Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Performance in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Transcription

1 Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Perormance in Eighteenth-Century Euroe Hester Bell Jordan A thesis submitted to Massey University and Victoria University o Wellington in artial ulilment o the requirements or the degree o Master o Music in Musicology New Zealand School o Music 2016 i

2 Coyright by Hester Bell Jordan All rights reserved Aril 2016 ii

3 Abstract Studies concerning eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century women musicians abound within recent musicological scholarshi, but the ocus on singers and keyboard layers whose musical activities are understood to have airmed their emininity has had the eect o obscuring layers o less tyical instruments. Violin-laying, requently cast as a man s activity and imbued with indecent associations, was a case in oint. Yet desite the connotations o the instrument, a small but signiicant grou o women did lay the violin: it is these violinists that this thesis takes as its central ocus. Looking irst at the comlex reasons behind objections to women s violin erormance, a number o actors that restricted women s access to the violin including the inluence o the male gaze and limits laced on women s hysical movement are revealed. Particular conditions nevertheless enabled certain women to lay the violin, namely the ersonal, educational, and economic suort available rom diverse sources such as amily members, atrons, and institutions like convents and the Venetian osedali. In addition to lacing women violinists in their historical context, this thesis centres on an analysis o a violin concerto by one o the most well-known emale violinists o the era, the Italian virtuoso Regina Strinasacchi. The analysis o Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto in B lat major is strongly erormance based and ocuses on the issue o gender and hysical movement (erormance gesture), toics which were o much interest to eighteenth-century commentators who witnessed women violinists erorming. As such the analysis engages with concets rom embodied musicology. In exloring Strinasacchi s concerto we see that emale violinists could exeriment with a variety o gendered roles through violin erormance, embodying both masculinity and emininity through their transgressive gestures. By taking a closer look at women s violin erormance and exeriences, this thesis aims to show that these violinists were not as eriheral to the workings o the wider musical community as is sometimes imlied. Furthermore, it aims to ut women violinists more irmly at the centre o their own stories, challenging the tendency to treat emale violinists as novel anomalies. iii

4 Acknowledgements There are many eole to thank or bringing this thesis to ruition. Firstly my suervisor, Dr Inge van Rij, or her constant suort, encouragement, and thoughtul eedback throughout the researching and writing rocess. Also my secondary suervisor, Pro. Peter Walls or generously allowing me to borrow a Classical-era violin on which to exlore eighteenth-century modes o laying, or giving me lessons on eighteenth-century technique, and or challenging me to always look at my writing with a critical eye. I would like to thank my examiners, Erin Helyard and Samantha Owens, or their thoughtul and in deth eedback on this thesis which has heled to make it a richer iece o research and a strong iece o writing. To my arents, or heling me to get where I am today through love and suort o many kinds. Mum thank you or always wanting to hear about my latest discoveries, and or rooreading. And Dad thank you or your sage advice, reassurance, and encouraging eedback on drats. Thanks also to the British Library or both roviding scanned acsimile coies o the manuscrit arts o Strinasacchi s concerto, and or allowing me to roduce a score rom those arts or inclusion in this thesis. To my ellow Masters students (Lynne and Nell in articular) or heling to create an enjoyable, suortive, and stimulating environment, and always being keen or hot chocolate breaks. And inally to Myren, or atiently listening to me think out loud, heling me solve all the technology roblems I encountered at the dro o a hat, and surring me on through diicult atches. iv

5 Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv List o Illustrations vii List o Musical Examles viii Introduction 1 1. The ear was more gratiied than the eye : Problems Surrounding Women and the Violin 7 Perorming, Dislaying, and the Male Gaze 7 Class and Gender Associations o the Violin and Its Reertoires 13 Idealisation o Stillness in Women Musical s Perormance 16 Physical Movement and the Violin Much delicacy o inger : Conditions which Enabled (Some) Women to Play the Violin 23 Familial Suort and Access to Education 24 Patronage and Emloyment 27 Emulating Men 30 Convents and the Venetian osedali Gender and Gesture in Late Eighteenth-Century Women s Violin Perormance: Regina Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto in B lat major 43 Analytical Frameworks Gender and Gesture 47 Musical Features or Analysis 50 Virtuosity 51 Toics 53 Structure 54 Soloist/Orchestra Interaction 56 Analysis o Strinasacchi s Concerto I. Allegro Moderato 57 II. Adagio 68 III. Rondo Aectuoso 75 v

6 Conclusion 87 Bibliograhy 91 Aendix A: List o eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century emale violinists 101 Aendix B: Edited Score o Regina Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto in B lat major Notes on the Edition 104 Score 107 vi

7 List o Illustrations Figure 1. Hauk, Silhouette o Regina Strinasacchi, 1795 (Klassik Stitung Weimar, Schloss Tieurt, Weimar) i Figure 2. Joseha Marti-Zbinden, early nineteenth century (in François de Caitani and Gerhard Aeschbacher, Musik in Bern: Musik, Musiker, Musikerinnen und Publikum in der Stadt Bern vom Mittelalter bis heute (Bern: Historischer Vereins des Kantons Bern, 1993), 182.) 33 Figure 3. Giovanni Grevenbroch, Orane ilarmoniche, 1754 (in Gli abiti de Veneziani di quasi ogni età, Biblioteca Correr, Venice) 37 vii

8 List o Musical Examles I. Allegro Moderato Examle 1.1 Exosition 60 Examle 1.2 Recaitulation 61 Examle 1.3 Vertiginous leas 65 Examle 1.4 Vulgar grand cadence 1 66 Examle 1.5 Vulgar grand cadence 2 66 II. Adagio Examle 2.1 Adagio introduction 70 Examle 2.2 Zeiro toic 71 Examle 2.3 Vocal-inluenced melody 74 III. Rondo Aectuoso Examle 3.1 Rerain 79 Examle 3.2 Minore section oening 81 Examle 3.3 End o minore section 82 Examle 3.4 High oints o the Rondo 83 viii

9 Introduction The silhouette reroduced on the title age o this thesis contains a number o curious details, details which cause the viewer to take a second look. A bow on the back o the dress and lace at the cus; a music stand with an almost discernible score; and, most striking o all, a woman laying a violin. What makes this image all the more intriguing is that we cannot see her ace the igure is literally a shadow, roviding only a vague imression o the erson at its centre. The silhouette, made in 1795 and very rare in terms o its subject matter, is o Regina Strinasacchi ( ), an Italian-born and internationally renowned eighteenth-century violinist. 1 Strinasacchi s silhouette atly catures the ambiguity and misinormation surrounding women violinists rom this era: the act that they were neglected by histories o music or much o the twentieth century has meant there oten remain only tantalising traces o who many o these women were. In this thesis, I have endeavoured to imagine these sometimes indeinite igures as lesh and blood, with a articular ocus on considering these emale violinists as eole who worked within and as a art o society. Since the introduction o eminism to musicology in the 1990s, women s articiation in musical activities, articularly in eighteenth-century Euroe, has become an area o much scholarly interest. Most research on this eriod has concentrated on erormers and comosers o articular tyes, namely the numerous singers and keyboard layers, and women who wrote or these instruments. This is not surrising, as singing and keyboard laying were musical activities in which the majority o emale musicians engaged, and were activities marked as distinctly eminine during this eriod (and indeed later). 2 The ocus on traditionally eminine musical activities has nevertheless had the eect o obscuring the stories o women who layed instruments, like the violin, that were considered roblematic or their gender. 3 Desite the 1 Hauk, Silhouette o Regina Strinasacchi, 1795, ink on orcelain, Klassik Stitung Weimar, Schloss Tieurt, Weimar. Reroduced rom Volker Timmermann, Strinasacchi, Regina, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 8 July 2014, htt:// 2 Richard D. Leert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology, and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 147; Lucy Green, Music, Gender, Education (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 32-33, Rita Steblin, The Gender Stereotying o Musical Instruments in the Western Tradition, Canadian University Music Review 16, no. 1 (1995):

10 disaroval exressed in conservative sectors, such as eminine conduct literature, a small but signiicant number o women did lay such unseemly instruments. In act, women violinists turn u at a surrising number o key moments in the history o the violin. Vivaldi, or instance, was able to orge innovations in instrumental music as maestro de concerti at the Osedale della Pietà in Venice, where he had access to a uniormly well-trained women s orchestra and collaborations with excellent soloists such as Chiara della Pietà. 4 According to Simon McVeigh and Jehoash Hirschberg, Vivaldi s L estro armonico (1711), or examle, changed and shaed the course o instrumental music, through its incisive deinition o the concerto idiom and strongly individual characterisation o each concerto. 5 Without this unique environment where emale violinists were vital articiants, the concerto genre and also violin technique might have develoed very dierently. In other words, women violinists were essential to the evolution o the concerto as we know it. A second examle o women s articiation in milestones o violin history relates to the accomanied sonata. This was a avourite genre during the eighteenth-century in which the violin, or the most art, layed an unobtrusive suorting role. 6 One o the irst works to really challenge this convention by giving the violin and keyboard equal standing was Mozart s Violin and Keyboard Sonata in B lat major, K. 454, written or the igure rom our silhouette, Strinasacchi, and erormed by her and Mozart in Vienna s Kärtnertortheater in It is articularly remarkable that this iece was written or a woman violinist. Not only did the sonata ut the instruments on equal ooting, it also inverted normative gender roles (male ianist, emale violinist), and brought a decidedly domestic genre into a ublic erormance context. Given the surrisingly requent involvement o women violinists in events with veritably canonic status, why are these musicians not more widely known As the above examles hint at, women violinists, when mentioned at all, are usually brought u in relation to Great Men narratives: Chiara della Pietà and Vivaldi, Strinasacchi and Mozart, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen and Tartini the list goes on. A articular 4 Simon McVeigh, Concerto o the Individual, in The Cambridge History o Eighteenth-Century Music, ed. Simon P. Keee (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 587; Freia Homann, Instrument und Körer: Die musizierende Frau in der bürgerlichen Kultur (Frankurt a. M.: Insel Verlag, 1991), Simon McVeigh and Jehoash Hirshberg, The Italian Solo Concerto, : Rhetorical Strategies and Style History (Rochester, NY; Woodbridge, Suolk, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), John Irving, Sonata: 2. Classical, Grove Music Online, Oxord Music Online, Oxord University Press, accessed 7 July 2015, htt:// 7 Ibid. 2 7

11 anecdote involving Strinasacchi has, or examle, oten been used to shore u the myth o Mozart s ability to comose in his head (he reortedly had no time to comlete the iano art rior to K. 454 s remiere). 8 In retellings o this kind, her most interesting eature is that she was both a woman and a violinist: her resence seems to unction to add novelty to an otherwise well-worn troe. Stories such as this render emale violinists assive suorting actors in the lives o others, rather than eole with their own stories. Bound u with the issue o Great Men narratives, the igure o the emale violinist is in conlict with the dominant image o eighteenth-century musical women as non-roessional keyboardists and singers. The combination o these two dominant aroaches to discussing emale violinists as novel asides or excetions to the rule takes them out o their historical and cultural context, ortraying them as isolated and thus dismissible anomalies. This disregards the act that these women worked as a art o established musical communities and layed throughout Euroe: in France, Britain, Italian and Germanic states; in the court and church systems; as travelling virtuosi in ublic and rivate concerts; as unaid amateur musicians. The articiation o women violinists in such diverse contexts shows that, to a certain degree, they were acceted by the societies they worked within (some to a greater degree than others). Otherwise, no emale violinist could have had the successul careers exerienced by Lombardini Sirmen and Strinasacchi, or indeed any career at all. Although I discuss a number o emale violinists in this thesis, I give articular attention to Strinasacchi. This violinist was an examle o how, when certain circumstances aligned, a woman was able to succeed as a roessional desite her unusual instrument choice. Strinasacchi was born in Ostiglia (near Mantua) on 18 February 1761, and trained at the Osedale della Pietà where, as the daughter o roessional musicians, she likely attended as a scholarshi student. 9 The length o her stay at the Pietà is unknown, but she was a member o the Pietà s elite musical ensemble known as the coro. 10 Unlike the majority o osedali students, Strinasacchi began touring as a soloist while still a teenager, undertaking ublic erormances around Italy and later 8 See, or instance, Frederick George Edwards, quoted in Samuel Breene, Mozart s Violin Sonatas and the Gestures o Embodiment: The Subjectivities o Perormance Practice (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 2007), Timmermann, Strinasacchi, Regina. 10 Jane L. Berdes and Joan Whittemore, A Guide to Osedali Research (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2012),

12 Germany. 11 Ater the 1784 tour which saw her erorm with Mozart, Strinasacchi returned to Italy in 1785 to marry the German cellist Johann Conrad Schlick, a member o the Gotha court orchestra and secretary to Prince August o Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. She subsequently became a member o the orchestra there, making her one o the earliest known emale orchestral musicians. 12 This hase o her lie rom around 1784 through her early years at the Gotha court is the eriod rom which much o the inormation on Strinasacchi in this thesis is drawn. She was resident at Gotha or much o her lie, though she and her husband, later accomanied by their daughter Caroline, toured extensively through Germany and Italy laying chamber and solo reertoire. 13 One o their most requent destinations was the court o Anna Amalia, a relative to the Prince o Gotha, at Weimar. Ater Schlick died in 1818, Strinasacchi moved to Dresden with her son Johann Friedrich Wilhelm, a cellist and luthier. It is rom this eriod o her lie that the only known examle o written corresondence rom her comes, a letter in which she inorms the reciient that she is well and continues to make music. 14 Ater a long and evidently successul lie, she died in Dresden on 11 June Strinasacchi is the subject o Chater Three, where I exlore a violin concerto that she comosed. In Chater One, however, I begin with a wider ocus, addressing the reasons behind the small number o women layers in the eighteenth century. Here I exlore issues surrounding eighteenth-century women s musical erormance in general, ocusing on the concets o dislay and the male gaze, a discussion which is inormed by Lucy Green s book Music, Gender, Education and insired by several articles by Suzanne Cusick. 15 These texts exlore how constructions o gender might be exressed through erormance. I also draw on Richard Leert s work regarding music and visual art, where he examines the intertwining issues o music, gender, and sight. 16 I build on these texts through an original combination o discussion o dislay and the 11 Jane L. Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice: Musical Foundations, (Oxord; New York: Clarendon Press, 1993), 72, ; Timmermann, Strinasacchi, Regina. 12 Strinasacchi, Regina. 13 Ibid. 14 Breene, Mozart s Violin Sonatas and the Gestures o Embodiment, 251; Regina Strinasacchi, Regina Schlick an Luise von Knebel in Jena, Gotha, 5. August 1824, accessed 13 July 2015, htt://dme.mozarteum.at/dme/briee/letter.hmid=73&cat=4. 15 Green, Music, Gender, Education; Suzanne G. Cusick, Perorming/Comosing/Woman: Francesca Caccini meets Judith Butler, in Musics and Feminisms, ed. Cate Poynton and Sally Macarthur (Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 1999), 79-98; On Musical Perormances o Gender and Sex, in Audible Traces: Gender, Identity, and Music, ed. Elaine Barkin, Lydia Hamessley, and Benjamin Boretz (Zurich; Los Angeles: Carciooli, 1999), Leert, Music and Image; The Sight o Sound: Music, Reresentation, and the History o the Body (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 1993). 4

13 male gaze with consideration o women s musical erormance seciically in an eighteenth-century context. Because o the imortance o sight or eighteenth-century audiences o women s erormance, I reer to these imagined witnesses as listener/viewers throughout, rather than simly listeners, in order to better relect the role that the visual layed in their exerience o erormance. An exloration o the associations carried by the violin itsel and how those associations roblematised violinlaying or women ollows the section on dislay, and Chater One concludes with a discussion o the hysical limits laced on women s musical erormance and how violin-laying may have jarred with those limitations. Here I borrow ideas rom Matthew Head, Erin Helyard, and Heather Hadlock regarding women s laying o keyboard instruments, alying these ideas to violin erormance. 17 Chater Two examines the other side o the coin, ocusing on the conditions that, desite the diiculties recounted in the revious chater, enabled some women to lay the violin roessionally. With reerence to research by scholars including Freia Homann and Mai Kawabata, I draw together material rom numerous sources on a range o violinists rom throughout Euroe. 18 I consider women violinists collectively, not only as individual cases, and in doing so exlore similarities in their exeriences. I also oer a short section on written recetion o certain violinists, seciically looking at how commentators reacted more ositively to women violinists who emulated masculine laying styles and dress. Aendix A sulements this chater by roviding a list o the sixty late eighteenth-century women violinists I have researched, and includes date and lace o birth and death (where known) as well as key sources or each violinist. The last section o Chater Two investigates two kinds o institutions convents and the osedali where violin-laying, and imortantly ensemble laying, among women was not only sanctioned but nurtured. Here I draw on Berdes s Women Musicians o Venice, as well as work on convent musicians by scholars such as Colleen Baade, who 17 Matthew Head, Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 2013); Erin Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Ph.D. diss., Schulich School o Music, McGill University, 2012); Heather Hadlock, Sonorous Bodies: Women and the Glass Harmonica, Journal o the American Musicological Society 53, no. 3 (2000): Homann, Instrument und Körer; Maiko Kawabata, Paganini: The Demonic Virtuoso (Woodbridge, Suolk; Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 2013); Virtuoso Codes o Violin Perormance: Power, Military Heroism, and Gender ( ), 19th-Century Music 28, no. 2 (2004):

