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1/5
Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End ofHitler's Reich by Pamela M. PotterReview by: Christopher HaileyNotes, Second Series, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Sep., 1999), pp. 106-109Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/900476.
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2/5
NOTES,
September
1999
OTES,
September
1999
group
Take
That,
Paul McDonald
obviously
worked hard
to
provide
detailed
descrip-
tions
of
the
spectacles
he
analyzed,
but
some photographs would have made his
essay
more
vivid.
In
the
course of
his
discus-
sion of
Take That's
popularity among
young
female and
gay
male
audiences,
McDonald
fairly
critiques
psychoanalytic
approaches
that reduce
multiple perfor-
mances
of
gender
to
dichotomies;
he also
does
a
good
job
of
defending
informed tex-
tual
analysis
as an
illuminating
method that
need not
always
depend
upon
direct
ethno-
graphic
corroboration.
Unlike
McDonald,
Sean Cubitt makes no
effort to describe visual images carefully,
leaving
the reader
unable
to
judge
or re-
spond
to
his
assertions. That is the case
with his entire
chapter,
most of which does
not even
pretend
to address
popular
music,
and none of which
displays
much
concern
with other
people's responses,
with
history,
or with
musical
signification.
Cubitt
speaks
of our
responses,
of how we
respond,
but offers no evidence that would
ground
his assertions outside of his own
reactions.
His
contribution
is less
an analysis
of
social
meanings
than a
performance
of his own
reception
of
gendered images.
Sexing
the
Groove oncludes
with
an anno-
tated
bibliography
of
relevant work
in
cul-
tural
studies,
gender
studies,
and
popular
music;
it is
a
helpful compilation
with fair
group
Take
That,
Paul McDonald
obviously
worked hard
to
provide
detailed
descrip-
tions
of
the
spectacles
he
analyzed,
but
some photographs would have made his
essay
more
vivid.
In
the
course of
his
discus-
sion of
Take That's
popularity among
young
female and
gay
male
audiences,
McDonald
fairly
critiques
psychoanalytic
approaches
that reduce
multiple perfor-
mances
of
gender
to
dichotomies;
he also
does
a
good
job
of
defending
informed tex-
tual
analysis
as an
illuminating
method that
need not
always
depend
upon
direct
ethno-
graphic
corroboration.
Unlike
McDonald,
Sean Cubitt makes no
effort to describe visual images carefully,
leaving
the reader
unable
to
judge
or re-
spond
to
his
assertions. That is the case
with his entire
chapter,
most of which does
not even
pretend
to address
popular
music,
and none of which
displays
much
concern
with other
people's responses,
with
history,
or with
musical
signification.
Cubitt
speaks
of our
responses,
of how we
respond,
but offers no evidence that would
ground
his assertions outside of his own
reactions.
His
contribution
is less
an analysis
of
social
meanings
than a
performance
of his own
reception
of
gendered images.
Sexing
the
Groove oncludes
with
an anno-
tated
bibliography
of
relevant work
in
cul-
tural
studies,
gender
studies,
and
popular
music;
it is
a
helpful compilation
with fair
commentary,
although
it
inexplicably
omits
one of the most
important
previous
works
on
popular
music and
gender,
Lisa A.
Lewis's GenderPolitics and MTV: Voicingthe
Difference
(Philadelphia:
Temple
University
Press,
1990),
as well
as
George Lipsitz's
sev-
eral books on
cultural studies
and
popular
music. It would be
easy
to
criticize the cov-
erage
of
Sexing
the Groove tself: the
popu-
lar music of its
subtitle is limited to
Anglo-
American rock
and
pop,
and
even
within
those
boundaries
there is no
discussion of
hip hop,
for
example,
and almost no men-
tion of black musicians.
Although
divided
evenly by
gender,
the
contributors are
mostly British, and some of the musicians
they
discuss are less well
known
in
the
United States and elsewhere. But
to dwell
on
such limitations would
be
unfair,
given
the
great range
of musical
performances
of
gender
that are
insightfully
examined
here.
