Music as a Sign in Daniel Deronda

The language of music communicates and contributes to spiritual transformation in Daniel Deronda. It expresses non-verbal truths about humanity\u27s connection to the world, and unifies the novel with a continuous vocabulary since sound and silence are frequently described in musical terms. George Eliot specifies meaning in non-verbal mediums. For instance, since the narrator says that Gwendolen blushes as a result of surprise, the reader can decipher an encoded meaning in situations where she blushes, although the characters must still interpret via deduction: \u27A blush is no language: only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of two contradictories. In order for Gwendolen to understand the world, she must learn to interpret it through non-verbal languages. Music is non-verbal, except when combined with texts in vocal music. Each art form adds a layer of understanding to the moral theme. Visual art is non-verbal communication, and its moral counterpart is \u27the vision\u27. Mordecai\u27s visions expand the dimensions of the current world, suggesting potential achievement. Alison Byerly outlines a thesis of how the arts relate to the self in George Eliot\u27s novels: Visual art is used to expose the detached and groundless fantasies of characters .... the pictures they create for and of themselves are circumscribed by their own egoistic desires, and have no connection with the world outside the frame. Theatrical art is also linked to a dangerous deception of self and others .... Music, however, represents a pure, authentic expression of self: it does not count as an \u27art\u27 at all. Actually, the text carefully delineates the demands of professional music, thereby treating it as an art. However, sound is indeed more truth-leading than vision. Mirah\u27s singing is introduced by painting her picture: \u27Imagine her\u27 (314), the narrator begins, then depicts her appearance. However, when Mirah begins to sing, Daniel responds most to the music (315). This sharply contrasts with Gwendolen\u27s first performance. English society is charmed by her pretty performance, but Klesmer responds by saying that although he dislikes her sound \u27It is always acceptable to see you sing\u27 (38) [italics mine]. Klesmer opens Gwendolen\u27s horizons, beginning a process that progresses through the novel. When Gwendolen stops judging herself on beauty and social rank, she learns how to be happy. Music traces this process

Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900: representations of music, science, and gender in the leisured home

The title and subtitle of this book must intrigue anybody who ·takes an interest in the cultural background of nineteenth-century literature. The familiarly stereotypical figures of the \u27accomplished\u27 Victorian girl at her piano, the evolutionary scientist and the domestic hearth where they might meet have often been analysed - and questioned. In fact, Phyllis Weliver\u27s chapter on sensation fictions shows the seductive, female demon lurking behind the deceptively correct musical performances of two \u27fallen\u27 heroines. In East Lynne, the protagonist, who is to abandon her husband and children to live abroad in shame, starts out playing hymns, and Lady Audley \u27s Secret - namely, that she has just pushed her first husband down a well- is betrayed by marks on her wrist when she is dutifully playing Beethoven to her second spouse. Similarly, Trilby, the tone-deaf artists\u27 model mesmerized into performing as an opera singer, is more than just Svengali\u27s innocent victim: Weliver convincingly points out certain androgynous characteristics and a personal choice of repertoire that show an unexpectedly independent personality even under hypnosis. Similarly, her nude modelling makes Trilby unsuitable for society at first, but later her beauty serves on stage to attract just that society\u27s concertgoers. The proverbial female domestic angels and demons may have been far less apart than the cliche suggests. However: the international diva Trilby \u27La Svengali\u27, the grisette made good, is anything but a figure from a \u27leisured home\u27. Also the chapter on Rosa Bud\u27s unexpected resistance to her mesmerizing music-master Jasper in Edwin Drood is perceptive but centres more on his frustrated musicianship than hers: neither gender nor the professional status of the \u27women musicians\u27 under discussion are what the book\u27s title promises to investigate. The analysis of Daniel Deronda concentrates, more pertinently, on Gwendolen and Daniel, although given that professional female musicians are discussed, it might have been interesting to see Alcharisi compared with her fellow-professional Trilby. Rosamond Vincy is a classical example of an \u27accomplished\u27 social-climber-by-music, but for Maggie Tulliver, to whom one of six chapters is devoted, musical experience is almost exclusively passive. \u27Musical women\u27, as the first chapter goes on to call them, is certainly a better - if still not completely apt - term for this array of very diverse figures. Unfortunately, similar problems of inconsistency and incompletely substantiated claims recur on different levels throughout the book - not for a lack of things to say but because the text is not completely in control of the many things that could be discussed. This is especially noticeable in the introduction and the two background chapters which deal with mesmerism and evolutionary theories respectively. The word \u27harmony\u27, for instance, is made to link concepts as diverse as Rameau\u27s eighteenth-century analysis of thorough bass, neoplatonic ideas of souls vibrating together, mesmerism and Herbert Spencer\u27s explanation of the origins of music in automatic muscular responses. The chapter on Edwin Drood plays with \u27fugue\u27 as a term for flight, a musical form and a medical condition; the introduction cites - among many others - Forster\u27s Aspects of the Novel, Lacan and Foucault, Walter Pater, Edward Said, opera, Darwin, Helene Cixous and ecriture jeminine as well as statistics on female professional musicians in Britain

Making an English Voice: Performing National Identity during the English Musical Renaissance

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1478572215000183.AbstractThis article examines constructions of national musical identity in early twentieth-century Britain by exploring and contextualizing hitherto neglected discourses and practices concerning the production of an ‘English’ singing voice. Tracing the origins and development of ideas surrounding native vocal performance and pedagogy, I reconstruct a culture of English singing as a backdrop against which to offer, by way of conclusion, a reading of the ‘English voice’ performed in Ralph Vaughan Williams's song ‘Silent Noon’. By drawing upon perspectives derived from recent studies of song, vocal production, and national and aesthetic identity, I demonstrate that ‘song’ became a place in which the literal and figurative voices of performers and composers were drawn together in the making of a national music. As such, I advance a series of new historical perspectives through which to rethink notions of an English musical renaissance.</jats:p

Singing angel or musical demon? Representations of female musicians in Victorian literature

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN029485 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Member record books are useful tools for evaluating 4-H club programs

We used data from 4-H record books to evaluate the 4-H programs in Shasta and Trinity counties. These books are completed annually by youth participants throughout California to describe and quantify their experiences in the program and reflect on their involvement in citizenship, leadership and life-skills activities. Quantitative and qualitative data from the reports was coded according to the Targeting Life Skills model developed at Iowa State University. Most club participants reported life-skill activities in each component of the model (Head, Hands, Heart and Health), in accordance with established 4-H goals. This method is applicable to other counties wishing to perform 4-H program evaluations using club participants' record books