TY - JOUR
AU - Geoffroy-Schwinden, Rebecca, Dowd
AB - Abstract This microhistory situates the musical activities of Nancy Macdonald, a French student at Madame Campan’s National Institute for Young Women and Napoleon Bonaparte’s school for daughters of Legion of Honour Recipients, in broader discourses about women and music in Napoleonic France. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of capital, it eschews a simplistic assessment of music as either constraining or liberating young women, by arguing instead that performance operated as a kind of ‘feminine capital’, accrued and then circulated to achieve tangible socio-economic ends. A feminine-capital framework exposes the paradoxes inherent in female music-making and reveals how values about music were enculturated from girlhood to womanhood in France. This approach contributes to recent scholarship that challenges the rigid binaries previously defining women’s musical labour during the Classical era and inserts France into historiographies of women’s musical practices in the early nineteenth century. We hear daily that a young [woman], as soon as she is married, closes her pianoforte, which becomes merely a useless piece of furniture; this is true, when it recalls but the sad memory of fruitless work. Through repeated lessons, harsh scoldings, and tears shed, she managed to play a few sonatas that never contributed to her pleasure nor that of others, is it not completely natural that she relieves herself from this constraint as soon as she can follow her inclination? That a young woman could accompany by sight-reading from a score; that after performing a selection of charming and well-sung airs, obligingly changing her pianoforte into an orchestra, she animates the gaiety of a pleasant reunion, her talent will give her unceasingly the precious means of occupying herself and pleasing [others], and surely she will not abandon it.1 This candid advice offered by the famous women’s educator Jeanne-Louise Henriette Genet-Campan (1752–1822) depicts a familiar scene of feminine music-making in early nineteenth-century Europe. A girl endures frustrating, forced labour at an instrument that serves more as her prison than her pastime. Yet Campan’s remedy for this sad state is perhaps unexpected: only through true musicianship can the girl set herself free. When anchored by the ability to accompany, sight-read, and sing by ear, Campan argues, music circulates not only as a pleasant ornament to social life but also as a kind of feminine currency. A young woman’s instrument transforms from a ‘useless’ object to a ‘precious’ commodity if she has properly invested her childhood into developing actual skills rather than simply cultivating a performance repertory. Campan highlights two attributes rarely conjured in discourses about female musical practices during this period: hard work and technique. By situating constraint and liberty as two sides of one valuable, musical coin, she invites us to re-examine historiographic tropes that define women’s music-making through rigid dichotomies. A frequently cited pedagogue in nineteenth-century Europe, Campan drew on diverse experiences to inform her exacting prescription for women’s music education. Under the Old Regime, she served as a reader to King Louis XV’s daughters and as first lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. During the French Revolution (1789–99), she narrowly escaped the guillotine, going on to found a boarding school just outside Paris, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which officially became the National Institute for Young Women by 1795. Over a decade later, Napoleon appointed her as superintendent of his new school for the daughters of Legion of Honour recipients. Campan’s most famous student was Hortense de Beauharnais, at the time Napoleon’s stepdaughter, and later to become his sister-in-law, Queen of Holland, and mother of Napoleon III. Although Beauharnais became known for the beautiful romances she composed, it is another of Campan’s lesser-known students who seems to have exemplified most clearly the famous pedagogue’s vision for how music could benefit women. The student’s name was Anne-Charlotte Macdonald, but family and friends called her Nancy (she is referred to throughout this article as ‘Macdonald’). Macdonald’s long life spanned a tumultuous era in French political history. She was born in 1792 during the French Revolution and lived to see the Napoleonic Empire, the Bourbon Restoration, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire. She died in 1870 as the Third French Republic was born. Her father, Étienne-Jacques-Joséph-Alexandre Macdonald (1765–1840), was an accomplished member of the French military who climbed the ranks during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, rising from lieutenant to general in just two years between 1791 and 1793. When General Macdonald set out on the revolutionary campaigns to Italy after his first wife died in 1797, he left his two young daughters, Nancy and her sister Adèle, in Campan’s care. Macdonald entered the National Institute for Young Women around 1799. In 1809, she transferred to Napoleon’s new school at Écouen, where she remained under Campan’s tutelage until marrying in December 1810. Because General Macdonald was away from Paris during nearly this entire period from 1799 to 1810, Macdonald regularly wrote letters to her father to keep him apprised of her studies and of news from home. This article situates the musical discussions found among Macdonald’s letters within the social life of Campan’s National Institute in particular, and Napoleonic France more broadly. In so doing, it eschews a simplistic assessment of musical practice as either a woman’s constraint or her freedom by arguing instead that music could operate as a kind of feminine capital accrued and circulated towards tangible ends. While historians have revealed the complex issues at play for women in the legal, educational, and medical realms of Napoleonic France, scholars have yet to investigate whether women’s musicianship offered similar opportunities in this historical context.2 Rebecca Rogers has already employed Macdonald’s letters to shed light on female experiences under the Napoleonic Code.3 Women had briefly enjoyed expanded legal rights as a result of the massive political changes achieved in the early years of the French Revolution, especially from 1789 to 1793, yet these gains were ultimately eclipsed by the reputation that women earned during this upheaval as either hysterical agitators or fanatical counter-revolutionaries.4 The Directory and Consulate governments (1795–1804) almost completely retracted women’s previous legal and political advances.5 Moreover, women were disproportionately affected by the poverty caused by the Revolution’s socio-economic turmoil, possessing fewer means to improve their unfortunate position.6 When Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, he prioritized the family unit as the basic foundation of French society and pursued an agenda that returned women to what he believed to be their proper role in the home. There, as housewives, they would help to instil a virtuous love of country among their children—the future soldiers and mothers of France.7 As strong agents in this new family unit, women’s domestic role was crucial to the French social structure, yet drastically circumscribed. The legal code prohibited women from any form of active citizenship or control over immovable property. Despite the disadvantaged legal position they held in pre-revolutionary Paris, some women had been respected arbiters of taste in the public sphere, running salons and wielding aesthetic power from court (most notably, Queen Marie Antoinette).8 Napoleon sought to diminish women’s prominent cultural role when he came to power. His fabled rivalry with Madame de Staël represents but one example of this mission. Some historians, however, have developed a counter-narrative to this account, arguing that, despite the legal restrictions experienced by women under Napoleon, his policies nonetheless provided educational opportunities that granted them agency in their livelihoods and an ability to traverse the boundary between public and private life. Meanwhile, recent musicological scholarship has begun to challenge rigid notions that music only limited Western women during the Classical era, showing instead that the relationship between music and femininity remained in flux throughout this period. Music conjured up gendered paradoxes of its own: a feminine ideal, but an effeminate hobby; a virtuous occupation, yet a gateway to immorality.9 The feminine ideal prescribed that women perform musical labour so naturally that it be rendered imperceptible, characterized by a corporeal stillness and delicate touch that distanced musical effects from the female body producing them.10 Musicologists seem to agree that, by the early nineteenth century, the positive connotations that had been ascribed to women’s music-making during the previous century had diminished, as public music-making became an autonomous, disembodied, and decidedly male pursuit.11 Put another way, men increasingly became active musical producers, as women became their passive consumers.12 Accepting nineteenth-century rhetorical tropes about women and music at face value risks reifying the ideologies that rendered women’s musical work invisible.13 Such discourses have already been perpetuated in secondary literature: when historian Rebecca Rogers claims that Macdonald ‘did not establish priorities or clearly distinguish between studies aimed at developing her reason and those which ensured she would behave properly in society’, she relegates music to the latter category.14 A musicologist’s knowledge of the musical practices, repertories, and instruments from this period reveals that Macdonald in fact prioritized music precisely because it combined intellectual and social benefits. Nancy Macdonald’s letters invite musicological scrutiny not only because they offer a unique opportunity to hear a woman speak for herself at a time when female voices were erased from musical discourses, but also because they provide a valuable window onto music’s place in childhood culture and gendered education.15 Although letters survive from Macdonald’s entire life, those written between 1799 and 1810, when she turned 18, shed light on her musical activities from girlhood to marriage, a significant life stage for women in Napoleonic France. Recent scholarship has elucidated women’s roles as composers, performers, and manuscript collectors in this period, particularly in England, Germany, and America, yet just one article has considered childhood music education