The Female Body and Reviews of Women Pianists in 1950s London

Abstract

Women pianists in London in the 1950s, performing mainstream repertoire (Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and Chopin) as well as modern pieces which demanded stamina, physicality and bravura, were often the subject of negative reviews. The critics’ attitudes towards them seems to echo the prevailing Freudian mantra, ‘anatomy is destiny’: women, generally smaller than men, apparently possessing less power and mental capacity, were deemed unfit for this repertoire. But if some women pianists demonstrated ‘unusual’ (for women) physical and mental power, successfully performing long and difficult pieces, they too were damned by the critics, because they did not fit the traditional notion of femininity. In this article, the author demonstrates the magnitude of the effect of the cultural image of women on the reception of both the ‘feminine’ and ‘unfeminine’ women pianists in 1950s London.

Keywords:

• London piano concerts in the 1950s
• women pianists of the 1950s
• London music critics in the 1950s
• the body and music criticism
• sexual imagery
• critical language and culture
• ‘feminine’ woman
• ‘unfeminine’ woman

Notes

¹Lucy Green, Music, Gender, Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 98–101.

²Katharine Ellis, ‘Female Pianists and Their Male Critics in Nineteenth-Century Paris’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 50:3, 1997, pp. 353–85.

³The changing attitudes of the appropriate instrument for women to play both in private and public are discussed in Cyril Ehrlich, The Music Profession in Britain since the Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985; Judith Barger, Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-Century England, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007; Judith Tick, ‘Passed Away Is the Piano Girl: Changes in American Musical Life, 1870–1900’, in Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (eds), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986, pp. 325–49; and Katharine Ellis, ‘The Fair Sax: Women, Brass-Playing and the Musical Instrument Trade in 1860s Paris’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 124:2, 1999, pp. 65–98. This article is a part of my doctoral dissertation, ‘The Reception of Women Pianists in London, 1950–60’, City University, London, 2010. I wish to thank my supervisor, the composer Rhian Samuel, for giving me invaluable advice for this article.

⁴Therese Ellsworth, ‘Victorian Pianists as Concert Artists: The Case of Arabella Goddard (1836–1922)’, in Therese Ellsworth and Susan Wollenberg (eds), The Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Instruments, Performers and Repertoire, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, pp. 149–71; Dorothy de Val, ‘Fanny Davies: A Messenger for Schumann and Brahms?’, in Ellsworth and Wollenberg, The Piano, pp. 217–39.

⁵The effect of the technology on musicians’ employment, Ehrlich says, was ‘catastrophic’. By 1932, 4000 cinemas went to talkies. According to the 1931 census, 7458 male musicians and 2013 female musicians lost their jobs. See Ehrlich, The Music Profession, pp. 209–10.

⁶In my Ph.D. thesis, I investigated the careers of six women pianists, who were regarded as some of ‘the leading pianists’ of the 1950s by contemporary music critics/writers, pianists and the BBC music producer whom I interviewed. These are Dame Myra Hess, Harriet Cohen, Eileen Joyce, Gina Bachauer, Margaret Kitchin and Dame Moura Lympany.

⁷Ellis, ‘Female Pianists’.

⁸Green, Music, Gender, Education, pp. 96–102.

⁹ The Times, 28 October 1959, p. 4.

¹⁰Although the majority of the Times reviewers were men, it employed a small number of women reviewers too; thus, this article cannot claim that prejudice against women performers was necessarily confined to male reviewers.

¹¹Tick, ‘Passed Away’, p. 336. Derek B. Scott also says that the metaphoric use of masculine and feminine began to be used as ‘an aesthetic confirmation of sexual difference’. See Derek B. Scott, From the Erotic to the Demonic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 25.

¹²Rhian Samuel, ‘Women's Music: A Twentieth-Century Perspective’, in Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel (eds), New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994, p. xv.

¹³Naomi Schor, Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine, New York: Methuen, 1987.