14 have demonstrated that nun and osedali musicians can in act be seen as roessional musicians. 19 The inal chater uts the sotlight on Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto in B lat major, the score o which is resented in Aendix B. To my knowledge, this is the irst in deth analysis o a comosition by a emale violinist since Berdes s edition o three concertos by Lombardini Sirmen was ublished in Issues broached in the revious chaters, including gender and the sight o the erorming body, are key eatures o the analysis, and I draw on accounts o women violinists in suort here. My analysis has been inormed by George Fisher and Judy Lochhead s article Analyzing rom the Body and Elizabeth Le Guin s Boccherini s Body, as well as work by Helyard and Tia DeNora. 21 I combine various asects o these embodied musicology studies by exloring the key issues o gender and gesture in relation to late eighteenth-century women s violin erormance. I thereore concentrate on musical eatures which interact with gender and hysical movement in interesting ways, here resulting in a ocus on virtuosity, toics, structure, and the interaction between soloist and orchestra. Through considering the varied exeriences o these women violinists, this thesis challenges the ubiquity o the amateur emale keyboardist igure, suggesting that being a emale musician in eighteenth-century Euroe encomassed a much wider range o exeriences. Though we can only gleam a limited idea o how contemoraneous audiences resonded to these women in erormance, my discussion o Strinasacchi s concerto seeks to consider how her transgressive gestures may have shaed their recetion. In doing so, this concerto emerges as a useul tool through which to consider the roles that emale violinists more generally layed within their historical and cultural context. A urther aim o this thesis is to resent these women as the lead actors in their own stories, rather than indistinct background igures in someone else s master narrative, challenging the tendency to treat emale violinists as novelties useul only or sicing u ootnotes. 19 Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice; Colleen Baade, Hired Nun Musicians in Early Modern Castile, in Musical Voices o Early Modern Women: Many-Headed Melodies, ed. Thomasin K. LaMay (Aldershot; Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), Maddalena Laura Lombardini Sirmen, Three Violin Concertos, ed. Jane L. Berdes (Madison: A-R Editions, 1991). 21 George Fisher and Judy Lochhead, Analyzing rom the Body, Theory and Practice 27(2002): 37-67; Elisabeth Le Guin, Boccherini s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press Berkeley, 2006). 6

15 Chater One The ear was more gratiied than the eye : Problems Surrounding Women and the Violin Beore addressing the question o how some women were able to build careers as violinists, it is necessary to look at what actors made it diicult or women and girls to take u the instrument in the irst lace. This necessitates an exloration o some o the tyical or stereotyical exectations held in the eighteenth century with regards to women and their actions. It is imortant to note that not everyone held these exectations to be valid no woman would have icked u a violin at all i that had been the case. So while I do not emhasise dissenting views in this chater, they were undoubtedly resent. Indeed, the outcomes o resistance to the ideals surrounding women s music-making by emale violinists will be exlored more thoroughly in Chater Two. In this chater, I look at general attitudes toward erorming women in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A woman resenting her body in erormance was seen as ulilling the eminine role o dislayer (as oosed to the masculine role o viewer) and erceived as otentially morally dubious. These issues are comlicated by the erormer s social class. I then address associations o the violin itsel in terms o class and gender. Thirdly, I examine the hysical restrictions that middle- and uer-class women aced, considering how the male gaze inluenced women s musical erormance and how the hysical requirements o the violin may have clashed with these. There were quite a number o actors inhibiting women rom laying the instrument, so it is not surrising that those who did were in the minority. Perorming, Dislaying, and the Male Gaze For most o the eighteenth century, Euroean women o the middle and lower classes articiated relatively widely in the world o aid work. Within the music 7

16 industry they worked alongside male amily members in ublishing and instrument making as well as in erormance as singers and instrumentalists. 1 By the end o the century, however, women were increasingly excluded rom articiating in working lie, deemed art o the newly articulated ublic shere. 2 While it had long been considered inaroriate or uer-class women to undertake aid work their very ability to disengage rom labour was symbolic o their male relatives wealth it was now also roblematic or middle-class women to do so. 3 Not all eighteenth-century music commentators held the view that women should not work outside the home, but this ideology did aect roessional women musicians, making erorming or ay an area o contention. 4 Changes in attitudes toward women and work were inluenced by igures such as Rousseau. According to Rousseau, women needed irst and oremost to ulil their natural roles as mothers and wives within the newly-eminised domestic shere: women who subverted these conining gender roles, such as uer-class society women and lower-class actresses, were characterised as immoral. 5 The commonality between these two grous o women was that they ut themselves their intellect, but also their bodies and sexuality on dislay in ublic. 6 The ower o eminine sexuality was the most dangerous asect o dislaying women in both theatrical and nontheatrical situations, as Rousseau believed that the act o watching a seductive woman robbed men o their masculinity and thus their ower. Paid erorming women were thus doubly threatening, as they not only earned their own income but did so directly in the ublic eye. They were not only individually dangerous or men in the audience but symbolically threatening to the (atriarchal) social order. 7 Nevertheless, the lack o olitical and economic agency women in general ossessed outside the theatre indicates that the ower Rousseau ascribed to dislaying women was somewhat illusory. 1 Valerie Woodring Goertzen, The Eighteenth Century, in From Convent to Concert Hall: A Guide to Women Comosers, ed. Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleier (Westort, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2003), Cecilia Feilla, Regarding Women: The Politics o Beholding in Rousseau s Letter to M. d Alembert on the Theatre, Women & Perormance: A Journal o Feminist Theory 7, no. 1 (1994): 3. 3 Leert, Music and Image, Proessional women musicians were generally o the lower middle class. Nancy B. Reich, Women as Musician: A Question o Class, in Musicology and Dierence: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarshi, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 1995), ; David Gramit, Cultivating Music: The Asirations, Interests, and Limits o German Musical Culture, (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 2002), Actresses were routinely comared to rostitutes. Feilla, Regarding Women, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to D Alembert and Writings or the Theater, ed. Allan Bloom, Charles E. Butterworth, and Christoher Kelly (London: University Press o New England, 2004), Feilla, Regarding Women,

17 Though Rousseau did not mention emale musicians in his writing, there were similar issues at lay with emale singers and instrumentalists as there were with actresses, and Rousseau s arguments were later exlicitly extended to roessional women musicians by German writers such as Johann Bernhard Basedow and Joachim Heinrich Came in the late 1770s. 8 Richard Leert highlights the visibility o emale erormers as key to the threat they were erceived to ose: by erorming ublically a woman risked ustaging her husband and communicating that she had shunned her exected role as subservient wie. 9 Imlicit in Leert s discussion is the uer-class status o the erormer. Perorming ublically, even i the erormer received no remuneration, was raught or all women, but it was articularly roblematic or uerand asiring uer- and middle-class women. In Music, Gender, Education, Lucy Green oregrounds this issue o bodily dislay in relation to musical erormance and gender. A key oint she broaches is that the concet o dislay itsel has strong gender associations: dislay is tyically seen as a eminine action, while viewing is masculine. 10 Green s argument engages with cinema theorist Laura Mulvey s concet o the male gaze: through being observed, women are rendered assive objects. 11 Though some scholars have argued that it is ahistorical to aly the male gaze concet to eighteenth-century issues, I eel that Green s interretation o the male gaze is still a useul tool or exloring eighteenth-century women s musical erormance, rimarily because the aims and limits o women s erormance were so requently dictated by male interests within the highly atriarchal system that was Euroe at this time. 12 Green not only alies Mulvey s theories to women s musical erormance in various contexts and eras but also builds on them. She osits that in comarison to actresses on ilm, emale musicians in live erormance have greater control and thus greater ower in their dislaying, rimarily because they are the active source o musical sound. 13 She also discusses dislay and gender in relation to both emale singers and instrumentalists, making a number o distinctions between the two grous. Green argues that, as singing is an integrated activity that is, the body and the instrument (voice) are uniied there is a signiicant asect o 8 Reich, Women as Musician, Leert, Music and Image, Green, Music, Gender, Education, 25, Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in Visual and Other Pleasures (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Rivka Swenson, Otics, Gender, and the Eighteenth-Century Gaze: Looking at Eliza Haywood s Anti- Pamela, Eighteenth Century Eighteenth Century 51, no. 1-2 (2010): Green, Music, Gender, Education, n5. 9

18 dislay to a erormance by a singer. 14 One cannot hel but ocus on the body: it is the origin o the sound. The integrated and ully embodied nature o the act o singing also reinorces the traditional association o women with the natural world and indeed with the very concet o music. 15 In this way, a emale singer is more liable to be objectiied rendered assive by the male gaze than a woman engaged in other kinds o musical erormance. As such, a singing woman might still in act airm her emininity as a subordinate articiant in a atriarchal system. 16 A singing woman thus osed less o a challenge to male ower than did certain kinds o instrumentalists, like violinists. Instrumentalists can ose a challenge to atriarchal roles through the mediating inluence o their instrument. In other words, laying an instrument can enable resistance to the male gaze. According to Green, laying an instrument interruts dislay because it draws attention away rom resting solely on the body (though this is less the case with instruments that are strongly associated with the eminine, such as keyboards). 17 Not being able to ocus solely on the body as object reduces the level o leasure available to the viewer. She suggests that instrumental erormance is to a certain extent characterised as a masculine activity, because the dislay element is decentralised, and because the instrumentalist is shown to exhibit control over a iece o technology. 18 Control over something external to the body is a strongly masculinegendered act. 19 Technology, such as a musical instrument, is used by men to control nature (here sound/music) and is a rivilege theoretically closed to women, as in this ideology women are aligned with nature and are thus subject to control, not exercisers o it. There were, however, instruments such as lucked strings, har, and various kinds o keyboards which were deemed suitable or women. 20 While lucked strings are obviously eminine in their sotness o volume and small size, large and 14 Ibid., Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (London; Minneaolis: University o Minnesota Press, 2002), Green, Music, Gender, Education, 28-30, This is not to say that singing women are necessarily rendered owerless. Texts which exlore singing women s resistance include Carolyn Abbate, Oera; Or, the Envoicing o Women, in Musicology and Dierence: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarshi, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 1993), ; Elizabeth Wood, Sahonics, in Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. Phili Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary Thomas (New York: Routledge, 2006), 27-66; Suzanne G. Cusick, Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation o Power (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 2009). 17 Green, Music, Gender, Education, Ibid., See Cusick, On Musical Perormances o Gender and Sex, Steblin, The Gender Stereotying o Musical Instruments, 138,

19 technologically comlex keyboards seem to contradict their gender designation. 21 The emininity o keyboards instead stemmed rom their extensive domestic use, role as accomaniment instruments, and the act that they could be layed in a visually aealing manner (more on this later). 22 A woman laying an instrument which did not have these eminine characteristics indeed i it was considered to be masculine (as we shall discover is the case with the violin) was considered to be taking control o technology inaroriate or her gender, thus iminging uon male ower and disruting dislay. By contrast, Erin Helyard s work on women s erormance o diicult keyboard music takes a dierent view o women, instruments, and dislay. He suggests that virtuosic (which oten means highly hysical) music in act ocused viewers attention more readily on the erormer s body movements, which became eroticised through such subversive erormance. 23 Though Helyard is o course discussing a eminine instrument, which reduces the intensity o the technological disrution, the oint that virtuosic music can draw attention to the body even when temered by an instrument hints at a contradictory situation or women violin layers, in which attention is concomitantly dislaced rom the body by the instrument and centred on the body by the dynamic hysical movement that instrument aords. Male interests and the male gaze were an imortant art o eighteenth-century women s musical erormance. Though contemoraneous writers on education and conduct roosed that ractising music within the home could revent boredom and oster disciline in young girls, erormance carried a dierent urose. 24 This was erhas esecially the case in the second hal o the century as musical erormance came under the accomlishment model o uer- and middle-class emale education. Young women cultivated accomlishments (needlework, dancing, olite conversation) with the exress urose o aealing to otential suitors. O all the accomlishments, music was deemed articularly useul as a method o attracting a husband as it could be shown o best while actually being accomlished. 25 As an accomlishment which had a visible eect uon the body, women s musical erormance thus oten layed directly to the gaze o male viewers in the hoe o eliciting a roosal. 21 Ibid., 139; Green, Music, Gender, Education, Music, Gender, Education, Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology, Leert, The Sight o Sound, Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954),

20 Singing or laying certain instruments did not just dislay a woman s ersonal attributes: it also served to dislay her amily s thus her ather s material and cultural wealth. Through erormance she showed that her amily could aord lessons and an instrument (singers obviously exceted), and that they had the social standing to areciate such things. Keyboard instruments were articularly well suited to this urose, as even when not being layed they still ulilled the unction o visually communicating the wealth and status o their owner through their size and elaborateness, on dislay in ublic rooms o the house. 26 Violins oten much cheaer and certainly easier to store than keyboards were ossessed by eole o varied socioeconomic status, including lower class and marginalised grous like the Roma (ejoratively called gysies ). Some violins were decorated with elaborately carved scrolls or even ainted bodies but this could not comare with the otential or decoration oered by a keyboard. Violins thus carried little o the cultural caital inherent articularly in large keyboard instruments. 27 Women s musical erormance can thus be seen as art o economic exchange between men: it was a method by which otential buyers (husbands) could be encouraged to urchase (marry), and as such constituted an investment on the art o athers. 28 Jean Marsden has exlored this idea in relation to actresses and the gaze on the English stage, ointing out that in a social system that had already identiied women as commodities or homosocial exchange the actress resented an oortunity or visual reresentation o this exchange. 29 Relace actress with emale musician and this hrase encasulates a key exectation though not necessarily always the reality in ractice underlying women s musical erormance. Within this world view, many eighteenth-century Euroeans exected women s musical erormance to rovide aural and indeed visual leasure or those witnessing it. Regula Hohl Trillini has also ointed out that the sight o the emale erormer may in ractice have layed a larger role in the male listener/viewer s ability to take leasure in women s erormance than one might think. Many men had little knowledge or interest in music 26 Leert, Music and Image, Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology, Leert, Music and Image, 29. See also Luce Irigaray, Women on the Market, in This Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), Jean I. Marsden, Fatal Desire: Women, Sexuality, and the English Stage, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 9. 12

21 due to the act that they tyically received little or no training in it and were thereore likely to lace their ocus on the visual elements o a erormance. 30 Class and the issue o remuneration clearly interact with the issues o dislay and the male gaze. Though both aid and unaid erormers can o course be objectiied by the viewer, the unaid erormer is in some ways more tightly bound to the exectation that they will rovide leasure. This is because o a dierence in aims between each mode o erormance. The ostensible aim o unaid erormance is to communicate the layer s status and secure a husband, thus the erormance will not ulil its unction i the musician subverts the viewers exectations through erorming in a visually unattractive manner. Alternatively, with aid erormance, while it may be in the erormer s best interest to aeal to the male gaze, she may also build a career on not doing so: inamy (u to a oint) sells just as many tickets. And imortantly, the rimary goal o roessional erormance is to rovide income or the erormer, allowing her an indeendent means to suort hersel which is unavailable to a comulsorily leisured woman. This is signiicant as receiving ayment or erormance renders it useul, the very non-roductiveness o unaid musical erormance being what made it a restigious activity or uer-class women. 31 This may hel exlain why so ew unaid uer-class women aear to have layed the violin, in comarison to those rom middle-class/roessional music backgrounds. Class and Gender Associations o the Violin and Its Reertoire The act that instrumental erormance osed greater roblems or women than singing did (due to the interruting eect an instrument can have on the gaze and thus the leasure o the audience) is an issue that is clearly relevant to the violin. Moreover, the violin and certain reertoires or it had a number o additional unsavoury associations involving class and gender that rendered it even more roblematic or women. The violin had been widely used throughout Euroe in olk traditions and was thus linked with the lower and easant classes, only becoming an aroriate instrument or gentlemen layers in the seventeenth century. 32 This use continued through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the Bieriddler igure and the 30 Regula Hohl Trillini, The Gaze o the Listener: English Reresentations o Domestic Music-Making (Amsterdam; New York: Rodoi, 2008), Leert, Music and Image, 28-29, The Sight o Sound,

22 instrument he layed carrying connotations o vagrancy and immorality. 33 The easy ortability o the violin erhas heled to maintain its itinerant and thus susect reutation: certainly it contrasted with the immobility o large keyboards, whose size and weight erhas rojected the imression o their owners rootedness or ermanence. Violins were also an essential element o dance music and were oten layed by dancing masters. 34 As dancing masters were oten o low birth yet taught aristocratic skills to young emale students, they were satirised (esecially in England) as lecherous and with asirations above their station. 35 Building urther on the connection with dance, the violin had consistently been deicted as the instrument o the devil in visual art rom the mid-sixteenth century onwards. 36 This derived rom ercetions that dancing was sinul, the view taken by many religious institutions, which lent the instrument a sinister and deraved air. I laying an instrument was intended to imrove or at least shore u a young woman s social status then the lower-class status and sinul connotations o the violin rendered it an undesirable choice. In addition to these class associations, the violin was considered a masculine instrument during the late eighteenth century, though most sources do not elaborate uon what that might mean beyond the act that it was redominantly layed by men. The instrument itsel was requently discussed in gendered and sometimes ersoniied terms. For instance, erhas due to the rominence accorded the violin by Louis XIII through his emloyment o the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roy, the violin was oten called the king o instruments, associating it with royalty and desotic masculinity. 37 This reutation was reinorced as courts throughout Euroe began to establish violindominated ensembles which only emloyed men, which in turn marked the ledgling concet o the orchestra and its reertoire as masculine. In its role as a gentleman s instrument in the second hal o the eighteenth century the violin articiated in the even more obviously gendered genre o the accomanied sonata. This genre was closely associated with courtshi, with the keyboard layed by an unmarried woman and the violin by her suitor: as such it was considered to be highly intimate. 38 The connotations o courtshi add another layer o subversion to the dynamic o Mozart s K. 454 sonata: 33 Kawabata, Paganini, Leert, Music and Image, Paula Gillett, Musical Women in England, : Encroaching on All Man s Privileges (New York: St. Martin s Press, 2000), Ibid., John Sitzer and Neal Zaslaw, The Birth o the Orchestra: History o an Institution, (Oxord; New York: Oxord University Press, 2005), Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology,

