Just in time for summer reading, Prof. Marian Wilson Kimber has published two articles.
“Miss Austen Plays Pleyel: An Additional Source for the Jane Austen Family Music Collection?”
Explores the provenance of a volume of accompanied sonatas by Ignaz Pleyel held in the Arthur and Miriam Cantor Rare Book Room of Iowa’s Rita Benton Music Library. The six sonatas, which sport a red label with the words “Miss Austen” on the cover, date from around 1800 and may have belonged to a member of the famous author’s extended family. Wilson Kimber described how her discovery of the volume resulted from two courses she has taught at Iowa in “Jane Austen in the Age of Digital Discovery.”
Wilson Kimber’s second article, “Reciting Parsifal: Opera as Spoken Word Performance in America,”
Uncovers an unusual performance practice that took place in turn-of-the-century America: the adaptation of operas for spoken word recitals with music. Often performed by female elocutionists, the works most commonly heard in this manner were those by Richard Wagner and Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Partly a literary, less theatrical substitution for staged opera, while at the same time an educational tool that allowed audiences to come to terms with foreign language performances, spoken word recitals made opera more intimate so that it might be absorbed into women’s salon culture.