“Leisure with Decorum”: Gentlemen Making Music in the Georgian era

Author

Lidia A. Chang, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

9-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Music

Advisor

Stephanie Jensen-Moulton

Committee Members

Christina Bashford

Talia Schaffer

Sylvia Kahan

Allan Atlas

Subject Categories

Digital Humanities | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Musicology | Music Practice

Keywords

Georgian era, England, Music, Gender, Performance Practice, Organology

Abstract

This project examines the musical activities of Georgian gentlemen with the goal of illustrating the ways that recreational music-making tested the boundaries of gender, class, and nationality. While the English nobility could respectably engage in music-making, socialize with professional musicians (subverting, or temporarily suspending otherwise rigid class boundaries), and openly extol the virtues of Continental culture without compromising their gentlemanliness, English gentlemen walked a much thinner line. In pursuit of these claims I will expand the scope of primary sources beyond conduct books and novels to include selections of unpublished, peripheral accounts of recreational music-making as found in letters, diaries, printed and handwritten music books, amateur drawings, and other unconventional sources. By basing my investigation on materials that are not often examined for their combined musical and sociohistorical content, I shed new light on the largely invisible musical practices of Georgian gentlemen.

Recommended Citation

Chang, Lidia A., "“Leisure with Decorum”: Gentlemen Making Music in the Georgian era" (2021). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4471