Despite
Whiteley's
unfulfilled
promise
to
bring
musical sound to the center of her
book's
analyses,
she
has
brought together
many
valuable
essays
and
produced
a useful
and
consequential
collection.
Sexing
the
Groove
s
one
of
the most
provocative,
en-
abling,
and
persuasive
recent contributions
to
popular-music
studies.
ROBERT
WALSER
Universityof California,
Los
Angeles
commentary,
although
it
inexplicably
omits
one of the most
important
previous
works
on
popular
music and
gender,
Lisa A.
Lewis's GenderPolitics and MTV: Voicingthe
Difference
(Philadelphia:
Temple
University
Press,
1990),
as well
as
George Lipsitz's
sev-
eral books on
cultural studies
and
popular
music. It would be
easy
to
criticize the cov-
erage
of
Sexing
the Groove tself: the
popu-
lar music of its
subtitle is limited to
Anglo-
American rock
and
pop,
and
even
within
those
boundaries
there is no
discussion of
hip hop,
for
example,
and almost no men-
tion of black musicians.
Although
divided
evenly by
gender,
the
contributors are
mostly British, and some of the musicians
they
discuss are less well
known
in
the
United States and elsewhere. But
to dwell
on
such limitations would
be
unfair,
given
the
great range
of musical
performances
of
gender
that are
insightfully
examined
here.
Despite
Whiteley's
unfulfilled
promise
to
bring
musical sound to the center of her
book's
analyses,
she
has
brought together
many
valuable
essays
and
produced
a useful
and
consequential
collection.
Sexing
the
Groove
s
one
of
the most
provocative,
en-
abling,
and
persuasive
recent contributions
to
popular-music
studies.
ROBERT
WALSER
Universityof California,
Los
Angeles
Most
German
of the
Arts:
Musicology
and
Society
from
the
Weimar
Republic
to the
End
of
Hitler's
Reich.
By
Pamela M.
Potter.
New Haven:
Yale
University Press,
1998.
[xx,
364
p.
ISBN
0-300-07228-7.
$40.]
Most
German
of the
Arts:
Musicology
and
Society
from
the
Weimar
Republic
to the
End
of
Hitler's
Reich.
By
Pamela M.
Potter.
New Haven:
Yale
University Press,
1998.
[xx,
364
p.
ISBN
0-300-07228-7.
$40.]
Any
musicologist
trained
in
the
last
forty
years
knows the names: Friedrich
Blume,
Heinrich
Besseler,
Helmuth
Osthoff,
Karl
Gustav
Fellerer,
Josef
Muller-Blattau,
Johannes
Wolf,
and at least
a
dozen or so
more.
Their
articles, reviews,
monographs,
and
editions,
sometimes
dry,
unappetizing,
pedantic,
and
austere,
were the
gluten
for
our first
wobbly
seminar
papers
and lent
gravitas
to our
footnotes,
heft to our
bibli-
ographies. And
it
was the heft of Die Musik
in
Geschichteund
Gegenwart
(Kassel:
Baren-
reiter,
1949-86
[MGG]),
that monument
of German
scholarship
and
eye-straining
graphic
design,
that
gave
tone to our arms
as
we
wrestled with our
Tonkiinstler. To
Any
musicologist
trained
in
the
last
forty
years
knows the names: Friedrich
Blume,
Heinrich
Besseler,
Helmuth
Osthoff,
Karl
Gustav
Fellerer,
Josef
Muller-Blattau,
Johannes
Wolf,
and at least
a
dozen or so
more.
Their
articles, reviews,
monographs,
and
editions,
sometimes
dry,
unappetizing,
pedantic,
and
austere,
were the
gluten
for
our first
wobbly
seminar
papers
and lent
gravitas
to our
footnotes,
heft to our
bibli-
ographies. And
it
was the heft of Die Musik
in
Geschichteund
Gegenwart
(Kassel:
Baren-
reiter,
1949-86
[MGG]),
that monument
of German
scholarship
and
eye-straining
graphic
design,
that
gave
tone to our arms
as
we
wrestled with our
Tonkiinstler. To
most
Americans,
German
scholars were not
personalities
but faceless
authorities,
stern
guarantors
of
standards
and
traditions;
it
scarcely
came to
mind that much of
their
work,
along
with
MGG,
the VW
Beetle,
and
the
autobahn,
was a
legacy
of
National
Socialism.
