Musicology at Weimar Republic

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1/5

Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End ofHitler's Reich by Pamela M. PotterReview by: Christopher HaileyNotes, Second Series, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Sep., 1999), pp. 106-109Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/900476.

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2/5

NOTES,

September

1999

OTES,

September

1999

group

Take

That,

Paul McDonald

obviously

worked hard

to

provide

detailed

descrip-

tions

of

the

spectacles

he

analyzed,

but

some photographs would have made his

essay

more

vivid.

In

the

course of

his

discus-

sion of

Take That's

popularity among

young

female and

gay

male

audiences,

McDonald

fairly

critiques

psychoanalytic

approaches

that reduce

multiple perfor-

mances

of

gender

to

dichotomies;

he also

does

a

good

job

of

defending

informed tex-

tual

analysis

as an

illuminating

method that

need not

always

depend

upon

direct

ethno-

graphic

corroboration.

Unlike

McDonald,

Sean Cubitt makes no

effort to describe visual images carefully,

leaving

the reader

unable

to

judge

or re-

spond

to

his

assertions. That is the case

with his entire

chapter,

most of which does

not even

pretend

to address

popular

music,

and none of which

displays

much

concern

with other

people's responses,

with

history,

or with

musical

signification.

Cubitt

speaks

of our

responses,

of how we

respond,

but offers no evidence that would

ground

his assertions outside of his own

reactions.

His

contribution

is less

an analysis

of

social

meanings

than a

performance

of his own

reception

of

gendered images.

Sexing

the

Groove oncludes

with

an anno-

tated

bibliography

of

relevant work

in

cul-

tural

studies,

gender

studies,

and

popular

music;

it is

a

helpful compilation

with fair

group

Take

That,

Paul McDonald

obviously

worked hard

to

provide

detailed

descrip-

tions

of

the

spectacles

he

analyzed,

but

some photographs would have made his

essay

more

vivid.

In

the

course of

his

discus-

sion of

Take That's

popularity among

young

female and

gay

male

audiences,

McDonald

fairly

critiques

psychoanalytic

approaches

that reduce

multiple perfor-

mances

of

gender

to

dichotomies;

he also

does

a

good

job

of

defending

informed tex-

tual

analysis

as an

illuminating

method that

need not

always

depend

upon

direct

ethno-

graphic

corroboration.

Unlike

McDonald,

Sean Cubitt makes no

effort to describe visual images carefully,

leaving

the reader

unable

to

judge

or re-

spond

to

his

assertions. That is the case

with his entire

chapter,

most of which does

not even

pretend

to address

popular

music,

and none of which

displays

much

concern

with other

people's responses,

with

history,

or with

musical

signification.

Cubitt

speaks

of our

responses,

of how we

respond,

but offers no evidence that would

ground

his assertions outside of his own

reactions.

His

contribution

is less

an analysis

of

social

meanings

than a

performance

of his own

reception

of

gendered images.

Sexing

the

Groove oncludes

with

an anno-

tated

bibliography

of

relevant work

in

cul-

tural

studies,

gender

studies,

and

popular

music;

it is

a

helpful compilation

with fair

commentary,

although

it

inexplicably

omits

one of the most

important

previous

works

on

popular

music and

gender,

Lisa A.

Lewis's GenderPolitics and MTV: Voicingthe

Difference

(Philadelphia:

Temple

University

Press,

1990),

as well

as

George Lipsitz's

sev-

eral books on

cultural studies

and

popular

music. It would be

easy

to

criticize the cov-

erage

of

Sexing

the Groove tself: the

popu-

lar music of its

subtitle is limited to

Anglo-

American rock

and

pop,

and

even

within

those

boundaries

there is no

discussion of

hip hop,

for

example,

and almost no men-

tion of black musicians.

Although

divided

evenly by

gender,

the

contributors are

mostly British, and some of the musicians

they

discuss are less well

known

in

the

United States and elsewhere. But

to dwell

on

such limitations would

be

unfair,

given

the

great range

of musical

performances

of

gender

that are

insightfully

examined

here.

