Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of

Hitler's Reich by Pamela M. Potter

Review by: Christopher Hailey
Notes, Second Series, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Sep., 1999), pp. 106-109
Published by: Music Library Association
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NOTES,
September
1999
NOTES,
September
1999
group
Take
That,
Paul McDonald
obviously
worked hard to
provide
detailed
descrip-
tions of the
spectacles
he
analyzed,
but
some
photographs
would have made his
essay
more vivid. In the course of his discus-
sion of Take That's
popularity among
young
female and
gay
male
audiences,
McDonald
fairly critiques psychoanalytic
approaches
that reduce
multiple perfor-
mances of
gender
to
dichotomies;
he also
does a
good job
of
defending
informed tex-
tual
analysis
as an
illuminating
method that
need not
always depend upon
direct ethno-
graphic
corroboration.
Unlike
McDonald,
Sean Cubitt makes no
effort to describe visual
images carefully,
leaving
the reader unable to
judge
or re-
spond
to his assertions. That is the case
with his entire
chapter,
most of which does
not even
pretend
to address
popular
music,
and none of which
displays
much concern
with other
people's responses,
with
history,
or with musical
signification.
Cubitt
speaks
of "our"
responses,
of how "we"
respond,
but offers no evidence that would
ground
his assertions outside of his own reactions.
His contribution is less an analysis of social
meanings
than a
performance
of his own
reception
of
gendered images.
Sexing
the Groove concludes with an anno-
tated
bibliography
of relevant work in cul-
tural
studies,
gender
studies,
and
popular
music;
it is a
helpful compilation
with fair
group
Take
That,
Paul McDonald
obviously
worked hard to
provide
detailed
descrip-
tions of the
spectacles
he
analyzed,
but
some
photographs
would have made his
essay
more vivid. In the course of his discus-
sion of Take That's
popularity among
young
female and
gay
male
audiences,
McDonald
fairly critiques psychoanalytic
approaches
that reduce
multiple perfor-
mances of
gender
to
dichotomies;
he also
does a
good job
of
defending
informed tex-
tual
analysis
as an
illuminating
method that
need not
always depend upon
direct ethno-
graphic
corroboration.
Unlike
McDonald,
Sean Cubitt makes no
effort to describe visual
images carefully,
leaving
the reader unable to
judge
or re-
spond
to his assertions. That is the case
with his entire
chapter,
most of which does
not even
pretend
to address
popular
music,
and none of which
displays
much concern
with other
people's responses,
with
history,
or with musical
signification.
Cubitt
speaks
of "our"
responses,
of how "we"
respond,
but offers no evidence that would
ground
his assertions outside of his own reactions.
His contribution is less an analysis of social
meanings
than a
performance
of his own
reception
of
gendered images.
Sexing
the Groove concludes with an anno-
tated
bibliography
of relevant work in cul-
tural
studies,
gender
studies,
and
popular
music;
it is a
helpful compilation
with fair
commentary, although
it
inexplicably
omits
one of the most
important previous
works
on
popular
music and
gender,
Lisa A.
Lewis's Gender Politics and MTV:
Voicing
the
Difference (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1990),
as well as
George Lipsitz's
sev-
eral books on cultural studies and
popular
music. It would be
easy
to criticize the cov-
erage
of
Sexing
the Groove itself: the
"popu-
lar music" of its subtitle is limited to
Anglo-
American rock and
pop,
and even within
those boundaries there is no discussion of
hip hop,
for
example,
and almost no men-
tion of black musicians.
Although
divided
evenly by gender,
the contributors are
mostly
British,
and some of the musicians
they
discuss are less well known in the
United States and elsewhere. But to dwell
on such limitations would be
unfair,
given
the
great range
of musical
performances
of
gender
that are
insightfully
examined here.
Despite Whiteley's
unfulfilled
promise
to
bring
musical sound to the center of her
book's
analyses,
she has
brought together
many
valuable
essays
and
produced
a useful
and
consequential
collection.
Sexing
the
Groove is one of the most
provocative,
en-
abling,
and
persuasive
recent contributions
to
popular-music
studies.
ROBERT WALSER
University of California,
Los
Angeles
commentary, although
it
inexplicably
omits
one of the most
important previous
works
on
popular
music and
gender,
Lisa A.