Time heals not
through
a
process
of for-
getting,
but
by
binding
trauma within the
tough
sinews of narrative
memory.
At this
century's end, Germany can look back on
four
generations
of
rupture
and
disloca-
tion. Three wars
(two
hot,
one
cold)
and
five
distinctly
different
governmental sys-
tems
have
rent
the fabric of its
psyche
and
its
culture.
If
music is the
most German of
most
Americans,
German
scholars were not
personalities
but faceless
authorities,
stern
guarantors
of
standards
and
traditions;
it
scarcely
came to
mind that much of
their
work,
along
with
MGG,
the VW
Beetle,
and
the
autobahn,
was a
legacy
of
National
Socialism.
Time heals not
through
a
process
of for-
getting,
but
by
binding
trauma within the
tough
sinews of narrative
memory.
At this
century's end, Germany can look back on
four
generations
of
rupture
and
disloca-
tion. Three wars
(two
hot,
one
cold)
and
five
distinctly
different
governmental sys-
tems
have
rent
the fabric of its
psyche
and
its
culture.
If
music is the
most German of
10606
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3/5
Book Reviews
the
arts,
then German music culture has
been
especially
disrupted,
and much
recent
scholarship
has been
devoted to
creating
a
narrative to reintegrate the broken lives,
repertories,
traditions,
and institutions
into
historical
memory.
These
projects
have
largely
been
devoted
to the
victims:
Jews,
exiles,
progressives,
revolutionaries,
and
whatever
else
war
and totalitarian
ideology
could
destroy
or
cast
away.
So
what
of the
others,
of
those who
stayed
and
labored on
and have ever since
been
lurking
in
our
footnotes?
Pamela
M.
Potter's examination of
German
musicology
over the
thirty-year
period from the end of the First World
War
to the
beginning
of the Cold
War
is
a
sober
and
sobering
tale. It is the
story
of
the
founders
of
twentieth-century musicol-
ogy
in
Germany,
men who were the teach-
ers,
colleagues,
or themselves the
students
of
exiles like Curt
Sachs,
Alfred
Einstein,
Karl
Geiringer,
Manfi-ed
Bukofzer,
and Leo
Schrade,
who in turn
did so much to
shape
American
musicology.
There is a
common
heritage
here,
and Potter is above
all
at
pains
to
examine that
heritage
as
a
story
of
contexts and
continuities,
a web of
history
in
which
we, too,
are
caught.
In
1918,
German
musicology
was still a
relatively
young discipline
and
only
re-
cently
established
at
German
universities,
which
at
the
time were bastions
of
political
conservatism,
scholarly
insularity,
and
jeal-
ously
guarded
academic
autonomy.
Unlike
scholars
in
other humanistic
disciplines,
who buried
themselves in
their
teaching
and
research,
musicologists
were
frequently
engaged with the culture at large as critics,
editors,
performers,
conductors,
adminis-
trators,
and
consultants.
Many
musicolo-
gists
saw
practical
applications
for their
re-
search
and
were idealistic in their
hope
that
musicology
could
be relevant
and re-
sponsive
to the
needs of
contemporary
Ger-
man
culture. In the
wake of
Germany's
defeat
in
the
First
World War
and
the
polit-
ical and
economic
turmoil of the
Weimar
Republic,
that
culture
was
highly politi-
cized. Music
might
have been
seen as a
means of healing the rifts in the national
spirit,
but
it was
also
a
battleground
of
ideo-
logical
contention.
Potter
emphasizes
that
most
of
the
themes
associated
with
Nazi
music
culture-education
reform;
devising
repertory
and
performing organizations
for
amateurs,
youth,
and
workers;
and an
all-
consuming preoccupation
with the
nature
of German
national
and,
increasingly,
racial and ethnic identity-were well in
place
before Hitler came to
power.
