Event
Doctoral Colloquium (Music): Kristin Franseen
Friday, January 13, 2023 16:30to18:30
Strathcona Music Building
C-201, 555 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 1E3, CA
Price:
Free Admission
The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.
Doctoral Colloquium: Kristin Franseen
Find out more about attending events at Schulich
Title: Reconsidering Gossip: Unreliable Sources in the History of Composer Biography
Abstract:
What do we do with sources in music history that we know to be dubious, incomplete, biased, or just plain wrong? It’s tempting to ignore them altogether—as Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro has written about literary conspiracy theories, there can be an understandable fear of giving bogus claims “unearned legitimacy” in academic discourse (2010). But many dubious sources have a long history of their own that refuses to be easily dismissed. This presentation considers the use (and, in some cases, invention) of evidence within two groups of obviously unreliable historical writings on 19th-century music: the Hüttenbrenner brothers’ reminiscences of their studies with Salieri and friendship with Schubert (1825 and 1858) and Edward Prime-Stevenson’s queer readings of Beethoven’s life and instrumental music (ca. 1905, 1909, and 1928).
What do we do with sources in music history that we know to be dubious, incomplete, biased, or just plain wrong? It’s tempting to ignore them altogether—as Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro has written about literary conspiracy theories, there can be an understandable fear of giving bogus claims “unearned legitimacy” in academic discourse (2010). But many dubious sources have a long history of their own that refuses to be easily dismissed. This presentation considers the use (and, in some cases, invention) of evidence within two groups of obviously unreliable historical writings on 19th-century music: the Hüttenbrenner brothers’ reminiscences of their studies with Salieri and friendship with Schubert (1825 and 1858) and Edward Prime-Stevenson’s queer readings of Beethoven’s life and instrumental music (ca. 1905, 1909, and 1928).
The Hüttenbrenner accounts remain frequently (if often critically) cited in important scholarship on Schubert and Salieri (see, for example, Rice 1998 and Gibbs 2000), while Prime-Stevenson’s Beethoven project remains obscure even within queer musicology and more experimental approaches to reception history. Part of this has to do with their authorial positions, publication histories, and intended audiences: the Hüttenbrenners wrote firsthand accounts of their experiences for a musical public (albeit while repeating conversations that supposedly took place years or decades earlier), while Prime-Stevenson self-published his work for a select group of personal friends and sexologists. Both sources, however, include obvious errors of fact and interpretation and rely upon an eclectic mix of fiction, semifictional anecdote, and biographical speculation. Drawing on Melanie Unseld’s work on 19th-century composer biography as a literary genre (2014), I argue that both also reflect shifting narratives of influence, canonicity, and identity across the 19th and early 20th centuries that merit further attention. By exploring not just that certain biographical sources are unreliable, but considering how and why, those of us working in historiography, critical biography studies, and reception studies can more fully explore what incorrect musical knowledge does and how it circulates.
Biography:
Kristin M. Franseen is a FRQSC postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University, where she is also a research associate with the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. She received her PhD in musicology from McGill University in 2019. Her research appears in Music & Letters, 19th-Century Music, the Journal of Historical Fictions, and the Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique, and her monograph Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson is forthcoming from Clemson University Press in 2023. She is currently working on two projects: (1) a critical look at early 20th-century music critic and amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson’s listening practices and self-publishing activities and (2) an examination of biofictional gossip and the post-truth in Antonio Salieri’s reception history. Her other research interests include the depiction of female philosophers in 18-century comic opera, women in the history of music theory, and early metronome advertising.
Kristin M. Franseen is a FRQSC postdoctoral fellow at Concordia University, where she is also a research associate with the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. She received her PhD in musicology from McGill University in 2019. Her research appears in Music & Letters, 19th-Century Music, the Journal of Historical Fictions, and the Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique, and her monograph Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson is forthcoming from Clemson University Press in 2023. She is currently working on two projects: (1) a critical look at early 20th-century music critic and amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson’s listening practices and self-publishing activities and (2) an examination of biofictional gossip and the post-truth in Antonio Salieri’s reception history. Her other research interests include the depiction of female philosophers in 18-century comic opera, women in the history of music theory, and early metronome advertising.
