Unbinding gentility : women making music in the nineteenth-century South

Bailey, Candace 1963- (author.).

Summary: "Southern women of all classes, races, and walks of life practiced music during and after the Civil War. Candace Bailey examines the history of southern women through the lens of these musical pursuits, uncovering the ways that music's transmission, education, circulation, and repertory help us understand its meaning in the women's culture of the time. Bailey pays particular attention to the space between music as an ideal accomplishment-part of how people expected women to perform gentility-and a real practice-what women actually did. At the same time, her ethnographic reading of binder's volumes, letters and diaries, and a wealth of other archival material informs new and vital interpretations of women's place in southern culture. A fascinating collective portrait of women's artistic and personal lives, Unbinding Gentility challenges entrenched assumptions about nineteenth century music and the experiences of the southern women who made it"--

Item details

ISBN: 9780252043758
ISBN: 0252043758
ISBN: 9780252085741
ISBN: 0252085744
Physical Description: print
xviii, 292 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2021]

Contents / Notes

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction. "One would like to know" -- PART 1. SOCIAL DIVERSITY AMONG AMATEUR WOMEN MUSICIANS. "The circle in which you move" : Gentility, Music, and White Women ; "Colored girls under the control of colored teachers" : Gentility, Music, and Women of Color -- PART 2. REPERTORY. "Home! Sweet Home!' with brilliant variations" : Melody ; "I have no time to tell you now half the enjoyment these operas have given us" : Opera as Cultural Capital -- PART 3. SCIENTIFIC MUSIC AND PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS. "Distinguished success ... in teaching Music as a Science": Genteel Women Scientists ; "Of that ilk": Foreign Music Teachers and Genteel Pupils ; "A remarkable accomplishment for one of the gentle sex" : Other Professionals -- PART 4. THE CIVIL WAR. "The female tribe as 'angels' on earth ... is being ... entirely dissipated" : The Parlor and the Civil War ; "Many shades of caste and kind" : The Civil War and the Public Gaze -- PART 5. WOMEN MUSICIANS IN THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA. "She takes up music as a profession" : Career Women ; "Beethoven wrote it -- that is enough" : Reconstructed Women Reconstructing Repertory -- Conclusion. "This old piece of music keeps her name like a flower pressed in a book".