23 having a emale violinist ulil the role normally taken by a male suitor would aear to ose a serious challenge to the atriarchal status quo. Strinasacchi not only took on a decidedly masculine role, but (as reviously mentioned) one that was musically assertive. Even without the articular subversions o K. 454, the sexually charged nature o the genre may have made the accomanied sonata raught territory or emale violinists. Seeing the violin as gendered and erson-like was a concet that had increased in oularity by the end o the eighteenth century. By Paganini s day a change had taken lace in the assigned gender o the instrument violins were no longer likened to kings but to emale singers. 39 According to Kawabata, this is due both to the similarity in register between the violin and the emale singing voice, but also because o the visual comarison between the instrument s hourglass-shaed body and that o the emale igure. 40 It is unclear when exactly this change in gendering o the violin as an instrument came about, though it seems to have increased in oularity ater the rise o the military violin concerto and the concet o the heroic, Naoleonic violinist in Revolutionary-era Paris, an image advanced by violinist-comosers such as Pierre Baillot, Pierre Rode, and Rudolhe Kreutzer. 41 Kawabata states that inherent in the idea o the heroic violin erormance was the layer s masculinity, symbolised most alably by his use o recently invented sword-like Cramer and Tourte bows. 42 The straighter line o these bows and the more owerul, and indeed violent, strokes they aorded in comarison to earlier models elicited hallic associations, most aarent in resonses to Paganini s laying, where his urious laying style was described as sexualised attack made against the eminine violin. 43 Homann (on whom Kawabata draws) has also suggested that a woman laying the violin in this context carried connotations o lesbianism: the interaction o gendered-emale human body and gendered-emale violin body in a ublic setting suosedly evoked an unconscious (unbewußt) association o illicit emale relations or eighteenth-century audiences. 44 The most exlicitly gendered concets o the violin as eminine and the violinist as heroically masculine can only be conirmed as widesread ater the turn o the century. Prior to this, the assumtion was that the violin was a ursuit to be undertaken 39 Kawabata, Paganini, Ibid., Virtuoso Codes o Violin Perormance, Ibid., Ibid., Homann, Instrument und Körer,

24 by men only, encasulated by comments such as Leoold Mozart s recommendation to always lay with earnestness and manliness. 45 This shows that women and the eminine had little or nothing to do with the instrument in most listeners minds, oten resulting in conusion and sometimes antiathy when a woman assumed that role. 46 Even when the instrument came to be directly connected with women and emininity, the articular nature o this gendering still resulted in exclusion o actual women, and it seems ossible that a sense o anxiety around the use o the violin by women may have been heightened once the violin was exlicitly cast as a eminised body. The lowerclass and immoral associations o the instrument ersisted into the eighteenth century arallel with its develoing role as a gentleman s hobby, which likely led to a urther sense o breached decorum when it was layed by a woman. Thus, although understandings o the violin changed over time, discourse about the instrument was eretually tied to ideas about gender and class which signiicantly comlicated its use by women. Idealisation o Stillness in Women s Musical Perormance The associations discussed above would have been on most listener/viewers minds when witnessing a emale violinist erorm. In eighteenth-century commentaries on these musicians, however, it is not these connotations that are mentioned as the source o the transgression, but rather their hysical bodies: the requirements o violinlaying aear to have clashed with ideas about women s hysical movement. Nonworking middle- and uer-class women aced a host o restrictive exectations about their hysical movement during the eighteenth century. These exectations connected with the belie that women were naturally intended to be assive members o society, while men were naturally active, but really this was about controlling the threat many men erceived in the concet o an active woman. 47 From a young age, girls were reared or leading a sedentary adult lie and exected to occuy themselves with 45 Quoted in Kawabata, Virtuoso Codes o Violin Perormance, 104. This ure, manly tone was contrasted with excessive use o vibrato, which (through its negative associations with weakness and ositive associations with sweetness) was viewed as eminine. Tone and vibrato are thereore yet urther examles o musical eatures that were erceived as gendered during the eighteenth century. My thanks to Erin Helyard or drawing my attention to the gendering o vibrato during this eriod. See Greta Moens- Haenen, Vibrato, Grove Music Online, Oxord Music Online, Oxord University Press, accessed 6 February 2016, htt:// 46 Gillett, Musical Women in England, Green, Music, Gender, Education,

25 docile ursuits: thus the only two orms o overt hysical movement deemed aroriate were walking and dancing. 48 Clothing was another means by which women were hysically restrained, to a much greater extent than men, through the use o items such as stays (a redecessor o the corset). This rioritisation o stasis delineated which musical activities were generally deemed aroriate or women and how they should be executed. 49 All eighteenthcentury instruments considered aroriately eminine held in common the trait that they could be layed with minimal hysical movement and maximum hysically visible ease. In other words, when layed in oicially sanctioned (read: conined) ways, hysically quiet instruments like keyboards and lucked strings airmed the emininity o their erormers. By comarison, the dynamic hysical movement that the bow arm in articular oten demands laced the violin outside the limits o accetable erormance. Likewise, contortion o the ace caused by the use o the mouth in brass and woodwind laying meant that these instruments were considered even less aroriate or women than the violin. 50 Airmation o emininity in this context meant leasing the male gaze by uholding the atriarchal concetion o woman as assive object, available to be visually consumed, and it also involved adhering to eighteenth-century exectations regarding hysical graceulness. The concet o graceulness was inormed by the ideal o srezzatura ( studied nonchalance ) and inherently associated with the aristocracy, a hysical communication o one s rank. 51 According to Eric McKee, who discusses graceulness in relation to the minuet, graceulness involved such eatures as simlicity tranquillity; small inlections o the body; delicacy o attitude and motion; roundness o motion; weightlessness; restraint and hidden control. 52 In this concetion o grace, energetic hysical movement or anything that was erceived to be laborious, aeared uncouth. Looking uncouth inhibited the ossibility o the erormer being erceived as desirable assive object. The concet that energetic movement was coarse ties back to the idea that to be erceived as doing something aroximating work such as exerting the body in 48 Leert, Music and Image, 69; Julia Allen, Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale: Sort, Health and Exercise in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2012), 120, Leert, Music and Image, Woodwind instruments also carried hallic connotations. Homann, Instrument und Körer, 190; Vanessa M. Tonelli, Women and Music in the Venetian Osedali (master s thesis, Michigan State University, 2013), Srezzatura, accessed 13 July 2015, htt:// Head, Sovereign Feminine, Adated rom table 2.2 in Eric McKee, Decorum o the Minuet, Delirium o the Waltz: A Study o Dance-Music Relations in 3/4 Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012),

26 vigorous musical erormance, as required in violin-laying was degrading or uerand uer-middle-class women. 53 The idealisation o stasis can be seen at work in relation to a uniquely eighteenthcentury instrument: the glass armonica. Heather Hadlock has suggested the armonica was considered the eitome o eminine music-making because it required so little hysical eort to lay. She argues that to lay the armonica was to hold a ose, to resent a erormance o stillness, balance, and silence. Playing, in short, resembled the not-laying deicted in so many contemorary aintings o women seated at keyboard instruments, touching but not ressing the keys. 54 Imortant in relation to our ocus on the male gaze, she osits that the instrument reconciled otentially contradictory desires: to hear women making music and to see them in a relaxed and graceul attitude. 55 This highlights that the sight o women erorming was a crucial element o their music-making, but it also shows that the ideal o musical woman as object (eitomised by an actual object, the ortrait) was essentially unobtainable. The violin rovides a alable contrast to the armonica: the movements required to lay the violin, even quietly, are almost antithetical to this ideal o motionlessness. The combination o ressure and seed o bow are basic tenets o sound roduction on the violin, meaning that obvious movement o the right arm is unavoidable. In a discussion o late seventeenth-century Dutch landscae ainting including musical scenes, Leert also mentions that the violin s relationshi to dance and the easant classes led to its association with intense hysicality and renetic movement. 56 Meanwhile the armonica was strongly associated with hynosis and the attendant connotations o siritual disembodiment. 57 The otential or dynamism, the renetic movement o both the bow arm and the let hand (articularly in ast, detached assages), and the hysical movement that the instrument insired in other bodies (toe taing, claing, dancing), sets the armonica and the violin at oosite ends o the kinetic scale. A second examle involving the stillness ideal and musical erormance shows that comosers and erormers were acutely aware o the requirements. In a letter to Haydn dated 11 July 1790, keyboardist Maria Anna von Genzinger requested that the comoser change a let-over-right hand crossing in the Adagio o the Sonata in E lat, 53 Head, Sovereign Feminine, Hadlock, Sonorous Bodies, Ibid. 56 Leert, The Sight o Sound, Hadlock, Sonorous Bodies,

27 Hob. XVI:49, because o the bodily and thereore visual aect this would have in erormance. 58 Tom Beghin notes that this assage (mm. 57.) requires a contortion o arms and body that any well-ostured, right-handed noble woman would have resisted. 59 Let-handedness was treated with susicion during the eighteenth century, so the attention-grabbing movement o crossing the let arm over the right may have been erceived as articularly ugly in its consicuousness. Most imortantly, this assage o the Adagio is oensive because it draws undesirable attention to the erormer s body, which intereres with her ability to airm her emininity through musical erormance hence Genzinger wanted it removed. The Genzinger examle o course illustrates that the concet o hysical containment was not just a eature o eminine instruments, but o much o the reertoire women layed. As Matthew Head discusses, a ortion o keyboard reertoire targeted at women during this eriod was intentionally hysically and musically easy. 60 Because o this, restricting movement to her arms, wrists, and ingers while at the keyboard would not have revented a musician rom laying much oular music o the day to a standard considered accetable. Sources such as Erasmus Darwin s A Plan or the Conduct o Female Education (1797) show that being too roicient a erormer (or instance by laying advanced ieces which might require hysical contortions, such as hand crossing or large intervals, was thought to indicate that the erormer had ignored more imortant asects o her education. 61 Helyard has also shown that women s erormance o diicult keyboard music was linked by critics to vanity when modesty was stressed as an imortant eminine quality. 62 This means that a musically or technically lawed layer who looked aealing while erorming simle music was oten valued more highly than her eer who could lay diicult music well and yet used her body more vigorously, and thus inaroriately. 58 Breene, Mozart s Violin Sonatas and the Gestures o Embodiment, Tom Beghin, A Comoser, His Dedicatee, Her Instrument, and I: Thoughts on Perorming Haydn s Keyboard Sonatas, in The Cambridge Comanion to Haydn, ed. Caryl Leslie Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Head, Sovereign Feminine, 49, Both Head and Helyard have discussed at length that, desite the existence o easy music, women layers could and did resist. Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology, 78, 97, Quoted in Leert, The Sight o Sound, Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology,

28 Physical Movement and the Violin Eighteenth-century observers o women violinists oten communicated that the hysical movements required to lay the violin were, at best, unattractive, at worst, oensive. The English oboist William Parke, or examle, commented on the disleasing sight o Louise Gautherot erorming on two searate occasions. In 1789 he stated that Gautherot erormed with great ability but that the ear was more gratiied than the eye by this lady s masculine eort. 63 In relation to a 1790 erormance he commented: it strikes me that i [Gautherot] is desirous o enraturing her audience, she should dislay her talent in a situation where there is only just enough light to make darkness visible. 64 Further examles include those ound in a 1784 essay by cleric and music commentator Carl Ludwig Junker. Junker believed that the combined imact o women s clothing and inaroriate hysical movement had a negative eect uon the audience s ability to enjoy the music when emale violinists layed, stating urther that we have a certain eeling o imroriety, that, as it seems to me, weakens the eect o the iece that is erormed. This arises rom ideas o bodily movement joined to the characteristic dressing style o the second sex. 65 Less than two decades later, hilosoher Karl Heinrich Heydenreich argued that to lay on the violin or organ is not comatible with the grace o the emale sex The arm movements which violin layers must make and the aces which they ull would do unailing harm to emininity. 66 What Parke, Junker, and Heydenreich were reacting to was the disrution o their ability to take leasure in the musical emale body: the hysical movements women violinists made shattered the ossibility o consuming their bodies as objects. 67 Desite the act that these statements single out hysical movement as the key issue, Paula Gillett argues that such objections to the sight o emale violinists were merely rationalisations or the discomort commentators exerienced. She suggests this rimarily because writers like Parke and Junker are vague about the seciic movements 63 William Thomas Parke, Musical Memoirs: Comrising an Account o the General State o Music in England, rom 1784, to the year 1830 (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830), Ibid., My italics. Quoted in Sanna Iitti, The Feminine in German Song (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), Quoted in Steblin, The Gender Stereotying o Musical Instruments, Further examles o statements such as those above include the ollowing. For Hans Georg Nägli regarding women violinists generally (1826) see Homann, Instrument und Körer, 190. In a review o Giulia Paravicini (October 1830) see Kawabata, Virtuoso Codes o Violin Perormance, 105 n66. 20

29 that might have caused oense. 68 Instead, Gillett osits that the underlying association with immorality was what really made the instrument roblematic or women. 69 She oints out that women who layed other bowed string instruments did not romt the same resonse: it was seciically the violin as an instrument that caused the objection. 70 While the instrument s connection to sin and the lower classes layed a signiicant role in reventing women rom laying it, the idea that the hysical movements themselves were transgressive should not be so easily dismissed. Bowed strings layed in the la or laced between the knees such as the viola da gamba and ardessus de viole which were considered aroriately eminine use some movements broadly similar to those used in violin-laying but require very dierent laying ositions. 71 To begin with, unlike the violin, neither o these instruments involves the chin, meaning that the erormer s ace and neck can remain relaxed and undisturbed while erorming. Given the imortance o the male gaze in women s musical erormance, being able to observe a erormer s ace without the instrument interering is clearly a desirable eature. In act, the attribute o allowing the erormer s uer body to remain reely graceul is shared by all tyically eminine instruments o this era. The viola da gamba and the ardessus also immobilise the musician she must sit down, whereas a violinist can sit, stand, or even walk about as they lease. The let and right arms urthermore utilise more relaxed or natural ositions the let arm is not raised as high as it is or the violin and it does not twist, and the bow arm moves along a horizontal line which sits no higher than the midoint o the torso. La orientation thus requires signiicantly less contortion and hysical eort on the art o the layer than does the violin, making it concomitant with the ideals o stillness and srezzatura. 68 Gillett, Musical Women in England, Ibid., Ibid., There aear to be conlicting views on whether the lacement o the viola da gamba between the legs was inaroriate or women. Peter Holman has argued it was not inaroriate, while Simon McVeigh s claim the instrument was manly suggests he believes it was. There were a signiicant number o uerclass women layers during the eighteenth century, which would seem to indicate the standard osition was less shocking than might be exected. See Peter Holman, Ann Ford Revisited, Eighteenth-Century Music 1, no. 2 (2004): ; Simon McVeigh, Concert Lie in London rom Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 87. Views o violoncello laying by women are similarly mixed, but in contrast to the gamba, ercetions o the cello as manly aear to have been more widesread. George Kennaway, Playing the Cello, (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2014) accessed 7 December 2015, htt://vuw.eblib.com/atron/fullrecord.asx= ,

30 These key dierences between the way in which the violin and eminine bowed instruments are layed thus signal that it would be rewarding to urther exlore the role that sight layed in eighteenth-century comments on women violinists. There are two oints which may account or the absence o detail about seciic oensive violin movements. Firstly, describing hysical movement accurately in written language is articularly diicult, and writers were erhas urther dissuaded by the customarily brie ormat o reviews and by the lack o enjoyment some derived rom these erormances. Secondly, the taboo nature o the transgression ossibly rendered seciic descrition risqué: writers erhas did not want to give the thought any more ower by ainting a clear image in readers minds. Instead o dismissing the lack o seciicity around inaroriate movements as evidence that such movements were not imortant, I suggest that the violin was not only inextricably linked to eighteenth-century Euroean constructs o masculinity, but that the hysical movements required to lay the instrument also came to be coded as masculine. Essentially, laying the violin required emale erormers to transgress established hysical boundaries surrounding women s musical erormance. In addition to issues surrounding erormance and dislay or women more generally, and the gender associations o the violin as an instrument, laying the violin required emale erormers to ruture the established hysical limits involved in women s musical erormance. These limits linked to a broader desire to contain women: i rendered assive, hysically and mentally, they osed no threat to the atriarchal status quo. The dynamic and subversive associations o violin-laying reinorced at every turn that it was a danger to men i women and violins were allowed to interact. Desite this, a small but signiicant grou o women did take u the instrument several to acclaim and their ublic erormances osed a alable challenge to the various restrictions laced on women s musical erormance. 22

31 Chater Two Much delicacy o inger : Conditions Which Enabled (Some) Women to Play the Violin The violinists discussed in this chater exerienced a mixture o conditions which made it ossible or them to ursue roessional careers. Women violinists oten did not have access to the same kinds o emloyment oortunities as men. For instance, they generally could not work in a court or theatre orchestra (Strinasacchi and several others being excetions), and ew aear to have taught uils. The rimary route taken by women violinists was thus as solo layers, in their home town and on international tours. The conditions which enabled emale violinists to lay desite the barriers that existed have been drawn rom a ramework used by Sylvia Glickmann. 1 The conditions or success that are articularly relevant when considering the lives o emale violinists are the intertwined actors o encouragement by an inner circle, access to education, and accetance by society. 2 The irst section o the chater ocuses on the kinds o suort emale violinists received rom their amilies and (later) souses, as well as the educational oortunities they were given access to by amily members and teachers. The second exlores the kinds o emloyment oortunities and endorsement women violinists received in the ublic shere, while the third looks at ways in which certain women violinists were able to gain greater accetance and raise rom critics and audiences through emulating masculine laying styles and dress. The last section centres on institutions where violin-laying by women was ostered, namely convents and the Venetian osedali, and considers why violin-laying was acceted in these contexts and the varied oortunities that they gave women violinists. 1 Sylvia Glickman, Introduction, in From Convent to Concert Hall: A Guide to Women Comosers, ed. Sylvia Glickman and Martha Furman Schleier (Westort, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 7. 2 Ibid. 23