The
Hitler
regime
succeeded in
harnessing
ex-
isting
energies,
and
that
included
focusing
many
of
the concerns that had
preoccupied
musicologists
for
a
generation.
The
major
beneficiary
of
Nazi
support
of
music
scholarship
seems
to have been
re-
search into folk music.
While
this
support
may
have been
ideologically
driven,
interest
in the
topic
was an international
phenome-
non,
as similar WPA research
projects
in
the United States attest. That means by
which
Poles,
Hungarians,
and
Spaniards
sought
to
declare musical
independence
from German dominance served also
to
un-
cover the roots
of German national
iden-
tity,
whether
in the German
provinces
or
in
such enclaves
of
German-language
culture
as northern
Italy
or Bohemia.
Already
begun
in
the
1920s,
this
research was
signif-
icantly
enhanced
by
the
National Socialist
political
agenda. Defining
Germanness
in
music
held
pride
of
place
in
many
subject
areas and
across
a
spectrum
of method-
ological approaches.
But as
pervasive
as
Nazi
ideology
was,
it
could
not,
for in-
stance,
generate
much
interest in
research
on the
Jewish
question,
and there
was no
particular
intensification of
scholarship
on
an icon like
Richard
Wagner.
The
most
significant
contribution
of
National
Socialism to German
musical life
was
in
organization.
The Weimar
Republic's
federal
system
of
culturally
independent
states produced many inequities in the dis-
tribution
of cultural
support
that
National
Socialism's centralized
bureaucracy
sought
to
overcome. The
universities
may
have
lost
much of their
prized
autonomy,
but
else-
where
struggling
research,
educational,
and
performance
organizations
were
revi-
talized
by
subsidies and
high-profile politi-
cal
support.
The
nearly
defunct
Royal
Institute for
Musicological
Research at
Buckeburg
was
restructured
as
the German
Music
Research
Institute;
under
its
aus-
pices, the Zeitschrift iir Musikforschungwas
given
new life
as the Archiv
fiir
Musik-
forschung,
and all
previous
Denkmaler
edi-
tions were
combined into
the series
Erbe
deutscher
Musik.
But
the
music
apparatus
of
the
Nazi state was
not as
monolithic
or
107
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4/5
NOTES,
September
1999
well
organized
as one
might imagine,
and
many
musicologists
who had crafted
grand
schemes
for
organizing
musical life in
Germany or her occupied territories were
disappointed
by
their
lack
of influence.
Moreover,
musicologists
found themselves
caught up
in the
competing power
spheres
of the
SS,
the Reich Music
Chamber,
and
the
interior,
propaganda,
and education
ministries,
all of which had
a hand
in
shap-
ing
music
policy
and
financing
research.
The
result
is a
story
of
rivalry, infighting,
betrayal,
and
compromise.
There are
few
heroes,
few
principled
stands.
Johannes
Wolf,
an elder statesman of German musi-
cology who made clear his distaste for Nazi
racial
policies,
and
Kurt
Huber,
who was
executed
as a member of
the Weisse Rose
group,
can be
singled
out,
but even their
actions seem too little
or too late.
Potter's
research is
thorough
and meticu-
lous and
brings
to
light
a
wealth
of new
source
material.
Her
judgment
is
dispas-
sionate, balanced,
and
differentiated,
and
she avoids
every
temptation
for sensational-
ism.
By
patient
accumulation
of detail
she
demonstrates
how
ideals
could
be
per-
verted
by
ideology
and ambition
collapse
into
opportunism,
but she never loses
sight
of the
larger
issues that
make
this
study,
as
much
as
anything
else,
a
history
of ideas.
There is little
here that is black
and white:
the seductions were
real,
the
corruption
gradual;
guilt
is
shaded,
innocence com-
promised.
Potter reminds
us that
all
musi-
cology
is
political,
and that
we,
too,
are
caught up
in
the
fabric of our cultural de-
bate and
thus
readily
vulnerable to ex-
ploitation
and
corruption
when
scholarship
is
co-opted
by political agendas.
