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“My Business is to Sing”: Emily Dickinson's Musical Borrowings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2014

GEORGE BOZIWICK
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Abstract

The daily musical activities of poet Emily Dickinson (1830–86)—home performances at the piano, collecting sheet music, and attending concerts—provided a vital and necessary backdrop for her emerging artistic persona. Dickinson's active musical life reveals a great deal about the cultural offerings available to a woman of her time, place, and class. Moreover, her encounters with the music-making of the Dickinson family servants and the New England hymn tradition encouraged artistic borrowings and boundary crossings that had a deep and continuing influence on her writing. Through her engagement with music, Dickinson was able to fashion an identity served by musical longings, one that would ultimately serve a vital role in the formation of her unique poetic voice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 8 , Issue 2: Musical Women in Nineteenth-Century America , May 2014 , pp. 130 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2014 

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References

References

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Murray, Aíf. Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson's Life and Language. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2009.Google Scholar
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Phillips, Elizabeth. Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
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Schultz, Gladys Denny. Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1962.Google Scholar
Sewall, Richard Benson. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.Google Scholar
Sloan, Lenwood, and Maloney, Mick. “Two Roads Diverged: A Dialogue on Irish and Black Contributions to American Culture.” Presentation given at the Irish Arts Center, New York City, 18 September, 24 October, and 7 November 2012.Google Scholar
Slobin, Mark, Kimball, James, Preston, Katherine K., and Root, Dean, eds. Emily's Songbook: Music in 1850s Albany. Recent Researches in the Oral Tradition of Music, no. 9. Middletown, WI: A-R Editions, 2012.Google Scholar
Small, Judy Jo. Positive as Sound: Emily Dickinson's Rhyme. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Smith, Christopher J. “Blacks and Irish on the Riverine Frontiers: The Roots of American Popular Music.” Southern Culture 17 (Spring 2011): 75–102.Google Scholar
Vaughn, Alden T. “From White Man to Red Skin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian.” American Historical Review 87/4 (October 1982): 917–53.Google Scholar
Walsh, Basil. Catherine Hayes 1818–1861: The Hibernian Prima Donna. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Richard. Secular Music in America 1801–1825: A Bibliography. New York: The New York Public Library, 1964.Google Scholar
The Emily Dickinson Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.Google Scholar
The Letters of Lavinia Dickinson. Amherst College Library, Archives and Special Collections. Emily Dickinson Collection, The Jones Library, Amherst, MA.Google Scholar
The Martha Dickinson Bianchi Collection. The John Hay Library, Brown University.Google Scholar
The New York Public Library: Emily Fowler Ford Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division; Picture Collection; Prints Division; Digital Gallery; Music Division: Early American Sheet Music Collections, Clipping Files, Program Files.Google Scholar
Bianchi, Martha Dickinson. Emily Dickinson Face to Face: Unpublished Letters, with Notes and Reminiscences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1932.Google Scholar
Bingham, Millicent Todd. Emily Dickinson's Home: Letters of Edward Dickinson and His Family. New York: Harper, 1955.Google Scholar
Broyles, Michael. Beethoven in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Broyles, Michael.Music of the Highest Class: Elitism and Populism in Antebellum Boston. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Burkholder, J. Peter. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Borrowing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Cavicchi, Daniel. Listening and Longing: Music Lovers in the Age of Barnum. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Clark, Bunker J., ed. Anthology of Early American Keyboard Music: 1787–1830. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 1977.Google Scholar
Cockrell, Dale. Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842–1846. New York: Pendragon Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Cockrell, Dale, ed. The Ingalls Wilder Songbook. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2011.Google Scholar
Cooley, Carolyn Lindley. The Music of Emily Dickinson's Poems and Letters: A Study of Imagery and Form. London: McFarland and Company, Inc., 2003.Google Scholar
England, Martha Winburn. “Emily Dickinson and Isaac Watts.” In Hymns Unbidden: Donne, Herbert, Blake, Emily Dickinson, and the Hymnographers, ed. Martha Winburn England and John Sparrow, 113–48. New York: New York Public Library, 1966.Google Scholar
