Conference Agenda

This paper argues that Hélène de Montgeroult's Cours Complet pour l'Enseignement du Forté Piano (c. 1816) represents a foundational yet unrecognized intervention in early nineteenth-century piano pedagogy that was decisively shaped by contemporary discourses on women's physical education, bodily propriety, and fashion. Using new evidence, I date the Cours Complet to precede Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum (1817) and identify it as the inspiration for, rather than homage to, her student J.B. Cramer's Instructions for the Piano Forte (1812). This redating repositions Montgeroult not as a peripheral figure but as a progenitor of the technical and pedagogical frameworks that defined nineteenth-century pianism.

Montgeroult's pedagogical vision, I argue, was contingent on broader ideologizations of the body emerging from Enlightenment physical education. Treatises by Rousseau, Basedow, and Salzmann articulated new relationships among body, nature, and health that shaped how pianistic training was conceived. These ideas were further refined for women's education in works such as Maria Edgeworth's Practical Education (1798), Mary Brunton's Discipline (1814), and Antoine-Martin Bureaud-Riofrey's Treatise on Physical Education: Specially Adapted to Young Ladies (1838), all of which confronted the conundrum of music's physicality and its appropriateness for women. Montgeroult’s Cours Complet emerges from this constellation of discourses, offering a pedagogical method that negotiated the demands of increasing technical difficulty with prevailing expectations of feminine bodily comportment.

Central to this negotiation was Montgeroult's conception of comfort at the keyboard, which I relate to contemporary fashion — particularly the empire waist and its revolutionary politics — that sought to extend women's bodily freedom while preserving propriety. Her pedagogical text and its 700 pages of progressive exercises thus occupy a threshold between feminine decorum and physical transgression, encoding in technical instruction a broader cultural argument about what women's bodies could and should do. By reconstructing this pedagogical and cultural context, this paper reframes the emergence of early nineteenth-century pianism as inseparable from the presence, labor, and fashioning of the women who practiced, performed, and composed its repertoire.

“Leipzigerisch” and “get thee to the conservatory!” are frequently cited as evidence of Franz Liszt’s lifelong and utter disdain for conservatories (Walker 1996, Hamilton 2008). Yet such extreme judgments of the conservatory’s professionalized and systematized education overlook the valent nature of Liszt’s own pedagogy. This reflected a larger concern for how music and ideas are communicated among specialists and non-specialists during the mid-century “War of the Romantics” (Quinn 2014). During this period, Liszt experimented with the semi-public format of masterclass as a means to differentiate his pedagogical method from the conservatory model. In doing so, he created a “Society of virtuosity.” This “Society,” which I articulate following Michel Foucault’s concept of a “Society of discourse,” preserves and reproduces discourse within a closed community (Foucault 1972), I suggest that Liszt’s “Society” operated in opposition to the conservatories’ use of group instruction by articulating a distinctive brand of pianistic pedagogy and performance practice. I illustrate Liszt’s discursive pedagogy through case examples of his elusive approaches to technique and teaching Frédéric Chopin’s music, which insisted on his personal connection to the composer and their shared goal of poetic pianism.

My paper tests this concept against masterclasses given by Hans von Bülow and Clara Schumann at the Frankfurt conservatories. I assess them as a microcosm of a broader didactic conflict—which raged with particular zeal in Germany—among competing discursive societies. I explore how it unfolded in their student’s notes and reminiscences, and as evidenced in the editions of scores used in those pedagogical settings. Liszt ritualized his class decorum through carefully facilitating language for spoken and musical dialogues with his students and observers (Lachmund 1995, Jerger 2010). Bülow imparted a historicist curriculum, with his classes hovering between inspired and scholastic interpretations (Pfeiffer and Motta 1993). Schumann evoked tradition as a means of community building, immersing her students by involving colleagues like Johannes Brahms to work with them (de Lara 1915, Schumann 1927). Given these various musical communities, Liszt’s approach is not necessarily a wholesale dismissal of conservatory culture, but rather a discontinuity in the teaching and dissemination of piano virtuosity in the Bildung tradition.

The Girton College Songbook is, as its name suggests, a collection of college songs from Girton College, Cambridge. It includes music from two eras of Girton’s history: the early years (from 1869) which include the college’s residence in Hitchin before moving to its current premises near Cambridge, and the post-war 1940s. The eight songs from the early years divide into two main categories: Exam Songs, such as “The Girton Pioneers” and “Ye Gracious Senate”; and Activity Songs, such as the “Fire Brigade Song” and the “Hockey Song.” Of these, the Exam songs are the earliest and commemorate the successes of Girton students sitting Tripos exams in the 1870s and 80s. The lyrics were faithfully copied by new students shortly after matriculating, and the Girton College Music Society typically devoted a few of its practices each term to making sure the new Girtonians were up to the mark in singing them.

College songs were only the beginning of the Music Society’s work. Its members regularly organized informal musical evenings, college-wide concerts, and commuted to Cambridge to perform with the University Musical Society. Some students pursued exams in music, and others supplemented their Girton education with certificates from the Royal Academy or Royal College of Music. College songs were distinctive because they were the one form of music in which every Girtonian participated, and their performance often concluded college events such as the Old Students’ Dinner every Michaelmas [Autumn] Term.

This paper investigates the nineteenth century songs included in The Girton College Songbook as a way of exploring the community of educated women that the Girton College Music Society was building and supporting. It takes direction from the work of Golding (2013, 2018), Maxwell (2011, 2023), Watt (2023) and Wollenberg & Darwall-Smith (2023) to contextualize the songbook and other documents from the Girton College Archives. The songs provide a wealth of insights into how music supported the college’s intellectual community, commemorated the college’s history, and taught new Girtonians to be members of Girton College and aspiring members of Cambridge University.