32 Familial Suort and Access to Education The kind o musical education a girl might receive was very deendent uon her amily and their socio-economic status. The large majority o roessional emale musicians came rom roessional musical amilies (which Nancy Reich has termed the artist-musician class) and emale violinists were no dierent. 3 Within this grou it was by and large considered accetable or women, even married women, to erorm roessionally. 4 O the twenty-our violinists out o a grou o sixty-our whose mother s and/or ather s occuations are known I have ound twenty-two violinists who had one or more arents who were roessional musicians, and twelve had arents or close relatives (mostly athers or uncles) who were violinists. 5 There are also two cases o mother-daughter violinist airs: Strinasacchi and her daughter Caroline, and Joseha Schleicher and her two daughters Cordula and Caroline. 6 Children within roessional musical amilies usually learnt rom their arents in an arentice-like scheme similar to that used in other eighteenth-century roessions, and it seems unlikely that these women would have received lessons on the violin i their amilies did not intend or them to lay in ublic. Indeed, arents may have chosen to give their daughters violin lessons or inancial reasons. Child rodigies were a oular attraction during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as the violin was not a standard instrument or girls the additional novelty actor had the otential to result in higher ticket sales. In these cases, arents (usually athers) oten acted as teacher-managers. Rita Steblin, drawing on Freia Homann, suggests that young girls laying instruments like the violin in these contexts 3 Reich, Women as Musician, Ibid., Included in the total number but not counted as violinists or whom arents occuations are known are our royal eighteenth-century women who are known to have layed the violin: the sisters Marie-Adélaïde ( ) and Victoire ( ) o France, daughters o Louis XV, and the sisters Wilhelmine o Bayreuth ( ) and Anna Amalia o Prussia ( ), daughters o Frederick I and sisters to Frederick the Great. Julie Anne Sadie, Musiciennes o the Ancien Régime, in Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, , ed. Jane M. Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbana: University o Illinois Press, 1986), 207; Caroline Richter, Wilhelmine von Bayreuth, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 27 January 2015, htt:// Anja Herold, Anna Amalia, Prinzessin von Preußen, ibid., htt:// 6 All three o the Schleicher women also layed the clarinet, an instrument that was even more eyebrowraising than the violin, due to its hallic connotations and contact with the mouth. Schleicher, Joseha, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 29 January 2015, htt:// Freia Homann, Schleicher, Cordula, ibid., htt:// Anja Herold, Krähmer, Caroline, ibid., accessed 17 Setember 2014, htt:// 24

33 contributed to the normalisation o women laying masculine instruments in the nineteenth century. 7 The reason that juvenile violinists may have aved the way or their elder sisters was that, because they were not o marriageable age, the aura o imroriety around the instrument was lessened. Examles o violinists who erormed as children include Marie Janitsch, Friederike Klinsing, Klara Sigl, Hannah Lindley Taylor, and Mariane von Berner, as well as the more well-known igures o Louise Gautherot and Strinasacchi. The only conirmed case o an aristocratic woman who trained as a roessional was that o Félicité Lebrun. 8 She was also the irst emale violinist to enter the Paris Conservatoire, attending rom November 1796 to October Lebrun articiated in Baillot s violin class (which was otherwise exclusively male), and in 1797 and 1799 won second and irst-equal resectively in the Conservatoire s annual cometition. Lebrun was not Baillot s only emale violin uil at the Conservatoire at the turn o the century: Adèle Sonneck joined the same class rom May 1800 to June Frédéric de La Grandville, who has ublished material rom the archives o the Conservatoire, suggests that Lebrun and Sonneck were able to join the men s class due to Baillot s highly resected status at the institution. 11 By 1815 Kreutzer had ollowed Baillot s lead, as the seventeen-year-old Elisabeth Blanchet was admitted to his class that December. 12 These were not insigniicant moves on the art o Baillot and Kreutzer, as the Conservatoire otherwise seems to have maintained strict gender segregation in its classes throughout the nineteenth century, setting male and emale students dierent syllabuses and even requiring them to use searate staircases. 13 The admittance o emale violin students aears even more striking given the ounding urose o the Conservatoire as a training centre or (strictly male) military musicians, and the exressly masculine heroism o the violin comositions o Baillot et al Steblin, The Gender Stereotying o Musical Instruments, Freia Homann, Lebrun, Félicité, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 9 March 2015, htt:// 9 Frédéric de La Grandville, Dictionnaire biograhique des élèves et asirants du Conservatoire de musique de Paris ( ) (L Institut de recherche sur le atrimonie musical en France, 2014) accessed 25 October 2015, htt:// Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Reich, Women as Musician, Kawabata, Virtuoso Codes o Violin Perormance, 97 n14. 25

34 Outside o Paris, there are erhas surrisingly extensive examles o emale violinists who learnt rom amous teachers. Felicita Blangini and Giulia Paravicini received lessons rom Gaetano Pugnani, Mariane von Berner rom Rode, Marianne Crux rom Friedrich Eck, Elizabeth Plunket rom Matthew Dubourg, and Catarina Calcagno rom Paganini. 15 Giusee Tartini s connection with Lombardini Sirmen is the most well-known examle, rimarily because he sent a now amous letter to her about ractising and violin technique in Lombardini Sirmen also travelled to Padua on multile occasions between 1760 and 1766 to take lessons with Tartini in erson. 16 The act that so many emale violinists learnt rom renowned teachers seriously undermines the idea that these women were on the ringes o musical lie. Rather, through their contact with such teachers, we can see that women violinists engaged with the key eighteenth-century violin schools, and by extension the innovations those schools develoed. I a violinist chose to marry, suort rom their souse was also an imortant actor in whether they continued to erorm. An examle o an amateur whose husband showed suort or her activities was Anne Wathen Leeves, an Englishwoman whose husband William (a clergyman and amateur cellist) wrote doting oems about her violinlaying. These oems clearly show that he ound Leeves choice o instrument to be not only accetable but even beguiling. 17 Marrying a ellow roessional musician also aears to have signiicantly increased the likelihood o a violinist continuing to erorm ublically once she was an adult. A number o violinists erormed with their souses collaborative erormance being an indicator o endorsement including Lombardini Sirmen, the Schleichers, and Henriette Larrivée Borghese. Some, like 15 H.B., Blangini, Felicita, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 27 January 2015, htt:// Volker Timmermann, Paravicini, Giulia, ibid., accessed 9 Setember 2014, htt:// H.B., Berner, Mariane von, ibid., accessed 13 March 2015, htt:// Volker Timmermann, Crux, Marianne, ibid., accessed 9 Setember 2014, htt:// Plunket, Elizabeth, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 13 March 2015, htt:// François-Joseh Fétis, Nicolo Paganini: With an Analysis o His Comositions and a Sketch o the History o the Violin (London: Schott & Co., 1860; rer.: Dover Publications, 2013) accessed 5 August 2014, htt://books.google.co.nz/booksid=cwzcagaaqbaj. 16 Elsie Arnold and Jane L. Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen: Eighteenth-Century Comoser, Violinist, and Businesswoman (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), Anna Maria Moon, In Memoriam: The Rev. W. Leeves, Author o the Air o Auld Robin Gray (Printed or rivate circulation, 1887) accessed 7 Setember 2014, htts://archive.org/stream/inmemoriamrevwle00mooniala#age/n7/mode/2u

35 Strinasacchi and the Hungarian-Romani violinist Panna Czinka, meanwhile ormed amily ensembles. 18 Strinasacchi and Lombardini Sirmen s marriages are o articular interest: both aear to have been, at least in art, economically-driven unions. It is certain that in Lombardini Sirmen s case, as a maestra (osedali teacher and musical director), she needed to marry a musician in order to leave the Mendicanti. 19 A letter sent on her behal by Tartini to the comoser Giovanni Naumann in 1766 indicates that she was somewhat deserate to get out. The aim o the letter was to secure emloyment or her uture husband Lodovico Sirmen (also a violinist) and Lombardini Sirmen hersel at the Dresden court, thus enabling them to secure ermission rom the Mendicanti governors to marry and deart Venice. 20 The imlication is that it was only through marrying a roessional musician that Lombardini Sirmen could orge a more indeendent, and robably more exciting, career. 21 Strinasacchi may have had been similarly bound to the Pietà, though this is unclear, as her exact status there is unknown. In any case, through her marriage to Schlick in 1785, she gained emloyment at the Gotha court, a relatively secure economic osition which she almost certainly would not have been able to take u as an unmarried woman. Patronage and Emloyment Suort or women violinists also came rom sources outside o amily and teachers, in the orm o endorsement rom atrons and emloyers. Examles o women who worked with the court system include Paravicini, who was emloyed by Josehine de Beauharnais (irst wie o Naoleon) as a soloist and violin teacher or her son while in exile in Milan. 22 Czinka meanwhile was sonsored as a child by the landowner Ján Lányi to have lessons with a local violin teacher, and Strinasacchi received atronage rom both Prince August o Gotha and Anna Amalia o Weimar. 23 Others, such as Crux 18 Anna G. Piotrowska, Gysy Music in Euroean Culture: From the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries, trans. Guy R. Torr (Boston, New England: Northeastern University Press, 2013), Arnold and Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, 35, 39; Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice, The letter was unsuccessul but the coule were later given ermission and set o to tour Euroe. Arnold and Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, 39-40, Lombardini Sirmen requently toured without her husband. Ibid., 57-58, Timmermann, Paravicini, Giulia. 23 Piotrowska, Gysy Music in Euroean Culture, 21; Timmermann, Strinasacchi, Regina. 27

36 and Caroline Bayer (or Baier) are known to have erormed or royalty. 24 Such diverse examles o atronal suort o emale violinists are o signiicance: as is well known, a key urose o atronage was to communicate that atron s restige and wealth. 25 This being the case, it is not unreasonable to assume that these atrons o emale violinists elt the musicians they suorted to be aroriate relections o their restige. Such endorsements can be seen as imortant stes towards the legitimisation o women violinists in their own day, and again shows that these women were very much a art o the eighteenth-century musical economy. Perormance oortunities or emale violinists outside o the courts were sometimes available in rivate salons. Strinasacchi is known to have erormed in a rivate concert hosted by Prince Kaunitz in Vienna in Aril 1784, and it is ossible that other o the more well-known violinists also articiated in this ractice while touring. 26 At her home in Paris, Madame Blangini (the mother o the violinist Felicita) held salons where the Italian violinists Rosalie Tognini and Luisa Gerbini erormed in Aril 1810 and January As Gerbini and Felicita Blangini are both known to have been uils o Pugnani in Turin, it seems robable that they had known each other beore the Blanginis settled in Paris. Felicita is also known to have been the violist o the irst documented all-emale string quartet, ormed around 1800, which consisted o Mme. Ladurner (irst violin), Clarisse Larcher (second), and Thérèse-Rosalie Pain (violoncello). 28 Blangini also wrote and dedicated a string trio to Larcher. 29 As well as showing that women violinists articiated in salon culture, this suggests that being in a osition to interact with other women violinists roessionally and socially could be creatively stimulating in a variety o ways, resulting in collaborations and commissions. Female violinists were not restricted to erorming in rivate settings in act there are ar more recorded instances o ublic erormance. The concert series that 24 Crux, Marianne ; Bayer, Caroline, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 10 July 2015, htt:// 25 William Weber, The Contemoraneity o Eighteenth-Century Musical Taste, The Musical Quarterly 70, no. 2 (1984): Mary Sue Morrow, Concert Lie in Haydn s Vienna: Asects o a Develoing and Social Institution (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1989), Les Tablettes de Polymnie: Journal consacre a tout ce ui inte resse l art musical (Paris, ; rer. Geneva: Minko Rerints, 1971) accessed 8 August 2015, htt://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/tid=osu ;view=1u;seq= ; ; Freia Homann, Ladurner, Vorname unbekannt, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 27 January 2015, htt:// 29 Mlle. T Blangini, Trio à Violon Princial, Second Violon et Basse, comosé et dédié à Madame Larcher (Paris: Benoît Pollet, c. 1800). 28

37 booked the most emale violinists during the eighteenth century was robably the Concert Sirituel in Paris, where Lombardini Sirmen, Gautherot, and Paravicini all erormed on multile occasions. 30 In London, Wilhelm Cramer s Proessional Concert series and Johann Peter Salomon s rival series also engaged Gautherot between 1789 and 1791, while Madame Guilberg aeared at Salomon s in Vienna saw a comaratively high number o emale violinists erorm in its theatres (ten between the 1770s and 1810s) including international artists like Strinasacchi and Gerbini, and local violinists such as Joseha Ringbauer. 32 Beneit concerts were also a major source o income or roessional violinists, with many erorming in London and Paris as well as cities throughout German- and Italian-seaking states. Though securing atronage and rivate concert oortunities require no less skill, the myriad aearances o emale violinists on ublic stages alerts us to the act that they were businesswomen. In order to ut on concerts, touring virtuosi had to build relationshis with local atrons and musicians, organise venues, ticket sales, and exercise numerous other skills, rendering them entrereneurs. 33 Though souses or athers may sometimes have acted in a managerial caacity, it should not be assumed that this role was always carried out by a male relative, as Lombardini Sirmen s highly indeendent status shows. 34 Female violinists did not only erorm as soloists but as orchestral musicians, a striking act considering the huge resistance that women musicians aced throughout Euroe when trying to enter orchestras in the late nineteenth century. Women had been laying in ensembles within the osedali and in convents since the seventeenth century, but Strinasacchi is thought to be one o the earliest emale orchestral violinists to erorm outside a cloistered environment. 35 According to Louis Sohr, she was a member o the Gotha court orchestra by 1805, though she may well have erormed with the ensemble rom a much earlier date. 36 Other ioneering orchestral violinists 30 Arnold and Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, 51, 99; Volker Timmermann, Gautherot, Louise, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 30 January 2015, htt:// Paravicini, Giulia. 31 Thomas B. Milligan, The Concerto and London s Musical Culture in the Late Eighteenth Century (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983), 7, Morrow, Concert Lie in Haydn s Vienna, 6, 8, 170, William Weber, The Musician as Entrereneur and Oortunist, , in The Musician as Entrereneur, : Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, ed. William Weber (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), See Timmermann, Plunket, Elizabeth ; Arnold and Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, 2, 57-58, Timmermann, Strinasacchi, Regina. 36 Louis Sohr, Louis Sohr s Autobiograhy (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1865),

38 were the Schleicher sisters. Cordula layed at an unnamed music hall in 1806 and in the Orchester der Züricher Allgemeinen Musikgesellschat rom Caroline meanwhile held a osition in the Kaelle o the Prince o Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, was emloyed as a irst violinist and sometimes concertmaster o an orchestra in the sa town o Baden, Switzerland, in 1809, and took u a osition in the Karlsruher Orchester in Karlsruhe, Germany, around As early as 1798, Swiss violinist Marie Janitsch led the orchestra o an oeratic society in Hannover and around 1804 held the ost o Konzertmeisterin in Bern. 39 It was even more unusual or a emale violinist to lay in an orchestra than as a soloist because, according to Green, articiating as art o the section in a maledominated orchestra causes a greater interrution to a erormer s emininity than solo laying, where the violinist is searate. 40 The audience s ability to interret her erormance in an orchestra as dislay is hindered because as she carries out the same gestures as the men around her she becomes a member o the collective. 41 Particularly as a member o a theatre orchestra, a emale orchestral violinist was also decidedly in the ublic shere. The existence o no less than our women violinists in otherwise male orchestras almost two centuries beore this was to become standard is thus astounding: they were truly ioneers. Emulating Men Female violinists sometimes also received endorsement in written criticism. Concurrent with the kinds o negative reviews discussed in Chater One, there was a substantial body o ositive accounts that aeared in ublished sources. These included the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, Mercure de France, World and Fashionable 37 Homann, Schleicher, Cordula. 38 Caroline also erormed clarinet solos with the Baden orchestra and was, according to Homann, the irst woman to establish a signiicant career on that instrument in the early nineteenth century. Her choice o two unusual instruments likely made her doubly intriguing to audiences. Anja Herold, Krähmer, Caroline, ibid., accessed 17 Setember 2014, htt:// Freia Homann, Die Klavierlehrerin: Caroline Krähmer und ein literarisches Stereoty, ed. Cordula Heymann-Wentzel and Johannes Laas, Musik und Biograhie: Festschrit ür Rainer Cadenbach (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004), accessed 13 July 2015, htt://books.google.co.nz/booksid=dg7t3tglkyac, Anja Herold and Jannis Wichmann, Janitsch, Marie, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 27 January 2015, htt:// 40 Green, Music, Gender, Education, Ibid.,