Despite

Whiteley's

unfulfilled

promise

to

bring

musical sound to the center of her

book's

analyses,

she

has

brought together

many

valuable

essays

and

produced

a useful

and

consequential

collection.

Sexing

the

Groove

s

one

of

the most

provocative,

en-

abling,

and

persuasive

recent contributions

to

popular-music

studies.

ROBERT

WALSER

Universityof California,

Los

Angeles

commentary,

although

it

inexplicably

omits

one of the most

important

previous

works

on

popular

music and

gender,

Lisa A.

Lewis's GenderPolitics and MTV: Voicingthe

Difference

(Philadelphia:

Temple

University

Press,

1990),

as well

as

George Lipsitz's

sev-

eral books on

cultural studies

and

popular

music. It would be

easy

to

criticize the cov-

erage

of

Sexing

the Groove tself: the

popu-

lar music of its

subtitle is limited to

Anglo-

American rock

and

pop,

and

even

within

those

boundaries

there is no

discussion of

hip hop,

for

example,

and almost no men-

tion of black musicians.

Although

divided

evenly by

gender,

the

contributors are

mostly British, and some of the musicians

they

discuss are less well

known

in

the

United States and elsewhere. But

to dwell

on

such limitations would

be

unfair,

given

the

great range

of musical

performances

of

gender

that are

insightfully

examined

here.

Despite

Whiteley's

unfulfilled

promise

to

bring

musical sound to the center of her

book's

analyses,

she

has

brought together

many

valuable

essays

and

produced

a useful

and

consequential

collection.

Sexing

the

Groove

s

one

of

the most

provocative,

en-

abling,

and

persuasive

recent contributions

to

popular-music

studies.

ROBERT

WALSER

Universityof California,

Los

Angeles

Most

German

of the

Arts:

Musicology

and

Society

from

the

Weimar

Republic

to the

End

of

Hitler's

Reich.

By

Pamela M.

Potter.

New Haven:

Yale

University Press,

1998.

[xx,

364

p.

ISBN

0-300-07228-7.

$40.]

Most

German

of the

Arts:

Musicology

and

Society

from

the

Weimar

Republic

to the

End

of

Hitler's

Reich.

By

Pamela M.

Potter.

New Haven:

Yale

University Press,

1998.

[xx,

364

p.

ISBN

0-300-07228-7.

$40.]

Any

musicologist

trained

in

the

last

forty

years

knows the names: Friedrich

Blume,

Heinrich

Besseler,

Helmuth

Osthoff,

Karl

Gustav

Fellerer,

Josef

Muller-Blattau,

Johannes

Wolf,

and at least

a

dozen or so

more.

Their

articles, reviews,

monographs,

and

editions,

sometimes

dry,

unappetizing,

pedantic,

and

austere,

were the

gluten

for

our first

wobbly

seminar

papers

and lent

gravitas

to our

footnotes,

heft to our

bibli-

ographies. And

it

was the heft of Die Musik

in

Geschichteund

Gegenwart

(Kassel:

Baren-

reiter,

1949-86

[MGG]),

that monument

of German

scholarship

and

eye-straining

graphic

design,

that

gave

tone to our arms

as

we

wrestled with our

Tonkiinstler. To

Any

musicologist

trained

in

the

last

forty

years

knows the names: Friedrich

Blume,

Heinrich

Besseler,

Helmuth

Osthoff,

Karl

Gustav

Fellerer,

Josef

Muller-Blattau,

Johannes

Wolf,

and at least

a

dozen or so

more.

Their

articles, reviews,

monographs,

and

editions,

sometimes

dry,

unappetizing,

pedantic,

and

austere,

were the

gluten

for

our first

wobbly

seminar

papers

and lent

gravitas

to our

footnotes,

heft to our

bibli-

ographies. And

it

was the heft of Die Musik

in

Geschichteund

Gegenwart

(Kassel:

Baren-

reiter,

1949-86

[MGG]),

that monument

of German

scholarship

and

eye-straining

graphic

design,

that

gave

tone to our arms

as

we

wrestled with our

Tonkiinstler. To

most

Americans,

German

scholars were not

personalities

but faceless

authorities,

stern

guarantors

of

standards

and

traditions;

it

scarcely

came to

mind that much of

their

work,

along

with

MGG,

the VW

Beetle,

and

the

autobahn,

was a

legacy

of

National

Socialism.

