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Harmonizing the Nation: Margaret Fuller and the Music of Antebellum America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2011

Aaron D. McClendon
Aaron D. McClendon
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University
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Extract

In August of 1846, Margaret Fuller – one of the most influential feminist intellectuals in American history – sailed from New York City to Europe prepared to continue her work as the lead columnist for the New-York Tribune. As it was planned by Fuller and Horace Greeley – the Tribune's editor – while abroad, Fuller would work as an international correspondent and send to the Tribune letters of her travels that recorded her thoughts about Europe, which she did from late 1846 until late 1849, with her final piece appearing in the 6 January 1850 edition of the paper. In ‘Letter No. XI’ (1847) of Fuller's more than 30 European dispatches to the Tribune, she recounted for her readers several of the operas that she attended while in Paris. After first reviewing Robert le Diable, Guillaume Tell, L'Elisire d'Amore and Semiramide in this 31 March letter, Fuller turned her attention to a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Fuller assessed Don Giovanni differently from the other operas in her letter. Rather than highlight the merits of the singers or staging, she prefaced her review with an account of her decision to take ether in an attempt to alleviate the pain she had been suffering as a result of toothache. In some depth, Fuller described the pleasurable sensations that she had experienced because of the ether. As she noted, however, the treatment had not stopped her discomfort. This troubled her on more than one level. For one, she was in acute pain; but Fuller was also worried that her suffering might make it difficult for her to sit through the entirety of Don Giovanni. Fuller had long wanted to attend this opera, so despite her concern she went. Her choice to go would delight her, for as Fuller wrote in her letter, once Don Giovanni began, ‘the music soothed the nerves’ of her toothache ‘at once’. But even more wonderful than this, she explained, was that, after hearing Mozart's music, the pain from her toothache ‘left [her] from that time’ on.

Type
Articles
Information
Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , June 2009 , pp. 47 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

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93 See Margaret Fuller's 18 January 1845 column ‘Music in New-York’. There she noted of a concert that ‘the atmosphere produced by an entire want of proper means of ventilation … seemed to taint the very music as it flowed' (Fuller, ‘Music in New-York’, in Margaret Fuller, Critic, CD-ROM). Also see her March 1845 column entitled ‘Music in New-York’. There, she expressed her hope that the patrons of an upcoming performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 would be afforded by the venue ‘an occasional breath of fresh air’ (Fuller, ‘Music in New-York’, in Margaret Fuller, Critic, CD-ROM).

94 In ‘The Grand Concert’ (1846), Fuller wrote that ‘[a] suitable building is all that is wanted to give New-York the benefit of all the best works of the leading Art of our time’ (Fuller, ‘The Grand Concert’, in ibid., CD-ROM). In a January 1846 article entitled ‘Philharmonic Concert’, Fuller wondered if the acoustics of the building ‘swallowed up’ the music that had been performed the previous night (Fuller, ‘Philharmonic Concert’, in ibid., CD-ROM). In a March 1846 column that was also entitled ‘Philharmonic Concert’, Fuller registered her pleasure with the prospect of constructing a new concert venue. ‘We heard, with much pleasure’, she wrote, ‘the proposition for erecting a building suitable for musical entertainments. This is absolutely required here and will, in many ways, prove a benefit to the cause of Art throughout the country’ (Fuller, ‘Philharmonic Concert’, in ibid., CD-ROM).

95 Fuller, , Letter XIII, in At Home and Abroad; or, Things and Thoughts in America and Europe, 213.Google Scholar

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