Conference Agenda

Commencing with her debut as a Wunderkind in 1822, the pianist and composer Delphine von Schauroth (1813-1887) enjoyed a charmed early career until she disappeared from the public stage in the early 1840s. Until this withdrawal, her performances in Germany, England, and France were received rapturously, and she was regularly ranked among the top pianists in the press.

This presentation is concerned with a vital episode from a later era of Schauroth’s career and centers on the issue of class. In the 1860s, Schauroth sought to return to the stage, but her situation was complicated by her noble status: she was a baroness. Drawing on Schauroth’s letters to Ferdinand Hiller and reviews of her performances from the early 1860s, I elucidate Schauroth’s strategic management of her return to public performance and its reception in light of her noble status. The letters reveal how Schauroth carefully orchestrated various degrees of publicness in her appearances, considered the classes of her social contacts in various cities, attempted to circumnavigate her status through her choice of stage name, and aspired to be remunerated for her performances. They also disclose her confidence in her abilities and her trepidation about the potential ramifications of the artistic path she chose to resume. The press coverage of this stage of her career confirms that she remained a spectacular pianist, while also suggesting that she was impeded by her class.

In addition to providing insight into a prominent musician who has received little attention, this presentation also contributes to scholarship on the “power of class” with regard to female musicians in the nineteenth century. Notable previous work by scholars such as Nancy Reich (1991, 1993) and Harald Krebs (2007) has emphasised the distinctions between the opportunities available to women of the “artist-musician class” and the aristocracy or upper class, though figures who complicate these divisions, such as Maria Szymanowska, have been acknowledged. This presentation provides additional insight by demonstrating how class restraints could shift (particularly in relation to age, marital status, location, and financial status) and, crucially, how women artists could attempt to manipulate them.

The figlie di coro, female musicians who lived and worked in four prominent Venetian charitable institutions called the Ospedali Maggiori, have fascinated music lovers and scholars for centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for instance, crowds of hundreds and sometimes even thousands would pack themselves in and around the institutions’ chapels to hear the voices and instrumental playing of these talented women. Yet, specifics of who these women were and how they contributed to the music they performed has been elusive, often historically obscured by the careers of male composers who wrote for them. Through a renewed study of Venetian archival documents, including institutional records regarding the care of these wards, personal requests the figlie di coro wrote, and musical manuscripts containing their parts and pedagogical materials, this project reveals specifics of their work as sought-after educators and virtuosic performers in early modern European musical networks.

With a case study of one musician, a soprano known as Fortunata Cantora, this research particularly demonstrates the social mobility that non-elite early modern women could achieve through cultivating their musical careers. Fortunata, like many other typical figlie di coro, lived through childhood abandonment and the difficulties growing up within a charitable home to become a renowned musician. She not only awed adoring audiences with her vocal solos, but she was also requested by Austrian princes to teach young girls as musicians for their courts. Most importantly, newly transcribed training exercises and chamber pieces, which were composed specifically for Fortunata and contain hand-written solo cadenzas, unveil details of the musical knowledge these women gained and shared in order to follow successful musical vocations within and beyond the Ospedali.

Throughout her career as a professional composer, pianist, and teacher, Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) interacted with a vibrant network of professional and semi-professional women musicians in Paris. Drawing on Farrenc’s published works and writings from the nineteenth-century musical press, the first half of this paper reconstructs Farrenc’s network and shows how her approach to dedications changed as she became an established figure in Paris’s musical culture. Of the forty-nine numbered compositions Farrenc published between 1825 and 1865, thirty-three bear public dedications, with twenty-five honoring women. These dedications highlighted a shared devotion among Farrenc’s network to a learned pianistic style. As she became more renowned herself, Farrenc used dedications to spotlight women working to establish their own reputations. For example, when Farrenc dedicated her critically acclaimed 30 Études, op. 26, to Sophie Pierson-Bodin in 1840, the choice of work signaled to others in Paris that Pierson-Bodin was an accomplished pianist and teacher in the “serious” tradition that Farrenc had come to represent.

The second half of the paper turns to an illuminating dedicatory exchange, using music analysis to demonstrate how Farrenc expressed appreciation for a younger composer’s work, and vice versa. Pianist, composer, and critic Thérèse Wartel (1814-1865) dedicated her Andante for solo piano, op. 11, to Farrenc in 1851, after having performed Farrenc’s chamber music in a series of public concerts the previous year. Op. 11 stands apart from Wartel’s earlier virtuoso-oriented compositions. A contemplative ternary form, the Andante constantly develops its theme through varied repetitions, a technique that recalls Farrenc’s compositional procedures. This Andante shows Wartel adopting a more learned style in her own compositions, perhaps in response to her engagement with Farrenc’s chamber music. Farrenc responded with the dedication of her Piano Trio, op. 34, a work filled with Romantic piano writing that recognizes Wartel’s technical and artistic skill, but centered in a genre that highlighted the younger pianist’s growing reputation as a specialist in the Classical chamber repertoire. These two works express each woman’s distinct musical persona while also suggesting the esteem with which they viewed each other’s professional achievements.

Although Maroie de Dergnau de Lille is credited as the author of the chanson d’amour Mout m’abelist in two trouvère chansonniers, almost nothing is known about her life. The descriptors attached to her name, Dergnau and Lille, offer an opportunity to identify this medieval poet-composer, yet little has been learned about her for over 120 years. Alfred Guesnon was the last to establish new biography for Maroie, suggesting in 1902 that she may have been from a suburb of Lille and was possibly related to a Philippe de Dergnau. But Guesnon did not provide details of this man’s identity nor why he thought they could have been related. In the intervening century, scholars have essentially repeated what biographical information he gathered.

This paper offers new evidence about Maroie’s identity, providing the most complete biography to date of a woman trouvère (apart from Blanche de Castille). It situates Maroie within an aristocratic family of Lille by examining contemporary documents from the city, including an obituary that lists her name. It further examines her family members’ activities in Lille and explores the geography of the neighborhood where she likely lived. Finally, it sheds new light on Maroie’s music and musical relationships by analyzing her surviving song and its connections to a chanson d’amour by another trouvère, Andrieu de Contredit. Andrieu’s dedication of Bonne, belle, et avenant to Maroie has long been acknowledged, but it has not heretofore been noticed that his song does more than merely honor her: it responds directly to Maroie’s surviving song by replying to her text and by citing her opening melody in its musical setting of her name.

The findings presented here open lines of inquiry that improve our understanding of women’s involvement in the trouvère community, building on recent work showing that 40% of the professional musicians in thirteenth-century Arras were women (Dolce 2021). The conversation recorded by Maroie’s and Andrieu’s songs may indicate a broader dialogic function of chansons d’amour. Andrieu’s envoy stamps a melody with Maroie’s name, suggesting that other envoys should be reconsidered to locate identifying information.