specifically.16 Scholars have only recently begun to consider childhood culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France. Jennifer Popiel argues in particular that the motivation to incorporate women into French liberal society through motherhood originated with the widespread adoption of the ideals espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Émile (1762).17 The book instilled a belief in children’s natural goodness, thus inspiring a new understanding—at least in France—of childhood as a life-stage distinct from young adulthood, one that was characterized by vulnerability and potential.18 Macdonald’s letters show musical practices evolving from girlhood to womanhood—an enculturation of femininity in and through music.19 Rather than the more clinical term ‘case study’, the musical life detailed in this correspondence might be more aptly considered a microhistory, an approach that the Americanist Jill Lepore has eloquently championed because ‘however singular a person’s life may be, the value of examining it lies not in its uniqueness, but in its exemplariness, in how that individual’s life serves as an allegory for broader issues affecting the culture as a whole’.20 The limited research that has been carried out on music in the everyday lives of girls and women in Napoleonic France renders it difficult to assess the extent to which Macdonald’s story is representative. Yet the close reading of her letters offered here provides an initial step towards situating women’s musical activities in this complex, gendered historical and cultural context. The multifaceted nature of this context is revealed through the paradoxes that defined Macdonald’s musical life. There are two reasons to read the letters for such contradictions: first, to resist simplistic dichotomies such as professional versus amateur, public versus private, ordinary versus exceptional, and masculine versus feminine; and, second, to foreground the way in which generalizations about women’s musical practices as invisible, superficial, and superfluous have been uncritically perpetuated.21 The historian Joan Scott has argued that, because nineteenth-century narratives portray women’s history as progressive, they resist the paradoxes inherent in the struggle for women’s rights, consequently ‘prevent[ing] us from analyzing, even from seeing, the downside of feminist experience’.22 Scott designed her analytical approach specifically to grapple with nineteenth-century French discourses. I answer her call to ‘read for paradox’ not simply to demonstrate music’s ‘downside’ for women, but also to reveal the complicated, contradictory expectations ascribed to their musical pursuits. By seeking ‘internal tensions and incompatibilities’ within expectations about female music-making, we might find the simultaneous containment and freedom that women experienced through music. Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘forms of capital’ provide fertile material from which to build a framework highlighting the contradictions that imbued music in Macdonald’s social world. I propose employing the term ‘feminine capital’ in order to situate music within an economy of practice in which women cultivated and then circulated musical skills and objects to gain social and (consequently) economic capital. Although Bourdieusian frameworks dealing with forms of capital have been employed in both ethnomusicology and music education, historical musicologists have primarily drawn only on their terminologies—cultural and social capital—without pursuing the nuanced process of accumulation, transmission, circulation, and transformation that these terms imply.23 Bourdieu identifies two forms of cultural capital: embodied and objectified.24 The former comprises skills and knowledge acquired over time, since these are cultivated within the body; examples might include the ability to read music or to play an instrument. Objectified cultural capital, conversely, is accumulated through objects, such as instruments and scores. Musicologists have shown that a woman’s high social status during this period was marked by an ability to invest time to hone her musical talent, which reflected positively on her father or husband in particular, and her family more generally.25 Bourdieu similarly emphasizes time as a crucial factor in the acquisition of cultural capital.26 Macdonald’s letters testify to the significant time she devoted to improving her musical skills (embodied cultural capital) and collecting scores and instruments (objectified cultural capital).27 Following the acquisition of cultural capital, an individual can then enact and exchange it in a network of beneficial relationships, thereby gaining social capital.28 In Macdonald’s case, after spending her time accruing musical skills and objects (embodied and objectified cultural capital), she transformed these into social capital during performances, when elite audiences gathered at Campan’s school to attend the students’ public examinations, concerts, and stage productions. By performing at the school, the girls enacted and exchanged their cultural capital among a group of potentially or actually beneficial social connections. Campan’s students came from both bourgeois and noble families—among them, Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense de Beauharnais, his sister Caroline, and Eliza Monroe, daughter of future United States President James Monroe—to name only a few of those who were most famous. Daughters of bourgeois and military families, like Macdonald, were particularly well placed to benefit from the institutionalized cultural and social capital fostered at the school because Napoleon explicitly sought to replace the Old Regime nobility with a new, military aristocracy, accessible through both blood and merit. At the age of only 7, Macdonald wrote to compliment her father on his recent promotion in the military, citing his achievement as ‘proof that merit is never without recognition’.29 If aristocratic blood did not run through a girl’s veins, she could nevertheless some day earn a position among the Napoleonic elite by attracting a suitable husband—and perhaps a title—through her talents. According to Bourdieu, noble titles represent institutionalized social capital par excellence.30 For French women, the ‘official transmission of capital’ was ‘prevented or hindered’ because the Napoleonic Code forbade them from exchanging immovable property without the consent of their husbands. Consequently, cultural capital became crucial to women’s socio-economic advancement.31 In objective form it projected material proof of status and prestige; in embodied form it could be subtly exchanged.32 Immateriality imbued music with infinite potential and inherent risk in this respect: as Bourdieu explains, ‘cultural capital … is subject to a more disguised but riskier transmission than economic capital … because it is neither transmissible (like a title of nobility) nor negotiable (like stocks and trades)’.33 But women could apply their musical skills and objects to teaching children, and this allowed them to transform their cultural capital into an exchangeable commodity. In her letters, Macdonald discusses music as a serious endeavour. The Parisian public’s reaction to performances at the National Institute indicated that such activities had tangible consequences—both good and bad. This kind of feminine capital framework thus exposes the paradoxes inherent in female music-making, as a constraining social grace and a liberating personal pursuit, and Macdonald’s letters reveal how these musical values were enculturated from girlhood to womanhood in Napoleonic France. CULTIVATING FEMININE CAPITAL AT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR YOUNG WOMEN Macdonald arrived at the National Institute around 1799, as Campan expanded the school’s buildings and properties in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a small village about 19 km north-west of Paris. Macdonald lived along with her classmates in the Hôtel de Rohan, a building that Campan rented, which could house up to one hundred girls (see Pl. 1). At the time, the Institute had around eighty students enrolled.34 Tuition cost 1,200 francs per year, plus 400 francs for linens and clothing.35 Although these costs were often subsidized or reduced for less fortunate families, Campan needed to ensure a steady stream of paying students: the school was a private venture that survived on tuition revenue alone until around 1807, when such institutions began to receive government funding. Even some ostensibly privileged families never paid Campan for their daughters’ education, and the headmistress usually overlooked their arrears in return for social or political favours. This practice ultimately led the school to accumulate serious debt. Pl. 1 View largeDownload slide Vestibule of honour in the Hôtel de Rohan. CG92/ Musée du domaine départementale de Sceaux. Photographie Institut d’Enseignement libre, St-Germain-en-Laye, Vestibule d’honneur. Reproduced by permission Pl. 1 View largeDownload slide Vestibule of honour in the Hôtel de Rohan. CG92/ Musée du domaine départementale de Sceaux. Photographie Institut d’Enseignement libre, St-Germain-en-Laye, Vestibule d’honneur. Reproduced by permission Macdonald would have followed the National Institute’s curriculum, which consisted of geography, arithmetic, history, grammar, foreign languages, reading, writing, French literature, elementary sciences, and the pleasurable arts—music, drawing, needlework, and dancing.36 While Rogers claims that art lessons including music required extra fees in addition to basic tuition, ‘effectively barr[ing] poor girls from studying these subjects’, Geneviève Haroche-Bouzinac’s extensive archival research indicates that students studied music regardless of their families’ financial state.37 Macdonald requested extra money from her father to pay for music lessons in some of her later letters, and so Campan may have offered all students music lessons early on, and requested extra fees subsequently as her school encountered financial instability, or once she moved to Écouen, where budgets were closely scrutinized by the government. Macdonald’s classmates came from mostly privileged yet nonetheless economically diverse backgrounds. Both bourgeois and elite families sent their daughters to the school; however, Campan forbade students from discussing their families’ social standing, and demanded that they instead receive recognition at school exclusively for their academic and artistic achievements.38 As the daughter of a high-ranking military official—a position that would continually gain prestige during Napoleon’s reign, particularly for those gentlemen who contributed