schumann,"Das 'lesende Frauenzimmer,'" 160).
93. Perry,"Colonizing the Breast:Sexualityand Maternityin Eighteenth-CenturyEngland,"
Journal of theHistoryofSexuality2 (1991): 212.
94. Yalom,A Historyof theBreast,115.
95. Reichardt,Wiegenlieder,
preface,i (see AppendixB below).
240
Figure 2 Title-pageengravingofJ. F. Reichardt,WiegenliederfiirgutedeutscheMitter (Leipzig:
GerhardFleischerthe Younger,1798). Reproducedwith permissionof the BritishLibrary.
241
(1798), "Soschlafenun,du Kleine"
Wiegenlieder
Example5 J.F. Reichardt,
/^^-
^
^-H
r'IJ
r
pi
r
;
i
So schlaf-e nun, du Klein-e! Was wei-nest du? Sanft ist im Mond-en- schei-ne und siiBdie Ruh.
9:
irf if
Hi
cAr _
iF
in
In "So schlafenun, du Kleine,"on a text by MatthiasClaudius,a mother
talksto her infant about the moon, recallingher infancyin her own mother's
arms (see Ex. 5). Breast-feeding,implied in the engraving,is here made explicit. The mother and her moonlit breast replace the urban wet nurse with
her swaddlingand foreign milk, the infant'sgarmentsloosening the constriction endured by Rousseau'sviolet-faced swaddling-bound baby on a hook.
The text of the song runs as follows:
So schlafenun, du Kleine!
Wasweinest du?
Sanftist im Mondenscheine
Und siig die Ruh.
Sleep now, little one!
Why areyou crying?
In the moonlight all is gentle
And rest is sweet.
Auch kommt der Schlafgeschwinder
Und sonder Miih;
Der Mond freut sich der Kinder,
Und liebet sie.
Sleep too comes more quickly
And without trouble;
The moon delights in children,
And loves you.
Er liebt zwar auch die Knaben,
Doch Madchen mehr;
Giesst freundlichsch6ne Gaben
Von oben her.
The moon loves boys for sure,
And little girls even more;
Diffusing kind and lovely gifts
From up above.
Bescheint sie, wenn sie saugen,
Recht wunderbar;
Schenktihnen blaueAugen
Und blondes Haar.
If you suckle, the moon shines on you
Trulywondrously;
It gives you blue eyes
And blond hair.
Alt ist er wie ein Rabe,
Sieht manches Land,
Mein Vaterhat als Knabe
Ihn schon gekannt.
It is as old as a raven,
It sees many a land,
As a boy, my father
Alreadyknew of it.
Und bald nach ihren Wochen
Hat Mutter 'mal
Mit ihm von mir gesprochen:
Sie safiim Thai.
And soon afterher confinement
[My] mother,
Sitting in the valley,
Often talkedto it about me.
242
Journalof the AmericanMusicologicalSociety
In einer Abendstunde,
Den Busen bloss,
Ich lag mit offnem Munde
In ihrem Schoss;
At eventide,
Against her breast,
I lay in her lap
With open mouth;
Sie sah mich an, fir Freude
Ein Thrinchen lief,
Der Mond beschien uns beide,
Ich lag und schlief;
She looked down at me with joy
A little tear escaped,
The moon shone on both of us,
I lay and slept.
Da sprachsie: "Mond, o scheine,
Ich hab sie lieb,
Schein Gliick fir meine Kleine!"
Ihr Auge blieb,
Then said she: "Moon, oh light,
I love thee,
Shine luck for my little one!"
Her gaze dwelt,
Blieb lang am Monde kleben,
Und flehte mehr.
Der Mond fing an zu beben
Als horte er;
Dwelt long upon the moon,
And pleaded more.
The moon began to tremble
As if it heard her;
Und denkt nun immer wieder
An diesen Blick,
Und scheint von hoch hernieder
Mir lauterGliick.
And now the moon alwaysthinks
Of this look
And down from high shines
Only good luck.
Er schien mir unterm Kranze
It shone for me, under the wedding
crown
In the face of my betrothed,
And in the marriagedance
Before you were conceived.
Ins Brautgesicht,
Und bei dem Ehrentanze,
Du warstnoch nicht.
