Music as Feminine Capital in Napoleonic France: Nancy Macdonald’s Musical Upbringing

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Women And Music ◽  
French Student ◽  
Musical Activities

Abstract This microhistory situates the musical activities of Nancy Macdonald, a French student at Madame Campan’s National Institute for Young Women and Napoleon Bonaparte’s school for daughters of Legion of Honour Recipients, in broader discourses about women and music in Napoleonic France. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of capital, it eschews a simplistic assessment of music as either constraining or liberating young women, by arguing instead that performance operated as a kind of ‘feminine capital’, accrued and then circulated to achieve tangible socio-economic ends. A feminine-capital framework exposes the paradoxes inherent in female music-making and reveals how values about music were enculturated from girlhood to womanhood in France. This approach contributes to recent scholarship that challenges the rigid binaries previously defining women’s musical labour during the Classical era and inserts France into historiographies of women’s musical practices in the early nineteenth century.

Military Bands in the Romanian Principalities between 1821 and 1878

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-389
Author(s):  
Nicolae Gheorghiţă
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Military Bands ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Cultural Paradigm ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
The One ◽  
Radical Shift

The abandonment in the early nineteenth century of the Ottoman military bands (mehterhâne and tabl-khāne) that had provided ceremonial music for the Romanian princes, and the establishment of Western-style military bands in the newly formed army, brought about a radical shift in the cultural paradigm that was to have an effect upon the entire spectrum of musical life in the capitals of the Romanian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. This change occurred at two levels: on the one hand, musicians and the repertory current in noble salons were imported from the West, and, on the other, a native ethnic element was activated in a series of works and orchestrations based on folk themes. The present study examines the emergence, development and organization of the modern military bands in the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in the context of native musical practices and the transition of Romanian society from an oriental mentality to an outlook and behaviour specific to Western Europe, in the period from the nineteenth century to the War of Independence (1877).

Bodies of Music / Songs of Magic

2019 ◽  
pp. 185-199
Author(s):  
Guthrie P. Ramsey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Compositional Techniques ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Musical Practices

Rev. John F. Watson published a tract in 1819 meant to discourage black Methodist congregants from musical practices that they obviously enjoyed but that he loathed. Despite Watson’s bias, his words provide modern-day readers with a sense of how the music sounded, its communal nature, and its in-real-time compositional techniques—with striking clarity. Unbeknownst to him, these qualities would constitute foundational principles for future music-making in black communities. Drawing on modern theorists, the Fields’s study of “racecraft,” and Sylvan’s on “the religious dimensions of popular music,” Ramsey examines a range of archival documents and images from the nineteenth century to illustrate how fresh readings can provide useful reinterpretations of what was seen in an earlier era as negative assessments of black artistry

scholarly journals Religion and the Problem of Subjectivity in the reception of Early German Romanticism

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aexander Hampton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis examination provides a history of the problematic characterisation of Early German Romanticism (or Frühromantik) as subjectivist, and challenges this characterisation in light of recent scholarship. From its earliest critical reception in the early nineteenth century, the movement suffered from a set of problematic characterisations made by popular philosophical figures. Goethe, Hegel, Heine, Kierkegaard and others all criticised the movement for holding a dangerous subjective egoism. This characterisation remained with the Frühromantik throughout the twentieth century until it was challenged by recent re-evaluations offered by figures such as Dieter Henrich, Manfred Frank, Friedrich Beiser and Andrew Bowie. Their work has opened new possibilities for the re-interpretation of Frühromantik and our understanding of the movement’s religious thought.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

Disease and Civilization: A Scottish Atlantic Network of Physicians in the Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
American Physician ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
A Current

Through an examination of the extensive papers, manuscripts and correspondence of American physician Benjamin Rush and his friends, this article argues that it is possible to map a network of Scottish-trained physicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. These physicians, whose members included Benjamin Rush, John Redman, John Morgan, Adam Kuhn, and others, not only brought the Edinburgh model for medical pedagogy across the Atlantic, but also disseminated Scottish stadial theories of development, which they applied to their study of the natural history and medical practices of Native Americans and slaves. In doing so, these physicians developed theories about the relationship between civilization, historical progress and the practice of medicine. Exploring this network deepens our understanding of the transnational intellectual geography of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century British World. This article develops, in relation to Scotland, a current strand of scholarship that maps the colonial and global contexts of Enlightenment thought.

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