Music and the Women’s Suffrage Movement

Reading: Susan J. Glenn, “Actresses and Activism,” from Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism, pp. 134–148

Listening: Anna Chandler, “She’s Good Enough to Be Your Baby’s Mother, and She’s Good Enough to Vote With You”
Billy Murray, “Your Mother’s Gone Away to Join the Army”
Maurice Burkhart, “Since My Margarette Become a Suffragette”

Tasks:

• Suffrage song analyses [critical writing]

Women on Broadway and in Variety Theater – Chorus Girls

Reading: Excerpt from Lisa Misejewski, Ziegfeld Girl

Listening: John Steele, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody”
Fanny Brice, “My Man”
Eva Tanguay, “I Don’t Care”

• Chorus girls [research]

Midterm Exam

Women conductors and orchestral musicians – Women as patrons – Women’s music clubs

Reading: Ralph Locke, “Paradoxes of the Woman Music Patron in America”

Listening: A selection of numbers performed by Florence Foster Jenkins

Tasks:

• Women’s music clubs and orchestras [research]

The “Woman Composer Question”

Reading: The “Woman Composer Question,” pp 206–227 in Women in Music, ed. Neuls-Bates

Listening: Amy Beach, Gaelic Symphony
Ethel Smyth, Der Wald

Tasks:

• The “woman composer question” questions [participation]
• Answers to the “woman composer question” [research]

Representations of women in Romantic operas

Reading: Catherine Clément, “Dead Women” from Opera, or the Undoing of Women

Listening: Wagner, “Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde
Bizet, “Seguidilla” from Carmen
Puccini, “Con onor muore” from Madame Butterfly

Tasks:

• Women in opera plots [participation]

Salons and domestic music-making – Frauenlieben und Leben

Reading: Mary Burgan, “Heroines at the Piano: Women and Music in Nineteenth-Century Fiction,” pp. 51–63.

Optional reading: Ruth Solie, “Whose Life?”

Listening: Robert Schumann, Frauenlieben und Leben

Tasks:

• Women making music in 19th-century fiction [research]

2/18: Wives, Mothers, and Sisters – The educations of Nannerl Mozart and Fanny Mendelsson Hensel

Reading: Marion Wilson Kimber, “The ‘Suppression’ of Fanny Mendelssohn: Rethinking Feminist Biography”

Listening: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Piano Trio

Tasks:

• “Suppression of Fanny Mendelssohn” response paper [critical writing]

The rise of the virtuosa: women on stage – Male & female sopranos

Reading: “Fancying Tenducci” from Helen Berry, The Castrato and His Wife, pp. 67-89.

Optional reading: “The Pig Man Arrives in Monte San Savino,” from Helen Berry, The Castrato and His Wife

Listening: Luzzasco Luzzaschi, O dolcezz’ amarissime d’amore”
Claudio Monteverdi [?], “Pur ti miro” from L’incoronazione di Poppea
Georg Frederich Handel, “Caro, bella,” from Giulio Cesare

Tasks:

• Virtuosa in 17th- and 18th-century Europe [research]

Reading: Jennifer C. Post, “Erasing the Boundaries between Public and Private in Women’s Performance Traditions,” in Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music, ed. Cook and Tsou, pp. 35–51.

Optional reading: Jennifer C. Post, “Professional Women in Indian Music: The Death of the Courtesan Tradition,” in Women and Music in Cross Cultural Perspective, ed. Koskoff, pp. 97–109.

Viewing: Vidya Shah: “How Women Shaped Indian Classical Music”

Tasks:

• Men’s and women’s musical spheres [critical writing]