Sounding feminine : women's voices in British musical culture, 1780-1850 /
"This book examines the uses and meanings of women's voices in British society and musical culture between 1780 and 1850. As previous scholars have argued, during these decades patriarchal power increasingly came to rest upon a particular understanding of the essentially different nature o...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2020]
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| Series: | New cultural history of music.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "This book examines the uses and meanings of women's voices in British society and musical culture between 1780 and 1850. As previous scholars have argued, during these decades patriarchal power increasingly came to rest upon a particular understanding of the essentially different nature of male and female physiology and psychology. As a result, this book contends, the female voice-believed to blend both physical and mental attributes-became central to maintaining, and challenging, gendered power structures. It argues that the varying ways women used their voices-the sounds that they made, as much as the words they spoke or sang-were understood by contemporaries as aural markers of different kinds of femininity. Consequently, contemporary divisions over feminine ideals were both expressed and contested through women's use of their voices and audiences' responses to them. Following an introduction that lays out the book's theoretical frameworks and main arguments, the first three chapters explore how contemporary responses to different styles of female vocality were shaped by class, religious and national discourses, through an exploration of conduct literature, letters, diaries, life-writing, and music criticism and reportage in newspapers and periodicals. Two case studies then extend the argument further through detailed analysis of the use and meaning of women's voices on the part of both amateur and professional female singers respectively. A closing epilogue draws together the book's major themes and discusses their implications for the gender history of this period"-- |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xii, 220 pages) : music. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780190097585 9780190097578 0190097574 9780190097592 0190097590 0190097582 |