Lewis's Gender Politics and MTV:
Voicing
the
Difference (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1990),
as well as
George Lipsitz's
sev-
eral books on cultural studies and
popular
music. It would be
easy
to criticize the cov-
erage
of
Sexing
the Groove itself: the
"popu-
lar music" of its subtitle is limited to
Anglo-
American rock and
pop,
and even within
those boundaries there is no discussion of
hip hop,
for
example,
and almost no men-
tion of black musicians.
Although
divided
evenly by gender,
the contributors are
mostly
British,
and some of the musicians
they
discuss are less well known in the
United States and elsewhere. But to dwell
on such limitations would be
unfair,
given
the
great range
of musical
performances
of
gender
that are
insightfully
examined here.
Despite Whiteley's
unfulfilled
promise
to
bring
musical sound to the center of her
book's
analyses,
she has
brought together
many
valuable
essays
and
produced
a useful
and
consequential
collection.
Sexing
the
Groove is one of the most
provocative,
en-
abling,
and
persuasive
recent contributions
to
popular-music
studies.
ROBERT WALSER
University of California,
Los
Angeles
Most German of the Arts:
Musicology
and
Society
from the Weimar
Republic
to the End of Hitler's Reich.
By
Pamela M. Potter. New Haven:
Yale
University
Press,
1998.
[xx,
364
p.
ISBN 0-300-07228-7.
$40.]
Most German of the Arts:
Musicology
and
Society
from the Weimar
Republic
to the End of Hitler's Reich.
By
Pamela M. Potter. New Haven:
Yale
University
Press,
1998.
[xx,
364
p.
ISBN 0-300-07228-7.
$40.]
Any
musicologist
trained in the last
forty
years
knows the names: Friedrich
Blume,
Heinrich
Besseler,
Helmuth
Osthoff,
Karl
Gustav
Fellerer,
Josef
Muller-Blattau,
Johannes
Wolf,
and at least a dozen or so
more. Their
articles, reviews,
monographs,
and
editions,
sometimes
dry, unappetizing,
pedantic,
and
austere,
were the
gluten
for
our first
wobbly
seminar
papers
and lent
gravitas
to our
footnotes,
heft to our bibli-
ographies.
And it was the heft of Die Musik
in Geschichte und
Gegenwart
(Kassel:
Baren-
reiter,
1949-86
[MGG]),
that monument
of German
scholarship
and
eye-straining
graphic design,
that
gave
tone to our arms
as we wrestled with our Tonkiinstler. To
Any
musicologist
trained in the last
forty
years
knows the names: Friedrich
Blume,
Heinrich
Besseler,
Helmuth
Osthoff,
Karl
Gustav
Fellerer,
Josef
Muller-Blattau,
Johannes
Wolf,
and at least a dozen or so
more. Their
articles, reviews,
monographs,
and
editions,
sometimes
dry, unappetizing,
pedantic,
and
austere,
were the
gluten
for
our first
wobbly
seminar
papers
and lent
gravitas
to our
footnotes,
heft to our bibli-
ographies.
And it was the heft of Die Musik
in Geschichte und
Gegenwart
(Kassel:
Baren-
reiter,
1949-86
[MGG]),
that monument
of German
scholarship
and
eye-straining
graphic design,
that
gave
tone to our arms
as we wrestled with our Tonkiinstler. To
most
Americans,
German scholars were not
personalities
but faceless
authorities,
stern
guarantors
of standards and
traditions;
it
scarcely
came to mind that much of their
work,
along
with
MGG,
the VW
Beetle,
and
the
autobahn,
was a
legacy
of National
Socialism.
Time heals not
through
a
process
of for-
getting,
but
by binding
trauma within the
tough
sinews of narrative
memory.
At this
century's
end,
Germany
can look back on
four
generations
of
rupture
and disloca-
tion. Three wars
(two hot,
one
cold)
and
five
distinctly
different
governmental sys-
tems have rent the fabric of its
psyche
and
its culture. If music is the most German of
most
Americans,
German scholars were not
personalities
but faceless
authorities,
stern
guarantors
of standards and
traditions;
it
scarcely
came to mind that much of their
work,
along
with
MGG,
the VW
Beetle,
and
the
autobahn,
was a
legacy
of National
Socialism.
Time heals not
through
a
process
of for-
getting,
but
by binding
trauma within the
tough
sinews of narrative
memory.
