Long before “Mississippi Hot Dog” became cemented in the violin vocabulary, using words as an aid to teaching music was a common technique. As I gathered material for the anthology, it was interesting to note how the types of language, and how it was used, changed over time. Here are some entirely unscientific observations from my by no means exhaustive study of the topic.

In the early 20th century, Edith Lynwood Winn (1867-1933), that tireless pedagogue with her many How to Study... books (for Kreutzer, Fiorillo, Rode, and Gavinies) used poems as prefaces to the pieces in her compositions for violin and piano. For instance, the three pieces from From the Carolina Hills included in volume one of the anthology have the following poems:

"A Picture"

My summer’s gone—where did it go?
  The land is covered o’er with snow,
  
The air is sharp upon the hill,
  My hands are cold—I feel the chill

Of wintry winds that blow.
  And yet I sit and think, and lo!

The pine within the grate doth glow,
  While down the misty, snow-clad hill, I catch a song of sweet good-will,

And though the summer’s gone I know
  ‘Twill come again.

"The Sunshine Lad"

The Sunshine Lad has a morning song,
  For all the world like a robin’s note,

Clear and true, joyous and free,
  Though the rents are many in cap and coat.

The Sunshine Lad has a basket of pine,
  The long-leaved pine of the Old North State,

The song it sings is a sunshine song,
  As it sputters and sparkles in the grate.

"Buy My Pine"

“Buy my pine! Buy my pine!
  The long-leaved pine—the emerald pine,
  The scrubby pine full of turpentine, 
  For the pine of the hills is mine—all mine.”
    
A child cried out in the early morn,
  A child all dirty and ragged and torn,
  And the pine she bore cried back in turn,
  “I am thine—all thine, let me quickly burn.”

I haven’t found any attribution for the poems, so my assumption is that they were written by Winn herself. Her use of poems in these pieces, as well as in two other collections (Five Playtime Pieces and Six Shadow Pictures), seem to be to set the mood, or perhaps inspire the mind to loftier considerations. I tried singing the words along to the music, and in every case it was a dismal failure.

Jumping ahead to the 1930’s, one of the works that gave me many laughs (but didn’t make it into the anthology) was One String Solos for Violin Beginners, by Kate La Rue Harper. Now, before you La Rue Harper fans get upset with me, there is nothing wrong with the music or the pedagogy here. This set of pieces limits each tune to one string, to better learn the notes and the feel of tone production there. The words do correspond with the rhythms, and are printed as lyrics. But what words! In my mind, I nicknamed these “Songs of Pain and Death.” If more research were to show a shift in society and education from uplifting young minds to moralizing and fear-mongering, it would be in full bloom here. For example, this solo on the A string:

"Kitty Needs a Pill"

Go and call a doctor, Kitty’s very ill.
  Ask him if he’ll hurry, Oh I hope he will!
  Kitty’s had a spill, Now she’s very ill;
  Go and call a doctor, Kitty needs a pill.

And:

"Lazy Little Bug"  (D string Solo)
    
Lazy, lazy, little bug, Lying there asleep
  Warm and snug beneath the rug, Wrapped in slumber deep.
  When your little nap is o’er, And you stretch your legs once more,
  You may find your dream was true, Someone really stepped on you!

Humans also receive their share of trouble (“Bobby cries in bitter woe/Just because he stubbed his toe”). In fairness, not every tune focuses on sickness, pain or death, but enough do that the thought of having a child memorize the words in order to learn the rhythms of the song gives me the heeby-jeebies.

The only other work by La Rue Harper that I've found listed is a one-act juvenile opera called Tomboy Jo’. Tomboy Jo’ is a poor orphan girl who is ostracized by both girls and boys for her gender-inappropriate looks and behavior. Here are the stage directions for her first entrance: “Tomboy Jo’ comes in turning cartwheels, or some other boyish trick. She has short hair and is boyish and unkempt. The boys and girls in chorus exclaim: ’O, here comes Josephine!’ They look at each other as if she were not welcome in either group.” It all comes right in the end when a tramp arrives and turns out to be her long-lost father, who has been stricken with amnesia (and her mother died of a broken heart after he wandered away). Somehow his return allows the others to accept her… I haven’t been able to find any biographical information on La Rue Harper, but I hope her life was more pleasant than all this suggests.

Next, some far happier contributions from contemporary female teachers!

The next few posts will be a serialization of a paper I wrote back in the dim recesses of memory (meaning 1999), and presented at the Feminist Music and Theory V conference in London, England. It seems to me the main changes since then are the increasing "babe-ification" of men (google Charlie Siem, for an example)... I suppose that's a kind of progress?

Two hundred years ago, the female musicians of the Venetian ospedali could be heard but not seen, sheltered from view as they performed. Today it seems that the music industry has decided that women musicians must be seen– and often a great deal of the woman’s body must be seen– before she will be heard; that is, before her recording will be marketed or purchased. Why is it that a woman’s appearance, whether judged as suitable or unsuitable, continually captures the attention of the musical establishment? Have we really progressed so far beyond the attitudes towards those ospedali students, or is this merely the other side of the same coin?

