In Unit 2, we’ve looked at a few specific case studies that allowed us to explore how the concepts and factors of “public,” “private,” “professional,” and “amateur” music-making have applied to various musics, people, communities, and places during the 19th and 20th centuries. In your paper, I’d like you to focus on the “public-ness,” “private-ness,” “professional-ness,” and “amateur-ness” of our case studies, using these things as the primary lens to approach writing about this material.
In your paper, please pick two of our Unit 2 case studies to put in dialogue with one another. The basic goal of this paper is for you to craft an argument as to why/how your two chosen examples relate (or not) to each other insofar as conceptions of the public, private, professional, and amateur are concerned. You could take this as an opportunity to find similarities between two lecture case studies, or you could equally use this as an opportunity to highlight differences between examples. Those two approaches are also not mutually exclusive. I’d also like to give you space to discuss unit themes in the context of more recent musical examples that might be
more directly related to your own personal musical experiences. In your response, please consider the following questions:
What were the primary places where your examples’ musicking took place? How did this physical space contribute to musical activity?
Who was making the music in your chosen examples? How did aspects of training (i.e., professional, amateur) impact the music being made?
Audiences have been a central theme in this unit. Who was listening to the music in your examples? Did specific audiences or fandoms develop around your chosen examples? If so, why? What could the audience/fan activities of your chosen examples tell us about the music’s reception?
Are there gendered aspects of music-making at play? If so, what are they? How did the gender norms/expectations of the time dictate musical practices and/or products?
Do you think the categories of “public,” “private,” “professional,” and “amateur” are neatly applicable to your examples? If so, why? If you think these categorizations do not adequately describe the music and case studies discussed in lecture, please discuss.
Do you think that these categories/labels are useful? Might there be other ways to talk about this historical material?
Additionally, feel free to discuss how your own musical habits and/or musical culture today reflects any of the historical legacies we’ve discussed in class (i.e., how aspects of fandom operate today, how fandoms can be gendered, amateur vs. professional musicking, concert culture and etiquette, etc.). Making transhistorical connections is a great way to connect your own lived experiences to matters of “thinking historically.”
Note: Please do not feel obligated to respond to all of these questions. As I’ve noted in past assignments, I’m not expecting you to address all of the questions above, nor are you limited to them. I’m trying to outline a general area in which your discussion can take place. If you are really interested in one particular aspect and would like to center your response/argument on that one thing, that is absolutely fine (as long as you do so in a clear and well-supported way).
Your response must include at least one appropriate reference/quotation from at least two of the readings from this unit (i.e., you’ll engage with at least two Unit 2 readings in your response).
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Reminders: Your Short Paper should be about 650 words (double-spaced, standard 1-inch margins, standard 12pt, Times New Roman font), submitted in a .doc or .docx format. When referencing/citing readings, you’ll need to include an appropriate citation. Let’s follow a simple, in-text citation style. So, for example, if you’re citing page 9 of a reading written by John Doe, your citation would look like this: (Doe, 9).
Readings:
1. Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin (editors), “Music as a Proper Occupation for the British Female” (excerpts from Music in The Western World: A History in Documents, 1984), pp. 335– 336.
• This is a primary source. This document (from 1814) gives us some information about the widespread trend/trope of gendered aspects of nineteenth-century music-making–– namely, the expectation of middle- and upper-class women trained to play the piano in a private/domestic setting.
2. Tricia Henry, “Punk and Avant-Garde Art,” The Journal of Popular Culture 17, no. 4 (1984), 30–36.
• Themes: punk rock ideals and aesthetics, links between punk music and other avant- garde artforms, musicians responding to their social and political contexts.