At this
century's
end,
Germany
can look back on
four
generations
of
rupture
and disloca-
tion. Three wars
(two hot,
one
cold)
and
five
distinctly
different
governmental sys-
tems have rent the fabric of its
psyche
and
its culture. If music is the most German of
106 106
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Book Reviews
the
arts,
then German music culture has
been
especially disrupted,
and much recent
scholarship
has been devoted to
creating
a
narrative to
reintegrate
the broken
lives,
repertories,
traditions,
and institutions into
historical
memory.
These
projects
have
largely
been devoted to the victims:
Jews,
exiles,
progressives,
revolutionaries,
and
whatever else war and totalitarian
ideology
could destroy or cast
away.
So what of the
others,
of those who stayed and labored on
and have ever since been
lurking
in our
footnotes?
Pamela M. Potter's examination of
German
musicology
over the
thirty-year
period
from the end of the First World
War to the
beginning
of the Cold War is a
sober and
sobering
tale. It is the
story
of
the founders of twentieth-century musicol-
ogy
in
Germany,
men who were the teach-
ers,
colleagues,
or themselves the students
of exiles like Curt
Sachs,
Alfred
Einstein,
Karl
Geiringer,
Manfi-ed
Bukofzer,
and Leo
Schrade,
who in turn did so much to
shape
American
musicology.
There is a common
heritage
here,
and Potter is above all at
pains
to examine that
heritage
as a
story
of
contexts and
continuities,
a web of
history
in which
we, too,
are
caught.
In
1918,
German
musicology
was still a
relatively
young discipline
and
only
re-
cently
established at German
universities,
which at the time were bastions of
political
conservatism,
scholarly insularity,
and
jeal-
ously guarded
academic
autonomy.
Unlike
scholars in other humanistic
disciplines,
who buried themselves in their
teaching
and
research,
musicologists
were
frequently
engaged
with the culture at
large
as
critics,
editors,
performers,
conductors,
adminis-
trators,
and consultants.
Many
musicolo-
gists
saw
practical applications
for their re-
search and were idealistic in their
hope
that
musicology
could be relevant and re-
sponsive
to the needs of
contemporary
Ger-
man culture. In the wake of
Germany's
defeat in the First World War and the
polit-
ical and economic turmoil of the Weimar
Republic,
that culture was
highly politi-
cized. Music
might
have been seen as a
means of
healing
the rifts in the national
spirit,
but it was also a
battleground
of ideo-
logical
contention. Potter
emphasizes
that
most of the themes associated with Nazi
music culture-education
reform;
devising
repertory
and
performing organizations
for
amateurs,
youth,
and
workers;
and an all-
consuming preoccupation
with the nature
of German national
and,
increasingly,
racial and ethnic
identity-were
well in
place
before Hitler came to
power.
The
Hitler
regime
succeeded in
harnessing
ex-
isting energies,
and that included
focusing
many
of the concerns that had
preoccupied
musicologists
for a
generation.
The
major beneficiary
of Nazi
support
of
music
scholarship
seems to have been re-
search into folk music. While this
support
may
have been
ideologically
driven,
interest
in the
topic
was an international
phenome-
non,
as similar WPA research
projects
in
the United States attest. That means
by
which
Poles,
Hungarians,
and
Spaniards
sought
to declare musical
independence
from German dominance served also to un-
cover the roots of German national iden-
tity,
whether in the German
provinces
or in
such enclaves of
German-language
culture
as northern
Italy
or Bohemia.
Already
begun
in the
1920s,
this research was
signif-
icantly
enhanced
by
the National Socialist
political agenda. Defining
"Germanness" in
music held
pride
of
place
in
many
subject
areas and across a
spectrum
of method-
ological approaches.
But as
pervasive
as
Nazi
ideology
was,
it could
not,
for in-
stance,
generate
much interest in research
on the
Jewish question,
and there was no
particular
intensification of
scholarship
on
an icon like Richard
Wagner.
The most
significant
contribution of
National Socialism to German musical life
was in
organization.
The Weimar
Republic's
federal
system
of
culturally independent
states
produced many inequities
in the dis-
tribution of cultural
support
that National
Socialism's centralized
bureaucracy sought
to overcome. The universities
may
have lost
much of their
prized autonomy,
but else-
where
struggling
research, educational,
and
performance organizations
were revi-
talized
by
subsidies and
high-profile politi-
cal
support.
