Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany.

Peters, Mark A.

Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany. By Matthew Head. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. [xxi, 326 p. ISBN 9780520273849 (hardcover); ISBN 9780520954762 (e-book), $65.] Music examples, illustrations, tables, appendix, bibliography, index.

"What better can temper manly rudeness, or strengthen and support the weakness of man, what so soon can assuage the rapid blaze of wrath, what more charm masculine power, what so quickly dissipate peevishness and ill-temper, what so well can while away the insipid tedious hours of life, as the near and affectionate look of a noble, beautiful woman? ..." (J. C. Lavater, Physiognomy, 1775-1777) (p. vii).

With this epigram, Matthew Head points readers to the new perspective unfolded in his Sovereign. Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany, that the late eighteenth century in Germany represented a view of women, gender, and music distinct from that of earlier periods and especially from the role of music in the idealization and confinement of women commonly considered in German romanticism of the nineteenth century. Head argues instead that women in the late eighteenth century were seen as a civilizing, cultivating force over men, and that, as a result, some women were granted a greater cultural agency, especially through the fine arts. Head states: "[I]n highlighting a discourse--an ideology--of female sovereignty in polite culture and the fine arts one could argue that (some) women achieved symbolic power, and cultural capital" (p. 7).

Head thus captures what he presents as a special moment in the history of women's relationships with music, a moment that allowed for women's greater agency in society due to the view of women as civilizing influences on men. Head further argues that this agency was particularly communicated through music performance by women and through music composition by both women and men. He characterizes such a view as "a focus on music as part of the culture of sensibility" (p. 13) which also valued a man's "capacity to feel as a woman, at least within the dominion of sensibility and the fine arts" (p. 15).

Head's Sovereign Feminine is a significant contribution to the musicological discourse on gender, particularly on representations of, and participation of, women in music performance and composition. Head engages the significant dialogue about music and gender that has been ongoing in musicology since the early 1990s (marked by Susan McClary's Feminine Endings [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991], which Head appropriately recognizes as "groundbreaking," p. xvii). But, as Head highlights in his preface, even with this far greater attention to gender in musicology and with the influence of feminism in the field, there have been almost no studies of gender in the late eighteenth century.

After framing the book within the larger discourse on music and gender in the preface, Head presents his thesis and approach in the introduction. Through the example of Sophie von La Roche's novel Die Gescliichte des Frauleins von Stemheim (Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich, 1771), Head highlights the brief period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries "when figures of womanhood enjoyed exalted status as signs of reform, progress, morality, and civilization" (p. 4). Head also introduces Berlin Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752-1814), a highly influential voice in discourses on music in the period, but one who has been largely forgotten in modern musicology. Head employs Reichardt's writings, musical activities, and compositions as a unifying thread throughout the book, as Reichardt provided significant arguments for and support of the view of the "sovereign feminine."

The remainder of the book, with the exception of a brief afterword, includes six case studies to support and illustrate Head's conception of the "sovereign feminine." The arrangement is roughly chronological (though with much overlap, of course, given the relatively brief chronological scope of the volume), with chapters 1-4 focused on the late eighteenth century and Chapters 5-6 on the early nineteenth century. It is perhaps more helpful to think of the arrangement conceptually: chapters 1-2 are foundational studies that serve to define Head's conception of the "sovereign feminine" and its applications in the period, while chapters 4-6 provide more focused studies of how the ideal of the "sovereign feminine" was realized in relation to individual composers of the period (three female and one male).

The first two chapters present new perspectives on well-known topics in musicology: the first, the writings of Charles Burney, and the second, published music targeted for a female audience. In chapter 1, Head traces Burney's approach of "employing women didactically to exemplify particular aspects of contemporary and recent musical culture" (p. 29). Head argues that Burney's employment of women in such a manner is integral to his historiography (p. 31), particularly Burney's promotion of a view of women "as the civilized and civilizing center" of a society (p. 30). Within the context of Burney's writings, Head also introduces two other conceptions of women that are foundational for his study: that women can serve to reform male manners, particularly through the fine arts, and the presentation of women as "living Muses."

In chapter 2, Head provides a nuanced and insightful discussion of music published for women in the late eighteenth century, thus refining common conceptions of such works. Two significant insights related to music and gender frame the chapter: first, the personal stake that women held in such published music and the contexts in which it was performed (see especially pp. 62-66), and, second, the "masculine freedom to mediate between, and exhibit mastery in, both male and female domains" (p. 51).

Head shifts for the remainder of the book to more focused case studies, beginning with discussions of female composers in chapters 3-5. Chapter 3 presents a fascinating account of the life, and more so the death, of Charlotte ("Minna") Brandes (1765-1788), with particular focus on the appropriations of, and tributes to, Brandes after her death by her father, Johann Christian Brandes, and by her teacher and friend, Johann Friedrich Honicke. Chapter 4 explores the example of the Singspiel Die Fischerin, composed by Corona Schroter (1751-1802) with particular attention to Schroter's musical agency realized in its performance. While the chapter is well-researched and includes insightful music analyses and a fascinating story, the connections with the "sovereign feminine" are less clearly expounded in this chapter than in the others. Head concludes his case studies of female composers with an account of Sophie Marie Westenholz (1758-1838), whom he uses to illustrate the transition away from the "sovereign feminine" to the "more assertively and exclusively masculinist tone" of music discourse in the nineteenth century (p. 159).

Head's final case study is a fascinating one, which he presents in chapter 6 under the title "Beethoven Heroine: A Female Allegory of Music and Authorship in Egmont." Head here engages, and problematizes, discussions of Beethoven as hero through the composer's identification with a female heroine in Egmont and through exploring the assertion that "Constructions of heroism by Beethoven, his contemporaries, and his collaborators focused as much on women as on men and involved ambiguous gendering" (p. 197).

Head's Sovereign Feminine is well-researched and well-documented, engaging a wide range of primary and secondary sources in a variety of fields of study. Head provides generous footnotes and a substantial bibliography, both of which demonstrate his careful research into and consideration of sources. The volume also benefits from the many examples drawn not only from music but also front literature and the visual arts. (A small quibble is that Head's examples are sometimes too far ranging; Head especially tends to borrow examples from England without drawing a clear connection to any parallel movements in Germany, the region of his study's focus; e.g., chapter 2 opening with a scene from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, pp. 48-49; or the citation of an English source rather than a German one to support his otherwise excellent insights on the relationships between Christianity and heroism, pp. 199-200.)

The volume is well-written and engaging, though the writing style requires close attention and may be a challenge for undergraduate, or possibly even some graduate, students. The volume's arguments are not always presented as clearly as they could be, and it reflects a tendency to place key sentences in the middle of paragraphs rather than at the beginning or end where they could be more clearly recognized for their importance. Likewise, the flow of the book as a whole is not easy to follow. Granted, Head presents not a single narrative, but rather six case studies around the central theme of the "sovereign feminine." But a clearer connection between chapters (the move from chapter 3 to chapter 4 is especially jarring) and also to this central theme would guide readers more clearly through this varied content.

Despite these minor criticisms, Head deserves significant credit for bringing discussions of gender to bear on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with such depth and breadth. Sovereign Feminine is a significant contribution to both literature on the period and on music and gender. Head provides, through detailed and engaging examples, a much fuller and nuanced perspective on gender in late eighteenth-century Germany than has previously been considered.

Mark A. Peters

Trinity Christian College