In Faulk’s chapter entitled “ ‘Spectacular’ Bodies,” the author discusses the “Living Pictures” phenomenon that proved so popular in the music halls of the late Victorian Era. Faulk also discusses the various reactions to this phenomenon, attributing their responses to varying social class and ideology. Faulk writes, “…the female nude was not linked simply to scopic pleasure for late-Victorian London spectators; audiences participated in a complex production of meaning when they encountered the female body in settings that encouraged aesthetic evaluation.”[1] As Faulk implies, much of the controversy regarding the “Living Pictures” revolved around the classification of the female subject. Was she a working class woman transformed into a picture of beauty, embodying art? Or rather, is she a working class woman subjected to the vulgarity and sexual implications of being displayed in a nude body suit? Many of the questions that society asked regarding these pictures reminded me of the same arguments that surround the pornography industry of today, or, perhaps a magazine like Playboy. Do these businesses showcase a woman’s beauty or victimize unknowing woman with no economic alternative? The answer at which Faulk arrives, and which I believe is true of modern-day “female subjectification” is that one must judge on a case-by-case basis. It seems that critics of the Victorian Era attempted to make broad generalizations such as “tableaux vivants are degrading.” Well, yes, it seems that at times this art form was specifically geared toward the sexual enjoyment of middle class men. But, Faulk suggests with Kilyani’s Pictures and advanced special effects, that society became intrigued by the “visual spectacle.”[2] Faulk comments, “Comolli draws attention to the proliferation of optical inventions in the late nineteenth century – camera, magic lanterns, dioramas, biographs - …that place the body under new, intense scrutiny.”[3] Kilyani’s pictures allowed this art form to become a family affair. Boys would take their girlfriends, and neither party found anything wrong with appreciating the female form as it related to high art. Lady Somerset, an upperclass woman involved in the social purity movement, felt regardless that the living pictures victimized women. Faulk says that her “…intention, which appears to have been to speak for women unable to articulate their own concerns – established these women as speaking subjects in a public sphere.”[4] Faulk then exemplifies this point through the story of La Milo, who takes her success in the living pictures out into the streets, posing in a public parade. This anecdote reminds me of the TV shows like The Girls Next Door and HBO documentaries that feature women who feel empowered by their careers in the sex industry. There is no definitive moral answer to the questions asked in the Victorian Era or today, but I find it fascinating in itself that we are faced with the same moral battles, another hint that Victorian society is not so unlike out own.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Anderson's role as a piano salesman.
“Adapting Selling Talk to Circumstances: An Interview with John Anderson” from the March 18th 1916 issue of Music Trade Indicator is a front page article that discusses John Anderson’s advertising strategies and his subsequent success as a salesman. The article tells anecdotes about various customers of the Everett piano company, and how John Anderson catered his salesmanship to suit their life experience. Throughout the article Anderson convinces a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, a ship captain, and a minister to buy from the Everett piano company. Sounds like a dirty joke, right? (A lawyer, a doctor, and a minister walk into a piano store….)
My two favorite anecdotes are the farmer and the minister. The farmer complains that while the Everett piano only has two pedals, he is able to buy a cheaper piano with a three pedals down the road. Why should he buy here? Anderson replies, “ ‘Well, I suppose you always buy cows with three horns?... I suppose every horse you buy has five legs, and that you wouldn’t have a rooster on the farm unless he had three or four well spurred legs.”[1] When the farmer finally bought an Everett piano, the anonymous magazine writer concludes, “The farmer bought that piano because he had been told about it in a way that was easily understandable to the farmer.”[2]
In the case of the minister, the reverend was doubtful of the Everett piano because of what other salesmen on Boyleston Street had told him. It did not seem in compliance with Anderson’s praise of the Everett piano. Anderson rebutted, “Haven’t you ministers been telling us about heaven and hell for years and years? Do any of you know anything about it? Have any of you ever been there?”[3] Inexplicably this argument convinces the minister of the Everett’s superiority.
What impresses me about this article is the way in which John Anderson is not just presented as an authority on pianos, but an authority on life. He sizes up his customers and understands their deep inner-workings, so much so that he can connect their identities with their desire for the best piano imaginable, which in this case is the Everett piano. A doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, a ship captain, and a minister are all authorities in their own right. Within a parable, they would symbolize different components of wisdom. Yet John Anderson, a mere piano designer and salesman, sees through all of them. He sees through them, unmasks them as servants of the petty worldly wishes, while he is the servant of something much greater. Art. No wonder his argument is so convincing. Who wouldn’t want to be as enlightened? And to think that this enlightenment is represented by the piano in your living room!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The Music Hall and National Identity.