Time heals not

through

a

process

of for-

getting,

but

by

binding

trauma within the

tough

sinews of narrative

memory.

At this

century's end, Germany can look back on

four

generations

of

rupture

and

disloca-

tion. Three wars

(two

hot,

one

cold)

and

five

distinctly

different

governmental sys-

tems

have

rent

the fabric of its

psyche

and

its

culture.

If

music is the

most German of

most

Americans,

German

scholars were not

personalities

but faceless

authorities,

stern

guarantors

of

standards

and

traditions;

it

scarcely

came to

mind that much of

their

work,

along

with

MGG,

the VW

Beetle,

and

the

autobahn,

was a

legacy

of

National

Socialism.

Time heals not

through

a

process

of for-

getting,

but

by

binding

trauma within the

tough

sinews of narrative

memory.

At this

century's end, Germany can look back on

four

generations

of

rupture

and

disloca-

tion. Three wars

(two

hot,

one

cold)

and

five

distinctly

different

governmental sys-

tems

have

rent

the fabric of its

psyche

and

its

culture.

If

music is the

most German of

10606

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3/5

Book Reviews

the

arts,

then German music culture has

been

especially

disrupted,

and much

recent

scholarship

has been

devoted to

creating

a

narrative to reintegrate the broken lives,

repertories,

traditions,

and institutions

into

historical

memory.

These

projects

have

largely

been

devoted

to the

victims:

Jews,

exiles,

progressives,

revolutionaries,

and

whatever

else

war

and totalitarian

ideology

could

destroy

or

cast

away.

So

what

of the

others,

of

those who

stayed

and

labored on

and have ever since

been

lurking

in

our

footnotes?

Pamela

M.

Potter's examination of

German

musicology

over the

thirty-year

period from the end of the First World

War

to the

beginning

of the Cold

War

is

a

sober

and

sobering

tale. It is the

story

of

the

founders

of

twentieth-century musicol-

ogy

in

Germany,

men who were the teach-

ers,

colleagues,

or themselves the

students

of

exiles like Curt

Sachs,

Alfred

Einstein,

Karl

Geiringer,

Manfi-ed

Bukofzer,

and Leo

Schrade,

who in turn

did so much to

shape

American

musicology.

There is a

common

heritage

here,

and Potter is above

all

at

pains

to

examine that

heritage

as

a

story

of

contexts and

continuities,

a web of

history

in

which

we, too,

are

caught.

In

1918,

German

musicology

was still a

relatively

young discipline

and

only

re-

cently

established

at

German

universities,

which

at

the

time were bastions

of

political

conservatism,

scholarly

insularity,

and

jeal-

ously

guarded

academic

autonomy.

Unlike

scholars

in

other humanistic

disciplines,

who buried

themselves in

their

teaching

and

research,

musicologists

were

frequently

engaged with the culture at large as critics,

editors,

performers,

conductors,

adminis-

trators,

and

consultants.

Many

musicolo-

gists

saw

practical

applications

for their

re-

search

and

were idealistic in their

hope

that

musicology

could

be relevant

and re-

sponsive

to the

needs of

contemporary

Ger-

man

culture. In the

wake of

Germany's

defeat

in

the

First

World War

and

the

polit-

ical and

economic

turmoil of the

Weimar

Republic,

that

culture

was

highly politi-

cized. Music

might

have been

seen as a

means of healing the rifts in the national

spirit,

but

it was

also

a

battleground

of

ideo-

logical

contention.

Potter

emphasizes

that

most

of

the

themes

associated

with

Nazi

music

culture-education

reform;

devising

repertory

and

performing organizations

for

amateurs,

youth,

and

workers;

and an

all-

consuming preoccupation

with the

nature

of German

national

and,

increasingly,

racial and ethnic identity-were well in

place

before Hitler came to

power.

