maud powell, marie hall & alma moodie

289 Pages·2016·7.22 MB·English

by  Neil Stewart

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Citation: Goldberg, Tatjana (2015). Maud Powell, Marie Hall and Alma Moodie: A
gendered re-evaluation of three violinists. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City University
London)
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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

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THE FOLLOWING ITEMS HAVE BEEN REDACTED FOR
COPYRIGHT REASONS:

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.
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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).
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