Franklin, Ralph W. “Emily Dickinson to Abiah Root: Ten Reconstructed Letters.” The Emily Dickinson Journal 4/1 (Spring 1995): 1–43.Google Scholar
Franklin, Ralph W., ed. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Boston: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1999.Google Scholar
Fuld, James J.The Book of World Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk. New York: Dover Publications, 2000.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013.Google Scholar
Habegger, Alfred. My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Random House, 2001.Google Scholar
Hazen, Margaret Hindle and Hazen, Robert. The Music Men: An Illustrated History of Brass Bands in America 1800–1920. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Jenkins, MacGregor. Emily Dickinson, Friend and Neighbor. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1930.Google Scholar
Johnson, Thomas H.Emily Dickinson: An Interpretive Biography. Boston: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1955.Google Scholar
Johnson, Thomas H.The Letters of Emily Dickinson. 3 vols. Boston: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1958.Google Scholar
Kirk, Connie Ann. Emily Dickinson: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Krummel, D. W.Guide for Dating Early Published Music: A Manual for Bibliographic Practices. Hackensack, NJ: Joseph Boonin, Inc., and Kassel: Barenreiter Verlag, 1974.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Vera Brodsky. Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong. Volume 1: Resonances 1836–1849. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Lee, Abigail Eloisa (Stearns). Professor Charley: A Sketch of Charles Thompson by A. E. L. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1902.Google Scholar
Leyda, Jay. The Years and Hours of Emily Dickinson. 2 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Lott, R. Allen. From Paris to Peoria: How European Piano Virtuosos Brought Classical Music to the American Heartland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Lott, R. Allen. “Anton Rubinstein in America (1872–1873).” American Music 21/3 (Autumn 2003): 291–318.Google Scholar
Lowenberg, Carleton. Musicians Wrestle Everywhere: Emily Dickinson and Music. Berkeley, CA: Fallen Leaf Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Lundin, Roger. Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief. 2nd. ed.Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004.Google Scholar
Mattfeld, Julius. Variety Music Cavalcade 1620–1969: A Chronology of Vocal and Instrumental Music Popular in the United States. 3rd. ed.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1971.Google Scholar
Meyer Frazier, Petra. “American Women's Roles in Domestic Music Making as Revealed in Parlor Song Collections, 1820–1870.” Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, 1999.Google Scholar
Miller, Cristanne. Reading in Time: Emily Dickinson in the Nineteenth Century. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Morgan, Victoria N.Emily Dickinson and Hymn Culture: Tradition and Experience. Farnham, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Murray, Aíf. Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson's Life and Language. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Newman, Nancy. Good Music for a Free People: The Germania Musical Society in Nineteenth-Century America. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Parakilas, James, ed. Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Pascoe, Judith. “‘The House Encore Me So’: Emily Dickinson and Jenny Lind.” The Emily Dickinson Journal 1/1 (Spring 1992): 1–18.Google Scholar
Phillips, Elizabeth. Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Preston, Katherine K. Opera on the Road: Traveling Opera Troupes in the United States, 1825–60. Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Schultz, Gladys Denny. Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1962.Google Scholar
Sewall, Richard Benson. The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980.Google Scholar
Sloan, Lenwood, and Maloney, Mick. “Two Roads Diverged: A Dialogue on Irish and Black Contributions to American Culture.” Presentation given at the Irish Arts Center, New York City, 18 September, 24 October, and 7 November 2012.Google Scholar
Slobin, Mark, Kimball, James, Preston, Katherine K., and Root, Dean, eds. Emily's Songbook: Music in 1850s Albany. Recent Researches in the Oral Tradition of Music, no. 9. Middletown, WI: A-R Editions, 2012.Google Scholar
Small, Judy Jo. Positive as Sound: Emily Dickinson's Rhyme. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Smith, Christopher J. “Blacks and Irish on the Riverine Frontiers: The Roots of American Popular Music.” Southern Culture 17 (Spring 2011): 75–102.Google Scholar
Vaughn, Alden T. “From White Man to Red Skin: Changing Anglo-American Perceptions of the American Indian.” American Historical Review 87/4 (October 1982): 917–53.Google Scholar
Walsh, Basil. Catherine Hayes 1818–1861: The Hibernian Prima Donna. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Richard. Secular Music in America 1801–1825: A Bibliography. New York: The New York Public Library, 1964.Google Scholar