to major military successes—Macdonald’s own pedigree fell somewhere in the middle of her classmates’ social spectrum. General Macdonald enjoyed notoriety in France by the 1810s, so—while his daughter is today considered to have been among the Institute’s more socially high-ranking students—this status was in some sense applied retrospectively: during Macdonald’s time at the Institute, her father’s star was only just beginning to rise. Her Scottish grandfather, Neil MacEachen, who had settled in France (changing his surname to Macdonald for pronunciation reasons), died in abject poverty in Sancerre, France, in 1788. Her father, the General, eventually earned his high social position by climbing the military ranks. He fought with the Irish legion for the Dutch Republic during the 1780s, became a commander of the leading brigade in Napoleon’s campaigns against the Netherlands during the French Revolution, and eventually led the armies of the Rhine and Italy.39 In 1799 he was even approached by supporters to pursue the coup that Napoleon ultimately agreed to lead. Yet, despite this military success, he remained in and out of Napoleon’s favour until 1809 because, along with General Jean Victor Marie Moreau, he represented potential competition to the paranoid dictator.40 Meanwhile Nancy’s mother, Marie Constance Sorel de Montloisir, who died in 1797, was the daughter of a man who had purchased his position in the French bureaucracy. Thus, Macdonald’s lineage descended from recently elevated French bourgeois or military families whose status was in equal parts prestigious and precarious until at least 1809. This year stands out in the Macdonald family for reasons discussed below. Campan implemented a rigorous music curriculum taught by France’s most distinguished professional musicians.41 A typical National Institute student would have studied solfège, pianoforte, harp, and singing. Although she does not mention any music teachers by name, Macdonald probably studied with the Paris Conservatory professors who taught at the Institute. These included Charles-Henri Plantade (1764–1839), who taught solfège, composition, and chorus; Honoré-François-Marie Langlé (1741–1807), who was a singing tutor; Jean Jacques Grasset (1769–1839), who taught violin and accompaniment; Benoît François Mozin (1769–1857), a pianoforte tutor; and Hyacinthe Jadin (1776–1800), who taught pianoforte, sonatas, and concerti; it was Jadin, indeed, who was responsible for the women’s piano classes at the Conservatory and he also published keyboard music marketed to women.42 In addition to Conservatory faculty members, other well-known musicians also served as music tutors at the Institute, including Benoît (Barnabas) Bonesi (1745/6–1824), a composer and theorist who taught Italian singing, and the famous harpist Madame Delaval (1763–after 1804).43 The identity of MacDonald’s piano instructors during these years remains unclear, but in 1807 she expressed contentment with her then piano maîtresse, telling her father that it was to this instructor that she owed everything she knew of the instrument. She asked for money to buy the teacher a gift to express her gratitude for her lessons.44 Since she specifically referred to her piano instructor as a woman, she may have been studying at this point with Madame Gueffre, the piano instructor who lived at the National Institute. Campan requested supplies from the revolutionary government to establish her school. In the inquiry, she specified her desire for instruments crafted by the best manufacturers, particularly valued in Old Regime Paris, including Nadermann, Amati, and Stradivari. She also preferred the most advanced instrument technologies, like English pianofortes with pedals. Her solicitation for scores in separate parts by the composers Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714–87), Antonio Sacchini (1730–86), Niccolò Piccini (1728–1800), and André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (1741–1813), suggests that she may have resuscitated Marie Antoinette’s Trianon performance repertory, since these were all composers whose works the Queen had performed at her private theatre.45 In 1795, she began building a small theatre at the National Institute, and in 1800 Bonesi directed students in a performance of excerpts from Giovanni Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1782).46 On the one hand, Campan’s music curriculum seemed to resurrect a bygone era of Old Regime musical entertainments, while, on the other, it prepared students to make a living from their musical talents if necessary.47 Women began to enjoy institutionalized training as musicians via the Paris Conservatory, founded during the Revolution in 1795. Although they studied separately from their male counterparts, being relegated to their own courses held in specially designated parts of the Conservatory building, they took courses in practical harmony and accompaniment, which would prepare them to become music teachers.48 Like the Conservatory, Campan educated women within an environment that supposedly prioritized public transparency, technical skill, healthy competition, and meritocracy. Her petition to the revolutionary government for scores and instruments even employed republican rhetoric, and when the Minister of the Interior approved her requests he both affirmed her claim that the National Institute was built on the ‘principles of a pure morale and love for the country’, and commended ‘the public work [Campan] does with her talents’.49 If Campan’s students were to become the mothers of French soldiers, then they required a patriotic education, one that included music. But her pedagogical goals traversed social and professional realms. Women educated by Campan ideally sought to avoid a life of work, yet some would inevitably need to employ their talents to make ends meet, just as Campan herself had had to do when the Revolution struck. Training at Campan’s school made sense for women—like Macdonald—whose future was uncertain. Their musical training could be mobilized in one of two ways, both ultimately with economic ends: it could either be employed as a social grace that would help them to secure a profitable marriage, or it could become a professional skill that would help them to earn money as school teachers. The uncertainty of Macdonald’s socio-economic future lurked beneath her musical practices. As she acquired skills and training, it was not yet clear whether she would deploy these as leisure or in professional settings. Despite, or perhaps because of this uncertainty, she worked to cultivate her musical talent. According to Pierre-Michel Menger, this is what professional artists do: he characterizes work as a ‘vector of individual accomplishment’, but also as ‘management of relationship networks’.50 Within this context, creative labour is both profoundly individual and what he terms ‘inter-individual’. Thus, his formulation maps onto Bourdieu’s conception of social capital, the relationships that could ultimately be translated into economic gains. Whether destined to a life of pleasure or work, Campan’s students all followed the same practice regimen. According to Campan’s own prescription for music studies outlined in her influential publication De l’éducation, Macdonald would have taken pianoforte lessons three times per week, plus independent study and practice each day, with a specific emphasis placed on sight-reading.51 Weekly performances occupied both academic and leisure time at the Institute. Sundays were dedicated to providing pianoforte accompaniment for one another’s dancing,52 while on Thursdays more advanced students held recitals to earn extra points in music and to motivate younger students to work harder at their instruments. The accumulated points contributed to report cards and to end-of-year prizes awarded for outstanding achievement. The winners were announced annually when the school year culminated with a comprehensive, public examination performed for an elite audience.53 The examination proceedings represented a significant social performance even for spectators. Campan made sure to invite the most famous of the families that populated her school. On the occasions when Macdonald sent her father tickets to the event, she offered to provide more for his friends and asked whether he might bring particular guests whom she hoped to see in the audience.54 Fanny Burney D’Arblay, daughter of the music historian Charles Burney, recorded her impressions of the examinations she attended at the National Institute in 1802, in which Macdonald was a participant. Guests entered the examination hall beneath a pediment that read ‘Talents are the true riches’ (see Pl. 2).55 Two hundred fifty spectators donning the most current Parisian fashions crowded the auditorium: ‘I saw more of les elegantes here’, D’Arblay claimed, ‘than I had yet beheld in France, as the room was almost filled with the rich and gay who first set afloat, or first adopt the modes of the day.’56 The annual event had become as esteemed as a Parisian spectacle, partially due to the prestigious position the girls’ fathers held in Napoleon Bonaparte’s new aristocracy. Ever since his female relatives had attended the school, Campan had reserved an onstage box for Napoleon and his entourage, who were frequent visitors. In 1801 prestigious attendees included the ambassadors of Prussia and Austria, the minister of Russia, and the Prince of Orange.57 At the 1802 event, after learning that Napoleon would not be able to attend, Campan insisted that D’Arblay move into his onstage box.58 D’Arblay deplored Campan’s blatant social-climbing tactics witnessed throughout the programme. She described the headmistress naming famous attendees in stage whispers while rearranging seats to position certain notable guests within clear sight of the entire audience.59 She also reports that, although the spectators were admitted by invitation only, Campan quietly policed unwelcome attendees who had managed to gain entry.60 Pl. 2 View largeDownload slide Entrance to the salle des exercices at the National Institute for Young Women, as depicted by Victor-Jean Nicolle (c.1806–7). Courtesy of RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY Pl. 2 View largeDownload slide Entrance to the salle des exercices at the National Institute for Young Women, as depicted by Victor-Jean Nicolle (c.1806–7). Courtesy of RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY The girls themselves wore a head-to-toe uniform—from the ringlets in their hair to their shiny white shoes—that was intended to focus attention on their talents alone. In contrast to the modish audience, the examinees wore modest white dresses distinguished only by a coloured sash indicating