¹⁴From the point of view that most significant cultural movements are male products, Schor hesitates to say that detail belongs in the feminine sphere. See Schor, Reading in Detail, pp. 6, 97.

¹⁵ The Times, 8 June 1959, p. 5.

¹⁶Marcia J. Citron observes that needlework was practised by the privileged classes in the Middle Ages (monks, nuns and royalty). But, around 1700, the economic configurations of family and kinship resulted in this becoming a domestic activity. By the eighteenth century (along with domestic music-making), it became part of the feminine stereotype. See Marcia J. Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993, p. 129.

¹⁷Ellis, ‘Female Pianists’, p. 369.

¹⁸Ellis, ‘Female Pianists’, p. 370.

¹⁹ The Times, 2 April 1956, p. 10. There is little information available in the English language regarding Zuccarini. However, scattered information through concert advertisements can be gathered online, which establishes Zuccarini as an active and well-regarded pianist in her country in the 1950s.

²⁰This analogy is inspired by Citron's ‘professionalism’ in Gender, pp. 80–119.

²² Music and Musicians, January 1960, p. 18.

²¹Such gendering of the repertoire was particularly prominent in nineteenth-century Paris. Ellis points out that the sweet and decorative nature of early keyboard works led to the appellation ‘Beethoven's wife’ for Haydn and the description of ‘sub-professional’ for Mozart. See Ellis, ‘Female Pianists’, pp. 365, 381.

²⁴ The Times, 21 December 1953, p. 9. For Gianoli's biography, see www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Gianoli-Reine.htm

²³ Music and Musicians, April 1957, p. 26.

²⁵ The Times, 12 March 1956, p. 3.

²⁶ The Times, 24 February 1958, p. 12. Taddei is a Naxos recording artist. See www.naxos.com/artistinfo/Annarosa_Taddei/38972.htm.

²⁷ The Times, 24 February 1958, p. 12.

²⁸Schor, Reading in Detail, p. 19. Such a view of ‘detail’ must be understood as reflecting the aesthetic of the eighteenth century, not that of romanticism and modernism.

²⁹ Music and Musicians, November 1954, p. 24.

³⁰Freud's ‘anatomy is destiny’ is probably the most (over-)quoted phrase in second-wave feminist studies, including feminist musicology. In the early 1990s, a number of scholars gathered to ponder the issue of ‘difference’ in music. Ruth A. Solie cites this phrase in the introduction to the resultant book, Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, p. 4.

³² The Times, 29 September 1952, p. 10.

³¹Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex [1949], trans. from the French by H.M. Parshley, London: Jonathan Cape, 1953, p. 70.

³³ The Times, 2 March 1953, p. 11. Litvin—also known as Natasha, Lady Spender—is now a music writer, having given up the piano because of illness. She is the widow of the writer Sir Stephen Spender.

³⁴ Musical Opinion, August 1952, p. 649. Schofield's biography can be found at ‘The Margaret Schofield Memorial Scholarship' (www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/excellenceawards/schofield_award.html).

³⁵ Music and Musicians, December 1952, p. 19.

³⁶ Musical Opinion, June 1954, p. 520. French pianist Diana Merrien visited London several times in the 1950s, performing at the Wigmore Hall.

³⁷Christine Battersby, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics, London: The Women's Press, 1989, p. 8.

³⁸ The Times, 26 March 1956, p. 3.

³⁹Battersby, Gender and Genius, p. 41.

⁴⁰This theory was advocated by Gerard Manley Hopkins in a letter to his friend R.W. Dixson in 1886. See Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979, p. 3.

⁴¹ Musical Opinion, July 1950, p. 599. See Cyrus Meher-Homji, ‘Joyce, Eileen’, Grove Music Online, at www.oxfordmusiconline.com, and the biography of Joyce by Richard Davis, Eileen Joyce: A Portrait, Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001.