Faulk’s first couple chapters in his book Music Hall and Modernity explore the music hall and its ties with English essence, the hall’s rise and downfall, and the analysis of the musical hall through the lens of Victorian critics. The description of the music hall as a corny but entertaining variety show reminded me of a show I saw while visiting the Chitwan rainforest in Nepal. The act, which included singing, dancing, and stunts, was supposed to introduce tourists to the culture of the indigenous people. I found it odd that my mind kept returning to this experience, considering that the music halls of England were not necessarily intended for tourists. The target audience was the English middle class. Especially as the music hall developed into a popularized, commercialized form, it was as if the English middle and upper class became tourists to their own country, embracing the songs and dance of the working people. This interest in the exoticism of one’s own country reminded me of slumming, a kind of tourism in which the wealthy visit impoverished communities for sport. However with slumming, just as with the music hall, the more popular the idea of escaping into a national subculture became, the less of a subculture it actually was. I remember reading that in the Latin quarter of New York City, there was a “divey” restaurant that rich tourists liked to visit to experience the dirty underbelly of city life. However, as slumming became more popular, the restaurant became a place for the upper class in search of adventure, without an impoverished person in sight.
As the music hall became more family friendly and less reflective of folk culture, society critics like T.S. Eliot began writing music hall laments. These laments mourned the music hall’s inevitable demise. While paying tribute to the nationally infamous and deceased music hall singer Marie Lloyd, “the poet emphasizes that Lloyd’s death affects more than a single mourner and means much more than a setback for music-hall audiences; it constitutes a full-blow, national crisis.”[1] It seems to me that the English were trying so hard to establish a national identity that to many the music hall because a national treasure, the one slimmer of hope is “Das Land ohne Musik.” In my own personal experience however, the more we try to define ourselves, the less real we actually are. England reminds me of an angst-ridden teenager searching for identity amongst existential emotions. The music hall is the perfect snapshot of England’s identity crisis.
Friday, March 18, 2011
The American Woman and the Piano.
One aspect of piano history that has fascinated me is the influential power of the woman. I was happy to read that in the early 19th century, there were a couple professional pianists who were female: Sophia Hewsit, who performed Beethoven’s Sonata in A-flat, Opus 26 with the New York Philharmonic, and Miss Eustaphieve, the daughter of the Russian consul. But even in the more socially expected ways, the woman influenced piano consumption in America. In 1820, John R. Parker published America’s first music magazine in Boston, entitled Euterpeiad, or Music Intelligencer, Devoted to the Diffusion of Musical Information and Belles Lettres. Loesser comments, “A year’s wroth of response to Parker’s venture seems not to have been too eager, and he therefore, for the future, tried to tone it up with a little more pungent feminine flavor – just as the Jacksons toned up their piano store with perfumes and soap.”[1] Parker even added the subtitle Ladies’ Gazette to the cover. Although the magazine failed after three years, this consumer targeting suggests that music and pianos were a female affair.
In 1825, Manuel Garcia brought his troupe of Italian singers to New York City, where Americans heard real Italian opera for the first time. “Italianitis”[2] ensued. As a result, the Musical Fund Society was established in New York City, the new economic and social epicenter of America. At one of the Musical Fund Society concerts at the City Hotel, a woman named Miss Sterling played the piano. The review states, “The keys of her piano seemed gifted with vocal powers, which addressed themselves to the inmost feelings of the auditory, in tones of stirring excitement, or of melting passion, of solemn grandeur or hurried breathlessness, at the will of their mistress…”[3] This review in particular reminds me of the advertisements associated with the Everett Piano Company (my great-great grandfather’s business). The reviewer describes Miss Sterling in a way that deems her sexy, and the piano is an object that she has enchanted. What more could make a young woman desire to play the piano?
Loesser also writes about America’s preference for the upright as a female-inspired trend. Women wanted the space in their drawing rooms to display their many knick-knacks, and the smaller square shape of the upright piano, as opposed to the grand piano, gave a woman more space in which to display her wealth. Loesser states that the upright became the norm for 40-50 years. I am curious to find out what perpetuated a change in this thought, especially considering that the grand piano came back into fashion around the time of my great-great grandfather John Anderson’s business in the early 20th century. Was their something innately Victorian about owning a grand piano?