Today,
as
in the
1920s
and
1930s,
the first victims of
such
threats to
scholarly
integrity
are
clarity
of
thought,
language,
and
logic.
But true
resistance
requires
more
than
scholarly
in-
tegrity.
Perhaps
it
took an American
to
write
this
book.
Even
today,
the
power
structures and
sensitivities within
the German
academy
make
full
disclosure
of the
past
awkward
and
painful.
An American
has the
freedom
to delve into such matters without concern
for
professional
repercussions.
Beyond
that, however,
the American
perspective
is
valuable because this
story
affects our own
identity
within a
discipline
that has been so
thoroughly grounded
in
German
sources,
methods,
and, indeed,
preoccupations,
the
first and foremost
being
German music it-
self. Potter's book is
part
of that
larger
re-
examination of our century's inheritance,
whether it be the
legacy
of
fascism or
the
myths
of
European
modernism.
The
ironies are
compounded
when one realizes
how
many
of our
current
historical,
aes-
thetic,
and
methodological
priorities
can
be traced
back to the
period
Potter
studies.
We
have internalized concerns
brought
to
these
shores
by
the exiles from
Hitler's
Europe,
and
contextualizing
those con-
cerns
helps
both to define our own
identity
and
repair
the fabric of
history.
This is clearly a book by a musicologist,
about
musicologists,
and for
musicologists
-a
pity,
because
the
topic
has an
import
and breadth
of
interest
that should be
made
available to a
wider
audience. Pot-
ter's
summary
of
early-twentieth-century
research trends
in
chapter
6
( The
Shaping
of New
Methodologies )
is
excellent,
though
we
are
given
no overview of
Germany's
musicological
establishment.
A
few statistics on
the number of
depart-
ments,
teaching positions,
and
students,
on
dissertations written or
monographs pub-
lished,
would
give
the uninitiated reader a
better feel for
the
size and
scope
of
activity
of
that
pool
of
trained
musicologists
on
which the
author
is focused.
As
an
approach
to cultural
history,
this
narrow
focus
on
professional
musicologists
is
problematic.
A
significant
portion
of
Potter's
argument
is
based on the
very
public
activities and
pronouncements
of
musicologists
in their
capacity
as music
journalists. (See especially chapter 2,
Musicologists
on Their Role
in
Modern
German
Society,
and
chapter
7,
Attempts
to Define 'Germanness'
in
Music. )
Ger-
many's
literate
reading
public certainly
made little
distinction
between those with
and without
musicology degrees.
There
were indeed
a number
of music critics and
journalists
with no formal
musicological
training
who nonetheless had
a
demonstra-
ble influence
on
scholarship
and
aesthetics,
including
Paul
Bekker and Theodor W.
Adorno. Nowhere was the line between
amateur
and
professional
more
perme-
able than in music
literature,
and without
a
better sense for how the
public
and
musi-
cologists
themselves
established
a
separate
identity
for
scholars,
the
distinction
often
108
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5/5
Book
Reviews
ook
Reviews
seems
arbitrary.
Two further criticisms: the
translated,
limiting
the book's
accessibility
book's
index
is
spotty
and
does not refer- to the interested
general public.
ence
material contained
in
the
endnotes;
CHRISTOPHER
HAIILEY
and much endnote material remains un- LosAngeles
Cultivating
Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists
since
1860.
Edited
by
Ralph
P.
Locke and
Cyrilla
Barr.
Berkeley:
University
of
California
Press,
1997.
[xi,
357
p.
ISBN
0-520-08395-4.
$45.]
Extraordinary
Women
in
Support
of Music.
By
Mona Mender.
Lanham,
Md.:
Scarecrow
Press,
1997.
[x,
309
p.
ISBN
0-8108-3278-X.
$48.]
seems
arbitrary.
Two further criticisms: the
translated,
limiting
the book's
accessibility
book's
index
is
spotty
and
does not refer- to the interested
general public.
ence
material contained
in
the
endnotes;
CHRISTOPHER
HAIILEY
and much endnote material remains un- LosAngeles
Cultivating
Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists
since
1860.
