Description
Book SynopsisIn the German states in the late eighteenth century, women flourished as musical performers and composers, their achievements measuring the progress of culture and society from barbarism to civilization. This title restores this earlier musical history and explores the role that women played in the development of classical music.
Trade Review"A significant book, which usefully applies gender studies to a previously neglected period of music history." -- Laura Hamer Women's History Review "Head's contribution is most welcome ... for the light that it sheds on a cultural field that was every bit as significant as literature and art." -- Joachim Whaley German History "Well-written and engaging ... a significant contribution to the musicological discourse on gender." Notes "A work filled with wisdom about the "strangeness of the past" ... [a] splendid book." -- Celia Applegate Journal of Modern History
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Fictions of Female Ascendance 1. Europe's Living Muses: Women, Music, and Modernity in Burney's History and Tours 2. "If the pretty little hand won't stretch": Music for the Fair Sex 3. Charlotte ("Minna") Brandes and the Beautiful Dead 4. An Evening in Tiefurt: Corona Schroter's Die Fischerin and Vegetable Genius 5. Sophie Westenholz and the Eclipse of the Female Sign 6. Beethoven Heroine: A Female Allegory of Music and Authorship in Egmont Conclusion Appendix: Johann Friedrich Reichardt, Two Prefaces to the Fair Sex Notes Bibliography Index