Maternity is situated here on the edge of the sanctioned limits of
Enlightened rationality.Superstitionis deployed in an attempt to situate the
mother in a timeless realm of folk experience and wisdom. A sort of patron
saint,the moon, is the mother'swishing well, grantingher child coveted "blue
eyes and blond hair."Ancient and all seeing (stanza 5), the pale moon, itself a
breast to the mother and her child, lights a perpetualcircle of maternity,for
"soon after her confinement / [my] mother, / sitting in the valley,/ often
talkedto it about me" (stanza6). These revolvinggenerationsare matched in
the twelve strophicrepetitionsof the melody.
The Volkstiimlichkeit
of Reichardt'ssongs, their "folk song" simplicity,is
in
the
deployed
Wiegenliederwitha more particularsignificanceto the topic of
as
maternity.Just Rousseauattributedthe abandonmentof woman's maternal
role to the blandishmentsof the city, Reichardtchooses for his ideal images a
pastoral scene. The key of F major (which has rustic connotations), horn
fifths, and the 2/4 contredanseare furtherreassuranceof a return to nature.
243
By this date, strophicsettings bore connotations of nature,instinct, and untutored musicality.96
As a form of rhetoricalmultiplicatiothey also possessedthe
power of insistence;in performancethey persuadeas to the naturalnessof the
images they convey. Strophicform also conveys something of the temporality
of the scenes described,a large-scaleformal echo of the gently rocking cradle
illustratedin the accompanimentto severalsongs.
But the new ideal of mother-as expounded by Reichardt,his poets, and
the engraver-brought new fearsand new transgressivefantasiesthat further
destabilizedthe authorityand disciplinaryefficacyof the collection. A literary
discourse of the child murderesssprung up around the image of the "good
German mother." Ottilie's slip in ElectiveAffinities by which Edward and
Charlotte'sbaby is lost to the darkpond is just one of numerous cautionary
melodramas.97The sociologicaltruth-valueof Reichardt'slullabiesis no more
secure than that of the contraryfantasiesthat surroundedthem, and the efficacy of his songs as instrumentsof containment is compromised by the contradictoryand unstablesocialand discursivecontext.
In Reichardt'slullabies, the composer's personal emotional needs are as
much at stake as the exercise of power, the attempt at broad social-political
control. There emerges here a psychologized investment in the maternal
voice, which is scriptedin accordancewith not only a disciplinaryagenda but
masculinepsychologicalneeds, the two levels closely linked. Reichardt'sprescriptions,above, about the qualityof voice with which his lullabiesshould be
sung relate to maternaltenderness, and its loss, as topics of male sensibility.
The maternalvoice as something remembered, lost, an object of mourning,
appears(not coincidentally)in a text by Rousseau,though one that Reichardt
could not have known: the Confessions.Rousseau's tearful and fragmentary
recollectionsof his nanny'slullabiesand folk songs bespeaka sentimentaland
psychologized investmentin the mother, in which the recollectionof the maternalvoice signalsat once presenceand loss.98In such moments of masculine
investment,Reichardt'slullabiesfor good Germanmothers, like the repertory
for the fairsex as a whole, revealthe fact of a misdedication:this was music for
women in only the most fragilesense. In the largerpicture,it servedmasculine
needs, desires,and (to some problematicextent) power. These masculineinvestments are of criticalimportance because, I have suggested above, such
96. Heinrich Christoph Koch, MusikalischesLexicon (1802; reprint, Hildesheim: Georg
Olms, 1964), "Lied,"901-4.
97. Goethe, Elective Affinities, 205-9. Reichardt and Horstig issued Zwei schwabische
Volkslieder(Two Swabian Folksongs)in the second volume of BerlinischemusikalischeZeitung
(1806), the second song titled "Die Kindermorderin."The eponymous Swabian'sdespairover
her deed draws forth compassion and displays of masculine sensibility from the editors.
Nonetheless, the song is offered by virtueof the "moralimprovement"that might be had from it,
as the Swabianmaid is led awayto the gallows.
98. Jean-JacquesRousseau, Les Confessions,vol. 1 of Oeuvrescompletes(Geneva: Galliard,
1959), bk. 1, p. 11.