This paper had its genesis about five years ago, from what at first seemed to me an innocuous observation. While browsing through violin recordings (my particular interest), I began noticing an increasing number of “cheesecake” photos on cd covers. Delighted as I am to note the upsurge of talented young women violinists, it did strike my middle-aged and chubby self that perhaps the already tough criteria for success as a Classical musician was getting tougher– if you were female, you’d better be a “babe.”

What a mystery! A recording is an aural, not a visual experience– if the musician is accomplished, why should we care about his or her form? As I began to look at the perception of women musicians it became clear that, in one way or another, their appearance has always been as significant as their skill in the public’s eye and mind.

Perception-- what we appear to be and what others wish we would appear to be. The perception of proper feminine roles has always been a major issue for women in music. Those roles have perhaps been debated with the greatest heat in regard to women as composers. While these women were not actively in the limelight like performers, their “womanliness” (which, of course, would be reflected in their appearance) was nonetheless of great interest to the public. To quote Christine Ammer in her book Unsung: “If... a woman should produce a respectable composition, it was argued that she could do so only at the expense of her ‘womanhood.’ For example, one writer pointed out that, even if matrimony and lack of strength and endurance did not deter a woman composer, it still took a considerable amount of ‘fight’ to make one’s way. Even many men found themselves temperamentally ill equipped for such battle. And if a woman should be suited for it, it would diminish her ‘womanly qualities,’ and then what would become of her power of writing ‘womanly music?’”

So many Catch-22's! Writers often worked hard to assure their readers that these risqué women composers had not lost this mysterious “womanliness” by virtue of their musical pursuits. Here, for example, the introduction to an article from the February 1904 issue of Etude Magazine interviewing Amy Beach:

“When Mr. George Whitfield Chadwick first heard Mrs. Beach’s symphony, he is said to have exclaimed, ‘Why was I not born a woman?’ It was the delicacy of thought and finish in her musical expression that had struck him, an expression of true womanliness, absolute in its sincerity... She is a woman of charmingly simple manners, and, as foregone conclusion, of high, innate refinement. She is of medium height. Her eyes are of a grayish blue, large, and smiling. Her complexion is fresh and brilliant... Her straightforwardness is like her personality– gentle, direct, convincing... If you should put direct questions to her as I did you would learn that she composes when she feels the inclination move her to it; that she studies the piano when she is not writing; that one time of day is as good to work in as another, and that her housekeeping is of a very earnest interest to her. This last, however, was an admission, not an answer; but there was such ample proof of it that it must be put down. So many great ladies in art have told me what good housekeepers they were, and, after leaving them, I have had to stop, on turning the first shielding corner, to brush from my overcoat the veneer of dust it had acquired on their hall bench. Mrs. Beach’s domestic regime is not of this type. It fills you with chagrin, indeed, not at the prospect of dust carried out, but at the fearful possibilities of dust carried in.”

The double standard becomes so clear when we turn the tables and apply the same treatment to men! The brilliant mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers does just that in a collection of essays from the 1930's, entitled Are Women Human?

“Probably no man has ever troubled to imagine how strange his life would appear to himself if it were unrelentingly assessed in terms of his maleness; if everything he wore, said or did had to be justified by reference to female approval; if he were compelled to regard himself, day in and day out, not as a member of society, but merely as a virile member of society... If he were vexed by continual advice how to add a rough male tough to his typing, how to be learned without losing his masculine appeal, how to combine chemical research with seduction, how to play bridge without incurring the suspicion of impotence... He would be edified by solemn discussions about ‘Should Men Serve in Drapery Establishments?’ and acrimonious ones about ‘Tea-Drinking Men’; by cross-shots of public affairs ‘from the masculine angle,’ and by irritable correspondence about men who expose their anatomy on beaches (so masculine of them), conceal it in dressing-gowns (so feminine of them), think about nothing but women, pretend an unnatural indifference to women, exploit their sex to get jobs, lower the tone of the office by their sexless appearance, and generally fail to please a public opinion which demands the incompatible... If he gave an interview to a reporter, or performed any unusual exploit, he would find it recorded in such terms as these: ‘Professor Bract, although a distinguished botanist, is not in any way an unmanly man. He has, in fact, a wife and seven children. Tall and burly, the hands with which he handles his delicate specimens are as gnarled and powerful as those of a Canadian lumberjack, and when I swilled beer with him in his laboratory, he bawled his conclusions at me in a voice that implemented the promise of his swaggering moustache.’”

A recurring theme in Ms. Sayers 1936 novel, Gaudy Night, is the importance of finding one’s “job” in life, and remaining faithful to it, no matter the outside opinion. Interesting to hear this sentiment echoed two years later by Nadia Boulanger, when asked by a reporter how it felt to be the first woman to ever conduct the Boston Symphony: “I’ve been a woman for a little over fifty years, and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that’s a job. I don’t think sex plays much part.”

Alas, this clarity of vision seems all too rare. 


stay tuned for more...