“That more liberal mode of life": Aestheticism and Queer Listening in Victorian and Edwardian Music

Talk by Philip R. Bullock (Paris IAS fellow) within the framework of the conference "Liberalism and Victorian Music Culture", convened by Sarah Collins and Bennett Zon, 27-28 Jan. 2017 at King's College London.

Abstract

This paper takes as its inspiration Walter Pater's passing reference, in his essay in Winckelmann, to 'that more liberal mode of life'. Pater's essay in Winckelmann has often been read in terms of its advocacy of what James Eli Adams calls 'the subversive power of an erotic liberation', but as Juliet John has recently observed, Pater's use of the term 'liberal' can also be interpreted as an instance of how the literature of the period reflected liberalism's 'political ascendancy' in a variety of ways, both direct and indirect. In this paper, I propose to widen the remit to include late Victorian and Edwardian attitudes to both musical repertoires and cultures of listening, focusing in particular on the cosmopolitan practices of Rosa Newmarch. I shall tease out an underlying discourse of political liberalism in Newmarch's writings and then link this to her interest in Russian music as a repertoire that demanded newer modes of appreciation from contemporary audiences. Widening the discussion yet further, I will then explore how Newmarch's writings form part of a broader interest in music's potential to fashion queer identities, both male and female, around the turn of the century, not least as it was expressed in aestheticist and sexological writings at the time.