244
music may well have proven ineffectiveas a purelydisciplinarytool. Perhapsit
is appropriate,then, that in an unguarded moment Reichardt should have
confessed to playing, if not his Wiegenlieder,at least his earliercollection of
firs schoneGeschlechtof 1775) to none other
songs for ladies (the Gesadnge
than-himself!99
Afterword: Resisting Valuation
Music associatedwith female amateurpracticesis almost invariablyjudged to
be of inferioror at best mediocre quality:"The very most that can be expected
of music for girls," wrote an anonymous reviewer of Bidenbenz's Leichte
Klaviersticke (1799), "is that it isn't totally bad."'00 Hiller's review of
Wenkel's Clavierstiickesimilarlyworked from the assumptionthat this music
was mediocre and trivial. Reichardt spoke with embarrassment about his
Concerts.Transplantinginto the realm of compositionthe ideology of untutored pleasuresurroundingthe female practice of music, he described these
works as "juvenilia... composed for the sheerpleasureof it [ausLieb und Lust
geschrieben],without deep insight into art, and barely with knowledge of
common rules."'01In the prefaceto his Gesdngehe left it to the executantsto
determine if the collection was "entirelyinconsequential."'02In this century,
an otherwise sympatheticstudy of women in German music passes over the
eighteenth-centuryrepertoryfor the fair sex with the apparentlyself-evident
assertionthat this music "hardlypossessesinnerworth."'03
The denigrationof ladies'music in the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth
centurieswas closelylinked to discoursesof the artist-composeras genius, and
to the emergent aesthetic of the artwork.As JeffreyKallberghas discussed
with referenceto the nocturne, the amateurfemale practiceof music continued to inspireideas that some genres and styleswere intrinsically"feminine"the salon and the drawing room extended the eighteenth-centurypractices
(both criticaland musical) of accomplishment.But this continuity notwithstanding, the Tonkiinstlermight rhetoricallyrenounce the lady at music-her
99. Reichardt,
Gesdnge,
preface,iii (seeAppendixA below).
100. "AnleichtenKlavierstiicken
fur Anfainger
und die grosseKlassespielenderMadchen
kannmannichtzu vielhaben,vorausgesezt,
dasssie nichttotalschlechtsind"(reviewof Leichte
vonBidenbenz[Leipzig:Breitkopfund Hartel,1799], in Allgemeine
Klaviersticke,
componirt
musikalische
Zeitung3 [October1799]:55).
101. Reichardt,"ChronologischesVerzeichnifi,"in Musikalisches
Kunstmagazin,ed.
208.
Reichardt,
102. Reichardt,
A below).
Gesdnge,
preface,iii (seeAppendix
103. "Schlieflichentstehtsogareine Literatur
fiirMadchenund Frauen,die kauminnere
hat"(Annemarie
derMusikerziehung
und MusikiiBerechtigung
Krille,Beitrdgezur Geschichte
bung der deutschenFrau [von 1750 bis 1820] [Berlin:Triltschund Huther, 1938], 206).
Krille's
sensehereis ambiguous-theremarkcouldbe takento meanthatthe dedicaAdmittedly,
tiontogirlsandladiesis itselfwithoutjustification.
245
death the sacrificethrough which the composer was born. The female amateur came to personify the intolerable restrictionsof bourgeois taste upon
masculine genius, inspiration, and creativity. Charles Rosen, discussing
Beethoven's Hammerklaviersonata (1817-18), reportsa remarkof Czernyto
this effect:
The decisionto continuewith the more purelyclassicalformswas, in its
standards,
[thesonata]wasmonstrously
way,heroic.... Bycontemporary
long
and scandalously
difficult:Czernywrotein Beethoven'sconversational
scrapbook that a ladyin Viennawho had been practicingfor monthscomplained
thatshestillcouldnot playthe beginningof the sonata.104
In this century, biographiesof J. F. Reichardt,seeking to assesshis development as a composer, have redeployedthis renunciationof the lady at music in
order to plot a course of compositionalmaturation.Hanns Dennerlein, picking up on Reichardt'sown remarkabove, describesthe composer turning his
back on his concertos for the fairsex (those "fashionableand foreign"works)
as he came under the spell of the Berlinschool and C. P. E. Bach'streatiseOn
the TrueArt of PlayingKeyboardInstruments.'05
From the presentvantagepoint, in which systemsof valuationsurrounding
female music-makingand female composers have been scrutinized, the selfevidence of negative judgments of musical quality is no longer clear.106The
repertory can be seen to stress or resist contemporarysystems of valuation,
rather than to serve as their victim.107Music for the fair sex exemplifies an
eighteenth-centuryalignment of the aesthetic category of the beautifulwith
women and the feminine.108Edmund Burke's sense- and perception-based
account of beauty is particularly suggestive of the stylistic and affective
characteristicsof the repertory.For Burke, aesthetic beauty lay in smallness,
smoothness, gradual(not sudden) variation,delicacy,and softness.109Beauty
in sounds consists in these qualities and, additionally,in the avoidance of
"loudnessand strength ... notes which are shrill,or harsh,or deep; [beauty]
104. Rosen, The ClassicalStyle:Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven(New York:W. W. Norton,
1972), 404.
