Through an examination of the intersections of women and domestic piano music, the representation of the piano in literature, class and gendered expectations in Victorian England, and Romantic aesthetics, modern audiences can better understand and appreciate Mendelssohn's Songs without Words by considering them in nineteenth-century contexts. Approaching the Songs without Words in these terms reveals mutual influences and illuminates a symbiotic relationship between the Songs without Words and Victorian domestic society: art and life reflected and relied upon each other. The Songs without...
Through an examination of the intersections of women and domestic piano music, the representation of the piano in literature, class and gendered expec...