City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Goldberg, Tatjana (2015). Maud Powell, Marie Hall and Alma Moodie: A gendered re-evaluation of three violinists. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University London) This is the submitted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/14997/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] MAUD POWELL, MARIE HALL & ALMA MOODIE: A GENDERED RE-EVALUATION OF THREE VIOLINISTS by TATJANA GOLDBERG A thesis submitted to City University London for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Music School of Arts and Social Sciences City University London November 2015 1 . THE FOLLOWING ITEMS HAVE BEEN REDACTED FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS: p.36 Figure 3.4 p.73 Figure 5 p.90 Figure 10 p.138 Figure 27 p.140 Figure 28 p.205 Figure 39 p.207 Figure 40 Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 4 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 5 Literature Review .............................................................................................................. 6 Chapter One: Violin playing and Virtuosity- a Gendered Perspective ...................... 26 A History of Women and the Violin: from ‘demonic’ to ‘angelic’ ................................... 31 The Impact of Education on the Emergence of Female Violin Soloists ............................ 44 Chapter Two: The Reception History of Powell, Hall and Moodie ............................ 56 Chapter Three: Maud Powell: the first female ‘modern Bow’ of North America ............................................................................................................................. 76 Powell’s life and achievements- a Gendered Perspective ................................................................ 77 Maud Powell back in America ......................................................................................................... 81 Back in Europe ................................................................................................................................. 88 Pioneering the female violin solo recital in America ....................................................................... 94 Violin concertos premiered in America by Maud Powell ............................................................ 100 Premiering American compositions .............................................................................................. 107 Maud Powell’s transcriptions ....................................................................................................... 109 Maud Powell’s cadenza for the Brahms Violin Concerto Op. 77 in D major .............................. 112 Maud Powell’s place in the history of the early recording industry ............................................. 117 Chapter Four: Marie Pauline Hall ............................................................................... 132 Marie Hal's collaborations with Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar ....................................... 149 Elgar’s Violin Concerto Op. 61 in B minor and Marie Hall’s recording ..................................... 152 Chapter Five: Alma Moodie: from an Australian protégée to oblivion ................... 163 Alma Moodie's artistic life ............................................................................................................ 165 Alma Moodie, champion of modern repertoire ............................................................................ 187 Chapter Six: The shared experiences of Maud Powell, Marie Hall and Alma Moodie through the prism of gender studies .............................................................. 213 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 226 APPENDIX A: Powell’s concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York ................................ 238 APPENDIX B: Works by American comosers dedicated to and premiered by Maud Powell ................................................................................................................... 250 APPENDIX C: Maud Powell's transcriptions of European, African-American and American music ..................................................................................................... 253 APPENDIX D: Music dedicated to Alma Moodie and works she premiered .......... 262 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 264 Discography and Scores ................................................................................................ 286 2 Abstract Music as a reflection of a wider culture provides a fruitful area in which to investigate the complex relationship between gender, sexuality and culture. Bearing in mind that many accounts of the changes in Western violin playing concentrate almost entirely upon male virtuosi this thesis investigates the extent to which gender and the corresponding socially constructed identity influenced how pioneer female violinists are seen in the history of the violin. In particular, this thesis investigates the lives and careers of the American Maud Powell, Australian- born Alma Moodie and Briton Marie Hall in order to establish their role in promoting then-contemporary music, as well as considering their contribution to the history of early recordings and in the case of Maud Powell, her significance in the development of the solo recital. At the dawn of the twentieth century these women captivated the public with their artistry. Moreover, they inspired, collaborated and premiered important then-contemporary violin works. Powell’s and Hall’s progressive outlook also embraced the new technology of recording, recognising its importance for the popularisation of art music. However they were assigned, at best, second place by historians. Therefore this research, by a modification of the traditional, patriarchal estimations of their legacy, aims for a more profound assessment of their merits as players and a re-evaluation of their place in the history of the violin. