Description

Cultivated by Hand aligns the overlooked history of amateur musicians in the early years of the United States with little-understood practices of music book making. It reveals the pervasiveness of these practices, particularly among women, and their importance for the construction of gender, class, race, and nation.

CONTENTS

List of illustrations
Note on sources
Cast of characters
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Reproducing Music
Laboring Bodies and Technologies of Reproduction
What is a Manuscript Music Book?
Manuscript, Print, and Gender
Chapter 2: Learning Music
Literacies
Literacy as Piety
Print Discipline
Becoming Refined
Rigorous Seminaries
Chapter 3: Consumerism and the Materiality of Music Books
Family Business
Luxury Goods
Global Trade and Raw Supplies
Chapter 4: Economies of Accomplishments
Pleasing Patriarchs and Self-Display
Courtship, Marriage, and the Intimacies of Musical Exchange
Absence and Remembrance
Chapter 5: Appearing Tasteful
Personal Improvement
Cosmopolitan Aspiration, Provincial Anxiety, and the American Galant
Being Seen
Sensibility, Observation, and Connection
Epilogue
Bibliography