Edited
by
Ralph
P.
Locke and
Cyrilla
Barr.
Berkeley:
University
of
California
Press,
1997.
[xi,
357
p.
ISBN
0-520-08395-4.
$45.]
Extraordinary
Women
in
Support
of Music.
By
Mona Mender.
Lanham,
Md.:
Scarecrow
Press,
1997.
[x,
309
p.
ISBN
0-8108-3278-X.
$48.]
Appreciating
the influence
of
gender
has
never
been the sole
purview
of
feminist
scholars.
Advertising
executives have
long
known
that men and
women
part
with their
money
in
different
ways,
and
fund-raisers
can
now
turn to studies that show a
gender
differential
in
philanthropy.
The work of
Martha A.
Taylor
and Sondra
Shaw,
in
con-
junction
with Andrea Kaminski
(currently
executive
director
of the
Women's Philan-
thropy
Institute),
suggests
that
the
doing
of
good
works is different
for men and
women
even
from
the
same
elite class.
Whereas men
typically
fund
to maintain
the status
quo,
women,
who
often have
much less
to
give,
are
literally
more in-
vested in
change, funding
projects
that will
make a
calculated difference to
their com-
munities.
(See
Sondra C. Shaw and Martha
A.
Taylor,
Reinventing
Fundraising: Realizing
the
Potential
of
Women's
Philanthropy
[San
Francisco:Jossey-Bass,
1995].)
Although Cultivating
Music in
America
does
not draw on
any
of
this
new fund-
raising
research,
it
makes
an
enormous
contribution toward recognizing the cru-
cial
role
of female
philanthropy
in
the de-
velopment
of
Western
concert musicmak-
ing
in
the
United
States.
The
individual
essays
are
readable and offer
much to our
understanding
of
American
musical life
and
culture. This
richly
textured collection
should
be
of
particular
interest
to
interdis-
ciplinary
scholars
in
American studies as
well as
to those
in
women's
and
gender
studies.
The
editors
begin
by
redefining
music
patronage as musical activism (p. 5),
thereby
undoing
the
problematic
connota-
tions
of
patron-patronizing-patriarchy
and
allowing
for
an
expanded
understanding
of
what
might
be
given by
patrons
other
than
money:
time,
creativity,
philosophical
Appreciating
the influence
of
gender
has
never
been the sole
purview
of
feminist
scholars.
Advertising
executives have
long
known
that men and
women
part
with their
money
in
different
ways,
and
fund-raisers
can
now
turn to studies that show a
gender
differential
in
philanthropy.
The work of
Martha A.
Taylor
and Sondra
Shaw,
in
con-
junction
with Andrea Kaminski
(currently
executive
director
of the
Women's Philan-
thropy
Institute),
suggests
that
the
doing
of
good
works is different
for men and
women
even
from
the
same
elite class.
Whereas men
typically
fund
to maintain
the status
quo,
women,
who
often have
much less
to
give,
are
literally
more in-
vested in
change, funding
projects
that will
make a
calculated difference to
their com-
munities.
(See
Sondra C. Shaw and Martha
A.
Taylor,
Reinventing
Fundraising: Realizing
the
Potential
of
Women's
Philanthropy
[San
Francisco:Jossey-Bass,
1995].)
Although Cultivating
Music in
America
does
not draw on
any
of
this
new fund-
raising
research,
it
makes
an
enormous
contribution toward recognizing the cru-
cial
role
of female
philanthropy
in
the de-
velopment
of
Western
concert musicmak-
ing
in
the
United
States.
The
individual
essays
are
readable and offer
much to our
understanding
of
American
musical life
and
culture. This
richly
textured collection
should
be
of
particular
interest
to
interdis-
ciplinary
scholars
in
American studies as
well as
to those
in
women's
and
gender
studies.
The
editors
begin
by
redefining
music
patronage as musical activism (p. 5),
thereby
undoing
the
problematic
connota-
tions
of
patron-patronizing-patriarchy
and
allowing
for
an
expanded
understanding
of
what
might
be
given by
patrons
other
than
money:
time,
creativity,
philosophical
premises,
and
so on.
