AMS Philadelphia 2009 Abstracts - American Musicological Society

Abstracts Friday morning 67
Focusing on gustavo iii, this paper identifies the unofficial censors (they turn out to be the
Director of the Police, a high-ranking lawyer, the impresario’s right-hand man, and even the
impresario himself), determines their political or religious function, and interprets some of
their emendations. In addition, the paper will show that the unofficial censors worked together
much more closely than we have so far believed (handing the libretto back and forth among
themselves) and that they censored much more thoroughly than their official colleagues. They
were not satisfied with simply eradicating problematic words or phrases but returned to the
same passage time and again, hoping to improve it. In the case of Un ballo in maschera, where
the composer and librettist had a chance to react to the censors’ work, the result was on occasion
surprisingly good.
PoPulAr genres in the eArly tWentieth century
David Ake, university of nevada, reno, chair
SCHEMING YOUNG LADIES: IMAGES OF FEMALE
MUSICIANS IN RAGTIME-ERA NOVELTY SONGS
Larry Hamberlin
Middlebury College
“As late as the 1920s,” wrote Jacques Barzun in Music in American Life, “untutored popular
sentiment regarded the playing of music as the occupation of wretched professionals and
scheming young ladies.” Ragtime-era novelty (i.e., comic) songs about female musicians, and
especially singers, provide some clues as to why such a negative stereotype was both widespread
and long-lived. Coinciding with the peak of the women’s suffrage movement, these
songs may represent an antisuffragist backlash, lampooning “scheming” women’s quest to
pursue careers in music, where their financial independence presented a threat to patriarchal
norms.
Yet the ridicule of women singers did not end with the Nineteenth Amendment. Ragtime
songs set the pattern for the still-current soprano joke, which may express other musicians’
resentment of the diva’s power over audiences. Moreover, the soprano voice itself may be an
object of psychological discomfort that male listeners might want to defuse with humor. Yet
another cause of male discomfiture is an association of female display with disreputable entertainments
such as the burlesque show—self-display, even on the operatic stage, some songs
imply, is intrinsically indecent.
Because so many of these songs focus on “unfeminine” ambition, voice students and other
aspiring singers feature prominently among the protagonists. This paper considers in turn
portraits of voice students, amateur singers, and professional singers, tracking the increasingly
negative portrayals of women’s aspirations, and concludes by comparing these songs with a
few novelties about male singers, which suggest that vocal display was increasingly perceived
as a feminine-gendered social practice.