their grade levels. A jury of experts, including members of the prestigious Institut de France, facilitated the public examination and awarded prizes in writing, orthography, grammar, geography, music, recitation, and history.61 The students sat on the stage, where they transcribed a dictation to be judged for its orthography and punctuation, read aloud from a grammar book ‘stopping upon each word to declare its part of speech’, and pointed out the longitudes and latitudes of European countries and principal cities on gigantic maps.62 They answered questions about Roman history and French literature, and recited poetry from memory. One of D’Arblay’s companions could barely stand the tedium of the whole process: ‘A’n’t you half dead?’ he asked her.63 Unfortunately, D’Arblay arrived late to the examinations and seems to have missed the musical performances.64 Her perspective on the event overall is nevertheless illuminating. She claimed that geography, history, and recitation were ‘treated with greater dignity’ than other subjects. Girls who burst into tears while being questioned were quickly escorted back to their chairs. According to Campan, when one student experienced profound stage fright while performing a piano sonata, her distress was only exacerbated by angry stares from her piano instructor, Madame Gueffre.65 Although the audience and examiners were supportive of nervous participants (even offering zealous applause as the defeated children re-seated themselves), the girls performing on examination day risked their reputation: a girl would have to work hard to erase an embarrassing incident from the memory of the exclusive European elites. What prestigious family would want their son to marry a woman who could not carry herself properly in a stressful situation? This would have been a more pressing consideration for students who were nearing marriageable age, around 14 and older. Students recalled their final examinations at Campan’s National Institute as a rite of passage into adulthood.66 Here surfaces the first paradox surrounding musical accomplishments and the National Institute: this torturous public scrutiny was couched as an opportunity, hardly concealing the examination’s true purpose, which was to vet Campan’s students both intellectually and socially. According to Bourdieu, in a system that rewards cultural capital, those who possess it gain significant power unless moderated—through competition—by those with real capital.67 The format of the assessment puts this reality into stark relief. During the prize ceremony, D’Arblay felt that the dramatic presentation of awards, the audience’s excessive applause, and the winners’ exuberant reactions to their success all ‘render[ed] the examination rather too much like some theatrical representation’.68 Any attention captured on assessment day might have affected a student’s social capital. Examinations were risky because a girl could only control her own performance (recall Bourdieu’s assertion that cultural capital is non-negotiable):69 reception and valuation were the exclusive purview of the examiners and the audience. The potential benefits from a successful performance nevertheless outweighed the risk of embarrassment. D’Arblay’s own account of the exams provides a superb example. Addressed to Margaret Planta, governess to the British royal princesses, D’Arblay’s letter recounted the ceremony for Queen Charlotte of Great Britain, who reigned from 1761 until her death in 1818. In the letter, D’Arblay cited the outstanding talent and intelligence of one Mademoiselle de Vallence.70 This was precisely Campan’s intent when she invited a large, elite audience to the examinations—one well-received performance might enhance a students’ reputation, not just in Paris but even across Europe. In 1803, the year after D’Arblay’s visit to the National Institute, Macdonald earned three prizes at examinations, one of which was in singing. In 1805, she once again clinched the prize in singing and this time was successful in piano as well.71 Receiving three major music prizes at the public examinations would have identified Macdonald as one of the best musicians at the Institute, just as she had reached the age of 13 and was therefore on the cusp of marriageability. Years of hard work—of the kind described in this article’s opening epigraph—were what earned Macdonald her prizes. Along with these rewards, the repertory Macdonald referenced in her letters indicates that she had honed considerable keyboard skills.72 She performed pieces considered both feminine and masculine. By the age of 10, she had learned to play sonatas by Ignace Pleyel (1757–1831), and by 14 she was preparing a Daniel Steibelt (1765–1823) concerto for examinations.73 Although she played works such as these that were commonly prescribed to women, this in no way indicates that her keyboard skills were dilettantish.74 Circumstantial evidence suggests that she may have learned Steibelt’s Third Piano Concerto in E major, Op. 33 (1799), dubbed L’ orage (The Storm), which was wildly popular in Paris at the time when Macdonald mentioned the composer’s concerto in her letters:75 Édouard Fétis described how it could be heard ‘on every piano’ in Napoleonic France.76 Its ubiquity began with a highly successful 1797 Parisian premiere performed by Steibelt himself and attended by Napoleon. The performance pioneered a masculine, public virtuosity rooted in military heroism. The composition’s ‘swelling, dramatic tremolos … and dense, booming chords’ required Beethovenian technique and excessive physical gestures, according to Dana Gooley.77 Nevertheless, the work was also evidently played by women: Elizabeth Morgan cites Steibelt’s Storm concerto in particular as evidence that women contributed to a culture of virtuosic, heroic keyboard genres in early nineteenth-century Britain,78 and the piece was also recommended in Elizabeth Appleton’s Private Education (1815) as part of a woman’s practice regimen.79 Although there is no clear proof, the concerto’s exceptional popularity in France and its reputation as a woman’s piece make it a likely choice for the repertory Macdonald reported preparing. She would have performed the solo version for exams, but during practice the score would have invited her to imagine performing with an orchestra, on an expanded keyboard, using the pedals now built into the newest instruments (see Pl. 3). This technical piece suggested a masculine pianism, despite being recommended to women (see Pl. 4).80 Yet Macdonald also enjoyed repertory more typical of the recommendations made to ladies. In addition to the Pleyel sonatas, she complained to her father when she lacked scores to study, reminding him to send music books that she had forgotten, which included airs, rondos, and a book of songs that belonged to her younger sister, Adèle.81 When she captured the music prizes at the National Institute’s annual exam ceremonies, the audience would have realized that Macdonald had spent much of her girlhood at the piano. Pl. 3 View largeDownload slide Excerpt of the theme from mvt. 3 of Steibelt’s Third Concerto in E major, Op. 33, L’orage (Paris, 1799). The excerpt shows ‘additional keys’ notated in an upper, third staff, ‘horns and oboes’ indicated in the bottom system, and pedal markings symbolized by a circle with a cross through it. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France Pl. 3 View largeDownload slide Excerpt of the theme from mvt. 3 of Steibelt’s Third Concerto in E major, Op. 33, L’orage (Paris, 1799). The excerpt shows ‘additional keys’ notated in an upper, third staff, ‘horns and oboes’ indicated in the bottom system, and pedal markings symbolized by a circle with a cross through it. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France Pl. 4 View largeDownload slide The tremolos and booming chords of the Rondo of Steibelt’s concerto. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Pl. 4 View largeDownload slide The tremolos and booming chords of the Rondo of Steibelt’s concerto. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Here arises a second paradox of feminine music-making in Napoleonic France: Macdonald’s success could have signalled either a virtuous occupation or an immoral obsession.82 The playwright Joseph Patrat (1733–1801) gave voice to the former interpretation. He found his experience serving as a judge for the National Institute exams so profoundly moving that he wrote an opera about the school, even asking Campan’s permission to dedicate the libretto to her. While she respectfully declined, because accepting such public praise would be considered inappropriate, his dedication nonetheless describes the headmistress: ‘To Madame: You have refused the homage that I wanted to give you… . I have hidden your name with great care … and if someone recognizes you, take it upon yourself, [since] in painting virtue, one paints your portrait.’83 The title page identifies La Pension de jeunes demoiselles (c.1801) as a ‘moral piece, in verse, in one act, mixed with music’, yet its contents lie squarely in the realm of conduct dramas intended to teach morality lessons to young women.84 It was first performed at the Théâtre des Jeunes Artistes on 9 May 1801. The music, composed by Alexandre Piccinni (1779–1850)—the illegitimate grandson of the more famous Niccolò—is no longer extant.85 Campan was under the impression that Patrat had written the libretto recently, even though he clearly based it on his pre-existing play, La Pension genevoise ou l’éducation (1778).86 The original plot centred on a proud, rich student who realizes the error of her ways upon learning of her father’s shocking reversal in fortune. Patrat’s changes from the 1778 to 1801 versions are telling: he added a headmistress character and dedicated more dialogue to demonstrating the benefits women gained from cultivating talents, especially music. The play takes place in the school’s instrument-filled salon where, in the penultimate scene, the girls perform a musical selection composed by a fellow classmate, who is praised by her peers for her ability to play many instruments. The stage directions read: ‘ All take up their instruments, and one [girl] distributes the music… . They begin a little instrumental concert where each student’s talents can shine.’87 Like many of his contemporaries, Patrat correlates music with moral constitution. The final chorus, in particular, highlights ‘innocent pleasures’ and ‘love of talent’, like music, as ‘the son of wisdom’, and ‘the father of happiness’. Here, morality is a positive by-product of music-making as it continually enhances the mind and body, motivates girls to work hard, and occupies them in virtuous activities. Patrat’s impression of the Institute was