The
nearly
defunct
Royal
Institute for
Musicological
Research at
Buckeburg
was restructured as the German
Music Research
Institute;
under its aus-
pices,
the
Zeitschrift fiir Musikforschung
was
given
new life as the Archiv
fiir
Musik-
forschung,
and all
previous
Denkmaler edi-
tions were combined into the series Erbe
deutscher Musik. But the music
apparatus
of the Nazi state was not as monolithic or
107
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NOTES,
September
1999
well
organized
as one
might imagine,
and
many musicologists
who had crafted
grand
schemes for
organizing
musical life in
Germany
or her
occupied
territories were
disappointed
by
their lack of influence.
Moreover,
musicologists
found themselves
caught up
in the
competing power spheres
of the
SS,
the Reich Music
Chamber,
and
the
interior,
propaganda,
and education
ministries,
all of which had a hand in
shap-
ing
music
policy
and
financing
research.
The result is a
story
of
rivalry, infighting,
betrayal,
and
compromise.
There are few
heroes,
few
principled
stands.
Johannes
Wolf,
an elder statesman of German musi-
cology
who made clear his distaste for Nazi
racial
policies,
and Kurt
Huber,
who was
executed as a member of the Weisse Rose
group,
can be
singled
out,
but even their
actions seem too little or too late.
Potter's research is
thorough
and meticu-
lous and
brings
to
light
a wealth of new
source material. Her
judgment
is
dispas-
sionate, balanced,
and
differentiated,
and
she avoids
every temptation
for sensational-
ism.
By patient
accumulation of detail she
demonstrates how ideals could be
per-
verted
by ideology
and ambition
collapse
into
opportunism,
but she never loses
sight
of the
larger
issues that make this
study,
as
much as
anything
else,
a
history
of ideas.
There is little here that is black and white:
the seductions were
real,
the
corruption
gradual; guilt
is
shaded,
innocence com-
promised.
Potter reminds us that all musi-
cology
is
political,
and that
we, too,
are
caught up
in the fabric of our cultural de-
bate and thus
readily
vulnerable to ex-
ploitation
and
corruption
when
scholarship
is
co-opted by political agendas. Today,
as
in the 1920s and
1930s,
the first victims of
such threats to
scholarly integrity
are
clarity
of
thought, language,
and
logic.
But true
resistance
requires
more than
scholarly
in-
tegrity.
Perhaps
it took an American to write this
book. Even
today,
the
power
structures and
sensitivities within the German
academy
make full disclosure of the
past
awkward
and
painful.
An American has the freedom
to delve into such matters without concern
for
professional repercussions. Beyond
that, however,
the American
perspective
is
valuable because this
story
affects our own
identity
within a
discipline
that has been so
thoroughly grounded
in German
sources,
methods, and, indeed,
preoccupations,
the
first and foremost
being
German music it-
self. Potter's book is
part
of that
larger
re-
examination of our
century's
inheritance,
whether it be the
legacy
of fascism or
the
myths
of
European
modernism. The
ironies are
compounded
when one realizes
how
many
of our current
historical,
aes-
thetic,
and
methodological priorities
can
be traced back to the
period
Potter studies.
We have internalized concerns
brought
to
these shores
by
the exiles from Hitler's
Europe,
and
contextualizing
those con-
cerns
helps
both to define our own
identity
and
repair
the fabric of
history.
This is
clearly
a book
by
a
musicologist,
about
musicologists,
and for
musicologists
-a
pity,
because the
topic
has an
import
and breadth of interest that should be
made available to a wider audience. Pot-
ter's
summary
of
early-twentieth-century
research trends in
chapter
6
("The
Shaping
of New
Methodologies")
is
excellent,
though
we are
given
no overview of
Germany's
musicological
establishment. A
few statistics on the number of
depart-
ments,
teaching positions,
and
students,
on
dissertations written or
monographs pub-
lished,
would
give
the uninitiated reader a
better feel for the size and
scope
of
activity
of that
pool
of "trained
musicologists"
on
which the author is focused.
As an
approach
to cultural
history,
this
narrow focus on
professional musicologists
is
problematic.
A
significant portion
of
Potter's
argument
is based on the
very
public
activities and
pronouncements
of
musicologists
in their
capacity
as music
journalists.
(See
especially chapter
2,
"Musicologists
on Their Role in Modern
German
Society,"
and
chapter
7,
"Attempts
to Define 'Germanness' in
Music.")
Ger-
many's
literate
reading
public certainly
made little distinction between those with
and without
musicology degrees.