The

Hitler

regime

succeeded in

harnessing

ex-

isting

energies,

and

that

included

focusing

many

of

the concerns that had

preoccupied

musicologists

for

a

generation.

The

major

beneficiary

of

Nazi

support

of

music

scholarship

seems

to have been

re-

search into folk music.

While

this

support

may

have been

ideologically

driven,

interest

in the

topic

was an international

phenome-

non,

as similar WPA research

projects

in

the United States attest. That means by

which

Poles,

Hungarians,

and

Spaniards

sought

to

declare musical

independence

from German dominance served also

to

un-

cover the roots

of German national

iden-

tity,

whether

in the German

provinces

or

in

such enclaves

of

German-language

culture

as northern

Italy

or Bohemia.

Already

begun

in

the

1920s,

this

research was

signif-

icantly

enhanced

by

the

National Socialist

political

agenda. Defining

Germanness

in

music

held

pride

of

place

in

many

subject

areas and

across

a

spectrum

of method-

ological approaches.

But as

pervasive

as

Nazi

ideology

was,

it

could

not,

for in-

stance,

generate

much

interest in

research

on the

Jewish

question,

and there

was no

particular

intensification of

scholarship

on

an icon like

Richard

Wagner.

The

most

significant

contribution

of

National

Socialism to German

musical life

was

in

organization.

The Weimar

Republic's

federal

system

of

culturally

independent

states produced many inequities in the dis-

tribution

of cultural

support

that

National

Socialism's centralized

bureaucracy

sought

to

overcome. The

universities

may

have

lost

much of their

prized

autonomy,

but

else-

where

struggling

research,

educational,

and

performance

organizations

were

revi-

talized

by

subsidies and

high-profile politi-

cal

support.

The

nearly

defunct

Royal

Institute for

Musicological

Research at

Buckeburg

was

restructured

as

the German

Music

Research

Institute;

under

its

aus-

pices, the Zeitschrift iir Musikforschungwas

given

new life

as the Archiv

fiir

Musik-

forschung,

and all

previous

Denkmaler

edi-

tions were

combined into

the series

Erbe

deutscher

Musik.

But

the

music

apparatus

of

the

Nazi state was

not as

monolithic

or

107



4/5

NOTES,

September

1999

well

organized

as one

might imagine,

and

many

musicologists

who had crafted

grand

schemes

for

organizing

musical life in

Germany or her occupied territories were

disappointed

by

their

lack

of influence.

Moreover,

musicologists

found themselves

caught up

in the

competing power

spheres

of the

SS,

the Reich Music

Chamber,

and

the

interior,

propaganda,

and education

ministries,

all of which had

a hand

in

shap-

ing

music

policy

and

financing

research.

The

result

is a

story

of

rivalry, infighting,

betrayal,

and

compromise.

There are

few

heroes,

few

principled

stands.

Johannes

Wolf,

an elder statesman of German musi-

cology who made clear his distaste for Nazi

racial

policies,

and

Kurt

Huber,

who was

executed

as a member of

the Weisse Rose

group,

can be

singled

out,

but even their

actions seem too little

or too late.

Potter's

research is

thorough

and meticu-

lous and

brings

to

light

a

wealth

of new

source

material.

Her

judgment

is

dispas-

sionate, balanced,

and

differentiated,

and

she avoids

every

temptation

for sensational-

ism.

By

patient

accumulation

of detail

she

demonstrates

how

ideals

could

be

per-

verted

by

ideology

and ambition

collapse

into

opportunism,

but she never loses

sight

of the

larger

issues that

make

this

study,

as

much

as

anything

else,

a

history

of ideas.

There is little

here that is black

and white:

the seductions were

real,

the

corruption

gradual;

guilt

is

shaded,

innocence com-

promised.

Potter reminds

us that

all

musi-

cology

is

political,

and that

we,

too,

are

caught up

in

the

fabric of our cultural de-

bate and

thus

readily

vulnerable to ex-

ploitation

and

corruption

when

scholarship

is

co-opted

by political agendas.