precisely the one that Campan hoped to project during public examinations. Nevertheless, accusations of immorality were never far from a woman making music. Campan’s own conduct drama, Les Deux éducations, demonstrates the less-innocent pleasures associated with music.88 In the short play, a widowed mother questioning the morality of her son’s fiancée enlists a friend to help her create a disguise in order to spy on her future daughter-in-law, Mademoiselle Brillantine (even her name conjures a shiny surface lacking substance). Brillantine’s musical activities conspicuously symbolize her lack of virtue. She sleeps in her music teacher’s studio, where she and Monsieur Toutor never wake before noon, after carousing at late-night balls. When they finally do rise, he gives her music lessons all afternoon. As her future mother-in-law looks on, the mademoiselle dances around her bedroom singing a gavotte air. Brillantine’s routine thus represents one of the two music educations referenced in the play’s title: unbalanced by discipline, morality, and other useful skills, this education is a relic of the Old Regime musical pastimes that turned the Parisian public away from Campan’s former maîtresse, Marie Antoinette.89 Campan represents the second, edifying education through two other female characters, the daughters of a seamstress, who spend their days sewing and praying. Rather than surrounding themselves with frivolous society, the two girls are immersed in work and religious activity. When the widowed mother meets the sisters, she realizes the virtue of an education comprised of diligence and faith, and engages her son to one of the poor virtuous seamstresses rather than the rich music-loving Mademoiselle Brillantine. Here, Campan foregrounds debates about musical talents, particularly whether such studies could lead to immorality. Through her play, and indeed in all her publications, she argues that if young women were to fail to balance pleasurable talents like music with education and hard work, then they would certainly risk causing moral decay. She insisted that ‘it is through [balance] that one obtains harmony in the whole education’.90 Taken together, Patrat’s and Campan’s representations reveal how music stood at the crossroads between virtue and immorality, and was implicated in larger debates about education proper for girls and young women. As feminine capital, music only gained or lost value when circulated in social life. The perceived integrity of a woman’s music-making hinged in part upon its setting, and performances at the National Institute blurred the public and private realms.91 Although Rogers emphasizes the public nature of Campan’s curriculum, the context was in fact more complicated when it came to music—girls sometimes performed at intimate gatherings for strangers, at other times for large audiences primarily comprised of family and friends.92 As a venue, the Institute was complex in itself because of the French distinction between institutional instruction and domestic education: the term instruction denoted ‘acquisition of a specific skill, like reading, while education entail[ed] the development of the whole person’.93 Tutors imparted knowledge through instruction at school, while mothers educated their daughters in self-control at home.94 From this perspective, Campan’s publication title, De l’éducation, and its narrative emphasis on how mothers should slowly introduce their daughters into society, reveal how her own role in the students’ lives was twofold: she was both instructor and surrogate mother.95 In her analysis of the 1826 engraving A Prize for Wisdom, Popiel concludes that the teacher standing in the scene’s doorway ‘emphasizes … the relationship between life and public responsibilities. A girl’s primary influence on society could—and perhaps even should—be worked out in a context that included life outside the home.’96 Many girls in Campan’s care, including Macdonald, had lost their own parents and considered the headmistress as a surrogate mother.97 Thus, responsibility for creating the appropriate balance between public and private musical performances fell to Campan. The pristine virtue displayed at the annual public examinations failed to counter the poor reputation suffered by other productions that were hosted at the National Institute. In 1803, Macdonald apologized to her father because she had not found time to write while still learning all the music she agreed to perform at an upcoming ‘party’ (fête), and she periodically mentioned performing at such parties throughout 1807.98 By regularly hosting concerts, balls, and stage performances, Campan hoped to attract the ‘famous ears’ of Paris to the school.99 She described the school’s music programmes as ‘delicious’, and delighted in the fact that ‘everyone’ attended.100 By 1800 she gushed: ‘Over six months the improvements in music [at my school] are incredible; I will have a grand concert after this one; where I will take care to attract famous ears; it must be well known in Paris.’101 The author of an apocryphal memoir of Hortense de Beauharnais claimed that Campan’s curriculum ‘felt a bit like the levity and recklessness of the time’: more luxurious than virtuous,102 stating, moreover, that when students performed a ballet to Luigi Cherubini’s (1760–1842) ‘Marche des Tartares’ from Lodoïska (1791) during an event given in honour of the Persian ambassador, Askerkan, the dance recalled an Asian harem.103 Such critiques resonate with scenes in La pacha de Suresne, ou l’Amitié des femmes (1802), a play about a headmistress who tries to arrange a student’s marriage while the girl and her two flighty friends seek a pasha willing to marry all three of them so they will never be forced to separate. In a footnote to Hiver à Paris, Johann Frederick Reichardt claims that Campan became a public joke when, at the Parisian production of La pacha de Suresne: ‘Madame Campan … believed she recognized herself [in the play]. She complained to the authorities, who made a mockery of her. The public, soon in on the secret, went in crowds to the performances and laughed at the expense of the susceptible institutrice.’104 The play, by Charles Guillaume Étienne and Charles Gaugiran-Nanteuil, which premiered at the Théâtre Odéon in Paris on 31 May 1802, explicitly portrays a pension education as superfluous, complete with a stuttering dance instructor named Flicflac and an opening scene that depicts girls bickering at a piano in the school’s salon.105 Whether the National Institute students were aware of it or not, the public debated the morality and utility of their education.106 Some felt it was inappropriate for children to be subjected to such displays, while others were more critical of Campan’s intervention in the girls’ future social lives.107 Yet Macdonald, for her part, never placed musical performances in such a negative light. In fact, from a young age Macdonald conveyed to her father the social benefits—the social capital—garnered by her performances. She boasted about the applause she received from all the nobles who attended a comédie presented at the Institute, even seizing upon one especially well-received performance in order subtly to confront Napoleon himself. She was about 10 years old at the time. After Napoleon vigorously applauded the performance, he sought Macdonald out, embraced her, and inquired about her father. She responded simply by stating that he had missed the performance—a brave hint that she knew the emperor’s role in her father’s current political position.108 The General had briefly fallen out of Napoleon’s favour because of his affiliation with General Moreau, who supported the Emperor’s rise to power but subsequently became a rival to the self-made monarch. As a result, Macdonald’s father had been intermittently shunned until 1809. Her assertive comments thinly concealed a childish frustration that Napoleon personally prevented her father from attending her performances, the girl’s dearest wish. In June 1806, her father’s absence from another comédie was foregrounded when everyone in the audience asked about him. She cut her letter about the performance short, exhausted from all the rehearsals she had endured.109 Whatever the social payoff, Macdonald nonetheless realized that stage performance was a delicate matter. The students presented an annual performance of Racine’s tragedy Esther (1689), joining a long tradition maintained by elite women’s boarding schools in France. Over a century earlier Jean Racine had written the work’s libretto for Madame de Maintenon’s girls’ school at Saint-Cyr, where it continued to be performed until the convent was closed during the Revolution in 1792.110 Since its seventeenth-century premiere, Esther had earned a reputation for inspiring dissent among audiences who disapproved of girls singing and acting on stage.111Esther’s composer, Jean-Baptiste Moreau (1656–1733), had been careful to relegate music to ostensibly appropriate scenes such as prayers, expressions of gratitude, or commentary on action; however, the tragedy’s detractors found staged emotional expression set to music far too sensuous for proper young ladies. In her publications, Campan acknowledged this perspective to a certain extent, but she remained firm in her conviction that it was acceptable for girls to perform in operas about tragic subjects.112 Around 1802, during the period when Macdonald regularly performed in Esther at the Institute, one production so riled the Parisian public that Campan decided to cancel future performances.113 By 1804 productions had resumed, but Macdonald was wary and wrote to her father: ‘Madame Campan said that I will play an Israelite in Esther and I don’t want to perform without your permission.’114 Shortly afterwards, the student cast as Elise (Esther’s confidant) left the Institute, so Campan instructed Macdonald to obtain her father’s approval so that she could take on the role.115 The precaution was necessary in part because Macdonald was still in mourning for her stepmother, Félicité-Françoise de Montholon, who had died the same year. In an attempt to persuade him, Macdonald reminded her father that the performances would take place near the end of her mourning period. Her requests to participate in Esther two years later, in 1806, took on a different tone: Madame Campan would like to perform Esther in the spring and would like me to play Elise and if this would not displease you by her making me learn this role she said to tell you that there would be few but truly notable people [in attendance] I dare to make this request a second time since we will perform the tragedy at the end of the spring.116 She must not after all have taken on the part of Elise, since two years later