UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Having identified the roots of the anti-bravura in drawing-room performances by women at the turn of the nineteenth century, Morgan traces a host of connections between private musical culture in England and the virtuoso’s place of prominence on public stages throughout Europe in subsequent decades. Morgan shaped my dissertation around these connections, devoting three chapters to the musical activities of late Georgian-era women and a final chapter to the legacy of those women as embodied in the development of virtuosity. The relationship between amateur female keyboardists in late- Georgian England and the towering concert pianists of the mid-nineteenth century may seem like an unlikely alliance, but it was a tremendously fruitful one.