39 Advertiser, and Morning Chronicle among many others. 42 O seciic writers who enned avourable accounts, Johann Friedrich Reichardt and Charles Burney are only two o the most eminent examles. 43 While it is not my intention to rovide a comrehensive recetion study, there are certain themes which aear in accounts o women violinists, making a brie examination o critical resonses useul. It becomes clear, or instance, that the ways in which they layed naturally aected how they were received: seciically, the manlier a violinist s laying style, the better many commentators considered a woman violinist to be as a musician. Reichardt, or instance, raised Paravicini because her laying is so masculine-owerul. 44 A Viennese review rom 1807 regarding Gerbini, meanwhile, stated that she can be counted among the strongest violinists [Violinisten] (men included) and has the ower in her bow and certainty and strength even in the highest notes, and a recision o execution that make her comletely worthy o general arobation. 45 Masculinity in this context is interwoven with the concet o hysical and aural strength, at odds with the ercetion o women as the weaker sex. By the same token, a violinist might be criticised or not being manly enough, as was Henriette Larrivée in a review rom 1791 in which the writer stated that they had no objection to the eorts o the sex on the Violin but that it requires the more muscular tone o a man, than the delicacy o emale nerves to accomlish the instrument. 46 For commentators who were against emale violinists, the categories woman and violinist were mutually exclusive. For many who gave avourable accounts though, violinist as a concet was still erceived as incomlete without some asect o man. By describing their laying as manly, commentators essentially bestowed the title o honorary man on violinists they admired as a way o rationalising their abilities. Those who were erceived as having an insuiciently masculine style were subsequently also inadequate violinists. So while ositive reviews which cast emale violinists as masculine mark rogress in the accetance o emale violinist, they still dislay the diiculty eighteenth-century listener/viewers had in attemting to reconcile the ideas that someone could be both a skilled violinist and a woman. 42 Timmermann, Paravicini, Giulia ; Gautherot, Louise. 43 See Head, Sovereign Feminine, 17; Charles Burney, The Present State o Music in France and Italy: Or, the Journal o a Tour through Those Countries, Undertaken to Collect Materials or a General History o Music (London: T. Becket and Co, 1771), 183, Kawabata, Virtuoso Codes o Violin Perormance, Morrow, Concert Lie in Haydn s Vienna, Quoted in McVeigh, Concert Lie in London,

40 Emulating men while laying the violin was not just connected to laying style, but the clothes worn by women violinists. In her autobiograhy, Getrud Mara (the amous oera singer who layed the violin as a young girl) recounted that she would dress in a riding habit [Amazonen-Habit a loor-length riding coat], because one ound that this attire was the most aroriate or violin-laying. 47 Women s riding habits were at this time closely modelled on men s styles, and negative reactions show such outits were considered by conservative commentators to transgress gender boundaries. 48 Mara s wearing o a riding habit (the German term or which imlies both masculine gender and its connection to the Amazon igure) thus carries links to her act o violin-laying, imlying that the aroriateness o such an outit lay more in its gender-muddling roerties which echoed the eect o the violin itsel than merely the ractical beneits that riding clothes might aord violin-laying, in terms o ease o movement. 49 This idea is suorted by Junker, who said that women who wore riding habits while laying the violin more closely resembled men. 50 Intriguingly, he aears to suggest that the eeling o indecency is weakened by the wearing o masculine clothing, indicating that imroriety is aradoxically increased when a woman lays the violin while wearing more eminine attire. That indecency might be lessened by a woman violinist s aearance being erceived as more masculine whether by clothing or other means is urther suorted by a resonse to Gerbini rom In a review rom the Zeitung ür die elegante Welt, the author remarked that her more masculine than eminine attitude and igure revented too glaring a contrast [between violin and erormer] My translation: Ich wurde in einen Amazonen-Habit [lose allende bodenlange Kleidung ür Reiterinnen] gekleidet, weil man and, dass dieser Anzug am besten zur Violine asse. Quoted in Freia Homann, Schmeling, Gertrud, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 16 January 2015, htt:// 48 Dror Wahrman, The Making o the Modern Sel: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), See ibid., 7-8. For urther discussion on riding habits, gender roles, and the Amazon igure see Cally Blackman, Walking Amazons: The Develoment o the Riding Habit in England during the Eighteenth Century, Costume Costume 35, no. 1 (2001): My translation: Man sehe das nemliche [Geige sielende] Frauenzimmer, nun im Amazonenhabit, also in einer Kleidung sielen, in welcher sie sich dem Manne, mehr annähert, und jenes Geühl des Unschicklichen wird um vieles geschwächt. Quoted in Homann, Schmeling, Gertrud. 51 My translation: Ihre mehr männliche als weibliche Haltung und Gestalt verhinderte dabei einen zu grellen Kontrast. Signora Luigia Gerbini, ed. Karl Sazier, Zeitung ür die elegante Welt (Berlin: Janke, 29 October 1803), accessed 1 February 2016, htt:// Quoted in Volker Timmermann, Gerbini, Luigia, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 9 Setember 2014, htt:// 32

41 Figure 2. Joseha Marti-Zbinden as a young woman (early nineteenth century). 52 Countering accusations o indecency aears to have motivated other emale violinists go a ste urther and don actual men s clothing, rather than merely masculineinsired items. The irst examle was Czinka, who wore the livery o her atron s household when erorming. 53 A later examle is Joseha Marti-Zbinden, a Swiss violinist who erormed with her ather s dance orchestra in the early nineteenth century (ig. 2). 54 Homann suggests that Marti-Zbinden would not have been able to erorm with the all-male ensemble i she had not also dressed in men s clothing. 55 The transgressive act o cross-dressing thus aears to have been less roblematic than, irstly, laying the violin, and secondly, highlighting that she was the only woman in the band through the act o wearing women s clothing. It is ertinent to note that both these violinists were rom lower-class backgrounds. This suggests that their crossdressing was a means through which they attemted to assume ower in a maledominated environment. 56 As well as emloying a masculine style o laying, then, erorming in men s or masculine-insired clothing could aradoxically reduce the 52 François de Caitani and Gerhard Aeschbacher, Musik in Bern: Musik, Musiker, Musikerinnen und Publikum in der Stadt Bern vom Mittelalter bis heute (Bern: Historischer Vereins des Kantons Bern, 1993), 182. Reroduced rom Freia Homann, Marti-Zbinden, Joseha, Sohie Drinker Institut, accessed 9 March 2015, htt:// 53 Piotrowska, Gysy Music in Euroean Culture, Homann, Marti-Zbinden, Joseha. 55 Ibid. 56 Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender (Philadelhia: University o Pennsylvania Press, 1993),

42 imroriety erceived in women s violin-laying, in turn enabling these women to erorm as roessionals. While the majority o avourable accounts emhasise the erormer s successul embodiment o violinistic masculinity, it is imortant to note that there are accounts that suggest an alternative concetion o violin-laying that exlicitly involved emininity. This is aarent in an English review o Madame Guilberg rom 1795, which stated that her youth and beauty, added to a delicate, though rather eeble tone, a brilliant shake, and great neatness o execution, interested her hearers, who exressed their arobation with reeated laudits. The Adagio in articular (comosed by Viotti, much to his honour) she layed in a chaste and charming style. 57 Here we see a reerence to the erormer s hysical attractiveness, tyical or accounts o women s erormance. It also, however, invokes tyically eminine traits such as delicacy, charm, chastity, and accuracy, characteristics which carried great value in other kinds o women s erormance. 58 Another account, this rom the rivate writings o Susan Burney, concerns Gautherot and also concentrates on the concet o accuracy by reerring to the violinist s raid execution, & so much recision. 59 Through raising Gautherot s recision (she has little else avourable to say), Burney laces Gautherot s laying within the realm o brilliant but emty virtuosity, a concet linked to the ercetion o virtuosic women s keyboard-laying as mechanical. 60 Fast assagework was seen as alsely imressive, ultimately lacking in genuine eeling thus machine-like which aligned such musical eects with a broader view o women and their activities as suericial and sometimes decetive. 61 Mechanical metahors such as the comarison o keyboard-laying women with automata and the use o descritive words like rattling can be seen works such as Maria Edgeworth s treatise, Practical Education. 62 The associations o ast assagework with a articular kind o dislay-ocused 57 London, Morning Chronicle, 24 February Quoted in Milligan, The Concerto and London s Musical Culture, Green, Music, Gender, Education, Ian Woodield, Salomon and the Burneys: Private Patronage and a Public Career, vol. no. 12 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2003), Ibid., This evokes Rousseau s statement regarding women writers as able to acquire science, erudition, talents, and everything that is acquired by virtue o work but incaable o roducing work that was anything but cold and retty. Rousseau, Letter to D Alembert and Writings or the Theater, Hohl Trillini, The Gaze o the Listener, See also Gillen D Arcy Wood, Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, : Virtue and Virtuosity (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010),

43 emininity show that, while descritions o women s violin erormances as masculine (whether ositive or negative) redominated in the eighteenth century, the idea that violin-laying could be seen as an activity that encomassed contemoraneous understandings o emininity was also exlored by some writers. Convents and the Venetian osedali The convents o Catholic Euroe and the osedali were the only contexts where concentrated and relatively consistent suort existed or emale violinists to learn, collaborate, and erorm regularly as soloists and in ensembles. Convents that are known to have had resident violinists and all-emale ensembles existed in Italy, Sain, France, Poland, and in Vienna and Brno (in the modern day Czech Reublic). 63 Though the our osedali the Pietà, Derelitti, Mendicanti, and Incurabili were sometimes mistaken or convents by tourists, they were in act charitable institutions originally established in the sixteenth century to house and educate oor, orhaned, and invalided children. Imortantly, they rovided a high quality o musical education or emale wards, known collectively as the iglie del coro. 64 By the eighteenth century the institutions were so amous or the musical activities that girls rom middle class or even wealthy amilies were quite requently admitted. 65 The osedali and in some cases convents thus rovided musical education to a much wider range o girls than those who were to became nuns or ermanent residents. There are a number o actors that enabled and normalised violin erormance by women within these contexts. Firstly, both convents and the osedali were religious institutions, the siritual urose o their music-making rendering it or the most art accetable. 66 Instrumental music was urthermore a relatively common (though 63 Burney, The Present State o Music in France and Italy, ; Colleen Baade, Two Centuries o Nun Musicians in Sain s Imerial City, TRANS: Revista transcultural de música/transcultural Music Review 15(2011): 10; Horace Walole, Letter No. 109 to George Montagu, Esq., 17 Setember 1769, in Letters o Horace Walole (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1890); Elizabeth Raley, A Social History o the Cloister: Daily Lie in the Teaching Monasteries o the Old Regime (Montreal: McGill-Queen s University Press, 2001); Magdalena Walter-Mazur, The Musical Practice o the Sandomierz Benedictine Nuns During the Eighteenth Century, Interdiscilinary Studies in Musicology 11(2012): ; Janet K. Page, Convent Music and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Ken Shirin, The Women s Orchestra o Old Brno, Early Music America 11, no. 2 (2005): 26-28, This was however declining in the late eighteenth century. Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice, Ibid., Tonelli, Women and Music in the Venetian Osedali,

44 contentious) eature o religious services throughout Euroe, articularly in Italy. 67 Secondly, violins comrised the core o instrumental ensembles, so any ensemble in such institutions would have been imrobable without them. The act that the ensembles were comrised only o women rendered them more accetable to the governing authorities and outsiders. 68 Green argues that the all-emale nature o the osedali cori, couled with the discourse o religiosity in act rovided a temorary solution to the interrutive otential o emininity that is delineated by emale instrumental erormance. 69 Fourthly, ublic erormances by the cori were integral to the survival o the osedali. Steblin has suggested that the iglie were allowed to lay masculine instruments because the novelty drew larger audiences and thus more donations. 70 Finally, both convents and the osedali were ultimately under the jurisdiction o male authorities: church heads such as the local bisho, and the osedali s governing boards, made u o aristocratic or wealthy Venetian men (though at the Derelitti widows could succeed their husbands and sit on the board). 71 This indicated that, desite the ostering o women s musical activities that went on in these contexts, their institutions were still under oten strict atriarchal control. Nuns were usually hysically searated (cloistered) rom the outside world, meaning that when they were erorming, musicians had to be obscured rom the audiences view. The osedali took a similar aroach. Searation in erormance was achieved by lacing the musicians in an inner chael, on balconies above the audience, and by using grilles, signiicantly reducing dislay (see ig. 4). 72 The decision to mask these women musicians erormances shows that the ecclesiastical authorities and governing boards were well aware o the eect dislay had and the ower it could bestow uon the erormers. Masking dislay suosedly rotected the modesty and iety o nuns and the iglie, but in reality this highly intentional disembodiment o women s musical sound imosed by external orces can be viewed as a method or controlling emale agency and sexuality. 73 The numerous conlicts that occurred between nuns and their sueriors throughout the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries about what nuns could and could 67 Sitzer and Zaslaw, The Birth o the Orchestra, , Male wards did not receive musical training. Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice, Green, Music, Gender, Education, Steblin, The Gender Stereotying o Musical Instruments, Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice, Barbara Garvey Jackson, Musical Women o the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, in Women and Music: A History, ed. Karin Pendle (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 98; Berdes and Whittemore, A Guide to Osedali Research, Indeed, this was a key aim o cloistering more broadly. Mario Rosa, The Nun, in Baroque Personae, ed. Rosario Villari (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 1995),

45 not do musically are a testament to the erceived ower that music and the concet o musical reedom carried. 74 Figure 3. A erormance at the Pietà during the eighteenth century violinists on let. 75 Removing the visible body rom musical erormance does not, however, remove the body altogether. In the re-recording age, music was o course insearable rom body as it could not be roduced without it. The imagined body thus still layed a owerul role in this unseen music. While obscuring the musicians rom view did have the eect o maintaining their holiness in the minds o some, or others the imagined musical body was erhas even more tantalising than those they could see in the oera house. 76 In these instances, the absence o sight, the lure o the orbidden and unknown was ironically more arousing or some audience members. This is clear rom the sometimes sensual descritions o osedali erormances. Rousseau s account o his 74 See Craig A. Monson, Divas in the Convent: Nuns, Music, and Deiance in Seventeenth-Century Italy (Chicago: University o Chicago Press, 2012). 75 Giovanni Grevenbroch, Orane ilarmoniche, 1754, in Gli abiti de Veneziani di quasi ogni età con diligenza raccolti, e diinti nel secolo XVII, vol. 4, Museo Correr, Venice. Reroduced rom Denis Stevens, Musicians in 18th-Century Venice, Early Music 20, no. 3 (1992): Sitzer and Zaslaw, The Birth o the Orchestra,

46 exerience at the Mendicanti rom his Conessions describes the coro s concealed erormances as volutuous (volutueux) and delicious (délicieux). 77 He exresses an almost obsessive desire to see the women, conveying agitation at not being able to observe them clearly and noting that he elt a shuddering o love that I had never exerienced just beore meeting the erormers. 78 The leshly descritions Rousseau used convey a hysical resonse to the music, the eroticism o which was greatly heightened or him by the act that the sounds source was invisible. Though the cloistered iglie and convent musicians oten sent their whole lives within their institutions, there is a strong case or considering their time working there as roessional careers. This is articularly the case with the iglie: each musician received a ortion o the roits rom their erormances, as those who trained younger girls did rom their teaching, so the iglie earned ersonal income. 79 Lombardini Sirmen, or instance, had accrued the large sum o 3,000 ducats by the time she let the Mendicanti in Furthermore, it was through income rom the women s erormances that the osedali were sustained inancially, thus the quality o their erormance was o great imortance. 81 The names o over sixty violinists are recorded in the osedali archives, o which Chiara della Pietà was one o the most renowned at mid-century. 82 Chiara not only had numerous works dedicated to her by comosers like Vivaldi and Antonio Martinelli, but was said by Charles de Brosses to be among the best, i.e. roessional male, violinists in Italy, urther strengthening the claim o the women to roessional status. 83 The osedali can also be seen as a training ground not only or orhaned girls, but or those wishing to go on to roessional careers in the secular world. Berdes has already suggested this was the case or numerous oera singers who went through the institutions. They also aear to have served this role or some violinists: a number, including Strinasacchi, came rom amilies o roessional musicians and did not remain 77 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Conessions and Corresondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes, ed. Christoher Kelly, Roger D. Masters, and Peter G. Stillman (London: University Press o New England, 1995), 264; Les conessions de J. J. Rousseau (Paris: Charentier, 1841), The Conessions, Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice, Arnold and Berdes, Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen, Tonelli, Women and Music in the Venetian Osedali, Berdes and Whittemore, A Guide to Osedali Research, Charles de Brosses, Selections rom the Letters o de Brosses, trans. Ronald Sutherland Gower (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., 1897),

47 at the osedali. 84 Besides the wards there were two other grous within the iglie: iglie d educazione, or scholarshi students; and iglie di sese, ee-aying students. 85 Figlie di sese could be boarders but also local Venetian day students, essentially rivate uils taught by the maestra di coro, while daughters o roessional musicians could come rom urther aield. 86 Lombardini Sirmen, Leila Achiaati, Maria Canciana, Teresa Maruzzi, and Antonia Perona are some o the violinists rom these categories who aear in the osedali archives, indicating that the osedali enabled something o a culture o violin-laying among girls not just rom orhan backgrounds to develo in Venice and surrounding areas. 87 In the convent system, girls with musical talent were sometimes admitted with ortions o their convent dowries waived. 88 Women with waived dowries who were unable to ulil their musical duties, either through ailing to meet exectations or through alling ill, were in many cases required to ay a urther ortion o their dowry in order to stay on at their convent. 89 There are other examles o women who were musicians but chose to ay ull dowries so as to not be contractually obliged to erorm. 90 These cases all indicate that convent musicians did indeed work in a sense similar to their secular counterarts emloyed at court, and may have held an equivalent level o social status as skilled servants. Colleen Baade has even ound evidence that some nuns received inancial comensation or their erormances. 91 This culture o waiving entry dowries also shows that women and girls did not always enter convents or strictly religious reasons, and that music in convent lie was by no means casual aair but an undertaking that required trained musicians. It may have been work in the service o God, but it was nevertheless work. Convents, as roviders o education to thousands o Euroean girls, may also have enabled access to violin lessons or girls who were not nuns. Historian Elizabeth Raley has noted that accounts o the Ursuline convent school at Montbard show violin lessons, along with other artistic activities, were rovided or the students in the 1790s 84 Berdes, Women Musicians o Venice, Ibid., Ibid., 117, 118, Berdes and Whittemore, A Guide to Osedali Research, 432, 446, 480, Page, Convent Music and Politics, 93; Baade, Two Centuries o Nun Musicians, Two Centuries o Nun Musicians, Ibid., Hired Nun Musicians in Early Modern Castile. 39