The American Piano.
Loesser’s Men, Women and Pianos continues to be an invaluable source for the piano’s social history in America. The chapter “The American piano takes its own shape” confirmed many of my hypotheses from the previous blog. At the beginning of the 19th century, those who could afford pianos preferred the European imports to American-made. This fact is supported by the Franklin Music Warehouse, which prided itself at its opening upon its two Viennese grand pianos, each for sale for $750. ($750 was equivalent to one year’s salary for an upper middle class family.) The extreme exoticism and price of these pianos implies that Americans idealized European products. Charles Albrecht, a piano salesman, advertised his pianos as a “consignment of patent pianofortes from London.”[1] Loesser deduces, “The word ‘London’ represented, as theretofore, a presumption of superior excellence.”[2] American pianos were not even associated with their maker because they were not held in as high esteem. In advertisements, these American-made pianos were simply listed as “American,” without any person or company, as if this qualifier covered all bases.
American-made pianos became more popular as people realized that European imports did not always hold up to America’s extreme weather conditions. American piano companies used this issue as a main vehicle for advertisement. There was a great amount of piano innovation in America at this time: John Isaac Hawkins of Philadelphia developed the first upright piano, Alpheus Babcock constructed the first one-piece cast-iron frame, and Jonas Chickering further developed the cast-iron frame and used it in many of his pianos. Also, in 1816, a 30% duty on all imported items made of wood made the imported piano much less economically feasible for many families. By 1830, American-made pianos were preferred to imported pianos.
With these developments came a change of thought in America. New Englanders began to view music as more than just a young woman’s social activity. Loesser writes,
It was characteristic that in New England the elevation of music’s value should take a religious form. The moral earnestness, as well as the respect for learning, of the original Calvinists persisted; and when many of the richer and more educated among their descendants evolved into Unitarians, it was natural that some of them could see something divine in music. It was not really paradoxical that the great great grandchildren of those who had all but forbidden music in church services should now become enthusiastic promoters of a kind of sacred music. Both the negative and the positive point of view implied an appreciation of the power of music.[3]
Just as I suspected, America’s initial hesitance toward and rejection of music resulting from religious belief eventually transformed into a zealous appreciation of the art. In 1815, the Handel and Haydn Society formed, a choral society that still exists today. Loesser notes that it is interesting that Handel and Haydn were both known for their nonliturgical sacred music, a concept that New England seemed to embrace at this time.
Friday, March 11, 2011
The piano in colonial America.
I have just begun reading Arthur Loessler’s Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History. I am starting with the section on the United States, as the focus of my upcoming research paper is the perception of the piano in Victorian America. The first couple of chapters weave the story of the piano’s beginnings in the colonies. The Massachusetts Puritans and the Pennsylvanian Quakers were against music in the church, although Puritans were comfortable with music study as private practice. Thomas Brattle, one of Boston’s social elite and the treasurer of Harvard College, was the first to buy and import an organ from England for his home. In the 1730s, the first musical performances appeared in Boston. Philadelphia, New York City, and Charleston, South Carolina were other hot spots for music in the 18th century. Charleston especially was supportive of the arts. The city constructed many playhouses in the mid-1700s and premiered the first American operas. Flora, one of these operas, was actually revived this past summer at the Spoleto Arts Festival, and some of my colleagues from Westminster Choir participated in the production. The opera is more reminiscent of musical theatre, alternating between speech and song. The subject matter is comedic, raw, and simple. The opera does indeed make music-making feel like the earthy and sinful genre that many Americans believed it to be.
As population increased and the colonies gained more financial success, more harpsichords were shipped to America from England. Virginia especially had a surplus of harpsichords, which suited the needs of educating businessmen’s blossoming young daughters. In the 1760s the pianoforte was introduced to America. Thomas Jefferson even ordered a pianoforte for his fiancée: “I have since seen a Forte-piano and am charmed with it.”[1] In 1775, John Green crafted in Philadelphia the first American-made piano. By 1791, 27 Boston families owned pianos.
While none of the information above directly describes the Victorian experience, it is interesting to think about how the country’s social origins perhaps laid the groundwork for Victorian perceptions. For example, colonial American’s Puritanical ideology certainly repressed many Americans from musical enjoyment. Thus the language used in the Victorian Era to describe the piano as a spiritual vessel leading to ecstasy and freedom might imply an attempt to break away from this prior repression. In conjunction with this thought, like in England the piano was used as a parlor trick for young ladies wishing to impress a potential husband, clearly another form of oppression. How interesting that the piano simultaneously represented a split from Puritan and Quaker thought, as well as a tie into female social entrapment. The piano both freed and limited American thought.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Gustav Holst.