105. Dennerlein, Reichardt,20. Cf. Hans Michael Schletterer'sJohann FriedrichReichardt:
Sein Lebenund seine Werke(Augsburg:J. Schlosser,1865), in which Reichardt'scompositions for
women arereviewedwith approbation(p. 216).
106. Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
107. Similarly,conflicts in the valuation of professionalParisianfemale fortepianistsin the
mid-nineteenthcenturyare exploredby KatharineEllisin "FemalePianistsand Their Male Critics
in Nineteenth-CenturyParis,"this Journal 50 (1997): 353-85.
108. See Immanuel Kant, "The Sense of the Beautifuland the Sublime,"in ThePhilosophy
of
Kant, ed. and trans.CarlJ. Friedrich(New York:Modern Library,1949), 3-13.
109. Burke, A PhilosophicalEnquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful,ed. with an introductionby Adam Phillips(Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress, 1990), pt.
3, sec. 18, p. 107.
246
agreesbest with such as are clear,even, smooth, and weak."'l0The pertinence
of such characterizationsto the physique, character,and voice of the fairsex
was largelyself-evident:"I need here say little of the fairsex, where I believe
the point will be easilyallowed me. The beauty of women is considerablyowing to their weakness, or delicacy,and is even enhanced by their timidity,a
qualityof mind analogous to it."'ll Burke'sremarkson the avoidanceof dynamic and registralextremes are echoed in Reichardt'sdirectionson how to
Directions regardingexpressionin the Gesangealso
sing the Wiegenlieder."2
in
locate the music the affectivesphere of the beautiful:"stii und lieblich,"
"m'figiggeschwind," "angenehmund etwas lebhaft."The courtshipfunction
of music for the fairsex is relevanthere because,in Burke'sdefinition, beauty
"is that qualityor those qualitiesin bodies by which they cause love, or some
passion similar to it.""3
The alignmentof beauty and the femininewas not, however, entirelypositive:it bespoke a dissatisfactionwith the limits of the beautifulas a category of
aestheticexperienceand an increasedfascinationwith the sublime as linked to
masculinist theories of artistic creativity (genius, inspiration) and forms of
artisticexperienceand enjoymentthat partookof pain, disorder,and chaos. As
a form of socialentertainment,ladies'music betrayeda function that rendered
it ineligible (along with dance and Tafelmusik)for purely aesthetic, disinterested contemplationwithin a Kantianframeworkof aestheticjudgment.
Music for the fairsex stressedofficialsystemsof musical-aestheticvaluation
by blurringthe boundariesof music and the body, and thus the boundarybetween the visual and the auditory. In a gallant touch in the preface to the
Gesange,Reichardtattributedany beauty the songs might possess to the performance,or rather,to the performer,whose physicalbeautyis carriedon the
composer'smelodies like perfume on a breeze:
Whetheror not, dearladies,I submitto you herean entirelyinconsequential
collectionof songs,you andyouradmirers
mustdecide.Not withoutreasondo
I hide behindthis, sinceyou will certainlybe for me the most advantageous
judgesof my work.Sung from your sweet lips, the songs will seem all the
Oh! If
more-perhapsevena thousandtimesmorebeautifulto youradmirers.
