‘Music is not merely for musicians’: Vernon Lee's musical reading and response

Towheed, Shafquat (2010). ‘Music is not merely for musicians’: Vernon Lee's musical reading and response. Yearbook of English Studies, 40(1-2) pp. 273–294.

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41059791

Abstract

This essay examines Vernon Lee's wide-ranging, informed and often interdisciplinary reading about music, and demonstrates its centrality for her as a late 19th century intellectual preoccupation. Drawing upon unpublished sources (including commonplace books and marginalia), her reading of Gurney, Wundt, and Weismann, and exchanges with Ethel Smyth, I argue that Lee tried to bridge the increasing gap between professional musicians and mass audiences by examining how music might be assimilated and appreciated. Scrutinising Lee's distinction between active listening and passive hearing, this essay interrogates her determination to write not merely for musicians but for a non-specialist audience as well.

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