What most struck me in Vaughan Williams’s “Gustav Holst: An Essay and a Note” is the equal importance placed on Holst the man and Holst the musician. Vaughan William implies that Holst’s identity as a man very directly influences the quality of his music. Vaughan Williams writes, “But if to live may be summed up in the words ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with they might,’ then Holst has lived to the full; he has learnt his lesson in the hard school of necessity; he has not run away from the battle but has fought and won.”[1] Vaughan Williams then proceeds to discuss key aspects of Holst’s compositional style: his austerity, his interest in ancient Sanskrit texts, his tie to English folk song, his use of modes, and his independent treatment of the voice. Vaughan William’s one criticism of Holst lies in his tendency to at times add too much to the musical texture. The writer explains, “…his very faults are those of commission not of omission.” He continues, “His austerity leads not to dullness or emptiness, but to harmony which is acrid rather than luscious, melody sometimes angular but never indefinite or sugary, orchestration which is brilliant and virile but not cloying.”[2] I found this emphasis on Holst’s austerity particularly interesting as it relates to Vaughan William’s assertions that Holst is a quintessential nationalist composer. I imagine that these claims have somewhat to do with prevalent anti-German sentiments, as Strauss or Mahler were certainly not known for their simplicity.
I also enjoyed thinking a little bit about Holst’s ties with Indian culture. I know from singing Choral Hymns to the Rig Veda-III that Holst studied Sanskrit and wrote his own translations of the Vedic Hymns. It notes in the essay that Holst enjoyed the flexibility that came with interpreting a “mystical” text. Vaughan Williams writes, “…it is not the orientalism, but the mysticism of the Vedic Hymns which attracted Holst, he needed some expression of the mystical point of view less materialized and less systematized than anything to be found in occidental liturgies.”[3] This point reminded me of the Victorian Era’s interest in exoticism. In actuality the Vedic Hymns are just as systematic as any standard Christian text. It is our distance from and subsequent idealization of eastern religion that makes it so mystical, just as it is the distance from impoverished communities that made slumming a phenomenon. When I sang the Choral Hymns, I never once thought this work to be an illumination of Hinduism. I feel now that these pieces are rather a snapshot of Western thought gazing at the East through rose-colored glasses.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Vaughan Williams and Folk Song.
What struck me most about the Vaughan Williams articles this week was the composer’s absolute commitment to and belief in the power of folk music to establish an English national identity. He believed in folk song so much that he wrote an opera that he did not anticipate would garner any acclaim or success; he simply wanted to showcase the many English folk songs sprinkled throughout the work. This opera, entitled Hugh the Drover, does not utilize folk song to develop the storyline. Rather, the folk influence is “…atmospheric, appropriate for underscoring the rural setting but irrelevant to the plot” (Saylor 49). It is amazing to me that in the Victorian Era Covent Garden would only produce opera with Italian libretto, and I find it very smart of Vaughan Williams to capitalize upon this disservice to national music by composing his own English opera, rampant with indigenous folk melody. Even better it seems that the opera was well received. The opera’s success coupled with the work of the English Folk Song Society aided in the reemergence of English folk songs in school, church, and everyday life.
The convictions in indigenous folk song Vaughan Williams had reminded me of a book I read in college entitled Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America. This book by Mirjana Lausevic explores a subculture in America in which white Anglo-Saxons indentify with the music and dance of Eastern European rural society. The conclusion that Lausevic comes to is that there is no Anglo-Saxon culture left in America, so certain individuals seek the vibrancy and quirkiness of another culture in order to feel like they belong somewhere. It seems to me that Vaughan Williams had a similar aim in cultivating the old songs of his own heritage. I wonder though if certain English people did identity with the music and dance of another culture to order to gain a sense of identity, or whether in the midst of World War I this attachment to another culture was considered taboo. I appreciated Vaughan William’s quote at the conclusion of the Saylor article, which reads,
This was Vaughan Williams artistic ideal: he wanted England to have its own autonomous, distinctive musical life, but he also knew that “…this life cannot develop and fructify further except in an atmosphere of friendship and sympathy with other nations […] our national art must not be a backwater, but must take its part in the great stream that has flowed through the centuries.” (Saylor 83).
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