Unbinding Gentility: Women Making Music in the Nineteenth-Century South (Music in American Life)

This book is a history of women in the US South told through the medium of music, focusing on music’s social and cultural uses, and mapping the cultural geography across space and time. The subjects represent a wide range of circumstances: enslaved women of color, white plantation daughters, both black and white daughters of middle-class families, women born on small farms, the daughters of mechanics. By recasting southern musical practices from the point of view of women’s history, it recovers silent voices and positions them within the social world of which they were so much a part. Significantly, it also introduces the existence and influence of professional women. The concentration here is music read from notation. Spending the time and money to learn to read music implies a tangible appreciation for its undertaking, and it indicates that those who paid for the education saw a benefit in doing so. It conferred value, in this case cultural capital, on those musicking in all its facets. This value, in turn, served in the performance of gentility in the mid-nineteenth century. The source materials include binder’s volumes (bound volumes of sheet music or manuscripts), letters, diaries, the contents of newspapers, images, and other types of documentation. As an ethnographic reading of archival sources, this study crafts new and vital interpretations of music in southern culture. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2022 Hearing southern women in the pauses of history Southern women of all classes, races, and walks of life practiced music during and after the Civil War. Candace L. Bailey examines the history of southern women through the lens of these musical pursuits, uncovering the ways that music's transmission, education, circulation, and repertory help us understand its meaning in the women's culture of the time. Bailey pays particular attention to the space between music as an ideal accomplishment—part of how people expected women to perform gentility—and a real practice—what women actually did. At the same time, her ethnographic reading of binder's volumes, letters and diaries, and a wealth of other archival material informs new and vital interpretations of women's place in southern culture. A fascinating collective portrait of women's artistic and personal lives, Unbinding Gentility challenges entrenched assumptions about nineteenth century music and the experiences of the southern women who made it. | Cover Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations Author's Note Introduction: "One would like to know" Part 1. Social Diversity among Amateur Women Musicians 1. "The circle in which you move": Gentility, Music, and White Women 2. "Colored girls under the control of colored teachers": Gentility, Music, and Women of Color Part 2. Repertory 3. "'Home, Sweet Home!' with brilliant variations": Melody 4. "I have no time to tell you now half the enjoyment these operas have given us": Opera as Cultural Capital Part 3. Scientific Music and Professional Musicians 5. "Distinguished success . . . in teaching Music as a science": Genteel Women Scientists 6. "Of that ilk": Foreign Music Teachers and Genteel Pupils 7. "A remarkable accomplishment for one of the gentle sex": Other Professionals Part 4. The Civil War 8. "The female tribe as 'angels' on earth . . . is being . . . entirely dissipated": The Parlor and the Civil War 9. "Many shades of caste and kind": The Civil War and the Public Gaze Part 5. Women Musicians in the Reconstruction Era 10. "She takes up music as a profession": Career Women 11. "Beethoven wrote it—that is enough": Reconstructed Women Reconstructing Repertory Conclusion: "This old piece of music keeps her name like a flower pressed in a book" Notes Bibliography Index Back cover |"An important contribution to the field of American music history. This well-written and meticulously researched volume breaks new ground in the understanding of the role that music played in shaping the lives and social positions of Southern women across race and class boundaries." — Music References Services Quarterly "Bailey's work offers valuable new insight into the relationship between performance, music, and society during a pivotal period in US history. . . . Unbinding Gentility is a meticulously detailed study that does much to deepen, complicate, and ultimately expand our understanding of women's musical lives in the nineteenth-century South." — Women and Music "Candace Bailey has written an impressive book that achieves its stated aim to challenge assumptions about music-making by women in the nineteenth-century United States. . . . Unbinding Gentility is a model of creative archival archaeology. . . . This deeply researched, gracefully written, and deftly organized book deserves the widest possible readership." — Music and Letters | Candace Bailey is a professor of music at North Carolina Central University. She is the author of Music and the Southern Belle: From Accomplished... Introduction. "One would like to know" -- PART 1. SOCIAL DIVERSITY AMONG AMATEUR WOMEN MUSICIANS. "The circle in which you move" : Gentility, Music, and White Women ; "Colored girls under the control of colored teachers" : Gentility, Music, and Women of Color -- PART 2. REPERTORY. "Home! Sweet Home!' with brilliant variations" : Melody ; "I have no time to tell you now half the enjoyment these operas have given us" : Opera as Cultural Capital -- PART 3. SCIENTIFIC MUSIC AND PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS. "Distinguished success ... in teaching Music as a Science": Genteel Women Scientists ; "Of that ilk": Foreign Music Teachers and Genteel Pupils ; "A remarkable accomplishment for one of the gentle sex" : Other Professionals -- PART 4. THE CIVIL WAR. "The female tribe as 'angels' on earth ... is being ... entirely dissipated" : The Parlor and the Civil War ; "Many shades of caste and kind" : The Civil War and the Public Gaze -- PART 5. WOMEN MUSICIANS IN THE RECONSTRUCTION ERA. "She takes up music as a profession" : Career Women ; "Beethoven wrote it - that is enough" : Reconstructed Women Reconstructing Repertory -- Conclusion. "This old piece of music keeps her name like a flower pressed in a book".