Journal

allad-one of those you promised to teach me, or a story-I’d rather
have a ballad though.
Catherine repeated the longest she could remember. The employment
pleased both mightily.’
There are four examples of Catherine’s singing. She sings for the purpose of
consoling and soothing the sullen Linton.
The Brontë siblings
Emily began studying the piano at Haworth in 1833 or 1834 and she soon
played, in the words of Ellen Nussey, ‘with precision and brilliancy.’ In 1842
she studied piano at the Heger Pensionnat in Brussels and even gave piano
lessons to some of the younger students there. After returning to Haworth,
she acquired a new piano. At this time, in the words of Ellen Nussey, ‘the
ability with which [Emily] took up music was amazing, the style, the touch,
and the expression was that of a Professor absorbed heart and soul in her
theme’. Her playing seems to have been particularly important to her father.
As Winifred Gérin wrote,
Emily’s playing on the little upright in his study became so intimate a
language between these two silent people that when she was dead he
could not bear its presence there, and had it carried upstairs out of
sight.
The music she studied and played after returning from Brussels is impressive.
Not only did she acquire a new piano (with
two pedals and a range of 5½ octaves), she
also acquired The Musical Library, an 8-volume/
musical anthology published in 1844. The music
included is of a consistently high quality; the
composers most often represented in the
instrumental volumes being Handel, Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven. She gravitated
particularly to the piano transcriptions from
Beethoven’s symphonies. She also marked for
special attention works by Handel, Gluck,
Haydn, Mozart, and Clementi.
There is no record of the concerts she may
Beethoven
have attended while in Brussels. That Emily
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