Today,

as

in the

1920s

and

1930s,

the first victims of

such

threats to

scholarly

integrity

are

clarity

of

thought,

language,

and

logic.

But true

resistance

requires

more

than

scholarly

in-

tegrity.

Perhaps

it

took an American

to

write

this

book.

Even

today,

the

power

structures and

sensitivities within

the German

academy

make

full

disclosure

of the

past

awkward

and

painful.

An American

has the

freedom

to delve into such matters without concern

for

professional

repercussions.

Beyond

that, however,

the American

perspective

is

valuable because this

story

affects our own

identity

within a

discipline

that has been so

thoroughly grounded

in

German

sources,

methods,

and, indeed,

preoccupations,

the

first and foremost

being

German music it-

self. Potter's book is

part

of that

larger

re-

examination of our century's inheritance,

whether it be the

legacy

of

fascism or

the

myths

of

European

modernism.

The

ironies are

compounded

when one realizes

how

many

of our

current

historical,

aes-

thetic,

and

methodological

priorities

can

be traced

back to the

period

Potter

studies.

We

have internalized concerns

brought

to

these

shores

by

the exiles from

Hitler's

Europe,

and

contextualizing

those con-

cerns

helps

both to define our own

identity

and

repair

the fabric of

history.

This is clearly a book by a musicologist,

about

musicologists,

and for

musicologists

-a

pity,

because

the

topic

has an

import

and breadth

of

interest

that should be

made

available to a

wider

audience. Pot-

ter's

summary

of

early-twentieth-century

research trends

in

chapter

6

( The

Shaping

of New

Methodologies )

is

excellent,

though

we

are

given

no overview of

Germany's

musicological

establishment.

A

few statistics on

the number of

depart-

ments,

teaching positions,

and

students,

on

dissertations written or

monographs pub-

lished,

would

give

the uninitiated reader a

better feel for

the

size and

scope

of

activity

of

that

pool

of

trained

musicologists

on

which the

author

is focused.

As

an

approach

to cultural

history,

this

narrow

focus

on

professional

musicologists

is

problematic.

A

significant

portion

of

Potter's

argument

is

based on the

very

public

activities and

pronouncements

of

musicologists

in their

capacity

as music

journalists. (See especially chapter 2,

Musicologists

on Their Role

in

Modern

German

Society,

and

chapter

7,

Attempts

to Define 'Germanness'

in

Music. )

Ger-

many's

literate

reading

public certainly

made little

distinction

between those with

and without

musicology degrees.

There

were indeed

a number

of music critics and

journalists

with no formal

musicological

training

who nonetheless had

a

demonstra-

ble influence

on

scholarship

and

aesthetics,

including

Paul

Bekker and Theodor W.

Adorno. Nowhere was the line between

amateur

and

professional

more

perme-

able than in music

literature,

and without

a

better sense for how the

public

and

musi-

cologists

themselves

established

a

separate

identity

for

scholars,

the

distinction

often

108



5/5

Book

Reviews

ook

Reviews

seems

arbitrary.

Two further criticisms: the

translated,

limiting

the book's

accessibility

book's

index

is

spotty

and

does not refer- to the interested

general public.

ence

material contained

in

the

endnotes;

CHRISTOPHER

HAIILEY

and much endnote material remains un- LosAngeles

Cultivating

Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists

since

1860.

Edited

by

Ralph

P.

Locke and

Cyrilla

Barr.

Berkeley:

University

of

California

Press,

1997.

[xi,

357

p.

ISBN

0-520-08395-4.

$45.]

Extraordinary

Women

in

Support

of Music.

By

Mona Mender.

Lanham,

Md.:

Scarecrow

Press,

1997.

[x,

309

p.

ISBN

0-8108-3278-X.

$48.]

seems

arbitrary.

Two further criticisms: the

translated,

limiting

the book's

accessibility

book's

index

is

spotty

and

does not refer- to the interested

general public.

ence

material contained

in

the

endnotes;

CHRISTOPHER

HAIILEY

and much endnote material remains un- LosAngeles

Cultivating

Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists

since

1860.