she states that she would need to ‘learn the role’. More significantly, her urgent run-on sentence conveyed Campan’s assurances to the General that the audience would be appropriately composed, making the production an opportunity rather than an impropriety. Macdonald’s 1806 letter about Esther implies that performances might be considered virtuous when offered to a small but prestigious audience—no doubt because they might leave a good impression on the right crowd.117 As she matured, Macdonald intensified her musical studies, expanding her objectified cultural capital with scores and instruments to augment the embodied cultural capital that she already possessed. She confessed to her father: ‘it is true that I was not practising my piano as much as my singing [in the past; … now] I prefer to study my piano to anything else’.118 When the General encouraged her to take up the harp she protested, citing the difficulties encountered when simultaneously pursuing two instruments. She is likely to have adopted this perspective from Campan, who recommended that women master one instrument rather than play two superficially.119 Instead of studying the harp, Macdonald laid out a plan to study the piano with enhanced ‘zeal’ in order to continue improving independently during vacation time.120 The General supported her enthusiasm by sending a piano to Saint-Germain-en-Laye for his daughters to place in their room.121 The new instrument fuelled Macdonald’s motivation to practise. Only weeks after receiving it, she claimed to be sight-reading and accompanying fluently, and playing very difficult pieces.122 She frequently reminded her father to send music that she had forgotten to take with her, or had requested from family friends.123 Macdonald ordered copies of keyboard works, especially sonatas, for her personal collection from a visitor who brought a chest of scores to the school. She even purchased two copies of some scores so that she would have the same pieces available at the family’s Paris and ‘country’ residences.124 Practically speaking, multiple copies ameliorated her absentmindedness (she frequently forgot to swap music copies between her various lodgings), but the duplicates may also indicate that she was beginning to collect scores for both practice and display.125 Indeed, she kept more than just scores in multiple copies: Macdonald also asked her father to purchase an additional piano—this one with six octaves—for their home in Paris. It would seem that the expanded range allowed her to play pieces like the Steibelt concerto properly and to execute her plan to improve without instruction during breaks. Macdonald’s letters indicate that she viewed cultural and objectified capital as commutable. When General Macdonald questioned the large number of scores for which he had been paying, she assured him that she always kept her spending in order and had no financial needs except to pay for music lessons and materials.126 She also promised to treat her father to a ‘pretty piece’ in exchange for the new instrument she had requested. She thus repaid her father with the only capital that she possessed—her musical talents.127 Macdonald was, of course, financially dependent upon her father to support her collections. The more money he provided, the more she established the material complement to the skills she had honed for the past ten years. The combination of her musical talents, instruments, and scores produced a kind of feminine capital that indicated her family’s standing but also, and more importantly, her own virtue and hard work, two qualities Campan championed as part of a proper young woman’s education. These attributes—obtained in and through music—belie contemporaneous discourses that characterized women’s musical activities as easy or ornamental:128 on the contrary, musical talent required consistent, diligent labour. Yet Macdonald employed her feminine capital not only to please and impress others, but also for her own pleasure. As the opening epigraph suggests, Campan believed that music could ‘animate solitude’, ‘complete happiness’, and ‘console grief’ for a woman confined to domestic life.129 Macdonald’s focus on music around 1808 occurred at a difficult period for her emotionally. She was 16, the age at which many French women ended their education to transition into society. As one of the older students at the National Institute, she had tired of the energetic younger girls who surrounded her and she received almost daily news of friends’ betrothals. Her social position remained uncertain, as her father was not yet back in Napoleon’s particular favour, and he had been repeatedly overlooked for military posts in recent years. Her passage from childhood to womanhood was marked in her letters by increasing references to her social life—she sent regards to women whom her father was to see, relayed messages to him from family and acquaintances, and discussed her grandmother’s sage advice. The letters also underscore Macdonald’s sadness as she watched the disintegration of the school community that had constituted her surrogate family.130 Most painful for Macdonald, at this crucial stage in her life, was Campan’s departure from Saint-Germain-en-Laye to become the headmistress of Napoleon’s new school at Écouen.131 The Emperor first had the idea to create schools for the daughters of military heroes in 1805 during the Battle of Austerlitz, and by 1807 they had become a reality. Campan lobbied to have the new school opened at Saint-Germain-en-Laye instead of Écouen (which is about 36 km to the north of Paris), but Napoleon insisted upon the new location. The National Institute continued to run in Campan’s absence, and thus co-existed with Écouen for some time, with little change,132 but it was the people that Macdonald missed most. Her father had been reluctant to place his daughter in Napoleon’s new school among the aristocracy, with whose fickleness he was all too familiar at the time. But once her friends and Campan had left for Écouen, Macdonald complained to her father that she feared boredom and begged to return to the family’s home in Paris to study with private tutors. She began to miss her father more intensely (probably because he was home, and thus accessible) and she dedicated pages of letters to her desire to be reunited with him in Paris, saying: ‘neither talents nor instruction: nothing will give me the satisfaction that the happiness of being near you could’.133 Campan left the National Institute in November 1807. If musical activities could not offer Macdonald companionship, at least they provided her with a useful occupation during this lonely period. The extra time Macdonald found in her solitude might partially explain why she decided to begin harmony lessons in January 1808.134 After requesting her father in multiple letters that she be allowed to study harmony, she excused her persistence, explaining: ‘I impatiently await [your] permission to learn harmony … I want to wait for your response to begin.’135 General Macdonald acquiesced and she soon began lessons with Joseph-François-Narcisse Carbonel (1773–1855), a well-known singing instructor and composer who regularly taught at the National Institute. He warned Macdonald that she would need to apply herself seriously if she hoped to succeed in the endeavour. They agreed to begin meeting after mardi gras, since Carbonel feared that cancelled lessons during carnaval would be too disruptive to her studies.136 By June 1808, Carbonel had expressed satisfaction with her progress.137 Here arises another paradox surrounding women and music in Napoleonic France: accomplishment could never appear to emanate from excessive application. In the light of contemporaneous debates about women and harmony, it was sensible for Macdonald to await her father’s permission before beginning her harmony lessons. Of course the lessons would cost extra money that he would need to provide, but there were not only financial elements at play: her father also had to consider social implications. Harmony lessons might create an impression that Macdonald studied music a bit too seriously, an excessive intellectual engagement detracting from more important pursuits—namely, securing a suitable husband.138 She was by this stage, at least for upper-class women, old enough to become betrothed.139 Harmony required intellect and concentration. It was unusual for women to undertake any study of harmony during this period in Great Britain and America.140 In France, in contrast, bourgeois and upper-class women usually studied enough harmony to facilitate fluent sight-reading and accompaniment—two skills recommended in contemporaneous education manuals like Campan’s.141 But accompaniment, meaning the realization of figured bass, was distinguished from harmony, the study of modulation, which occasionally included counterpoint.142 French authorities on music, such as Rousseau and the composer Grétry, discouraged women from engaging deeply with harmony because its scientific, learned elements might spoil their natural melodic gift.143 In the early nineteenth century, the Conservatory offered practical harmony and accompaniment classes to women, while counterpoint and fugue were addressed exclusively in male courses.144 Formal harmony classes would have both aided Macdonald’s improvisation at the keyboard and enhanced her composition skills. She frequently referred to her meetings with Carbonel as ‘conversations’ (entretiens), thereby distinguishing them from leçons, practical instruction at the keyboard, and implying that they would have discussed musical materials. Although no evidence indicates that Macdonald wrote music, composition was taught at the National Institute and continued to be a lifelong hobby of her former classmate Hortense de Beauharnais.145 Macdonald’s harmony conversations with Carbonel reveal that she engaged in serious musical study to a point that threatened to be perceived as inappropriately masculine, or at the very least, excessive for a proper young woman. No longer a child, Macdonald began asserting preferences about her own education. Campan encouraged students during their final year at the National Institute to reflect on their hopes for the future and how their studies might contribute to those aspirations.146 She believed that ‘their education should be chosen and not suffered’.147 Macdonald made two significant choices around 1808. First, she asked to be excused from competing in the National Institute’s annual examinations, assuring the General that her reasons for withdrawing were sound: ‘I only ask this to improve more in the pleasurable talents.’148 She promised to submit her drawings and needlework to be judged, and to perform in the final concert at the