As
the editors set
forth
in
their
introduction and as the
essays
themselves make clear, musical activism,
at least in
the United
States,
was
frequently
women's
work.
Through
a
complex
cul-
tural
and
historical
network,
musicmaking
and its
appreciation
were
considered
ap-
propriate
for middle-
and
upper-class
women.
Certain
kinds of
musical
objects-
what
we now
identify
as the
Euro-American,
German-dominated
canon-likewise
at-
tained
a
privileged ennobling
power,
or,
as
Ruth
Solie notes:
music
had
itself
become
religious practice (p. 279).
This
kind
of
musicking,
to use
Christopher
Small's
term,
was
rarely
self-supporting.
Rather,
it
came
to
require specialized spaces,
star
per-
formers and
conductors,
and
growing
num-
bers of
trained
musicians-all of
which
cost
increasing
amounts of
money
to
sustain,
even as
its moral
nature
required
that
such
commercial realities
remain hidden.
Since it
fell to the female
sphere
to
provide
spiritual
uplift,
women
with financial
means
took it
upon
themselves to educate
and enlighten through musical philan-
thropies.
This
collection is
not intended as a
neat
chronological exploration;
the
individual
contributions can
stand alone. Of
the nine
essays,
four have
appeared
elsewhere in
other
guises
(Solie
on
Sophie
Drinker,
Joseph
Horowitz on
the
cult
of
Richard
Wagner,
Cyrilla
Barr on
Elizabeth
Sprague
Coolidge,
and
Ralph
P.
Locke on
Isabella
Stewart
Gardner).
These
essays,
including
additional ones on
women's
clubs,
black
women activists, and philanthropists in this
century,
are
enlivened
by
ten
vignettes,
typ-
ically
first-person
reflections
on
the individ-
uals
or
activities
involved.
Read
together,
the
collection
accumulates its
own
power
as
issues
and
individuals
keep
resurfacing:
premises,
and
so on.
As
the editors set
forth
in
their
introduction and as the
essays
themselves make clear, musical activism,
at least in
the United
States,
was
frequently
women's
work.
Through
a
complex
cul-
tural
and
historical
network,
musicmaking
and its
appreciation
were
considered
ap-
propriate
for middle-
and
upper-class
women.
Certain
kinds of
musical
objects-
what
we now
identify
as the
Euro-American,
German-dominated
canon-likewise
at-
tained
a
privileged ennobling
power,
or,
as
Ruth
Solie notes:
music
had
itself
become
religious practice (p. 279).
This
kind
of
musicking,
to use
Christopher
Small's
term,
was
rarely
self-supporting.
Rather,
it
came
to
require specialized spaces,
star
per-
formers and
conductors,
and
growing
num-
bers of
trained
musicians-all of
which
cost
increasing
amounts of
money
to
sustain,
even as
its moral
nature
required
that
such
commercial realities
remain hidden.
Since it
fell to the female
sphere
to
provide
spiritual
uplift,
women
with financial
means
took it
upon
themselves to educate
and enlighten through musical philan-
thropies.
This
collection is
not intended as a
neat
chronological exploration;
the
individual
contributions can
stand alone. Of
the nine
essays,
four have
appeared
elsewhere in
other
guises
(Solie
on
Sophie
Drinker,
Joseph
Horowitz on
the
cult
of
Richard
Wagner,
Cyrilla
Barr on
Elizabeth
Sprague
Coolidge,
and
Ralph
P.
Locke on
Isabella
Stewart
Gardner).
These
essays,
including
additional ones on
women's
clubs,
black
women activists, and philanthropists in this
century,
are
enlivened
by
ten
vignettes,
typ-
ically
first-person
reflections
on
the individ-
uals
or
activities
involved.
Read
together,
the
collection
accumulates its
own
power
as
issues
and
individuals
keep
resurfacing:
10909
This content downloaded from 193.144.2.35 on Tue, 7 Oct 2014 12:15:17 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp