Certainly one of Jane Austen’s manuscripts

Gillian Dooley‘s e-book, She performed and sang: Jane Austen and music, was printed by Manchester College Press in March 2024. The e-book appears on the central position that music performed in Austen’s life, and the way she made sensible use of it in her books, exploring a not too long ago recovered treasure trove of proof, together with her music books alongside letters and household information, bringing out a beforehand unregarded side of Austen’s world.

Gillian Dooley (Picture: IASH-The College of Edinburgh)

Gillian is an Honorary Senior Analysis Fellow in English at Flinders College in Adelaide, Australia and was beforehand a librarian there. She has been engaged on the subject of music in Jane Austen’s novels for over 25 years, and for the final 15 has been engaged on the gathering of music owned by Austen and her household. These tutorial pursuits ran alongside Gillian’s life as a librarian. She describes the library as a great place to be in case you have been additionally doing literature analysis, but additionally Gillian helped placed on live shows within the library.

There have been a couple of books coping with music in Jane Austen’s world, however Gillian feedback that Austen’s private life and her doable amorous affairs are way more sensational topics. Additionally, folks do not consider the music in her music books as significantly important, however Gillian’s perspective modified as she received to understand it. She factors out that earlier writings have typically been patronising concerning the music, that it wasn’t Mozart or Beethoven, the concept that Austen’s England was the land with out music. 

While literature is Gillian’s residence self-discipline, music is somewhat greater than only a passion. She has at all times been fascinated with Jane Austen and inevitably the music crept in. Music in Austen’s novels has a which means that she attributes or implies, maybe completely different to her personal regard for music within the residence. Gillian factors out that what you do as a author can contain pulling what you recognize however utilizing this in somewhat alternative ways. The music in Austen’s life should have undoubtedly influenced her, however this isn’t a easy relationship.

We all know that she appreciated the music of Charles Dibdin (1745-1814), significantly his comedian songs, maybe a somewhat much less refined style than we would count on from Jane Austen. [Dibdin is best known for his song, Tom Bowling, but Retrospect Opera have been exploring his other repertoire including a disc of his songs, and his musical comedy, The Jubilee]. 

Austen didn’t have a lot Italian music in her assortment, and solely three Italian arias together with a duet from Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte which has no title or composer. The opposite two Italian songs are people songs, however then the hyperlink between people music and theatre music was very porous. The primary form of English opera was ballad opera, which re-used present tunes and people tunes. There’s extra French music than Italian in Austen’s assortment however then, this will merely be all the way down to availability, as a result of her cousin Elizabeth married a French rely and was dwelling in France. There are songs concerning the sea and sailors. These have been typically widespread, there are songs by Dibdin within the fashion within the assortment, however we must also keep in mind that two of her brothers have been sailors. About half the music in Austen’s books is for solo piano or piano with an obligato instrument.

The music folks performed and have been fascinated with was modern. Austen had much more music by Thomas Arne (1710-1778) than Handel (1685-1759), and she or he had no music by ‘historical’ composers in her assortment. It is a very completely different perspective from ours, the place we see fashionable music as elite.

Probably the most direct proof we’ve of her tastes is her niece Caroline writing in 1869/70 (when Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Legh wrote A Memoir of Jane Austen) recalling 4 songs that she heard Jane Austen singing, one French, and two Scottish songs and an English theatre track. But of those 4, just one is in Austen’s manuscript assortment, thus undermining the concept that this information her favourites. However then Caroline is recalling Jane Austen in her 30s, when her tastes might have modified from {the teenager} who first began assembling the music collections.

Now that the e-book is printed, Gillian feedback that there’s at all times extra to be taught, extra to work on; after publication, extra data comes out of the woodwork. Lately she was invited to contribute a chapter to a e-book about Northanger Abbey. Gillian at all times stated that there was no music within the novel, however she appeared once more and wrote a 6000-word essay. There are at all times little issues that you may burrow into.

One space she ignores within the e-book is something outdoors the Austen household’s music assortment. Then there may be the topic of music related to Jane Austen’s work after her demise, together with the music utilized in movies and tv diversifications, which displays the director’s concepts somewhat than Austen’s personal style. However Gillian provides that she likes the movies and tv diversifications to not be too slavish. Movie must be new, another person’s imaginative and prescient and Gillian isn’t satisfied a few movie that has a rating that solely makes use of music Austen knew. Trying forward, Gillian can also be hoping to jot down about one other Austen adaptation, Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton’s opera Mansfield Park.

Matthew Flinders – by Antoine Toussaint de Chazal painted in Mauritius in 1806–07

When Gillian and I chatted in London she was on an prolonged tour, visiting the UK, Eire Italy and the USA. She had simply been to the reinterment of Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), the British navigator and cartographer who led the primary inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia. He’s additionally credited as being the primary individual to utilise the title Australia to explain the whole lot of that continent. In 2019, his grave in London was rediscovered by archaeologists and on 13 July 2024, Flinders stays have been reburied on the Church of St Mary and the Holy Rood in Donington, Flinders’ birthplace. Gillian was there.

She has written about Matthew Flinders in her e-book Matthew Flinders: The Man behind the Map (2022). There are unusual hyperlinks between Flinders and Austen. There’s a track in Jane Austen’s assortment referred to as William which is taken from a Haydn piano sonata, while Matthew Flinders additionally tailored one other Haydn sonata for a track. Flinders and Austen are nearly actual contemporaries, and he knew one in every of her brothers within the Navy.