examinations. He agreed. Her focus on the arts, and on music in particular, would benefit her future regardless of her family’s social status. When she made this request, her father remained out of Napoleon’s favour. If this position persisted, she could survive, if necessary—as Campan had—by teaching. Conversely, if he returned to favour, her talents could attract a suitable husband. Reflecting on her future, as Campan encouraged, Macdonald chose to capitalize on her strengths in music, which could benefit her regardless of what the future held in store. With her second significant request, Macdonald sought to address her long-standing sense of isolation at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Since 1807 she had begged her father to allow her to transfer to Écouen to be closer to her friends and Campan. After much pleading and many appeals to the social benefits of education among Napoleon’s favourites, her father eventually agreed on this matter as well. She signed her letters from Écouen beginning in April 1809, coinciding with her father’s appointment as military adviser to Napoleon’s stepson (and Hortense’s brother) Eugène de Beauharnais. The General succeeded brilliantly in his new position, achieving a decisive military victory against Austria, which returned him to Napoleon’s favour, and he was rewarded later that year with two titles: Marshal of France and Duke of Taranto. Finally, the General earned decisive approval under the imperial government. This accomplishment greatly satisfied his daughter, who shared his frustration throughout his many years of unofficial exile.149 Meanwhile, Macdonald, like so many of her classmates who transferred from the National Institute to Écouen, was overjoyed to be reunited with Campan. There, she found new opportunities to deploy the embodied and objectified cultural capital she had accrued during the previous ten years.150 circulating capital at napoleon’s écouen While some of the performances at the National Institute risked devaluing a girls’ social capital, the blame for such an unfortunate occurrence primarily rested with a responsible adult. For example, the outcry against Esther was really a condemnation of Campan’s impropriety, and when the poor child burst into tears during her ill-prepared sonata, it was the angry piano tutor who should have pre-emptively sheltered her from such embarrassing public exposure. This accountability shifted when girls matured into young women. As an older charge at Écouen, Macdonald did not take classes and she was judged by different standards than the younger students.151 Her time shifted from mere practice to performances with serious consequences, and Macdonald increasingly took ownership of the circulation of her own cultural capital. She became piano instructor to her two younger sisters, Adèle and Sidonie, using her education precisely as a woman was expected to—domestically.152 She continued to study harmony with Carbonel,153 who found an even better piano for her—one that was more expensive and more beautiful because, as she explained to her father, it had ‘three strings for each note’.154 The description indicates an English pianoforte with a grand action, and her specific explanation reveals that Macdonald had accrued some technical knowledge about the differences between the various keyboard instruments available in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. At this point she apparently at last felt sufficiently accomplished at the piano to begin studying the harp as well.155 A detailed account of her daily schedule evinces her mastery of the piano, to which she no longer dedicated significant time to practising, instead only performing during the evening. She continued, however, to practise the harp at 3 o’clock every afternoon.156 She received praise from influential acquaintances: in June 1810, Caroline Bonaparte, a former classmate who was by this time Queen of Naples, complimented Macdonald’s musical skills when the two performed together during a visit.157 Macdonald’s friends among the Bonaparte and Campan families felt she had ‘become a virtuoso’ on the piano.158 She thus truly began to reap the benefits of the years she had invested into acquiring musical skills and objects. Macdonald’s musical maturity coincided with her social maturity. From the Spanish battlefields, her father, now a Marshal, capitalized upon his rising fame in France by arranging a profitable marriage for his eldest daughter. He communicated with a grand judge, Charles-Ambroise Régnier (1746–1814), one of the main editors of Napoleon’s Civil Code, who had been named the Duke of Massa in 1808. Régnier’s son, Nicolas François Sylvestre Régnier (1783–1851) served as a government official both under the Napoleonic Empire and Bourbon Restoration,159 and the General set about arranging the match. On 6 June 1810, MacDonald responded to a question her father had posed in a previous letter: ‘You asked me, my loving and excellent father, if I wouldn’t be flattered to be called the Countess of Massa.’160 ‘Who would reject such a beautiful name?’, she pondered (although she would regret giving up her father’s). On 22 August 1810, Nicolas and Nancy met for the first time. She knew that the Régniers would visit eventually, but had no idea when. A friend at Écouen ran to alert her that she should act surprised when a guest arrived shortly by carriage. Macdonald acted accordingly, and remained composed when Régnier arrived, but her heart pounded during their entire conversation. She told her father that her future fiancé’s ‘sweet’ and ‘spiritual’ face was pox-ridden and pale, and yet, she concluded, ‘he does not seem bad to me’.161 In her letters, Macdonald identified music as an integral aspect of their courtship and engagement.162 In the autumn of 1810, she told her father that she had ‘already performed music for M. Régnier many times’.163 Régnier came to visit Madame and Mademoiselle Ney (Campan’s niece and grandniece) only under the condition that Macdonald would play the harp for them. She must have progressed quickly on the instrument if she was willing to perform in front of company. For her guests’ enjoyment, she played the keyboard and sang two romances, a duo with her sister, and even a duet with her future husband. She was not at first overly impressed by Régnier, whom she described to her father as having ‘a very timid way’ because he ‘spoke little’. But after he sang a romance to Macdonald’s accompaniment, his bashful comportment was fortunately soon put aside.164 He wrote a letter to her, admitting his initial timidity to speak and the confidence he gained from singing words that expressed his true sentiments. She thought this confession ‘very sweet’.165 Only weeks later Régnier proposed.166 The Marshal sent word from Spanish battlefields that, while he approved the marriage, he would need to assign a proxy to represent him at the ceremonies.167 Upon their engagement, Régnier sang an aria praising Macdonald’s father, the exclamation in the lyrics to ‘announce the arrival of your good father’ referring to the wait that the couple had to endure for the Marshal’s proxy to arrive.168 The delay lasted only a few weeks, although, according to Macdonald’s letters, it felt much longer for the eager couple. All the while, the two continued to perform together. Macdonald gushed: ‘We sing together every time he comes. Yesterday he sent through Madame Campan’s mail a duo that he wants me to look over in order to perform it when he visits.’169 Her musical talent charmed Régnier’s family, too, and on many occasions she played to the delight of her influential future father-in-law. However unusual Macdonald’s musical pursuits may have been as a child, music’s role in her courtship with Régnier was markedly conventional. When Macdonald began to dedicate significant portions of her letters to discussing tangible capital like her trousseau, musical instruments still occupied a privileged place. As the wife of Régnier, she would enjoy an aristocratic lifestyle. Campan had procured a lady-in-waiting for her who was ‘accustomed to serving people from a distinguished rank’.170 The woman knew how to dress hair, make clothing, and most importantly, she spoke perfect English—a language in which Macdonald was eager to become more fluent. A family friend suggested that Macdonald buy a ‘beautiful piano to put in [her] boudoir or the waiting room near [her] bedroom’ in the couple’s new home. The gracious advice indicates that her instruments would continue to occupy Macdonald’s solitary leisure time as well as her socialization in more public rooms of the aristocratic home.171 Prior to the engagement, she had already asked her father whether she might move her piano to Paris.172 Later, she secretly hoped that her performances for Régnier’s family would be rewarded with a new harp as well, which she told her father would ‘go very well with the piano’.173 Macdonald’s family friend Madame Des Tillières came to visit along with Macdonald’s future father-in-law, the Duke of Massa, to finalize the trousseau. During their stay, they insisted that Macdonald perform music and display her recent drawings.174 Eventually, her talents yielded real dividends. The Régniers paid to move the piano from Écouen to Paris and also gave her a harp for the new residence to which the couple moved after their marriage in December 1810.175 In a letter written on Christmas Day 1810, thirteen years after the very first letter she composed to the General as a 5-year-old girl, Macdonald told her father how dearly she treasured the little room next to her new bedroom where she placed the beautiful instruments she had received.176 It is as if Campan had Macdonald in mind when she penned her predictions for the skilled young woman who would continue to enjoy her pianoforte even after marriage. Macdonald invested her childhood in music—as an embodied practice and as collectable objects. This musical, feminine capital established her as a desirable young woman. The talent she demonstrated led to a marriage of economic stability and social prestige, and more importantly, facilitated her companionship with a husband who shared her love of music.177 While music was, of course, not the only conduit to her success, the enactment and exchange of her musical skills accrued social and ultimately real capital. When Macdonald’s father-in-law died on 25 June 1814, her husband inherited the title Duke of Massa; thus, very soon after marriage, Macdonald was promoted from Countess to Duchess of Massa.178 confiscated capital A final paradox merits consideration. When Napoleon dictated the new curriculum for Campan to oversee at Écouen, he insisted that only vocal music be taught there. He specifically