I count
only everyreviewerhadhis conqueringbeauty!But in all seriousness,
uponthe beautythatyou willbringto the songs.14
This referenceto the performer'spretty mouth (troping the final couplet of
the firstsong of the collection, quoted above in Ex. 4), along with references
at the end of the prefaceto the performer's"prettylittle hands,"bringscorpo-
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
Ibid., pt. 3, sec. 25, p. 112.
Ibid., pt. 3, sec. 16, p. 106, with specific(though not exclusive)referenceto delicacy.
Reichardt,Wiegenlieder,
preface,ii (see AppendixB below).
Burke,Enquiry,pt. 3, sec. 1, p. 83.
Reichardt,Gesdnge,preface,iii (see AppendixA below).
247
real and visual elements to the fore, the female body ratherthan the music
"itself" the locus and subject of aesthetic valuation. The boundaries of
"women" and "music"dissolve as femininityachievesan abstractequivalence
with musical-aestheticbeauty.This disembodiment of femininityarisesparadoxicallyin a discoursefocused on the female body. Economicallydisempowered in her amateurmusical practices,aestheticallyenervatedin the leisured,
purposelesssphere of the home, the executant of Reichardt'spreface(whose
mouth is so vividly fantasized) becomes an aphrodisiacal alchemy in his
Pygmalionimagination.
This is not the only mythicallayerto the repertory.For the lady at music
was also an eighteenth-centuryretellingof at leastpart of the myth of Pandora
-not of her box from which were releasedall the sufferingsof the world, but
of woman's artfulmanufactureby the gods as punishmentfor the mortaltheft
of Zeus's fire (as told in Hesiod's Theogony).It is this notion of women as artifact that is reinscribedin the accomplishmentideal, the references to song
within the songs, and the iconographyof the lady at music. For the sociological realityof the female musical amateurwas problematic:she was first and
foremost an ideal, produced by and fantasized within the music that was
published in her name. Mediating between the realms of art and reality,of
aestheticsand flesh, she evades the categoriesof embodied and disembodied
discourse, complicating the premises upon which historicalwriting is predicated.1l5
The idealizationsof women in music for the fairsex undoubtedly exerted
ideological pressure.Self-referenceto the female at music informed and surrounded the performanceand reception of this music like so many mirrorsin
which the executant could find her own ideal image. These reflexiveimages
should not be read at face value, however, for their significancelies not in any
sociological truth. On the contrary,they disclose the imaginative,fictive, discursiveregistersof the volumes in which they areembedded. In so doing, they
open possibilitiesfor an assessmentof female music-makingthat establishes
criticaldistancefrom, and therebyresists,officialdisciplinaryrhetoric.
115. "The female is the first imitation.... Artifact and artificeherself, Pandorainstallsthe
woman as eidolonin the frame of human culture" (Froma I. Zeitlin, "Travestiesof Gender and
Genre in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousae,"
in Writing and Sexual Difference,ed. Elizabeth
Abel [Brighton:Harvester,1983], 154).
248
(Berlin:Friedrich
Appendix A J. Fr. Reichardt,Gesangefiirsschine Geschlecht
Wilhelm Birnstiel,1775), preface.
[iii]116 An die Schonen.
Ob ich Ihnen, meine Schonen, hiermit keine ganz gleichgiltige Sammlung von
Gesangen uiberreiche,das mogen Sie und Ihre Verehrer entscheiden. Nicht ohne
Ursache stecke ich mich hinter diese: denn sie werden gewif fir mich die vortheilhaftestenBeurtheilermeiner Stiicke sein. Von Ihrem schonen Munde gesungen, wiirden Ihre Bewunderer die Lieder noch einmal, vielleicht noch tausendmal so schon
finden, als sie wirklichsind. O hitte doch jeder Recensentseine siegende Schone! Aber
im Ernst,ich rechne viel auf die Verschonerung,die Sie diesen Liederngeben werden,
und ich glaube gewig, daf sie deshalb mir selbst gefallen, weil sie mir meine schone
Freundinnen,oder liebe Schwester,oder-ich selbstvorgesungen.
[iv] Da blattert mir eben mein ernster und bescheidenerFreund die Sammlung
durch und ruft:Auch Stiicke von mir?Die passenja gar nicht in die Sammlung.Was
soil da das ernste Gesprich des Vatersund Sohns, und das Lied an Hermenfriedund
das Revier?Und dann, wie haben sie das Lied eines Kindes, voller Gemahlde, wie
haben sie das componiren konnen?-Ich streite nicht mit meinen Freunden, deshalb
gebe ich ihm keineAntwort, aberIhnen will ich doch ein paarWorte dariibersagen.
