Frivolity, Foppery, and the English Gentleman at Music | Lidia Chang

In Austen’s England, music-making was an activity rich in social meaning. However, as a multifaceted performance of one’s social class, nationality, and gender, music-making had to be managed carefully. Austen’s novels offer a valuable window into the restrictive musical culture of Regency England, revealing nuances about how different kinds of people were allowed to engage with music. This talk will explore the complicated web of anxieties (especially xenophobia, homophobia, and class slippage) at work in the musical culture of the time, the gendered subtext of “frivolity”, and what we can learn from Frank Churchill (among others) about the many dangers of male music-making during this period.

Lidia Chang is a flutist and musicologist whose work examines the intersection of gender, literature, print culture, organology, and music performance practices in Europe during the long eighteenth century. She has served as the managing editor for Women and Music: A Journal of Gender…