Childhood: "I attend singing school" -- School Days: "You know what it is to 'love school'" -- The Avid Music Collector: "Home as a Waltz" -- The Age of the Virtuosi: "I never heard sounds before" -- Home Music-Making: "Sounds From Home" -- Edward Dickinson: "Hail to the Chief" -- Music-Making and the Dickinson Family Correspondence: "Vinnie is at the instrument" -- The American Political Struggle: "Decades of Arrogance" -- Fiddle Tunes, Minstrel Music, and Musical Borrowing: "No Black bird bates His Banjo-" -- The Poetry Takes Hold: "-and the noise in the Pool, at Noon - excels my Piano" -- Hymns and Ballads: More Musical Borrowings: "Let Emily sing for you because she cannot pray." -- The White Dress: "Ossian's Serenade" -- "Musicians wrestle everywhere" -- Contents listing of Emily Dickinson's bound volume of sheet music.
Summary:
"After years of studying piano as a young woman in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson curated her music book, a common practice at the time. Now part of the Dickinson Collection in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, this bound volume of 107 pieces of published sheet music includes the poet's favorite instrumental piano music and vocal music, ranging from theme and variation sets to vernacular music, which was also enjoyed by the family's servants. Offering a fresh historical perspective on a poetic voice that has become canonical in American literature, this original study brings this artifact to life, documenting Dickinson's early years of musical study through the time her music was bound in the early 1850s, which tellingly coincided with the writing of her first poems. Using Dickinson's letters and poems alongside newspapers and other archival sources, George Boziwick explores the various composers, music sellers, and publishers behind this music and Dickinson's attendance at performances, presenting new insights into the multiple layers of meaning that music held for her"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.