Was das Gesprachdes Vatersund Sohns anbelangt:so kann das auch wohl seinen
[sic "feinen"] Nutzen fir Sie haben, meine Schonen! Singen Sie nur die vorletzte
Zeile-["]Zwang lehret boshaft, seyn["]-so oft die Mutter dabei ist recht laut vielleicht dringt es ihr durchs Herz--die Tone die drauf gehen sind ja auch nicht ganz
kalt-vielleicht erlaubtsie Ihnen morgen mit Ihren Freunden und Anverwandtenauf
die Redoute zu gehen, damit Sie sich kinftigen Winter nicht einem Verfihrer anvertrauen mogen, um nur die Redoute heimlich zu besuchen, deren Vergniigungen Sie
sonst ohne Scheu und gutes Gewissens genieSen konnten. Dann das Lied an
Hermenfried?Ei, sollen es denn die Schonen nicht so gut wissen [v] wie wir, dag die
Menschen boshaftund gefahrlichwie Dornen sind?Kennt man denn nicht Frauenund
Midchen, die die Einsamkeitlieben, und die in ihrereinsamen Zelle Pult und Clavier
haben und Lieder dichten und componiren und singen konnen? Haben wir denn
keine Amalien, keine GrafinStolberg, keine Benda?-Und haben die Schonen nicht
auch Ihren Hermenfriedbey Namen zu rufen?oder flieht der Graamnicht aus Ihrer
Seele wenn sie ihn rufen?Denn sollen da noch zwei Sticke sein; das Revier,und Lied
eines Kindes-Wer will mir da wohl behaupten, dafi den Sch6nen ein Gemahlde, ein
sch6nes, feines melancholisches Nachtstiick nicht gefallen sollte? dai Ihnen eine
schone Winterlandschaftnicht gefallen sollte?daf ich dieses componirte?-Nicht die
Gemihlde componirte ich daran sondern die geschiftige Einbildungskraftund die
daraus entstehende Lebhaftigkeit und Frohlichkeit des Kindes. Und dann, meine
Schonen! gesetzt auch, sie geh6rten nicht in diese Sammlung,wiirden sie es nicht bedauren,diese feinen Stiickenicht gelesen zu haben?Mir ist es aufierdem Lesen, wahres
Vergniigen gewesen, sie hier einzuriicken.Der wunderlicheMann will mit alle seinen
Fahigkeiten und Kenntnissen in einer eigensinnigen Verschwiegenheit verborgen
bleiben;es kennt ihn keiner,als die kleine Zahl seinerFreunde, die gliicklichenSeelen,
die er den Weg der Tugend und der Wissenschaftenfiihret, und die Lerchen auf'm
Felde. Von Liebe-Liebe als Leidenschaft-da will er sich nun gar nicht bequemen zu
116. Originalpagenumbersaregivenin romannumerals.
249
singen. Der heitere Himmel, Lerchengesang,die griine bunt beblumte Flur,oder auch
die beschweisteFlur und sein Freund sind ihm alles. Ich schw6re's Ihnen aber, meine
Schonen! sollte ihn eine von Ihnen so recht in Bewegung setzen k6nnen, er wird
Ihnen treflicheSachenvorsingen.Hatte ich Ihnen doch auch solche vorgesungen!
Nachricht.
Der zarten Augen, und der kleinen Hiande der Schonen wegen, hab' ich die
Mittelstimme,die ich zuweilen mit hingesetzt, in kleine Noten geschrieben,damit sie
die Noten, die bios firs Clavierda stehen, von denen zu singenden Noten desto leichter unterscheidenkonnen, oder auch, damit sie, wenn die kleine sch6ne Hand nicht
hinreichenwill, die Singstimmenur allein spielen m6gen, und also um so viel leichter
erkennen,welche Noten sie auslassenk6nnen. Eben dieses gilt auch von den kleinen
Noten in Baf; wozu mich aber noch gewisse neidische, rothe, schielendeAugen bewogen haben, damit diese den Grundbaf desto leichter finden m6gen. Uebrigens
haben die Herren oft Hinde die 3 bis 4 T6ne iiber die Octavenreichen.
