Criticising Women’s Voices in the Musical Press

2020 ◽  
pp. 84-119
Author(s):  
David Kennerley
Keyword(s):  
Women's Voices ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Music Methods ◽  
Female Singers

This chapter examines how professional female singers’ voices were described, and critically evaluated, in the music press. It focuses on comparing and contrasting critics’ responses to the voices of Catherine Stephens, Giuditta Pasta, and Eliza Vestris, three very different female singers. It demonstrates how concerns about class, religion, and nationality were instrumental in shaping critical commentary on these women’s voices. It argues that the sound of women’s voices was central to debates between partisans of opera and oratorio, and between advocates of “English” and “Italian” styles of music, methods of singing, and attitudes to gender. In particular, it explores the connections between the range of attitudes to women’s voices encountered in Chapters 1 and 2, and the contrasts in critics’ responses to these three singers’ voices, illustrating the ways in which social divisions over the nature of femininity shaped the development of the musical world.

scholarly journals More Varieties than Heinz: Social Categories and Sociality in Humphries, Hammersley and Beyond

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harrison, W. Cealey ◽  
J. Hood-Williams
Keyword(s):  
Research Practice ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social

This paper is a contribution to a long standing debate over the nature of research and the relations between knowledge and power recently instantiated in exchanges over the criticisms of Hammersley (Hammersley, 1992, 1995, 1997; Gelsthorpe, 1992; Ramazanoglu, 1992; Williams, 1993; Hammersley & Gomm, 1997a and 1997b; Romm, 1997; Temple, 1997). It takes as its starting point Beth Humphries’ recent critical commentary on Hammersley and emancipatory research, and her attempt to ‘go beyond ourselves’ (Humphries, 1997). It argues that the logical endpoint of arguments that suggest the continuous salience of the social divisions commonly found in the current sociological lexicon is a bewildering impossibility and that they should not be taken as guidelines for research practice. It clarifies this critique in relation to ‘gender’. It further argues that Humphries's position, despite her apparent sympathy for post-structuralism, retains much from earlier structuralist positions, which undermines the basis of her attempt to develop a position beyond the constraints of current emancipatory research.

Instructing Women’s Voices in Conduct Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
David Kennerley
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Female Voice ◽  
Conduct Literature ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Professional Singers ◽  
Female Singers

This chapter explores the guidance regarding the use of the female voice that was a common feature of conduct literature in circulation in Britain between 1780 and 1850. Such works place a heavy emphasis on the restraint of the female voice, seeing it as an aural sign of a young woman’s modesty, diffidence, and chastity. Concomitantly, they characterised the technique, power, and skill displayed by many contemporary female singers’ voices (especially, but not exclusively, the professional singers of Italian opera) as signs of moral corruption and/or the neglect of feminine domestic and religious duties. However, this chapter stresses that this conduct literature was primarily written for a middle-class, evangelical readership. Consequently, it represents a particular perspective on the female voice, one that was certainly gathering steam in these years, but which was by no means universally dominant.

Diversity and Breadth of Talented Women's Voices Worth Hearing

1997 ◽  
Vol 42 (11) ◽  
pp. 1020-1021
Author(s):  
Barbara Kerr
Keyword(s):  
Women's Voices

Special focus section: Women's voices in Division 51 (Psychology of Men)

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Nutt ◽  
Michele Harway ◽  
Holly Sweet ◽  
Denise Twohey ◽  
Lenore Walker
Keyword(s):  
Special Focus ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Psychology Of Men

Young, Single and Employed: Jordanian Women’s Voices on Impact of Work

1970 ◽  
pp. 50-55
Author(s):  
Mary Kawar
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Working Women ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Urban Working

There is an increasing visibility of young urban working women in Amman, Jordan. As compared to previous generations, this group is experiencing a new life cycle trajectory of single employed adulthood. Based on qualitative interviews with young women, this paper will reflect on their experiences and perceptions regarding work, social status and marriage.

Kapitalistische Krisen mit und ohne systemischer Herausforderung.

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (185) ◽  
pp. 543-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingo Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
World Market ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Deep Penetration ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Overhaul ◽  
Domestic Markets ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Class Power ◽  
Second World

This article draws on Marxist theories of crises, imperialism, and class formation to identify commonalities and differences between the stagnation of the 1930s and today. Its key argument is that the anti-systemic movements that existed in the 1930s and gained ground after the Second World War pushed capitalists to turn from imperialist expansion and rivalry to the deep penetration of domestic markets. By doing so they unleashed strong economic growth that allowed for social compromise without hurting profits. Yet, once labour and other social movements threatened to shift the balance of class power into their favor, capitalist counter-reform began. In its course, global restructuring, and notably the integration of Russia and China into the world market, created space for accumulation. The cause for the current stagnation is that this space has been used up. In the absence of systemic challenges capitalists have little reason to seek a major overhaul of their accumulation strategies that could help to overcome stagnation. Instead they prop up profits at the expense of the subaltern classes even if this prolongs stagnation and leads to sharper social divisions.

Celluloid Bohemia? Ken Russell's Biopics of Visual Artists

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vito Adriaensens ◽  
Steven Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Visual Artists ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Dante Gabriel Rossetti ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Artistic Genius ◽  
Genre Conventions

Few directors are so closely associated with the genre of the artist biopic as Ken Russell who made several films dedicated to composers, dancers and writers. Only three of these, however, have visual artists as their protagonists: Always on Sunday (1965), Dante's Inferno (1967) and Savage Messiah (1972), dealing with Henri ‘Le Douanier’ Rousseau, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska respectively. There has also been relatively little critical commentary on these films compared with the discussion devoted to Russell's films dealing with the lives of composers. This article attempts to remedy this situation by considering the ways in which Russell tackles some of the thematic and formal challenges inherent to the genre of the artist biopic, such as the representation of the artist's personality, the visualisation of the process of artistic creation, and the relation between the style of the film and that of the artist portrayed. We will argue that, to a large extent, Russell's protagonists in these films conform to the romantic stereotype of the tormented and alienated artist. However, and perhaps contrary to what one would associate with the director, we will demonstrate that Russell's biopics also demystify this cult of artistic genius by focusing on the mundane or laborious activities involved in the process of artistic creation, which is at odds with genre conventions that normally glorify this process.

Sky Ops Surprise

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-34
Author(s):  
Shawna Malvini Redden
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
Commercial Aviation ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Death Experience ◽  
Near Death Experience

Invoking the styling of classic spy stories, this essay provides an account of a commercial aviation emergency landing that blew the agent/author's “cover” as a full participant ethnographer. Using an experimental autoethnographic format, the piece offers an evocative portrayal of a perceived near-death experience and its aftermath, as well as critical commentary on writing autoethnography with a fictionalized framing. In the closing “debrief,” the author sheds her agent persona to describe the process of writing about traumatic events and to analyze how those events focus attention on methodological and ethical considerations for qualitative research.

Identify This…

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie Rebecca Bloom ◽  
Amanda Reynolds ◽  
Rosemary Amore ◽  
Angela Beaman ◽  
Gatenipa Kate Chantem ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Life History ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Readers Theater ◽  
Creative Pedagogy ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Selection Of

Readers theater productions are meaningful expressions of creative pedagogy in higher education. This article presents the script of a readers theater called Identify This… A Readers Theater of Women's Voices, which was researched, written, and produced by undergraduate and graduate students in a women's studies class called Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender. Section one of the article reproduces the script of Identify This that was based on life history interviews with a diverse selection of women to illustrate intersectional identities. Section two briefly describes the essential elements of the process we used to create and perform Identify This.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document