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“It wasn’t enough for me just to be a singer”– (Self-)Representations of the “German prima donna” Gertrud Elisabeth Mara
Viehöver, Vera
2022In van Deinsen, Lieke; Vanacker, Beatrijs (Eds.) Portraits and Poses. Representations of Female Intellectual Authority, Agency and Authorship in Early Modern and Enlightenment Europe.
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Keywords :
Gertrud Elisabeth Mara; authorship; authority; autobiographie; musician writers; female agency
Abstract :
[en] Female musicians were generally denied a full musical-theoretical education in the 18th century. They were taught the art of instrumental playing and singing and were celebrated as virtuosos; their outstanding abilities, however, were stereotypically attributed to "natural musicality", sensitivity and empathy. In the course of their training and career, however, professional female musicians often acquired enormous theoretical knowledge in semi-official or autodidactic study-ing, so that they were often equal if not superior to the male music directors. The “Selbstbiographie” of Gertrud Elisabeth Schmeling (1749-1833), the “first German prima donna”, favourite singer of Frederick II and celebrated throughout Europe, is particularly illuminating with regard to the subject of the conference "Portraits & Poses. Representations of Female Intellectual Authorship, Agency and Authority in Early Modern and Enlightenment Eu-rope", for two reasons: firstly, it is one of the first autobiographies ever written by a "female" musician, so that writing such a text can in itself be regarded as a conscious appropriation of a form of authorship formerly reserved for learned composers and conductors; secondly, Mara uses autobiographical writing to discuss her degradation to a naïve "Natur-Künstlerin" (artist by nature), as she is represented in reviews of the time, but also in portraits (including those by the famous portraitist Anton Graff), and to write about her fight for the recognition of her musical authority, in particular in the account of her "duel" against the Kapellmeister and composer Jo-hann Friedrich Reichardt, whose alleged intellectual superiority she does not recognize. Confronting the "self-biography" (covering the years 1749 to 1793) with the textual and visual representations of Mara circulating in the 18th century will therefore contribute to a more precise understanding of female strategies for legitimizing intellectual authority.
Research center :
Traverses - ULiège
Disciplines :
Literature
Author, co-author :
Viehöver, Vera  ;  Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de langues modernes : ling., litt. et trad. > Littérature allemande
Language :
English
Title :
“It wasn’t enough for me just to be a singer”– (Self-)Representations of the “German prima donna” Gertrud Elisabeth Mara
Publication date :
2022
Event name :
Annual Conference of the Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies: « Portraits & Poses. Representations of Female Intellectual Authority, Agency and Authorship in Early Modern and Enlightenment Europe », KU Leuven
Event organizer :
Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Event place :
Leuven, Belgium
Event date :
21/22 March 2019
By request :
Yes
Audience :
International
Main work title :
Portraits and Poses. Representations of Female Intellectual Authority, Agency and Authorship in Early Modern and Enlightenment Europe.
Editor :
van Deinsen, Lieke
Vanacker, Beatrijs
Publisher :
Leuven University Press, Leuven, Belgium
Pages :
323-345
Peer reviewed :
Peer reviewed
Available on ORBi :
since 26 January 2022

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