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the staff of City University London’s Music Department for their support and encouragement over the past four years, especially to my mentor Ian Pace – thank you for sharing your expertise and probing mind with me. Outside City University, I am grateful to Karen A. Shaffer, the founder of the Maud Powell Society and Kay Dreyfus for their inspiration and kind words in the course of research for this thesis. I owe a specific debt of gratitude to my husband Nigel Goldberg, who advised me and patiently supported me during this journey; to my sister Gordana Grubic- Andvari, who generously gave her time and knowledge when I needed it; to Gerald Lorenz and my late mother-in-law Eleanor Gilmore, who translated essential German texts; to my proof-reader Tim Rutherford-Johnson for his kind help; and to many friends and colleagues for their support and encouragement at various stages of writing my thesis. 4 Introduction “The fame of a Paganini, of an Ernst, of a Joachim, of a Sarasate, is a fame which women have proved themselves full worthy to share.”1 As a professional violinist, I have always been interested in the role of women musicians in the history of music and in particular, female violin virtuosos. Growing up in Croatia and completing my MA at the Moscow Conservatoire I had little doubt about the meaning of the concept of the ‘great’ violinist: it was the male violinist (Vivaldi, Spohr, Paganini, Sarasate, Wieniawski, Heifetz, Menuhin, Oistrakh etc.), as the ideal of performing excellence in many accounts of the development of Western violin playing concerned the examination of mostly male virtuosi.2 At the same time I was aware that there was a whole group of female violinists such as Kathleen Parlow (1890–1963), Erika Morini (1904–1995), Elizabeth Gilels (1919–2008) and Johanna Martzy (1924–1979) whose names were known only to a limited number of connoisseurs. Ida Haendel (b. 1918) and Ginette Neveu (1919–1949) were the only female violinists who were greatly admired in Russia, probably because Neveu, the winner of the first Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in 1935 in Warsaw (overcoming a 29-year-old David Oistrakh) and Haendel (one of the laureates of the same competition) became great exponents of the art of violin playing. Listening to their playing I found it every bit as ‘great’ as that of their more famous male colleagues. Consequently, the questions I began to ask were: Accepting that it is innately difficult to find the essential properties integral to female violin playing, what are the politics involved in the establishment and evaluation of the careers of female soloists? Was a female virtuoso really inseparable from her gender? If so, how can we understand the rise of female solo violinists and their particular achievements without understanding the gendered nature of the public spheres in society and the management of ‘the musical world’ (since the overwhelming majority of those engaged in the organisation and practice of the musical world have been men). Similarly, how convincingly can we argue that social peer pressure and cultural politics were responsible for the lesser reception of early female violinists and the lack of their posthumous memory, and would the result of a retrospective study be 1 ‘Women Violinists of the Victorian Era’, The Lady’s Realm 5 (1899), p.654; cited in Gillett, Paula, Musical Women in England 1870–1914 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), p.140. 2 Books such as Martens, Frederick H., Violin Mastery (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1919), Farga, Franz, Violins and Violinists (London: Rockliff, 1950), Campbell, Margaret, The Great Violinists (London: Paul Elek Ltd., Granada publishing, 1980), Applebaum, Samuel, The Way They Play (series) (Paganiana Publishers, 1983), Schwarz, Boris, Great Masters of the Violin: From Corelli and Vivaldi to Stern, Zukerman and Perlman (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1983) rarely mention female virtuosi or comment on their artistic legacy. 5 relevant to present-day female violinists? Hence, the following text will try to shed light on the issues of women and the violin. Literature review It is remarkable that while there is no significant evidence of what we might term ‘female’ violin playing, rather little attention has been given to its possible importance in the history of violin playing and its subsequent literature. However, in some of the major collections of essays on the subject in English, exploration of gendered aspects of traditional music theory, musical constructions of gender and sexuality, and the effect of gender bias in female musicians’ lives and careers, are central issues.3 The social and cultural metaphysics of Western society have thrived upon concepts of duality and the unity of opposites, for which gender difference was perhaps fundamental.4 Accordingly, Susan