Edited

by

Ralph

P.

Locke and

Cyrilla

Barr.

Berkeley:

University

of

California

Press,

1997.

[xi,

357

p.

ISBN

0-520-08395-4.

$45.]

Extraordinary

Women

in

Support

of Music.

By

Mona Mender.

Lanham,

Md.:

Scarecrow

Press,

1997.

[x,

309

p.

ISBN

0-8108-3278-X.

$48.]

Appreciating

the influence

of

gender

has

never

been the sole

purview

of

feminist

scholars.

Advertising

executives have

long

known

that men and

women

part

with their

money

in

different

ways,

and

fund-raisers

can

now

turn to studies that show a

gender

differential

in

philanthropy.

The work of

Martha A.

Taylor

and Sondra

Shaw,

in

con-

junction

with Andrea Kaminski

(currently

executive

director

of the

Women's Philan-

thropy

Institute),

suggests

that

the

doing

of

good

works is different

for men and

women

even

from

the

same

elite class.

Whereas men

typically

fund

to maintain

the status

quo,

women,

who

often have

much less

to

give,

are

literally

more in-

vested in

change, funding

projects

that will

make a

calculated difference to

their com-

munities.

(See

Sondra C. Shaw and Martha

A.

Taylor,

Reinventing

Fundraising: Realizing

the

Potential

of

Women's

Philanthropy

[San

Francisco:Jossey-Bass,

1995].)

Although Cultivating

Music in

America

does

not draw on

any

of

this

new fund-

raising

research,

it

makes

an

enormous

contribution toward recognizing the cru-

cial

role

of female

philanthropy

in

the de-

velopment

of

Western

concert musicmak-

ing

in

the

United

States.

The

individual

essays

are

readable and offer

much to our

understanding

of

American

musical life

and

culture. This

richly

textured collection

should

be

of

particular

interest

to

interdis-

ciplinary

scholars

in

American studies as

well as

to those

in

women's

and

gender

studies.

The

editors

begin

by

redefining

music

patronage as musical activism (p. 5),

thereby

undoing

the

problematic

connota-

tions

of

patron-patronizing-patriarchy

and

allowing

for

an

expanded

understanding

of

what

might

be

given by

patrons

other

than

money:

time,

creativity,

philosophical

Appreciating

the influence

of

gender

has

never

been the sole

purview

of

feminist

scholars.

Advertising

executives have

long

known

that men and

women

part

with their

money

in

different

ways,

and

fund-raisers

can

now

turn to studies that show a

gender

differential

in

philanthropy.

The work of

Martha A.

Taylor

and Sondra

Shaw,

in

con-

junction

with Andrea Kaminski

(currently

executive

director

of the

Women's Philan-

thropy

Institute),

suggests

that

the

doing

of

good

works is different

for men and

women

even

from

the

same

elite class.

Whereas men

typically

fund

to maintain

the status

quo,

women,

who

often have

much less

to

give,

are

literally

more in-

vested in

change, funding

projects

that will

make a

calculated difference to

their com-

munities.

(See

Sondra C. Shaw and Martha

A.

Taylor,

Reinventing

Fundraising: Realizing

the

Potential

of

Women's

Philanthropy

[San

Francisco:Jossey-Bass,

1995].)

Although Cultivating

Music in

America

does

not draw on

any

of

this

new fund-

raising

research,

it

makes

an

enormous

contribution toward recognizing the cru-

cial

role

of female

philanthropy

in

the de-

velopment

of

Western

concert musicmak-

ing

in

the

United

States.

The

individual

essays

are

readable and offer

much to our

understanding

of

American

musical life

and

culture. This

richly

textured collection

should

be

of

particular

interest

to

interdis-

ciplinary

scholars

in

American studies as

well as

to those

in

women's

and

gender

studies.