There
were indeed a number of music critics and
journalists
with no formal
musicological
training
who nonetheless had a demonstra-
ble influence on
scholarship
and
aesthetics,
including
Paul Bekker and Theodor W.
Adorno. Nowhere was the line between
"amateur" and
"professional"
more
perme-
able than in music
literature,
and without a
better sense for how the
public
and musi-
cologists
themselves established a
separate
identity
for
scholars,
the distinction often
108
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Book Reviews Book Reviews
seems
arbitrary.
Two further criticisms: the
translated,
limiting
the book's
accessibility
book's index is
spotty
and does not refer- to the interested
general public.
ence material contained in the
endnotes;
CHRISTOPHER
HAIILEY
and much endnote material remains un- Los
Angeles
Cultivating
Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860.
Edited
by Ralph
P. Locke and
Cyrilla
Barr.
Berkeley: University
of
California
Press,
1997.
[xi,
357
p.
ISBN 0-520-08395-4.
$45.]
Extraordinary
Women in
Support
of Music.
By
Mona Mender.
Lanham,
Md.: Scarecrow
Press,
1997.
[x,
309
p.
ISBN 0-8108-3278-X.
$48.]
seems
arbitrary.
Two further criticisms: the
translated,
limiting
the book's
accessibility
book's index is
spotty
and does not refer- to the interested
general public.
ence material contained in the
endnotes;
CHRISTOPHER
HAIILEY
and much endnote material remains un- Los
Angeles
Cultivating
Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860.
Edited
by Ralph
P. Locke and
Cyrilla
Barr.
Berkeley: University
of
California
Press,
1997.
[xi,
357
p.
ISBN 0-520-08395-4.
$45.]
Extraordinary
Women in
Support
of Music.
By
Mona Mender.
Lanham,
Md.: Scarecrow
Press,
1997.
[x,
309
p.
ISBN 0-8108-3278-X.
$48.]
Appreciating
the influence of
gender
has
never been the sole
purview
of feminist
scholars.
Advertising
executives have
long
known that men and women
part
with their
money
in different
ways,
and fund-raisers
can now turn to studies that show a
gender
differential in
philanthropy.
The work of
Martha A.
Taylor
and Sondra
Shaw,
in con-
junction
with Andrea Kaminski
(currently
executive director of the Women's Philan-
thropy
Institute),
suggests
that the
doing
of
"good
works" is different for men and
women even from the same elite class.
Whereas men
typically
fund to maintain
the status
quo,
women,
who often have
much less to
give,
are
literally
more in-
vested in
change, funding projects
that will
make a calculated difference to their com-
munities.
(See
Sondra C. Shaw and Martha
A.
Taylor, Reinventing Fundraising: Realizing
the Potential
of
Women's
Philanthropy
[San
Francisco:Jossey-Bass,
1995].)
Although Cultivating
Music in America
does not draw on
any
of this new fund-
raising
research,
it makes an enormous
contribution toward
recognizing
the cru-
cial role of female
philanthropy
in the de-
velopment
of Western concert musicmak-
ing
in the United States. The individual
essays
are readable and offer much to our
understanding
of American musical life
and culture. This
richly
textured collection
should be of
particular
interest to interdis-
ciplinary
scholars in American studies as
well as to those in women's and
gender
studies.
The editors
begin by redefining
music
patronage
as "musical activism"
(p.
5),
thereby undoing
the
problematic
connota-
tions of
patron-patronizing-patriarchy
and
allowing
for an
expanded understanding
of
what
might
be
given by "patrons"
other
than
money:
time,
creativity, philosophical
Appreciating
the influence of
gender
has
never been the sole
purview
of feminist
scholars.
Advertising
executives have
long
known that men and women
part
with their
money
in different
ways,
and fund-raisers
can now turn to studies that show a
gender
differential in
philanthropy.
The work of
Martha A.
Taylor
and Sondra
Shaw,
in con-
junction
with Andrea Kaminski
(currently
executive director of the Women's Philan-
thropy
Institute),
suggests
that the
doing
of
"good
works" is different for men and
women even from the same elite class.
Whereas men
typically
fund to maintain
the status
quo,
women,
who often have
much less to
give,
are
literally
more in-
vested in
change, funding projects
that will
make a calculated difference to their com-
munities.
(See
Sondra C. Shaw and Martha
A.
Taylor, Reinventing Fundraising: Realizing
the Potential
of
Women's
Philanthropy
[San
Francisco:Jossey-Bass,
1995].)