McClary has argued that the ‘masculine’ was always perceived as objective, normal and strong, and the ‘feminine’ as subjective, weak and abnormal.5 However, McClary’s criticism can be challenged, as by recognising the binary oppositions male/female as equal to male/strong/oppressor and female/weak/victim we should also recognise their incompleteness. Women are not always ‘victims’; indeed they can occupy a position of power and exhibit violent and oppressive behaviours, a fact seldom acknowledged by McClary. Yet, she is partly correct, as more or less institutionalised (patriarchal) relationships created a durable social network on the basis of such perceptions of gender. William Weber, in Music and the Middle Class 1830–1848 (1975), and Karin Pendle, in Musical Women in Early Modern Europe: the Fifteenth Through the Eighteenth Century (2001), analyse the new role of middle – and upper – class women in the development of the entertainment world, and the formation of public 3 See Ammer, Christine, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music, 2nd ed. (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1991); Bowers, Jane and Tick, Judith (eds.), Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition 1150-1950 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), McClary, Susan, Feminine Endings: Music Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), Citron, Marcia, Gender and the Musical Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Pendle, Karin, Women and Music: A History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), and Leppert, Richard and McClary, Susan (eds.), Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 4 According to Aristotle (384–322 BC), the Greek philosopher Protagoras (490–420 BC) used the terms masculine, feminine and neuter to classify nouns, introducing the concept of grammatical gender. While Western culture has come to view gender as a binary concept, with two rigidly fixed options – male/female – the Swahili language, has 16 options that fall under an umbrella of cultural- sexual identifications. Similarly, the calabai or calalai of Indonesia, two-spirit Native Americans, and the hijra of India represent more a complex understanding of gender diversity that exists throughout the Western world. http://semantics.uchicago.edu/kennedy/classes; accessed 1st February 2014. 5 In the light of this argument McClary drew attention to Schoenberg’s mapping of major/minor from his Theory of Harmony and emphasised that Schoenberg defined major/masculine as ‘natural’ and minor/feminine as ‘unnatural.’ McClary, Feminine Endings, pp.10–11. 6 taste as the traditional aristocratic dominance of the music world eroded. They also point out that though wealthy or titled women were expected to be able to read music, to sing, to dance, and play at least one instrument, they were also required to limit their music making to home or court.6 Similarly, in Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-cultural Formation in Eighteenth Century England (1993), Richard Leppert analyses the relation between music, visual representation and the human body.7 He focuses on domestic music making and locates the piano as a central factor in the political, social and cultural construction of femininity under the conditions of patriarchy. According to Leppert, a young nineteenth-century woman of genteel upbringing was encouraged to entertain her family and friends with her piano skills as her musical competence was an important prerequisite in the curriculum of middle – and – upper class young women in the marriage market. Furthermore, whilst her seated position was well suited to nineteenth-century ideals of female modesty (as no awkward motions or altered facial distortion detracted from her female beauty), her piano playing seemed to confirm the traditional expectation of women’s perpetual readiness to serve others. In The Sight of Sound (1995), Leppert confirms that domestic music making lent male violinists an aura of potency and domination (thanks to the performer’s standing position facing the audience whilst commanding a feminine shaped instrument), whereas for the household ‘angels’ it served to reaffirm a traditional, modest female identity within the social patterns governed by domesticity. A common focus of Cyril Ehrlich’s The Music Profession in Britain since Eighteenth Century (1989) and Paula Gillett’s Musical Women in England, 1870– 1914 (2000) is women’s participation in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century English musical culture, and the perception of female musicians in the musical world being sharply divided by gender. Whilst Ehrlich offers statistics on women musicians, both teachers and performers, in the period 1861– 1931, Gillett deals with shifting attitudes towards female violinists by tracing the demise of the ‘informal ban’ on female violin playing. The instrument’s long- standing association with dance, death, sin and Satan together with supposedly defeminising aspects of violin playing restricted female playing in the period before the 1870s. However, by the 1890s, female violinists became fairly fashionable. Gillett identifies two main factors in changing the attitudes towards female violinists. Firstly, the wider advances in women’s education (necessary for 6 Pendle, Women and Music, p.59. 7 Leppert, Richard, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-cultural Formation in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 7