48 due to requests rom the girls amilies. 92 Girls might have the oortunity to learn the violin rom nuns or rom external male teachers. This shows that in some cases it was not only nuns laying the instrument in France, but their uer-class emale uils. In other words, a wider grou o aristocratic or wealthy women may have had oortunities to learn the instrument in France, and this may well have been the case in other Euroean cities. The only western-euroean country that did not have convents (and thus convent schools) in the eighteenth century was Britain. It is ossible that the ractice o laying the violin in convents, convent schools, and the osedali to a certain extent normalised the act in Continental communities adjacent to convents. As convents had not existed in Britain since the sixteenth century, a woman laying the violin may have seemed much more out o the ordinary there, and contributed towards the greater level o negativity towards emale violinists among Britons. Female violinists outside o convent or osedali communities received encouragement and educational suort rom amily members, souses, and teachers. Mentors and teachers could also hel their emale uils secure emloyment. In the ublic shere, suort came in the orm o emloyment and atronage, economic suort that carried with it a sense o roessional validation. Colleagues who erormed with emale violinists also aided their articiation in the highly collaborative nature o utting on concerts in the late eighteenth century, though clearly some ellow musicians did not arove o their instrument choice. Although economic suort rom audiences may not necessarily have translated into endorsement, those who chose to ay to see emale violinists erorm nevertheless enabled these women to continue erorming. In order to be taken seriously as a musician, one method available to women violinists was to emulate a masculine laying style, equated with hysical and aural strength. In some cases, dressing as man or in masculine-insired clothing also aradoxically allowed women violinists to erorm when their gender and outward dislay o that gender might otherwise have recluded this. Within the osedali and sometimes in convent communities, women violinists also eectively worked as roessional musicians and, unlike their non-cloistered counterarts, were art o a community o musical women in which they requently erormed in ensembles. We can also imagine that these contexts where many women 92 Raley, A Social History o the Cloister, 242, 343 n51. 40

49 violinists worked together were laces in which they ound emotional suort through interaction with musicians similar to themselves. At the very least these contexts rovided emale role models or younger violinists. Though recetion o nun and osedali musicians by the outside world was increasingly ambivalent, during the eighteenth century the music-making o the osedali in articular was acceted by the wider community. These many examles o dierent orms o suortive relationshis between emale violinists and those around them show that they did not exist in isolation, and in act received a much higher level o endorsement than one might think, given the aarently subversive nature o their erormances in an eighteenth-century context. 41

50 This age is let intentionally blank 42

51 Chater Three Gender and Gesture in Late Eighteenth-Century Women s Violin Perormance: Regina Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto in B lat major The ercetion that a violin-laying woman was a subversive sight ermeates late eighteenth-century accounts. Commentators saw emale violinists hysical movements as intriguing and sometimes distasteul (only a minority were so nonlussed as to make no exlicit mention o the erormer s body). But what movements might commentators have been reacting to, and what kind o music might roduce such movements Given the imortance ascribed to gender and gesture in women s violin erormance, this chater takes as its ocus a iece comosed by a emale violinist Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto in B lat major utilising embodied analysis to exlore how elements o Strinasacchi s concerto intersected with issues o gender in an eighteenth-century Euroean context. The source o Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto drawn on here is a coy currently held by the British Library (shelmark GB-Lbl R.M.21.d.7, ). This handwritten set o arts art o a bound collection o eleven works by various eighteenth- and nineteenth-century comosers was made and robably owned by one Johann Wilhelm ( William ) Griesbach ( ) and is dated At resent this is the only known coy o Strinasacchi s concerto. It is not known how Griesbach came to have a coy o the concerto arts, but it is known that he was a Hanoverian-born string-layer who worked as a member o the Queen s Band at the court o George III. 1 He immigrated to England around 1785, joining several relatives already in the Band: erhas he brought a coy o the concerto over to England with him, or a relative or riend sent it at his request. 2 As Strinasacchi is not 1 F. Anne M. R. Jarvis, The Community o German Migrant Musicians in London c1750-c1850 (master s thesis, University o Cambridge, 2003), accessed 6 February 2015, htt:// 2 Ibid. 43

52 known to have had any ersonal connection with England, this seems the more likely means by which the concerto would have arrived in Britain. Little to nothing is currently known about the genesis o the concerto itsel. Because the only known extant version is the Griesbach coy, and the concerto is not mentioned seciically in any sources ound in the course o this research, it is ultimately not ossible to inoint when, where, or why Strinasacchi comosed or erormed this concerto. Through drawing on research about Strinasacchi s historical context, however, it is ossible to make some broad suggestions about the concerto s background and urose. Like Lombardini Sirmen beore her, Strinasacchi ossibly learnt to comose during her time at the osedale. The solo concerto was a natural genre or her to choose: as is well known, it was the rimary means by which eighteenth-century virtuosi dislayed their skills and garnered attention. 3 In writing a concerto then, Strinasacchi was doing as her male colleagues did, though ew other emale violinists aear to have ollowed suit (Lombardini Sirmen exceted). There are two likely uroses or which Strinasacchi may have written this concerto: or one o her several tours around Italy and Germany, or or her atron Prince August once she had settled in Gotha. It aears that concerto was never ublished, but this does not necessarily mean that it was intended only or Strinasacchi s ersonal use. According to George B. Stauer, coying scores and erormance arts by hand remained the most viable way o reroducing ieces quickly and economically in the second hal o the century. 4 Thus the absence o ublication is not necessarily an indication that the concerto received limited distribution: indeed, its resence in Griesbach s collection would seem to indicate otherwise. What kind o audience might have heard Strinasacchi erorm this concerto Concert audiences at this time, though they were increasingly drawn rom the middle classes, really involved only the uer third o society. 5 Nevertheless there were a variety o grous with dierent social standing and levels o wealth rom the uerand uer-middle classes reresented, with the articular mixture varying according to geograhical location. Listener/viewers also came with dierent levels o musical knowledge, and were broadly divided into three grous: amateurs (also dilettantes or 3 Chaell White, From Vivaldi to Viotti: A History o the Early Classical Violin Concerto (Philadelhia: Gordon and Breach, 1992), George B. Stauer, Introduction: J.S. Bach, the Breitkos, and Eighteenth-Century Music Trade, Bach Persectives 2 (1996): William Weber, The Muddle o the Middle Classes, 19th-Century Music 3, no. 2 (1979):

53 Liebhaber in northern Germany), connoisseurs (exerts or Kenner), and roessionals. 6 Those in the irst two grous redominantly came rom the uer echelons they might lay an instrument but would not erorm or ay and were thus o higher social standing than roessional erormers or comosers. Non-working women o the middle classes and relatively well-o men emloyed in a roession other than music could also all into these categories. Though musicology has oten rivileged the ersectives o roessionals and the Kenner over those o the Liebhaber, Yotan Bar-Yoshaat has argued that Liebhaber views should not necessarily be thought o as inerior: even during the late eighteenth century the two grous were not universally erceived in this way. 7 This also extends to the reutation or inattention oten associated with eighteenthcentury audiences, articularly women. According to Caryl Clark, writing about oera in eighteenth-century Vienna, the sectacle o chattering emale Burgtheater atrons need not diminish or tarnish the role o women as consumers o oera or signal their total disregard or what was being transmitted to them. Likewise, audience attentiveness does not always mean listening or comrehension; rather, occasional inattention may be a sign o engagement with immediate events. 8 In other words, simly because certain musical eatures and modes o listening have traditionally been ascribed higher value than others, it does not in act ollow that they are any less valid means o engaging with music. In the course o this chater I look at Strinasacchi s concerto in its historical context, relecting on it as a erormance in the environment o the ublic concert rather than as an abstract work. Considering this concerto as a erormance enables me to exlore how the gendering o violin-laying made it a comlex undertaking or emale violinists, in turn acilitating closer study o some o the issues encountered in the receding chaters. A erormance ocus is arguably also a more aroriate aroach or late eighteenth-century music, which belonged to an 6 Yonatan Bar-Yoshaat, Kenner und Liebhaber Yet Another Look, International Review o the Aesthetics and Sociology o Music 44, no. 1 (2013): Ibid., Caryl Clark, Reading and Listening: Viennese Frauenzimmer Journals and the Sociocultural Context o Mozartean Oera Bua, The Musical Quarterly 87, no. 1 (2004):

54 environment in which work and erormance were oten not considered searable concets. 9 Because o the relationshi o the body to issues o gender (both generally and in relation to Western art music in articular), I will consider not only the aural eects o these musical eatures, but also their visual eects when erormed by a emale violinist. I emhasise this asect o erormance because o the centrality o the erormer s gendered body in resonses to women violin layers. Thus consideration o what George Fisher and Judy Locchead have termed erormance gesture and its relation to gender in this context will low through this analysis. 10 I ocus on two kinds o erormance gestures: those necessary or sound roduction, and coordinating and cuing activities, as these are hysical movements that can be extraolated rom the only remaining trace o erormance, the score. 11 Ater resenting historical and recent musicological suort or ocusing on erormance gesture, I elucidate my aroach to our other musical asects that will be considered: virtuosity, toics, structure, and soloist/orchestra interaction. I then turn to the analysis itsel which roceeds through the three concerto movements in chronological order, moving between and oten combining discussion o the six issues outlined above (gender, gesture, virtuosity, toics, structure, soloist/orchestra interaction). What emerges is a concerto in which the comoser/erormer has wholeheartedly embraced the multilicity o her osition as an eighteenth-century emale violinist. At once erceived as exressing both eminine and masculine traits in erormance, the onstage emale violinist came to be viewed as enacting an ambiguous mixture o genders. Strinasacchi s use o dierent musical eatures that were themselves considered to be gendered resulted in moments that airmed the erormer s emininity and others that imlied her embodiment o masculinity. 9 Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum o Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosohy o Music (Oxord: Clarendon Press, 1992), Fisher and Lochhead, Analyzing rom the Body, Ibid.,

55 Analytical Frameworks Gender and Gesture Many elements o Strinasacchi s erormance were imbued with gendered associations, irst among them being that, as discussed in Chater One, the instrument itsel was seen as a man s instrument. The violin concerto as a genre (given the instrument s association with men) was thus also considered relatively masculine, with this sense being strengthened by its connection with roessionalism and the ublic venue o the concert hall. Particular musical eatures, mainly structure and toic, also interacted with eighteenth-century ideas about gender in various ways. The rondo, or instance, was erceived as a eminine orm. 12 Yet urther layers are added when the erormers bodies are considered: erormance o the solo violin art by a eminine-gendered body contrasted with the collective male-gendered body o the orchestra accomanying her. Though many o these eatures would generally have gone unremarked under normal circumstances (with a male solo violinist), when erormed by a emale violinist their gendered associations were highlighted. What was taken as standard when erormed by a male violinist ceased to be invisible. Turning irst to consideration o erorming bodies, a host o evidence rom eighteenth-century sources indicates that eighteenth-century musicians elt erormers hysical movements were o signiicance, thus lending the use o erormance gesture historical alicability in this context. Oera is the most obvious musical context in which gesture layed an imortant role: scholars such as Mary Ann Smart have exlored how gesture not only interacted with text but with musical content. 13 It is imortant to note that there are limited arallels between theatrical (and oratorical) gesture and those involved in violin-laying. As the rimary unction o violin gestures is a ractical one to roduce sound in order not to interere with sound roduction the violinist is obviously much more restricted in the scoe and variety o their movements than an oera singer. Desite the act that violin gestures or the most art do not resemble other kinds o movements, concets rom theatrical and oratorical gesture do have some alication. Reerring 12 Matthew Head, Like Beauty Sots on the Face o a Man : Gender in 18th-Century North-German Discourse on Genre, The Journal o Musicology 13, no. 2 (1995): Mary Ann Smart, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Oera (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 2004). 47

56 to Gilbert Austin s Chrironomia rom 1806, Robert Tot has noted that most gestures do not reresent any articular sentiment but relate to the emotional quality o the text in a general way. Action derives its signiicance, then, not rom the gesture itsel but rather rom the manner in which it is alied. 14 This holds true or violin erormance. For instance, slow movements (such as the long slurred bows in the Adagio) visually communicate reose likewise in calm hrases the singer or orator moves their arms and hands little and in a leisurely manner. Though I argue that violin gestures tend to communicate in a general rather than seciic way, there is some overla between these and theatrical/oratorical gesture, which will be discussed in relation to toics and structure. Further sources show that gesture was imortant to non-oeratic musical erormance. In The Art o Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century, Stehanie Vial discusses views on the toic rom igures such as C.P.E Bach and Daniel Gottlob Türk. Crucially, though Vial ocuses mostly on vocal erormance, she shows that these writers addressed gesture seciically in the context o instrumental erormance. C.P.E. Bach is more strongly committed to this task, stating in his Versuch (1753) that those who maintain that all o this [aect] can be accomlished without gesture will retract their words when, owing to their own insensibility, they ind themselves obliged to sit like a statue beore their instrument. 15 In other words, emoting with the body is essential to good erormance, as without it the main urose o music (conveying aect to and thus moving the audience) cannot be communicated eectively. Türk s comments in his Klavierschule (1789) show another side o the story, arguing that it does not hold that such a antomimic lay in music contributes very much to exression as was ormerly maintained. 16 This indicates that Türk elt some instrumental erormers were by the 1780s relying too heavily uon the emotive caabilities o their hysical bodies (as oosed to the music itsel ). Türk was roosing that this ractice be reined in, though not banned outright: Vial adds that instead Türk maintains that the countenance o the keyboard layer should aroximate the character o the comosition in a decorous manner Robert Tot, Action and Singing in Late 18th- and Early 19th- Century England, Perormance Practice Review 9, no. 2 (1996): Quoted in Stehanie Vial, The Art o Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century: Punctuating the Classical Period (Rochester: University o Rochester Press, 2008), Ibid., Ibid. 48

57 In addition to these late eighteenth-century sources, relatively recent musicological texts such as Le Guin s Boccherini s Body rovide recedents or discussing erormance gesture in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century contexts. 18 As Le Guin is a cellist, the hysical rocesses she describes have some cross-over with violin-laying, and oer an examle o how erormers can draw uon their own embodied exeriences o laying a iece to construct an analysis. Insired by the aroach o Le Guin, as well as Helyard, DeNora, and Fisher and Lochhead, I utilise my own exerience as a emale violinist and also a listener/viewer in this analysis in order to discern what kind o hysical gestures Strinasacchi may have made in erormance. Through this I exlore what her audience may have seen and what the combination o sounds and erormance gestures originating rom a emale violinist might have meant to them. As Le Guin acknowledges in relation to Boccherini, this tye o reconstruction is in many ways a ictive exercise we cannot really know what or how Strinasacchi and her eighteenth-century listener/viewers heard, saw, or interreted. 19 Nevertheless, there is much to be discovered by thinking about the body that irst layed these notes, and that is sometimes best done by trying out those roles yoursel. My decision to ocus on how Strinasacchi s erormance may have been received and interreted, rather than on her imagined subjective exerience, may aear to downlay her agency. In act, my decision to emhasise otential audience resonse stems rom a desire to give her as much agency as ossible: I have not constructed my analysis around a rojection o what Strinasacchi hyothetically exerienced because I do not wish to claim that I seak or her. By considering the concerto rom the ersective o an imagined audience I am able to exlore imortant asects o Strinasacchi s erormance without re-enacting the historical silencing emale violinists have oten aced by utting my words in her mouth. An additional motivation or this decision was that there is very little rimary material rom which an idea o Strinasacchi s ersonality and subjective exerience could be constructed: only one letter in her hand and three or ossibly our silhouettes 18 Futher examles which also exlore gender in relation to erormance gesture include Tia DeNora, Embodiment and Oortunity: Bodily Caital, Gender, and Reutation in Beethoven s Vienna, in The Musician as Entrereneur, : Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists, ed. William Weber (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), ; Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology. 19 Le Guin, Boccherini s Body,

58 (including the one rom 1795) are readily available. 20 This situation might change with ocused archival research, but such research was not within the scoe o this study. Lacking such material, it was thereore necessary or me to ground my work in the score, my own violin-laying exerience, contemorary accounts o emale violinists, and (as those accounts are oten vague) scholarshi regarding other kinds o eighteenth-century emale instrumentalists. Musical Features or Analysis In addition to the wide reaching issues o gender and erormance gesture, a slightly less tyical aroach to this iece than a ocus on orm and harmony was required as, or a number o reasons, it might be seen as inerior when viewed using mainstream criteria. Firstly, it is a concerto (a genre maligned or its oregrounding o virtuosity), and it is by a little-known comoser doubly devalued due both to her gender and to her reutation as a erormer irst and oremost. Furthermore, Strinasacchi s concerto is Italianate: melody-ocused, dominated by light accomaniment in thirds, with short and clear hrases, much variety between hrases, and modulations that never stray ar rom the tonic. Thus I have ocused on the eatures o virtuosity, toics, structure, and soloist/orchestra interaction. Though it is not my intention to make claims o greatness on behal o this concerto, using tools which ocus on its inadequacies would ignore what interesting insights it has to oer in relation to eighteenth-century women s violin erormance. It is also worth noting that though the Italianate eatures listed above were oten viewed negatively by many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German critics, this does not mean that listeners with dierent kinds o musical knowledge elt the same way. Indeed quite the oosite: these musical attributes were highly oular among general eighteenth-century concert audiences, and criticisms rom secialist German writers were requently motivated by non-musical concerns such as nationalism In addition to the 1795 silhouette there is a head-only silhouette _ in an album amicorum owned by Schade and another held by the New York Public Library. A silhouette by Böttger was also mentioned in the Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung in 1796, which may or may not be the same artwork at that held in New York. 21 Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music (New York; Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 1997),

