We often turn to critics, commentators, biographers, and musicologists to help us deepen our connection to our favourite musical works. And the most prolific of these interpreters can create a lasting impression in the cultural zeitgeist – for better or for worse.
Kristin Franseen’s (PhD’19) first book, Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson, dives into the world of three influential early musicologists. Kristin explores each of their personal, cultural, and historical contexts to better understand how they chose to interpret certain musical works, and how they continue to influence musical readings. Kristin’s book is based on research she conducted during her doctoral program here at Schulich.
Don’t miss her book launch at 6 p.m. on January 10 at Librairie Résonance. It’s free to attend and open to the public!
Here’s Kristin Franseen in conversation.
Tell us a little about your book, Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson.
Imagining Musical Pasts focuses on the scholarly and creative work of three late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century musicologists, with an emphasis on the strategies each of them used to address (or in some cases, strategically avoid addressing) the potentially taboo topics of gender and sexuality several decades before the development of feminist and queer musicology in academic music research. It also considers the intersections between musicology and various forms of literature (including poetry, crime fiction, and historical fiction) and asks what happens when we think about research as a creative act and researchers as active participants in music history.
Why focus your work on Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson?
They were near-exact contemporaries of one another, were active in the same international intellectual circles, and each interacted with discourses and people central to the development of Anglophone musicology. They also represent a variety of interests and methods in Western art music history—Lee was largely interested in 18th-century opera and music psychology, Newmarch focused primarily on biographies of then-recent figures, and Prime-Stevenson emphasized analysis and the reinterpretation of historical anecdotes. They were also all active outside of academia for varying reasons and thus represent some ongoing complicated issues of social class, gender, and inclusion/exclusion in music criticism and scholarship.
What first made you interested in studying the storytellers of musical history (i.e. musicologists)?
Originally, I planned on writing my dissertation (on which this book was based) on broader discourses about music and sexuality in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sexology, musicology, and fiction. As I began writing, however, I realized that there was far more to say about the musicologists as people and the definition of musicology during this period than could easily fit in one chapter.
How do musicologists of the past impact popular interpretations of the music and composers we love?
A lot of older commentary has great staying power in popular ideas about historical composers, for both good and bad. This can often come down to access (especially with digitized sources today), where someone searching for information online or in libraries can often find much older sources more easily than current research. One somewhat infamous example of this is the conspiratorial thought surrounding Tchaikovsky’s music and later life, which (as discussed in my chapter on Rosa Newmarch’s biographical research) became extremely popular in Anglophone musical circles in the early twentieth century. This subject was heavily debated in the decades following Tchaikovsky’s death and remains a topic of biographical debate and popular interest today. And, depending on what sources you read, you might come to different conclusions about what “really happened.”
These historical and biographical ideas also shape how we listen to music. All three of the people I talk about were very aware of biographical readings of particular pieces, with Prime-Stevenson being perhaps the most eager to use biographical sources and anecdotes as evidence for how he understood queer music history. While many of his approaches were somewhat historically dubious (he makes unsupported claims about what we would consider queer subtext in symphonies by Brahms and Bruckner), they also resonate with how a lot of people relate to 19th-century instrumental music in deeply personal ways even today.
What can past readings of queerness in musicology tell us about the study of music today?
I think musicology can sometimes have a perception of itself as always being several years “behind” other humanities fields. While this notion is important for recognizing issues of inclusion and exclusion and continually reevaluating and challenging assumptions about what “counts” as musicology, it also risks reinforcing some unfortunate assumptions about what musicologists in the past did and who they were (especially if we take a more expansive view of the field).
How did your PhD work at the Schulich School of Music help set you up for this book?
While I came to McGill knowing that I wanted to work on a topic related to music and the history of sexuality during this time period, my experiences throughout my PhD led me to think more deeply about musicology as a discipline and the problem of reading conflicting or dubious sources. A wide variety of seminars dealing with the sociology and cultural study of music, historical performance practices, and the lives and reception of specific composers and works all shaped how I consider thinking not just about the history of musicology, but about how we relate to different kinds of historical stories and ideas.
On a more personal note, what are three musical works you would recommend to any lover of music?
In reverse chronological order, Pamela Z’s Typewriter (I love the mix of comedy and playing with new and old technology), Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers (especially the overture, which powerfully conveys the stormy setting), and Antonio Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole (probably my favorite opera about opera and an excellent depiction of how ridiculous and chaotic putting on a show can be).