Appendix B J. F. Reichardt, WiegenliederfiirgutedeutscheMutter (Leipzig:
GerhardFleischerthe Younger, 1798), preface.
Gute deutsche Mutter stillen und pflegen ihre Kindlein selbst und singen sie wohl
gerne selbst in den Schlaf.Darum hab' ich bei der Wahl dieserWiegenlieder[ii] eben
so viel an die zartlichen und verstandigenMutter, als an die Kindlein gedacht. Die
kleinen Schreierund Gauklerin der Wiege bediirfen nur einer sanften einlullenden
Melodie, und die muf ein Wiegenlied immer haben, was Inhalts die Verse auch sein
mogen. Die Sangerinnan der Wiege will aber auch zugleich wach dabei bleiben und
angenehm unterhaltensein. Fur diese ist manches Lied in der kleinen Sammlung, das
mancher Leser eben nicht fir ein eigentliches Wiegenlied halten m6chte, das die
Sangerinn[iii] abergerne auch dafiirannehmenwird. Diese wird es auch nicht befremden, daf die Liederkeine Ueberschriftenzur Bezeichnung der Bewegungen und keine
Anleitung zu Abinderung der Starkeund Schwache im Vortrageenthalten. Sie wird
bald fihlen, daf alle diese Lieder,um ganz das zu sein, was sie sein sollen, in mafiiger,
auch wohl langsamerBewegung und mit sanfterhalberStimme gesungen sein wollen.
Mit raschenrumpelnden Bewegungen und lauter schreienderStimme kann eine unverstandige[iv] leidenschaftlicheAmme ein unruhiges Kind wohl betauben und zum
Schlafzwingen wollen. Eine gute zartlicheMutter, die wohl fihlt und weifi, daf nur
sanfte Bewegungen und milde Tone einem zarten Kinde die Ruhe geben, die nicht
nur gedeihlichen Schlaf,sondern auch einen wohlthatigen Ton dem kunftigen Leben
verleihen k6nnen, die wird nie den sanften Ton verfehlen, in welchem sie sich, den
Blickaufszarte Kind geheftet, selbstnur wohl fiihlt.
[v] Freilichkann man auch bei dem aufmerksamenKinde, das sich schon gerne mit
seiner Puppe unterhalt,durch ein angenehmes Lied, womit das Kind seine Puppe einsingt, manchesgute Gefiihl erwecken,manche gute Lehre eindringendermachen, und
ich denke es fehlet dieserSammlungauch an solchen Liedernnicht.
Alle diese Lieder aber k6nnen auch sehr wohl beim ersten Clavier- und
Singunterrichtbenutzt werden, zu dem mir fir Kinder iiberallnichts zweckmaliger
[vi] scheinet, als leichte faf3licheLieder, deren Weisen dem Charakterund Bau der
Verse ganz angemessen sind, und fir sich eine gute Melodie mit reinerharmonischer
Begleitung haben.
250
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Abstract
The image of the young lady at music is part of the mythology of the eighteenth century, nostalgically summoning a bygone era in European manners.
How should such images be read, and to what uses are they put in the construction of the past and the present?RichardLeppert appealsto eighteenthcentury iconography to argue the disciplinary function of music on women.
This article extends Leppert's arguments in a newly uncovered repertory of
songs and keyboard works published in eighteenth-century Germany "for the
fairsex." Moving between prescriptionsabout musicalpracticespecificallyand
women's characterand place in the world more broadly,this music evinces
cautionaryand disciplinaryrhetoricsthat accordwith Leppert'sreadings.But
whereas Leppert deals with paintings-more or less officialrepresentationsmusical performanceand reception complicate the picture. In performance,
music offers possibilitiesfor negotiation. On closer examination,instrumental
music for the fairsex revealsa complex web of generic and stylisticmotifs that
underminethe manifestrhetoricof easinessand simplicityin the repertoryand
invoke the professionaland public spheres. Questioning as well as espousing
virtue, and haunted by the figure of the rake,songs for ladiesreflectthe instability in the emergent discourses of bourgeois femininity and the private
sphere.

M Head Music for the Fair Sex File

Transcription

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