⁴²See Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman [1792], 3rd rev. edn, London: Penguin, 2004, p. 64.

⁴³Green, Music, Gender, Education, p. 99.

⁴⁴Green, Music, Gender, Education, p. 103.

⁴⁵See Graham Wade, Gina Bachauer: A Pianist's Odyssey, Leeds: GRM, 1999, p. 71.

⁴⁶Ellis, ‘Female Pianists’, p. 376.

⁴⁷Citron, Gender, p. 97. For the original citation, refer to Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman, p. 65.

⁴⁸ Music and Musicians, March 1960, p. 26.

⁴⁹ The Times, 28 February 1955, p. 3.

⁵⁰ The Times, 1 December 1952, p. 3. For information on Kraus, see Dominic Gill, ‘Kraus, Lili’, Grove Music Online, at www.oxfordmusiconline.com.

⁵¹Citron, Gender, pp. 86–7.

⁵²Citron, Gender, p. 88.

⁵³ Musical Opinion, September 1950, p. 713.

⁵⁴Ellis, ‘Female Pianists’, pp. 368–9.

⁵⁵Battersby, Gender and Genius, p. 21. Battersby argues that women writers were, at times, viewed as such because of the tradition which describes the driving force of genius in terms of ‘male sexual energies’ (p. 102). The description of Wollstonecraft's writing style is that of the writer William Duff (p. 79).

⁵⁶ Musical Opinion, January 1957, p. 199. For Darré's biography, see Allan Kozinn, ‘Jeanne-Marie Darre, 93, a Pianist of Lyrical Power’, New York Times, 1 February 1999, at www.nytimes.com/1999/02/01/arts/jeanne-marie-darre-93-a-pianist-of-lyrical-power.html and Martin Anderson, ‘Obituary: Jeanne-Marie Darre’, Independent, 5 February 1999, at www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-jeannemarie-darre-1068787.html.

⁵⁷ The Times, 30 September 1957, p. 3.

⁵⁸ Musical Times, July 1957, p. 387.

⁵⁹ The Times, 28 April 1958, p. 12.

⁶⁰ The Times, 12 May 1958, p. 14. Vogel (1912–92) was a respected Austro-Hungarian pianist-teacher. She taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.

⁶¹See Adrienne Fried Block's observation on child upbringing of the nineteenth century in Amy Beach, Passionate Victorian: The Life and Work of an American Composer, 1867–1944, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 11.

⁶² The Times, 12 October 1959, p. 6.

⁶³ The Times, 6 December 1954, p. 11. Iles was the exponent of the music of the Russian-born composer Nikolai Medtner. She gave several world premieres of Medtner's piano works in the 1940s and 1950s. For more information on Iles's career, see her ‘Obituaries: Edna Iles’ (anonymous), The Times, 1 February, 2003, p. 44.

⁶⁶ The Times, 30 May 1955, p. 3.

⁶⁴ The Times, 23 September 1957, p. 3.

⁶⁵A review of a Marino concert in the Washington Post on 16 November 2004 contains biographical information on this pianist. See www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52897-2004Nov15.html

⁶⁷ Music and Musicians, March 1957, p. 28. However, Paton says that in Chopin, Fischer was more ‘subtle in colour’. For information on Fischer, see Bryce Morrison, ‘Fischer, Annie’, Grove Music Online, at www.oxfordmusiconline.com.

⁶⁸See Gilbert and Gubar's reappraisal of female monsters in the novels written by nineteenth-century women writers in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, 2nd edn, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 34. The notion of the ‘pen’ applies to the male composers as well. The pen inhibiting women composers’ creativities is noted by Citron, ‘Anxiety of Authorship’, in Gender, pp. 54–79.

⁶⁹Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman, 2nd edn, p. 79.

⁷⁰Hélène Cixous and Catherine Clément, The Newly Born Woman [1975], trans. from the French by Betsy Wing, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986, p. 154.