Synopses & Reviews
This innovative book examines the place and practice of musical life in eighteenth-century England among the upper classes. Focusing on the home, it shows how domestic music-making was shaped by socio-cultural forces while itself contributing to socio-cultural formation. Particular attention is given to visual representations of music in eighteenth-century paintings, drawings and prints. Other documentary material analyzed includes the music of the period, instruction manuals, tracts on education, courtesy and conduct books, sermons, diaries, letters and memoirs, fictional writing and journalism. Through these media the author examines the role played by construction, the human body via questions of physicality and sexuality in dancing, its agency in defining and replicating dominant ideologies of the family and its use in establishing and maintaining social and cultural boundaries.
Review
'\"Refreshingly original...Leppert\'s work is distinguished not only for its originality, but for its establishment of an important and unchallengable place for music in comparative studies...[This book] will prove at least as valuable for art historians as for sociomusicologists.\" The Musical Quarterly\"In a word, this is a book to go back to again and again for its insightful analyses and socio-cultural interpretations of artworks that depict musical images, and just for enjoying the pleasure--sometimes the humor--to be found in its illustrations.\" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism\"...Leppert\'s study is a bold and welcome project, and one that will doubtless raise the consciousness of many who have regarded musical iconography with more innocent eyes.\" Gretchen A. Wheelock, Journal of Interdisciplinary History'
Review
'Refreshingly original ... Leppert's work is distinguished not only for its originality, but for its establishment of an important and unchallengable place for music in comparative studies ... will prove at least as valuable for art historians as for sociomusicologists.' The Musical Quarterly
Synopsis
An examination of the place and practice of musical life in eighteenth-century England among the upper classes.
Synopsis
This innovative study examines the place and practice of musical life in eighteenth-century England among the upper classes. Focusing on the home, it shows how domestic music-making was shaped by socio-cultural forces while itself contributing to socio-cultural formation. The evidence examined is extremely broad, but particular attention is given to visual representations of music in paintings, drawings and prints: one hundred illustrations are discussed. The author considers in detail the problematics of imagery itself, analysing both the ideological and the semiotic content of the visual image. Other material analysed includes the music of the period, instruction manuals, tracts on education, courtesy and conduct books, sermons, letters, diaries and memoirs, fictional writing and journalism.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: music visualised; 2. Music, socio-politics, ideologies of male sexuality and power; 3. Music, sexism and female domesticity; 4. Music education as social praxis; 5. Music and the body: dance, power, submission; 6. The male at music: praxis, representation and the problem of identity; 7. The female at music: praxis, representation and the problematic of identity; 8. Music in domestic space: domination, compensation, and the family; 9. Epilogue: the social and ideological relation of music to privatised space.