59 For these reasons, I have chosen to ocus on musical elements that interact with the issues o gender and gesture in interesting ways. Virtuosity Though the majority o research on virtuosity has so ar ocused redominantly on the nineteenth century, it is ossible to draw some conclusions about musical virtuosity in the eighteenth century. Firstly, there are two rimary kinds o virtuosity: technical rowess, which on the violin usually involves the use o eatures such as ast assagework and high ositions; and beautiul sound roduction, shown rimarily in melody-driven assages. 22 Theorists o the day eectively saw virtuosity o the technical dislay kind as the direct oosition o true eeling. 23 Thus highly virtuosic music eschewed what many considered the central aim o music: to move the assions. Because o this, virtuosi were oten cast as machine-like and inhuman, lacking in the ability to exress true sentiment, and consequently virtuosic eats were considered easier to erorm than music that moved the soul. 24 It is imortant to note here that a number o scholars have shown that much anti-virtuosic sentiment stemmed rom musicians and comosers reacting to others in their ield. 25 As such there was almost certainly an element o roessional jealously wraed u in seemingly noble statements. Aside rom a erceived threat elt by some musicians, the ocus that virtuosity ut on the body rendered such musical erormances earthly, akin to lower class orms o entertainment such as circus acts. 26 This made musical erormance a crat (i.e. laborious) more than an art and, crucially, took the ocus o the music itsel. 27 The role that the visual layed in virtuosic erormance is thus highlighted in many accounts, with rioritisation o the visual being correlated with suericiality. 28 Finally, articularly with regards to singing and violin-laying, 22 White, From Vivaldi to Viotti, Le Guin, Boccherini s Body, Ibid.; Helyard, Muzio Clementi, Diicult Music, and Cultural Ideology, Dana A. Gooley, The Battle against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century, in Franz Liszt and His World, ed. Christoher Howard Gibbs and Dana A. Gooley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 76; Cli Eisen, The Rise (and Fall) o the Concerto Virtuoso in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, in The Cambridge Comanion to the Concerto, ed. Simon P. Keee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Gramit, Cultivating Music, 141; Le Guin, Boccherini s Body, Gramit, Cultivating Music, ; Eisen, The Rise (and Fall) o the Concerto Virtuoso, Le Guin, Boccherini s Body,

60 virtuosity was inherently connected to Italian music and musicians, lending criticism by non-italians a xenohobic edge. 29 The widesread oularity o Italian virtuosi and their erormance styles however conirms that this rejudice was mainly held by secialists roessionals and ossibly the Kenner and was a view that, according to Dana Gooley, was later imosed uon a ublic that was initially gravitating toward music o virtuoso character. 30 For the Liebhaber, then, virtuosity held great aeal: its ability to arouse wonder and astonishment (seen by theorists as susicious) held what Le Guin suggests was a seductive ower. 31 Undoubtedly, this seduction in art stemmed rom virtuosity s rootedness in the hysical and the visual. According to Le Guin, wonderinducing virtuosic eats cause a sense o alienation in the listener/viewer. This alienation or Othering can render a body inhuman and has the ability to both reulse and seduce. 32 Furthermore, it can lead to objectiication o the virtuosic body (hinted at by commentators comarisons o virtuosi to machines). Thus there is some overla in the anxieties surrounding the dislay o the body in virtuosic music and in women s (aid and unaid) erormance. As virtuosity was associated with roessionalism, and women s musical erormance was so closely tied to amateurism, the domestic shere, and the ideal o stillness, women enacting virtuosity (rimarily as keyboardists) could be seen as embodying masculinity. 33 Women who did this aced criticism similar to that o male virtuosi, but ast inger action at the keyboard in articular (and its association with the mechanical) came to be closely linked to emale erormance and was oten termed rattling. 34 In terms o women s violin-laying, a number o commentators exressed surrise at how well certain violinists were able to lay. 35 This imlies that their exectations o emale violinists erhas aligned with exectations around women s erormance more generally that virtuosity was not art and arcel o it. On the other hand, Gillen D Arcy Wood has argued that through the link between virtuosic erormance 29 Ibid., Gooley, The Battle against Instrumental Virtuosity in the Early Nineteenth Century, Matthew Riley, Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment: Attention, Wonder and Astonishment (Burlington; Aldershot: Ashgate Pub. Co, 2004), 31-32; Le Guin, Boccherini s Body, Boccherini s Body, Tia DeNora, Music into Action: Perorming Gender on the Viennese Concert Stage, , Poetics 30, no. 1 (2002): Hohl Trillini, The Gaze o the Listener, 66, See or instance two reviews o Strinasacchi in Cramer s Magazin der Musik (1783), quoted in Timmermann, Strinasacchi, Regina. 52

61 and the aristocracy, characterised by emerging bourgeois culture as eeminate, virtuosity itsel came to be considered by some as eeminate, articularly through the idea that it constituted useless labour. 36 The resence o virtuosic sounds and hysical movements in Strinasacchi s concerto thus brings u interesting issues surrounding gender and virtuosity (esecially on a masculine instrument), making consideration o these musical eature vital to my analysis. Toics Though eighteenth-century listeners did not use the term toic, and some scholars disute the historical basis or toic theory, others argue that eighteenthcentury listeners were very amiliar with and comrehended the use o toics such as the march, various dances, the astoral, singing style, and numerous others. 37 Here, a toic is deined as a amiliar style tye with easily recognisable musical eatures that is taken out o [its] roer context and used in another way. 38 It is thought that articularly the mixing o toics layed a signiicant role in making much late eighteenth-century music not only intelligible but enjoyable (and thus leasurable) or audiences, and is thus integral to this music s sociability. 39 The trend toward the mixing o toics in instrumental music in the second hal o the century meant that large works were essentially music made out o music, and considered indicative o Italian style. 40 The origins o this style have been linked to oera bua and the mixed style s comic nature was requently touted as a negative turn or instrumental music by German commentators. 41 Toics also encomass imitation o extra-musical sounds. 42 Numerous toic theorists have exlored the ways in which musical gestures can emulate hysical movement (musical gestures being the sonically oriented concet 36 Wood, Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, 6, 2-4. Note: eeminacy is not the same as emininity see Head, Like Beauty Sots on the Face o a Man, Danuta Mirka, Introduction, in The Oxord Handbook o Toic Theory, ed. Danuta Mirka (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2014), 2, 28; Melanie Lowe, Pleasure and Meaning in the Classical Symhony (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), Robert S. Hatten, The Troing o Toics in Mozart s Instrumental Works, in The Oxord Handbook o Toic Theory, ed. Danuta Mirka (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2014), 514; Danuta Mirka, Introduction, ibid., Introduction, Allanbrook quoted in ibid., 28; ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

62 rather than the hysical movements o erormers). 43 Few have considered how musical gesture and its relation to toics might interact with erormance gestures. 44 At articular oints throughout this concerto, I consider how actual erormed hysical gestures might interact with toics, showing that they oten heighten the listener/viewer s exerience o articular toics and the associations these toics evoke. Some theorists, such as Melanie Lowe, have argued that certain toics unctioned as indicators o structure, allowing less musically educated listeners to ollow along with a movement s rogress. 45 Toics such as the French overture (dotted rhythms, slow, grand) requently signal oenings, minor keys (in redominantly major key movements) can signal sections o continuation, while horns can signal closure. 46 I hysical gestures roduced by articular toics can hel communicate those toics, and certain toics can convey structure, I osit that certain gestures can also convey asects o structure. In this analysis I will rimarily ocus on commencing toics and gesture, linking one articular gesture with basic movements ound in eighteenth-century theatrical ractice. Structure I send little time in this analysis on structure in and o itsel I am more concerned with how it interacts with other musical elements. A lighter emhasis on large-scale structure in the traditional sense (e.g. irst movement sonata orm) is also arguably more historically aroriate or Italianate music o this era. As Le Guin (and others) have exlored, tools designed or later Viennese music simly do not work well or other reertoires. 47 Alternative aroaches have been roosed by Lowe, Robert Gjerdingen, and Mary Sue Morrow. Lowe argues that consideration o the broad categories o oenings, middles, and closings as oosed to a nonchronological, out-o-time aroach is more alicable to a musical culture in which instrumental ieces were oten heard only once. 48 Such general markers are quite easily discernible while exeriencing a musical erormance as it haens. 43 Ibid., 47-48; Fisher and Lochhead, Analyzing rom the Body, An excetion is Mary Hunter who has alluded to a connection. Mary Hunter, Toics and Oera Bua, in The Oxord Handbook o Toic Theory, ed. Danuta Mirka (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2014), Lowe, Pleasure and Meaning, Ibid., 30-32, 49, Le Guin, Boccherini s Body, Lowe, Pleasure and Meaning,

63 Thinking about structure in this way constitutes more o a continuous low aroach. Gjerdingen suggests that this was ossibly the kind o listening emloyed by eighteenth-century audiences. 49 Similarly, Morrow indicates that detailed asects o large-scale structure were at this time more the rerogative o theorists than the Kenner or Liebhaber. Even in the writings o eighteenth-century theorists the imortance o orm did not really begin to gain strength until the end o the 1780s. Rather, in the 1770s and early 1780s, musical structure deended more on the logical rogression o small musical ideas than it did on abstract unity or concrete orm. 50 In this aroach to comosition the eighteenth-century requirement or music to be sociable, a burden laced uon the comoser rather than the listener, is visible. In Strinasacchi s concerto, there is an emhasis on clarity and comrehensibility rom bar to bar and hrase to hrase that show she aimed to bring her less musically educated listeners along with her. This is articularly aarent in the solos, which are dominated by reeated two-bar units. Furthermore there is very little develoment or recasting o earlier material in a Mozartian sense. 51 Though this aroach, which avours clarity at the rice o grace can lead to continuity [which is] choy and short-breathed, and came to be rowned uon as simlistic as ideologies changed, White indicates that it was certainly not an unusual eature or violin concerti o this eriod. 52 What this aroach does enable is contrast and variety in melody, rhythmic ideas, and aect imortant, as variety was touted by theorists like Johann Sulzer as key to sustaining a listener s leasure and attention So while clarity is erhas sometimes valued over smoothness and overall unity in this concerto, these eatures relect the values o Strinasacchi s musical context, and show a desire on her art to engage with many o her listener/viewers in a comrehensible way. Though moment-to-moment consideration might be more aroriate or this concerto, as large-scale orm is such a art o the discourse surrounding late eighteenth-century music, and because standard orms can be maed onto this 49 Robert O. Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (Oxord; New York: Oxord University Press, 2007), Morrow, German Music Criticism, This one-idea-to-the-next aroach is one that Head has also noted in relation to a rondo by Sohia Westenholz. Head, Sovereign Feminine, Chaell White, The Violin Concertos o Giornovichi, The Musical Quarterly 58, no. 1 (1972): 76, Matthew Riley, Civilizing the Savage: Johann Georg Sulzer and the Aesthetic Force o Music, Journal o the Royal Musical Association 127, no. 1 (2002): 16.

64 concerto, I lay out the structure o each movement at the beginning o each movement discussion. The analysis as a whole rogresses in a broadly chronological ashion, but in the interest o clarity and to avoid extraneous bar-by-bar descrition, I move between moment-to-moment descrition and a more out-o-time aroach, where I have deemed this to be aroriate. Soloist/Orchestra Interaction The interaction between soloist and orchestra was, along with virtuosity, a key attraction o the concerto genre. In relation to this concerto, it also seems ossible that the novelty o seeing a emale violinist interact with a (male) orchestra may well have been a signiicant art o the aeal or audience members unaware o Strinasacchi s ame as a virtuoso. I visual sectacle was already a mainstay o the concerto genre due to the requirement o virtuosic dislay, then adding a urther sectacle in the orm o an unusual soloist would have been an additional draw card consistent with the genre s emhasis on insiring awe. Seeing Strinasacchi side by side with male violinists (musicians o the correct gender) may have heightened the sense o wonder created by the discord between her body, her instrument, and her gestures through the visual comarison. The issue o leadershi is o articular imortance in the interaction o the two arties. The dual orchestral leadershi model (with both keyboardist and irst violinist working together) was common throughout the century, but the irst violinist was increasingly avoured. 54 It was also standard ractice or the solo violinist to lay the irst violin art and thus act as leader during tutti sections, esecially i they were the comoser. 55 Common ractice thereore laces Strinasacchi as leader o an all-male ensemble not only as a distinct igure, but as one that is requently integrated into the ensemble through her laying o the irst violin art. She is both searate and assimilated, an individual woman soloist and a member o the male orchestral collective. This comlicates Green s argument that women erorming as orchestral layers are even less likely to airm their emininity than 54 Sitzer and Zaslaw, The Birth o the Orchestra, Robin Stowell, Perormance Practice in the Eighteenth-Century Concerto, in The Cambridge Comanion to the Concerto, ed. Simon P. Keee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005),

65 soloists, as they must work with the male collective and become one o the men. 56 O course, in the context o a concerto, it is visually and aurally clear when the soloist is acting as such, and when they are acting as a irst violin. Nevertheless, in Strinasacchi s case, these two seemingly exclusive roles were likely embodied by the same woman. This blurred the distinction, utting Strinasacchi in two masculinegendered roles (leader and orchestral layer) simultaneously, with the role o member o the orchestra otentially questioning traditional musical gender roles even more than that o solo violinist. Strinasacchi s role as leader within the music itsel is also o imortance. Musical interaction between soloist and orchestra in concerti usually reers to exchange and develoment o thematic material. There is minimal dialogue or exchange o thematic material in this concerto (really a eature o concerti by German, rather than Italian, comosers), making moments where active dialogue does occur stand out. The matter o who says what irst is also o signiicance. Through monoolising musical material, the solo violin asserts her metahorical and actual role as leader, challenging exectations regarding women s roles both in ensemble music-making and erhas also more generally. Analysis o Strinasacchi s Violin Concerto I. Allegro Moderato The Allegro o Strinasacchi s concerto is in ritornello-sonata orm and ollows many o the ormal conventions o concerto irst movements rom the 1770s and 1780s. 57 As is tyical or the era, though the labels o exosition, develoment, and recaitulation can be maed on to the Allegro, these do not it neatly. This is esecially the case in the develoment /second solo eisode in bb : as is common or non-austrian concerti, there is no real recasting or working out o earlier material here. 58 The ritornello rincile is thus clear in this movement, with alternations between (our) tutti and (three) solo sections. 56 Green, Music, Gender, Education, White, The Violin Concertos o Giornovichi, Ibid.,

66 The Allegro contains numerous musical eatures and erormance gestures which suggest that an eighteenth-century concetion o a masculine-gendered erormance style dominates. Strinasacchi s ulilment o a masculine role, seciically that o leader o the orchestra, is reinorced by the solo violin s takeover o ormerly tutti material in the recaitulation section. Oening and closing gestures rearatory bow movements, cou d archet, and inal lourishes visually illustrate basic elements o the movement s structure, and the act that Strinasacchi likely would have led these movements in erormance emhasises her leadershi role. Masculine-gendered violin-laying is ound in vulgar dislays o virtuosity: large leas, extreme grand cadences, and assages in high registers. The use o ast mechanical and ianistic assagework however hints at a eminine-coded virtuosity. The oening tutti begins with a cou d archet, elongated by a ause and rendered articularly grand by the rest which ollows immediately ater it in b. 1 (see examle 1.1 below). 59 This rest searates the cou d archet rom a light and layul melody eaturing syncoation in b. 6, which is itsel interruted by a clied French overture exclamation in bb , though the syncoated melody returns soon ater. Lowe argues that, in music o this eriod, the French overture toic and the cou d archet igure signal oening and as such serve a structural unction the irst traditionally served as courtly ceremonial entrance music, while the second loudly tells otherwise occuied audience members that the iece has started. 60 Beore the irst note had sounded though, gestures would have alerted listener/viewers to the start o the concerto being imminent: the orchestra would raise their instruments to their shoulders or lis, and the string layers would hold their bows at the ready above the string. The solo violinist/leader might then beat the temo with their bow or scroll in order to cue the orchestra or the unison irst note. 61 So without even roducing sound, gestures clearly indicate oening, and thus indicate structure. The gesture o the cou d archet itsel also communicates the oening unction o this two-note igure: the orchestra (articularly o course the strings bows) are not just aurally but also visually uniied, signiying the association o this igure with authoritative control in more than one way. 62 The starting osition or the violin 59 James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley: University o Caliornia Press, 1995), Lowe, Pleasure and Meaning, Sitzer and Zaslaw, The Birth o the Orchestra, Janet Levy quoted in Lowe, Pleasure and Meaning,

67 bows here also haens to mimic theatrical and oratorical commencing gestures. According to Tot, a eriod commences by raising the hand rom rest to a lace no higher than the downward or horizontal osition o the arm a very similar osition to where the right hand must move to in order to begin the u bow o this movement in the middle or lower hal. 63 Furthermore, because o the lacement o the rest directly ater the cou d archet, Strinasacchi must cue the orchestra twice. Her gestures train the eyes o the orchestra and indeed the audience on her body in a truly commanding manner right rom the outset o the concerto. 64 The second and third tutti sections share much material with the irst, but articularly in the third there are crucial dierences (see examles 1.1 and 1.2 below). Here the solo violin takes on several hrases originally layed by the orchestra: this can be seen as the soloist asserting her role as leader. Dialogue between the arties is also at its most active here. The irst hrase (bb ) roceeds exactly as it did in the exositional section, but in the consequent hrase, rather than the solo and irst violins laying in unison as they did initially, the soloist takes charge o the melody line. Meanwhile, the irst violins take over the accomaniment line reviously delivered by the seconds, the seconds take over the viola line, and the violas dro out altogether. The whole ensemble joins in again in bb or a French overture statement, but immediately ater this in bb the same changes in art distribution are reeated. In the exosition, this is ollowed by a grand orte section (bb ), a contrasting iano section (bb ), and a three-bar crescendo (bb ). In the recaitulation, however, this is relaced by another solo eisode (bb ) that introduces new material (mainly assagework in bb ) but which also lays on exositional material. For examle, in bb , the solo violin takes on the aoggiatura-laden hrase rom bb and resents it u the octave and with a semi-quaver variation in b. 181, while the irst violins join in a tenth below with an unornamented version o the melody. 63 Tot, Action and Singing in Late 18th- and Early 19th- Century England, I am grateul to Erin Helyard or suggesting this oint. 59

