Sounding Hymns
Many
hymns composed in the nineteenth century were not sung; rather, they were
spoken out loud. In some congregations any form of music-making, especially
singing, was considered immoral, and the recitation of hymns provided a way
around these moral codes. With the publication of hundreds of pamphlets,
treatises and books on poetry recitation, elocution, the physiology of the
voice, and hints on public speaking, reciters of hymns had a plethora of resources
to drawn on to produce an aesthetically satisfying tone and rhetorical affect. These
recordings, are of hymns composed by Malcolm Quin (1854–1945) for his
positivist Church in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne established from 1878 to 1905. PI: Paul Watt
(Monash University). This site is not yet live.
Sounding the Salon
Through historically-informed musical performance, photographs and archival texts, this digital resource explores the Victorian salon as an alternative musical space outside conservatories and large public venues. We aim better to understand the history of the rise of sociability in relation to art forms (creation, distribution, intertextuality), the impact of musical performance on people’s lives and other art forms, and the influence of marginal identities (women, queer, Jewish). Recovering this history involves studying how people related to each other, to and through sound. Because salons were an early manifestation of networking now experienced in social media, this scholarship ultimately presents a new way of conceptualizing the growth of modernity. Co-PIs: Sophie Fuller (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance [London]) and Phyllis Weliver (Saint Louis University). Co-I: Christina Bashford (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). This site is not yet live.
Sounding Swinburne consolidates ongoing research into a large, highly-significant body of Victorian and Edwardian music that was inspired by Swinburne’s verse. Demonstrating not only an extraordinary enthusiasm for Swinburne’s poems as music, the material (consisting of scores, which are currently being cataloged) also shows a cross-fertilization of content, style, and aesthetics that has implications not only for an analysis of Swinburne’s reception history, but also for the study of nineteenth-century and Modernist views on the relationship between poetry and song. The site illustrates the catalog with images, videos and literary sources (diaries, letters, etc.). In future, it will also curate academic papers on Swinburne and popular song (on such figures as Theo Marzials, Maude Valérie White, James Molloy, etc), and on Swinburne’s artistic relationship with nineteenth-century and later composers, such as Wagner, Granville Bantock, Vaughan Williams, William Walton, and others. PI: Michael Craske with Catherine Maxwell (Queen Mary University of London).
Children "should be seen and not heard" thought the Victorians even though the concept of childhood is predicated on sound: the delights of children's play, recreational songs, religious pieces, and hymns. Despite numerous archival artifacts that record these sonic expressions, sound has thus far been neglected int he burgeoning field of childhood studies. Focusing on children’s religious music, social music, and songs and sounds of play, this resource features reproductions of Victorian song texts and musical scores, scholarly commentary, and recordings of children’s songs, including performances recorded in historic settings. PI: Alisa Clapp-Itnyre (Indiana University East).
Sounding Tennyson is a digital resource that presents sonic and textual versions of Tennyson’s poetry. Its materials include the first recordings and publications of Emily Tennyson’s piano/vocal settings of “Break, Break, Break,” which preserve aspects of her husband’s recitation. The recordings were made in the drawing room at the Tennysons’ restored home, Farringford, using Queen Victoria’s piano. The digital application shows images of the score and plays the songs, with each measure marked in time with the music. Users can also compare multiple musical and textual drafts, and read commentary. In future, the site will expand to present all twenty-four Emily Tennyson musical settings of her husband’s poems, as well as additional items. PI: Phyllis Weliver (Saint Louis University). Co-I: Ewan Jones (University of Cambridge). Besides being part of Sounding Victorian, Sounding Tennyson is part of The Tennysons Archive, the first digital archival grouping of Tennyson items. The Tennysons Archive also includes the Tennyson resource hosted by the Cambridge Digital Library.
