Title: Domestic music making in late eighteenth-century elite Chesapeake society : the "elegant selections" of Shirley Plantation
Abstract: In late eighteenth-century Chesapeake society, music making in the home was not simply
a leisure activity; it was a social endeavor through which the middle and upper classes
were able to express and experience their gentility, and thereby display their taste, status,
and wealth. As a prominent family of the Chesapeake, the Carters of Shirley Plantation
used music as a way of representing - and engaging with - their status within society.
The eighteenth-century sheet music collection of Shirley Plantation provides crucial
evidence of the style and genre of music being consumed in the home of an elite family.
Yet this collection also reveals aspects of the practice and function of domestic music
making among late eighteenth-century Chesapeake elites when considered within the
context of the physical environment in which the music was consumed, as well as in
conjunction with contemporary letters, diaries, and documents from Shirley and other
Virginia plantations.
In this thesis I describe the relevant history of Shirley Plantation and the unusual musical
instrument that is thought to have been in the house in the late eighteenth century, an
organized harpsichord. I supply a description of the sheet music in general, offer specific
examples from the collection to illustrate the music's style and relevance, and suggest how
some of this music may have been performed. I discuss the parlor as a semi-public space
for the performance of music as well as the performance of identity and status, and thereby
suggest how musical performance functioned in the lives of late eighteenth-century elites. I
argue that the parlor, a semi-public space, was a stage on which cultural identity was
constituted, defined, and redefined.
The music the Carters consumed during the Early Republic reveals an adherence to
fashion expected of a family of elite status, yet certain selections also stand out as
significant choices that can illuminate the Carters' conception of their world. The inclusion
of an early anti-slavery work, lnkle and Yarico (1787), and songs from the 1790s that
sympathize with the plight of the French royal family, indicate an engagement with the
tensions inherent in the elite lifestyle within the Early Republic. The Carters' choice of
sheet music - and the performance of that music in the Shirley parlor - suggests the
family's tastes, but more significantly offers a nuanced and complex view of the role of
music making in elite society.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
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