The

editors

begin

by

redefining

music

patronage as musical activism (p. 5),

thereby

undoing

the

problematic

connota-

tions

of

patron-patronizing-patriarchy

and

allowing

for

an

expanded

understanding

of

what

might

be

given by

patrons

other

than

money:

time,

creativity,

philosophical

premises,

and

so on.

As

the editors set

forth

in

their

introduction and as the

essays

themselves make clear, musical activism,

at least in

the United

States,

was

frequently

women's

work.

Through

a

complex

cul-

tural

and

historical

network,

musicmaking

and its

appreciation

were

considered

ap-

propriate

for middle-

and

upper-class

women.

Certain

kinds of

musical

objects-

what

we now

identify

as the

Euro-American,

German-dominated

canon-likewise

at-

tained

a

privileged ennobling

power,

or,

as

Ruth

Solie notes:

music

had

itself

become

religious practice (p. 279).

This

kind

of

musicking,

to use

Christopher

Small's

term,

was

rarely

self-supporting.

Rather,

it

came

to

require specialized spaces,

star

per-

formers and

conductors,

and

growing

num-

bers of

trained

musicians-all of

which

cost

increasing

amounts of

money

to

sustain,

even as

its moral

nature

required

that

such

commercial realities

remain hidden.

Since it

fell to the female

sphere

to

provide

spiritual

uplift,

women

with financial

means

took it

upon

themselves to educate

and enlighten through musical philan-

thropies.

This

collection is

not intended as a

neat

chronological exploration;

the

individual

contributions can

stand alone. Of

the nine

essays,

four have

appeared

elsewhere in

other

guises

(Solie

on

Sophie

Drinker,

Joseph

Horowitz on

the

cult

of

Richard

Wagner,

Cyrilla

Barr on

Elizabeth

Sprague

Coolidge,

and

Ralph

P.

Locke on

Isabella

Stewart

Gardner).

These

essays,

including

additional ones on

women's

clubs,

black

women activists, and philanthropists in this

century,

are

enlivened

by

ten

vignettes,

typ-

ically

first-person

reflections

on

the individ-

uals

or

activities

involved.

Read

together,

the

collection

accumulates its

own

power

as

issues

and

individuals

keep

resurfacing:

premises,

and

so on.

As

the editors set

forth

in

their

introduction and as the

essays

themselves make clear, musical activism,

at least in

the United

States,

was

frequently

women's

work.

Through

a

complex

cul-

tural

and

historical

network,

musicmaking

and its

appreciation

were

considered

ap-

propriate

for middle-

and

upper-class

women.

Certain

kinds of

musical

objects-

what

we now

identify

as the

Euro-American,

German-dominated

canon-likewise

at-

tained

a

privileged ennobling

power,

or,

as

Ruth

Solie notes:

music

had

itself

become

religious practice (p. 279).

This

kind

of

musicking,

to use

Christopher

Small's

term,

was

rarely

self-supporting.

Rather,

it

came

to

require specialized spaces,

star

per-

formers and

conductors,

and

growing

num-

bers of

trained

musicians-all of

which

cost

increasing

amounts of

money

to

sustain,

even as

its moral

nature

required

that

such

commercial realities

remain hidden.

Since it

fell to the female

sphere

to

provide

spiritual

uplift,

women

with financial

means

took it

upon

themselves to educate

and enlighten through musical philan-

thropies.

This

collection is

not intended as a

neat

chronological exploration;

the

individual

contributions can

stand alone. Of

the nine

essays,

four have

appeared

elsewhere in

other

guises

(Solie

on

Sophie

Drinker,

Joseph

Horowitz on

the

cult

of

Richard

Wagner,

Cyrilla

Barr on

Elizabeth

Sprague

Coolidge,

and

Ralph

P.

Locke on

Isabella

Stewart

Gardner).

These

essays,

including

additional ones on

women's

clubs,

black

women activists, and philanthropists in this

century,

are

enlivened

by

ten

vignettes,

typ-

ically

first-person

reflections

on

the individ-

uals

or

activities

involved.

Read

together,

the

collection

accumulates its

own

power

as

issues

and

individuals

keep

resurfacing:

10909


Documents

Musicology at Weimar Republic