68 Examle 1.1 Exosition 60

69 Examle 1.2 Recaitulation 61

70 A urther dierence between the exosition and recaitulation is that the latter is inused with more drama: the third bar (b. 182) now contains a quaver rest and a reciitous grand cadence dro (discussed below), the crotchet-length cadential trill has been extended to a minim, and the hrase ends with an unsatisying imerect authentic cadence in bb The whole hrase demands reetition to bring the solo eisode to a more eective close. The solution Strinasacchi rovides is a longer and grander cadential build u (made thus through the use o longer note values), an even longer trill (now a semibreve), and the anticiated erect authentic cadence. The subsequent tutti section is eectively a coda: it reinorces the arrival o the inal cadence in the tonic and is an exact reetition o bb , involving the whole ensemble in a grand ashion. Through these changes, the solo violin has dismantled the strict searation between solo- and orchestra-ocused sections adhered to during the rest o the movement. In doing so, she has asserted her leadershi, and also questioned the individual/grou divide. By taking over the consequent section o each eriod in the oening o the recaitulation (bb and ), she rovides the metahorical answers to the orchestra s questions (bb and ). The violinist then takes the helm alone by diverting o into new virtuosic material. She also leads the way to reintroducing exositional material in b. 180 with sequential reetition in bb , while the orchestral strings emhatically state their suort by mirroring the solo art and outlining chord I. In b. 179, the continuous quavers in the irsts and basses echo their accomaniment in b. 26, roviding a subtle reminder o and additional momentum or launching into the variation o the aoggiatura igure in b This musical takeover on the art o the violinist conirms her leadershi role and it also urther blurs the boundary between what musical tur belongs to the soloist and to the orchestra. Strinasacchi s roles as visual leader o the ensemble (as concertmaster) and musical leader have also been merged into one here. In looking to the rhetoric esoused by male orchestral musicians in the late nineteenth century, when the number o women violinists had grown exonentially and there were calls or orchestras to begin emloying them, it is aarent that the idea o a woman entering an orchestra was seen as an intrusion on a distinctly male shere. 65 Though 65 Gillett, Musical Women in England. 62

71 the number o women orchestral musicians was not at all suicient to warrant them being seen as a threat to men s jobs in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Strinasacchi s musically and visually evident move into that shere in this concerto could have been seen in a similar light. The solo eisodes o the Allegro ocus rimarily on brilliant style virtuosity, oregrounding ast assagework, high ositions, and vertiginous leas in both the let hand and the bow. The resence o ast assagework here is erhas one o the least rovocative kinds o virtuosity Strinasacchi could have used as a emale musician. I suggest this because it is in assagework that a violinist can, gesturally seaking, most closely resemble a ianist (seciically, the movements o the let hand ingers become visually like those o a ianist). Because the keyboard was considered a eminine instrument, and ast, inger-centric movement was an acceted art o that instrument s gestural vocabulary, the gestures o ast assagework in violin-laying all more readily within the established limits o eighteenth-century emale music making. More than one account o Gautherot s London erormances show that eighteenth-century audiences saw assagework in the laying o emale violinists in this light, with one saying she bows but eebly, but she has a raid and brilliant let hand, that overcame many diiculties. 66 Susan Burney s criticisms o Gautherot mentioned earlier, and which are summarised by her statement that Gautherot s best laying was rather brilliant than touching were very similar to those aimed at women keyboardists. 67 In ast assages on the violin, the let hand ingers have to strike the ingerboard with recision and strength more so than at slower temos, so that the notes can seak roerly. Raidly striking or rattling ingers can both eel and look mechanical: they visually resemble and ulil a similar unction to the hammers o a orteiano. 68 This hammering action is echoed by the right arm movement required or executing ast, searate quavers: the bow and right hand/lower arm also make vigorous striking actions that move diagonally. The way one learns and retains the ability to execute these igures at seed is also, to a certain extent, mechanical : they 66 World and Fashionable Advertiser, 10 February Timmermann, Gautherot, Louise. 67 Quoted in Woodield, Salomon and the Burneys, no. 12, O course, with a orteiano the action o the hammers striking the string actually roduces sound, whereas on the violin the let hand ingers only alter the itch (while the bow roduces the sound). Nevertheless, as the violinist s let hand is highly visible in erormance, the link between let hand action and sound roduction is strong. 63

72 must be ingrained in muscle memory and are in that sense automatic. Moments where such mechanical virtuosic gestures aear in Allegro include bb , and , , These assages involve strings o semiquavers, oten in reetitive scalic (e.g. bb and 173) or areggiated (bb. 126 and 128) atterns, but also in stock atterns such those ound in the second hal o b. 118 and in b In a number o laces, vertiginous leas link high osition work to assages near the bottom o the violin s range. The biggest leas o this kind in the Allegro occur in b. 55 and b. 57 ( ''' to b '), and 182 and 189 (b ''' to e'). A dierent treatment o this virtuosic technique occurs in b. 76, which contains not one but two consecutive leas (e' to g''' to b ) and leads into ast assagework on the G, D, and A strings in bb (see examle 1.3 below). These leas necessitate large and highly visible gestures on the art o the violinist. In most cases either the let hand must quickly dive rom one end o the ingerboard to the other, or let hand and bow must jum laterally rom the E string to the D or even the G. In b. 76 there is an examle o these let and right arm gestures occurring simultaneously: while the let hand leas rom irst osition on the D string to sixth osition on the E and back down to irst osition on the G, the bow also generates large arm gestures. I I end b. 75 with a down bow, due to the crotchet-length slur I am at least at the midoint i not closer to the ti or the u bow at the beginning o b. 76. Because the second note o the bar is both a minim and on the E string, I must launch this irst u bow with seed and, simultaneously, quickly lower the level o my right arm, so that my bow starts the next note both at the heel and on the correct string. In order to get down to b ', I must swing my right arm uwards, skiing both the A and D strings, so that the ti o my bow lands on the G or the inal crotchet. Harmonically, the irst stratosheric lea seems to create a momentary sense o stasis as the minim (metahorically) hangs susended at the to o chord V in the dominant (F major). Underneath the solo violin, the orchestral violins and basses calmly continue their reeated quavers rom the revious bar, and ater the action o the high osition work in bb and exciting descent and rhythmic variety in b. 75 in the solo violin, b. 76 seems ull o anticiation without orward momentum. What, ater all, could ollow such a brazen jum on the high wire Strinasacchi undermines our anticiation o something even more exciting in b. 77 by changing 64

73 tack and diving into srightly semi-quaver movement in an elaboration o chord V, assagework which stays uncharacteristically low by utilising only the G and D strings. Put simly, b. 76 is aural and visual sectacle. Examle 1.3 Vertiginous leas Vertiginous leas o a slightly dierent kind to those seen in b. 76 occur in Strinasacchi s use o the gravity-deying grand cadence. This is a term adated rom Robert Gjerdingen s Music in the Galant Style by Floyd Grave, and is described by Grave as involving a ast climb to a melodic eak a reciitous dro on the ollowing downbeat; a inal aroach to the cadence rom above, energized by a trill over dominant harmony; and the structurally salient close itsel. 69 Grave is rimarily discussing the use o the schema in Haydn s string quartets, and he argues that the comoser s use o the exaggerated eature is not only comic but also didactic in unction. More seciically, these oten out-o-lace dros can be seen as a lesson in the aroriate limits o eighteenth-century taste: leas such as these are too brazen. Two examles o extreme grand cadences are on show in bb and bb , at the very end o the last solo section o the Allegro (see examles 1.4 and 1.5 below). In b. 182 we see the quick ascent to the eak ollowed by the extreme dro (though this does not all on the downbeat o the next bar, the quaver s anticiatory nature roduces the same eect), ollowed by a trill in b. 184 and artial resolution in the orm o an imerect authentic cadence. The second attemt at the grand cadence is a reeat o the irst with several changes that make this resolution much more satisactory. There is a two-bar extension between bb (which builds anticiation as it diverges rom the lan laid out in bb ), the trill now lasts or a whole rather than a hal bar, and we inally hear the requisite erect authentic cadence in b. 193, given with much greater orce than the revious cadence by the oboes, horns, and violas joining the strings or the tonic chord. 69 Floyd Grave, Freakish Variations on a Grand Cadence Prototye in Haydn s String Quartets, Journal o Musicological Research 28, no. 2-3 (2009):

74 Examle 1.4 Vulgar grand cadence 1 Examle 1.5 Vulgar grand cadence 2 Going by Grave s criteria, these grand cadence dros within Strinasacchi s concerto aear to exceed the limits o violinistic oliteness, crossing over into vulgarity. It is articularly striking that a emale violinist would do this: with these comositional and erormative gestures, it is almost as i Strinasacchi is communicating a bold I couldn t care less to otential detractors. In erorming these otentially vulgar movements, Strinasacchi could be seen as actively resenting a challenge to the idea that eighteenth-century women should embody virtue, chastity, and constraint o all kinds. 70 In the same article in which he exlores Haydn s use o extreme grand cadences, Grave also mentions the concet o a galant itch ceiling according to Grave, Leoold Mozart uts the standard ceiling or the violin at a'''. 71 Strinasacchi includes more than one assage in this concerto that centres on and even exceeds that itch. In the Allegro this aears in the inal solo eisode in bb and again in , assages which centre on g''' and also reach u to b ''' in b. 182 and 189. Grave 70 Susan Moller Okin, Rousseau s Natural Woman, The Journal o Politics 41, no. 2 (1979): Grave, Freakish Variations on a Grand Cadence Prototye in Haydn s String Quartets,

75 argues that to watch a violinist [ascend higher than a'''] reaching recariously around the shoulder o the instrument with the let hand while drawing the bow careully over a very short string-length with the right is to gain an areciation o the strain involved. 72 The high osition assages in Strinasacchi s concerto are indeed hard work or the violinist. In act, it eels as i Strinasacchi is utting the sotlight on the concet o violin-laying as hysically laborious. It requires visible eort to lay accurately and with aealing tone in eighth osition (with the irst inger laced on ''' on the E string so b ''' can be reached with the ourth), due to the shortness o the string. As Grave oints out, the let hand must contort around the instrument as the thumb remains anchored at the oint where the neck meets the body while the rest o the hand reaches u the ingerboard. Even i I am able to make these assages sound easy, it is quite another thing to make them look easy it is somewhat diicult to make my let hand and arm aear relaxed in these ositions, mainly due to the twisting they require. These demanding assages thus challenge the centrality o the ideals o srezzatura and stillness considered so imortant to eighteenth-century women s musical ractices, and they also undermine the idea that women should always remain visually aealing while erorming or the beneit o the male gaze. In the erormance context o Strinassachi s concerto then, a''' becomes a kind o musical glass ceiling, the symbolic breaking o which has the result o deying the hysical limits o women s erormance and disruting the audience s ability to comortably emloy the male gaze. Certainly, these moments seem to intentionally draw the listener/viewer s gaze to the erormer s body in action they are the oosite o eminine stasis. The gestures eel very ublic: they are movements designed to be seen right at the back o a ublic theatre. In erorming them, Strinasacchi would have also taken visible command o the hysical sace around her, in contrast to the very sedate and indeed almost assive movements o the (male) string layers accomanying her at these moments. Strinasacchi s hysical gestures also reairmed the ublic-ness o this articular concerto: the gestures are comounded by the act that the concerto is already a ublic genre and that we are considering a concerto erormance in a ublic theatre (a location which already questions the standard view o eighteenth-century Euroean women s musicianshi as domestic). The develoing concet o the ublic 72 Ibid. 67

76 was increasingly linked to the masculine during this eriod, and by dint o the erceived inherent masculinity o violin gestures, the size and boldness o these virtuosic movements come across as distinctly gendered in an eighteenth-century context. Strinasacchi could be interreted as caitalising on her audience s ercetion that these virtuosic gestures were inaroriate or a woman, or indeed anyone, to erorm, i we see these as hysical and aural gestures so extreme as to become vulgar. Through exaggerated movement, Strinasacchi urther exloits the awe insired by the visual discord between eminine body and masculine movement: these are certainly gestures that astonish, erhas even scandalise. II. Adagio In contrast to the Allegro, the Adagio can be seen as airmative o emininity. It uses a number o musical eatures that were strongly associated with women and the eminine in the eighteenth century. These include the astoral and related zeiro toics and the use o singing-style. These musical eatures, which involve small, comortable movements and a narrow range, contribute to a gesturally contained erormance style which bears relation to the hysical limitations exected o women s musical erormance more generally. Strinasacchi s successul erormance o an unnamed adagio was directly linked to her gender by Leoold Mozart in a letter to Nannerl dated 7-9 Dec In it he wrote that: She lays not a note without eeling, even in the orchestral ritornello she lays everything with exression, and the Adagio no one can lay with more eeling and more touchingly than she. Her whole heart and soul are in the melody she is laying. Her tone remains so beautiul and so owerul. I ind that overall, a woman with talent lays with more exression than men. 73 As Daniel Heartz has commented, this is an extraordinary statement coming rom one o the age s inest and most exerienced violin teachers, and rom an era that was more likely to derecate than raise roessionalism in women. 74 This is not only high raise or a women musician but high raise or any musician to receive rom Leoold, indicating that he was truly imressed by Strinasacchi s abilities. 73 Quoted in Daniel Heartz, Mozart, Haydn and Early Beethoven, (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), Ibid. 68

77 Breene has ointed out that in making this connection between Strinasacchi s gender and her emotive adagio laying, Leoold was drawing uon a well-worn troe o the association between eeling and emininity in contrast to reason and masculinity. 75 The troe s very ubiquity nevertheless strengthens the idea that other audience members may well have made such a connection between Strinasacchi s emininity and her erormance o this Adagio. This movement is in E lat major and uses arietta orm (common or middle movements o violin concertos at this time). 76 Like the irst movement, it oens with an orchestral introduction (see examle 2.1 below) that uses the dotted rhythms o the French overture. The whole ensemble is heard laying this in bb. 1 and 3, while in bb. 2 and 4 we hear a horn-call toic. We have already seen in relation to the Allegro that the French overture carries a structural unction as a resentational toic. Horn calls can also indicate this. 77 In the context o a slow second movement however, horns also signal the astoral toic, and the resence o this toic in the Adagio is conirmed by the highlighting o the oboe and lute timbres in bb Whether the horns indicate oening or the astoral toic, or indeed both, they sound as i they are laying in the distance. Their interjections are requently isolated, both in terms o the material they resent and in that the strings and woodwind tend to dro out o the texture when they lay. While the horns lay in rhythmic unison with the strings and woodwind in bb. 1 and 3, they alone resent the idiosyncratic call in bb. 2 and 4. The woodwind initially also aear to be set aart rom the ensemble in bb. 8-10, but their moti is immediately echoed by the uer strings in bb Meanwhile in bb the horns resent not the woodwind/string material, but their own take on the dotted rhythms contained within those hrases, making the horn moti sound like a ar o aterthought. The musical oreground during the introduction is thereore comrised o woodwind and strings, a trend continued through the middle section o the iece where the ocus is o course on the solo violin. 75 Breene, Mozart s Violin Sonatas and the Gestures o Embodiment, White, From Vivaldi to Viotti, Lowe, Pleasure and Meaning, Raymond Monelle, The Musical Toic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 5. 69

78 Examle 2.1 Adagio introduction Another eature o this movement that is oten ound in conjunction with the astoral is the zeiro toic a rocking or murmuring semi-quaver igure that aears in the orchestral strings, woodwind, and solo violin (see examle 2.2 below). 79 It is also evocative o a lullaby, a genre o song inextricably linked to the image o a mother singing to her child, an image which connotes calm, stillness, and comort. These associations render the rocking igure airmative o emininity. 80 The ervasiveness o the zeiro toic makes comort and comactness a veritable eature o the Adagio: these igures are easy and leasant to lay on the violin. Ater being 79 Elaine Sisman, Symhonies and the Public Dislay o Toics, in The Oxord Handbook o Toic Theory, ed. Danuta Mirka (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 2014), Green, Music, Gender, Education,

79 heard in the woodwind in b. 8, the igure is irst heard in the solo/orchestral violins in b. 10, layed in thirds. This is ollowed in b. 14 by a reeated major third, which can be seen as a ragmentation and thus a variation o the initial woodwind motive. As the rincial violin enters with the solo art in b. 16, the orchestral violins begin a urther variation on the rocking igure rom b. 14. These igures are not just close and comortable or the violinist s let hand: they work in much the same way or the bow. The most logical ingering or the irst violins in bb is irst osition, with the third inger on g' (D string) and irst inger on b '' (A string) simultaneously. The combination o this ingering with slurs means that the bow moves in a way that visually connotes rocking, through the constant movement between the D and A strings. Unless the second violins decided to lay this assage in third osition (which is lausible), the bow does not waver or the seconds rather the ingers establish a rocking attern on a smaller scale as they dro and lit with each semiquaver. Examle 2.2 Zeiro toic Strinasacchi has taken a vocal-inluenced aroach to melody in the Adagio: the reetition and one-idea-ater-the-other attern ollowed by the Allegro (and Rondo) are relaced by long lines that oreground melody. This signals that singing style dominates this movement, oregrounding the second tye o virtuosity. Though the astoral encomassed a wide range o meanings in the eighteenth century, erorming music that utilised the astoral and singing style was commensurate with eighteenth-century troes surrounding emininity, seciically through the link made 71