Although Cultivating
Music in America
does not draw on
any
of this new fund-
raising
research,
it makes an enormous
contribution toward
recognizing
the cru-
cial role of female
philanthropy
in the de-
velopment
of Western concert musicmak-
ing
in the United States. The individual
essays
are readable and offer much to our
understanding
of American musical life
and culture. This
richly
textured collection
should be of
particular
interest to interdis-
ciplinary
scholars in American studies as
well as to those in women's and
gender
studies.
The editors
begin by redefining
music
patronage
as "musical activism"
(p.
5),
thereby undoing
the
problematic
connota-
tions of
patron-patronizing-patriarchy
and
allowing
for an
expanded understanding
of
what
might
be
given by "patrons"
other
than
money:
time,
creativity, philosophical
premises,
and so on. As the editors set forth
in their introduction and as the
essays
themselves make
clear,
"musical
activism,"
at least in the United
States,
was
frequently
"women's work."
Through
a
complex
cul-
tural and historical
network,
musicmaking
and its
appreciation
were considered
ap-
propriate
for middle- and
upper-class
women. Certain kinds of musical
objects-
what we now
identify
as the
Euro-American,
German-dominated canon-likewise at-
tained a
privileged ennobling power,
or,
as
Ruth Solie notes: "music had itself become
religious practice" (p.
279).
This kind of
musicking,
to use
Christopher
Small's
term,
was
rarely self-supporting.
Rather,
it
came to
require specialized spaces,
star
per-
formers and
conductors,
and
growing
num-
bers of trained musicians-all of which cost
increasing
amounts of
money
to
sustain,
even as its "moral" nature
required
that
such commercial realities remain hidden.
Since it fell to the female
sphere
to
provide
spiritual uplift,
women with financial
means took it
upon
themselves to educate
and
enlighten through
musical
philan-
thropies.
This collection is not intended as a neat
chronological exploration;
the individual
contributions can stand alone. Of the nine
essays,
four have
appeared
elsewhere in
other
guises
(Solie
on
Sophie
Drinker,
Joseph
Horowitz on the cult of Richard
Wagner, Cyrilla
Barr on Elizabeth
Sprague
Coolidge,
and
Ralph
P. Locke on Isabella
Stewart
Gardner).
These
essays, including
additional ones on women's
clubs,
black
women
activists,
and
philanthropists
in this
century,
are enlivened
by
ten
vignettes, typ-
ically first-person
reflections on the individ-
uals or activities involved. Read
together,
the collection accumulates its own
power
as
issues and individuals
keep resurfacing:
premises,
and so on. As the editors set forth
in their introduction and as the
essays
themselves make
clear,
"musical
activism,"
at least in the United
States,
was
frequently
"women's work."
Through
a
complex
cul-
tural and historical
network,
musicmaking
and its
appreciation
were considered
ap-
propriate
for middle- and
upper-class
women. Certain kinds of musical
objects-
what we now
identify
as the
Euro-American,
German-dominated canon-likewise at-
tained a
privileged ennobling power,
or,
as
Ruth Solie notes: "music had itself become
religious practice" (p.
279).
This kind of
musicking,
to use
Christopher
Small's
term,
was
rarely self-supporting.
Rather,
it
came to
require specialized spaces,
star
per-
formers and
conductors,
and
growing
num-
bers of trained musicians-all of which cost
increasing
amounts of
money
to
sustain,
even as its "moral" nature
required
that
such commercial realities remain hidden.
Since it fell to the female
sphere
to
provide
spiritual uplift,
women with financial
means took it
upon
themselves to educate
and
enlighten through
musical
philan-
thropies.
This collection is not intended as a neat
chronological exploration;
the individual
contributions can stand alone. Of the nine
essays,
four have
appeared
elsewhere in
other
guises
(Solie
on
Sophie
Drinker,
Joseph
Horowitz on the cult of Richard
Wagner, Cyrilla
Barr on Elizabeth
Sprague
Coolidge,
and
Ralph
P. Locke on Isabella
Stewart
Gardner).
These
essays, including
additional ones on women's
clubs,
black
women
activists,
and
philanthropists
in this
century,
are enlivened
by
ten
vignettes, typ-
ically first-person
reflections on the individ-
uals or activities involved. Read
together,
the collection accumulates its own
power
as
issues and individuals
keep resurfacing:
109 109
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