Sounding Feminine: Women's Voices in British Musical Culture, 1780–1850 by David Kennerley (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sounding Feminine: Women's Voices in British Musical Culture, 1780–1850 by David Kennerley Alisa Clapp-Itnyre (bio) Sounding Feminine: Women's Voices in British Musical Culture, 1780–1850, by David Kennerley; pp. xiv + 220. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, $82.00. Part of Oxford's New Cultural History of Music series, David Kennerley's Sounding Feminine: Women's Voices in British Musical Culture, 1780–1850 is a welcome contribution to a series that includes studies on the music of France, Russia, Germany, and so on. British music, and that performed by women, is an especially vital field of study to which many of us over the last thirty years have contributed, answering the call by Nicholas Temperley in his formative 1989 book, The Lost Chord: Essays on Victorian Music, who writes: "Anyone who has studied Victorian history or literature is likely to be well aware of the presence of music, for it played a prominent part in Victorian life. Yet music has played little part in Victorian studies" ([Indiana University Press], 1). Kennerley's own important contribution is from a historian's perspective; his thorough investment in the archives of conduct literature, letters, diaries, and musical press brings a rich engagement with women's music often from new, intimately personal perspectives. As he writes, "[o]ne aim of this book, then, is to pursue these newly emerging links and cross-currents between public and private, professional and amateur worlds, and to do so as part of a wider rethinking of the categories scholars have applied to British musical life, especially in relation to gender" (12). Voice and sound are central foci as he argues that "the sound of the voice is always a product of a profound encounter between the body's physical structures and cultural norms" (3). Chapter 1 focuses on conduct literature that discouraged not only public performances by amateur women singers, but also immodest singing within the home. Chapter 2 considers a vast array of diary entries and personal letters, both of singers and listeners, to suggest, not surprisingly, that class and religious views shaped how one heard female voices. Chapter 3 considers attitudes of musical critics by focusing closely on conflicting reviews of three professional singers: Catherine Stephens, Eliza Vestris, and Giuditta [End Page 352] Pasta. Chapter 4 focuses exclusively on an upper-middle-class, amateur singer named Dorothea Solly. Kennerley uses extensive family papers to examine attitudes held by Solly, and those directed toward her, about singing and life. Chapter 5 returns to examining a wider grouping of women, now from personal papers such as Adelaide Kemble's letters, Clara Novello's singing adaptations (as read through reviews about her), and Marianne Lincoln's own tour diary. Kennerley shows anxieties and battles each experienced in their careers. Kennerley's timeline for the book, 1780 to 1850, is intentional and ends with the hope-filled 1854 concert of Clara Novello at the Crystal Palace, a "moment [that] epitomises a new kind of female embodiment … indicat[ing] the maturation by the mid-nineteenth century of an audience receptive to the voice of the British female musical artist—expressive, emotive, empowered" (185–86). The great strength of Kennerley's study is his vast archival research. Aside from a great many published contemporary sources, he has gathered and explored unpublished manuscripts, papers, diaries, letters, and correspondences from libraries and archives all across England. His reading of contemporary newspapers and periodicals is likewise exhaustive. As shown above, he pulls this material into useful chapters organized by genre: conduct literature for, life-writings of, and reviews about musical women. This reader finds his final two chapters especially rewarding because they utilize all genres, and Kennerley's adept understanding of social history, to elucidate one amateur female musician (Solly) and three professional singers in very focused, engaging, and personal ways, which some of the earlier chapters sometimes lack. His title cleverly highlights the major theme of his empathetic conclusion: "The challenge of sounding feminine was consequently an enduring one for these musical women, faced with audiences divided over the kinds of sounds to which women might give voice" (190). If I have any reservations for this...