CHAT THE FIFTH
Two Eighteenth-century Women Players of the Viola da Gamba
The Empress of Germany well defined the attainments of Pericles’ ideal woman—who was to be prized if no one spoke of her either in praise or blame—when she announced that a woman’s life should be made up of clothes, children, cooking and church. A century or so ago, such a statement would have been quite unnecessary, for our great-grandmothers welcomed each of these obligations as the sweetest duties of life. But, somehow, for some unaccountable reason, much of woman’s tender grace seems to have faded with the Victorian era, and to-day “nous avons changé tout cela.” Children, clothes, cooking, are the very things—except the clothes—that the modern woman, with her club and other interests, deals with most lightly. She would far rather rush into the battle of life and fight like her Amazon ancestry. She would far rather assume some definite career like her brethren of the sterner sex. Perhaps she does not cut quite such a good figure as she did fifty years ago, but her unceasing efforts to attain prominence have revealed her to be dowered, now and again, with an intellect capable of undertaking all the duties dear to her departed sisters, and rendering service in other provinces besides.
The emancipation of woman is a steady growth, and to-day there are few professions in which she does not compete side by side with man. In the rough and tumble of the battle, she must lose much of her ephemeral qualities, but, fortunately, there are careers open to her in the sphere of Art where her feminine evanescence is the principal charm of her work. In music more especially, her emotional value and quick instinct are indispensable, and here she retains her personality with ease. Whatever may be the general opinion of woman’s work in the realm of musical composition, her success as an executant is undeniable. She cannot perhaps build Masses like Bach, or Oratorios like Handel, but she can interpret the works of the great masters with much spontaneous insight, and one cannot forget that she has written some of our most popular songs. “Annie Laurie” was the work of Lady Jane Scott; Lady Arthur Hill wrote “In the Gloaming,” and Lady Scott Gattie composed the widely-known ballad “Douglas, Tender and True.” “The Campbells are comin’,” “The Land o’ the Leal,” and “The Laird o’ Cockpen” were all the work of Lady Nairne, while the languorous melody of “Juanita” emanated from Mrs Elizabeth Morton’s pen. Undoubtedly woman’s most appropriate place in music is as a singer, for, look back as far as you will, you will find her occupied in singing. The Egyptian women danced and sang to the accompaniment of clapping hands. The Hebrew women pointed the story of their songs with dramatic actions; they sang gaily at festivals, and chanted dirges at funerals, and, although the men—mark you—might join in if they felt inclined to do so, yet the women were the acknowledged leaders. Then, again, one of the cherished duties of those graceful women—the Greek Muses—was to sing songs at the banquets of the immortals, and the principal occupation of the Sirens, who sat upon rocks, was to sing ditties to the passing mariners. The record of woman’s singing is certainly ahead of man’s, and it is regrettable that in these days she does not continue to be ahead of him. It should be woman’s prerogative to sing, while men could monopolise the more technical branches of music, such as composing, and playing the flute and string and brass monsters. Go to one of the fashionable concerts devoted to that poor pale thing, “The Modern Ballad,” and see if the incongruity presented by six feet of muscular manhood warbling about stars kissing, and moons flirting, does not jar your sense of the fitness of things. Listen to the same sentiments voiced by a woman, however, and you will find the incongruity vanishes, and mere trash becomes sentiment.[32]
Unfortunately every woman is not blessed with a melodious singing voice, yet the instinct to sing being in her, she has turned to the best imitation of the human voice she can find—i.e. the violin and the violoncello. To-day these instruments, and even the viola, count innumerable votaries, both professional and amateur, among the fair sex, but who was the first brave lady to “saw the catgut with the horse’s tail” history does not recount. Where history fails however myth steps in and supplies us with the information that the invention of producing musical sounds from a stretched string originated in the twang of Diana’s hunting bow. Then the beautiful poetess Sappho—whose name has been handed down to us much besmirched for the reason that she was in advance of her time—is assigned the honour of inventing the fiddle-bow mounted with horse hair. St Cecilia—whose name now graces numberless Musical Societies—is said to have united instrumental with vocal music in divine worship, about the year 230. Little is known accurately of this saint, but legendary lore pronounces her to have been a noble Roman lady who embraced Christianity, and was forced by her parents into a union with a pagan named Valerian. She eventually converted both her husband and his brother to her faith, and they all three suffered martyrdom for their convictions. The passing phase in her history which relates that she frequently united instrumental music with that of her voice in praising the Lord, has inspired artists to paint and mould her in an attitude of praise with the organ and other musical instruments by her side. Whether she played the viola da gamba, or indeed any instrument, is a fact now lost in oblivion; in any case Domenichino has exquisitely represented her in the act of drawing the bow across a handsome bass-viol in his immortal picture now in the Louvre Collection in Paris. After St Cecilia a prominent English lady, who was the daughter of “Old King Cole” of fiddling fame, was a skilled musician according to Geoffrey of Monmouth. She is apparently a solitary example of feminine musical talent in England at that date.
The position occupied by woman in the music of mediæval times had greatly deteriorated from that occupied by St Cecilia, yet she was still thought worthy of portrayal, and we find a picture of her playing a viol with four strings on the painted roof of Peterborough Cathedral, which dates from about the year 1194. Two years later the names of several lady minstrels or “jongleuresses” figure in the code of laws which the Corporation of Minstrels presented in 1321 to the “Prefect” of Paris for signature. Heading the women is “Isabel la Roufelle,” and after her “Marcel la Chastaine, Liegart, fame Bieuveignant, Marguerite, la fame au Morne,” etc., and lastly “Adeline, fame de l’Angloise” and “Isabian la Lorraine.” The significant “fame” (wife) which occurs several times in the above list helps us to a peep at the life of the faithful spouse of the jongleur. Decidedly her attainments as a female jongleur, roaming the country with her husband, were absolutely opposed to the dictum of Pericles. The lives of these women were hard, and they were but poorly paid in comparison to their male brethren. It is on record that the Queen’s male “fiddler” in 1497 was paid “in rewarde” £1, 6s. 8d. while the two shillings paid by Henry VIII. to “a woman that singeth with a fiddle” is a pathetic revelation of the proportionately low value set upon woman’s artistic efforts at that time.
Among early amateurs of the bass-viol we find Anne of Cleves, who frequently amused her self by playing on a viol with six strings after her retirement from the turgid trials of her matrimonial life. The picture of a lady similarly occupied, which occurs in a fifteenth-century manuscript entitled “Les Echecs Amoreux,” shows us that the French ladies were also votaries of the viol at that time. In truth, the bass-viol was then a very fashionable instrument both in Europe and England. Shakespeare, who echoed the doings of the day with unerring exactitude, frequently employs the viol in a synonymous sense as, for instance, in Pericles, where the character that gives the title addresses his daughter, Antiochus:
“You’re a fair viol and your sense the strings
Who, finger’d to make man his lawful music,
Would draw heaven down.”