forbade instruction in instrumental music, which he considered appropriate solely as dance accompaniment, where it controlled the body in a manner similar to military exercises.179 Bernard Germain de Lacépède, chancellor of the Legion of Honour schools, convinced the emperor at least to allow students who already possessed elementary skills in piano to continue their studies in the unfortunate event that they would need to work for a living.180 Napoleon appropriated the emblem from Campan’s National Institute to suit his new school at Écouen, where it would appear printed on all official documents such as report cards and stationery. Tellingly, where musical instruments—a central tool in Campan’s pedagogy—had once been depicted, Napoleon inserted household utensils: a kettle, a feather duster, a broth skimmer, and a ladle (see Pl. 5).181 Pl. 5 View largeDownload slide A report card from Écouen printed between 1807 and 1810. At the explicit request of Napoleon Bonaparte, the kitchen and household tools in the lower left-hand corner of this design replaced musical instruments that were depicted on the original design that was used at the National Institute for Young Women. Courtesy of the Musée de la Légion d’honneur et des ordres de chevalerie, Paris Pl. 5 View largeDownload slide A report card from Écouen printed between 1807 and 1810. At the explicit request of Napoleon Bonaparte, the kitchen and household tools in the lower left-hand corner of this design replaced musical instruments that were depicted on the original design that was used at the National Institute for Young Women. Courtesy of the Musée de la Légion d’honneur et des ordres de chevalerie, Paris In the curriculum Napoleon focused upon motherhood above all other qualities, so, in taking music away from women, he sought to ensure morality in both their education and that of their children. Yet underneath this moral reasoning there probably lurked a suspicion that music offered women another advantage. He famously claimed that for women ‘to talk of literature, morals, the fine arts, and everything under the sun is to indulge in politics’.182 This conviction led him to encourage military men to form their own salons and to remove women from the privileged position they had held in social and cultural debates before the Revolution. Music had played a defining role in these social institutions. Thus, Napoleon evidently felt that musical practices controlled by women threatened the masculine society that he sought to erect in place of the feminine and effeminate Old Regime. Although he condoned women tinkering at the piano, like aural wallpaper plastered to the perimeters of Parisian salons, he did not approve their active engagement with broader musical discourses. Fortunately for women like Macdonald, the musical life of Écouen was in reality left to Campan’s discretion as Napoleon turned his attention to much larger concerns during his reign. As for Macdonald herself, although she enjoyed performing for her well-connected social circle at Écouen, she never expressed an explicit inclination towards salon life, although many of her peers certainly did. Whether or not Napoleon’s (un)musical vision for women became a reality at Écouen, what is significant about this investigation is its illumination of the ways in which women navigated the paradoxes that circumscribed music and femininity. As I have shown through the case of Nancy Macdonald, music-making at the National Institute vacillated between public scrutiny and personal opportunity, virtue and immorality, hard work and excess. Although the practicality of Napoleonic culture inspired a prioritization of serious subjects or domestic duties over the pleasurable arts, while under Campan’s tutelage Macdonald nonetheless chose to focus on music in her studies and leisure time. Certainly, her choice was not necessarily transgressive: her repertory and performances rested within the completely normal, even constrained realm of upper-class femininity. Yet she did not describe her musical life as restricted: she pursued it with passion and in preference to her other activities. Without further research on women’s musical practices in Napoleonic France, it remains impossible to determine whether her efforts were more involved than those of her peers who, while musical enthusiasts, had no intention of pursuing music as performers or composers.183 It is nonetheless clear that the paradoxes surrounding women and music in Germany and England also existed in France, but in a unique social structure—under the Napoleonic Code and cultural agenda. In Macdonald’s particular case, the cultivation of musical talents, scores, and instruments (cultural capital) granted her recognition in the form of prizes and approbation (social capital), which proved her to be a suitable wife on the ‘engagement market’.184 A profitable marriage was one of the few forms of economic capital available to a woman in Napoleonic France. Considering music as a form of feminine capital grants access to both the profundity and the mundanity of music in women’s lives. Campan viewed music simultaneously as an escape from the monotony of bourgeois life and as a path to ‘material independence’.185 As Bourdieu explains, the way that various kinds of capital are distributed ‘at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e., the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices’.186 Macdonald’s social world was structured to prohibit women from actively participating in the exchange of immovable property. ‘Removed from production’, women were ‘constrained’ to the world of cultural and social exchange.187 Feminine capital did depend on real (that is, masculine) capital: recall that the General spent money on scores, instruments, and lessons. However, once a woman obtained cultural capital, she could claim and exchange it as her own. Musical talent was valuable in this social world: it earned prizes, captured the attention of nobility, and impressed potential in-laws. Music proved successful (to use Bourdieu’s term) as a kind of feminine capital—so successful that it seemed to Napoleon to pose a threat. Bourdieu argued for the significance of cultural and social capital because it revealed how ‘bourgeois production and exchange’ was perpetuated not only through real currency, but also through skills that only those in the know, so to speak, could acquire and circulate.188 Feminine capital was thus particularly beneficial to women like Macdonald who teetered on the border between the bourgeoisie and nobility. Macdonald’s musical pursuits and those at the National Institute complicate the simple binaries that in the past drove our understanding of women and music during the Classical era. Many of the music instructors who taught at the National Institute were the nation’s leading professionals from the Conservatory, but their female students trained mostly to become amateur performers in the home and in social life. In Macdonald’s case, as she considered her uncertain future in 1808, we must wonder whether she pursued musical studies with rigour not only for the engagement market, but also to prepare for a scenario in which she would be required to support herself financially. Macdonald’s music regimen was on the one hand ordinary, yet the repertory she prepared, the prizes she earned, and the lessons she pursued indicate that she followed musical studies to what might have been considered an extraordinary, perhaps even masculine level. As a performance venue, the National Institute evades a clear designation as public or private. Musicologists are accustomed to working towards conclusions about whether women’s musical activities can be defined as professional or amateur, extraordinary or ordinary, masculine or feminine, and public or private. This article joins the growing body of scholarship that challenges the rigid binaries previously defining women’s music-making to illuminate instead the reality of women’s rich, dynamic musical lives. At the same time it returns to the main argument of Sophie Drinker’s seminal book Music and Women: that women’s musical practices were intimately tied to the human life cycle.189 Nancy Macdonald’s letters reveal that music was a significant part of the education and socialization of bourgeois and upper-class girls in Napoleonic France as they transitioned from childhood to adulthood. Her correspondence invites us to consider the ways in which women’s engagement with music evolved and fluctuated with age. The letters from after her marriage may reveal yet another stage of her musical life, and whether her childhood experiences were a brief window of opportunity or only the beginning of music serving as social capital.190 Most significantly, Macdonald’s childhood and adolescent letters show how her musical activities eschewed the rhetoric of superficiality and superfluity that characterized contemporaneous discourses about women performing music. She continually described the real labour that was required of her to improve musical techniques and to expand a collection of scores and instruments. Considering music as feminine capital reveals its perils, paradoxes, and power for women in Napoleonic France, and resituates women’s musical practices outside a rigid constraint/freedom binary. In fact, it is precisely in those places where freedom arises from constraint that women have so often found their voices throughout history. Among the final letters Nancy Macdonald sent to her father before she married Nicolas Régnier is one in which she wrote ‘I want to be an example in the world’; if she succeeded in the endeavour, she told her father, ‘you would have but yourself to praise for the education that you gave me’.191 Macdonald has become an example for us through her own voice, articulating how music was deeply embedded in the personal and social lives of girls and young women in Napoleonic France. I would like to express my gratitude to Candace Bailey and Benjamin Brand for their comments on previous versions of this article; the doctoral students who thought through the musicological literature reviewed in the introduction alongside me during Fall 2017 in a University of North Texas seminar on ‘Women and Gender in the Long Eighteenth Century’; Glenda Goodman for her insightful questions about the project when I presented it as a conference paper at AMS Rochester and her recommendations of scholarship on women in the late 18th c.; and the anonymous reviewers for this journal and Rebecca Herissone. The following abbreviation is used: F-Pan Paris, Archives nationales Footnotes 1 Jeanne-Louise Henriette Genet-Campan, De l’éducation, 2 vols. (Paris, 1824), i. 192–3: ‘On entend dire tous les jours qu’une jeune personne, aussitôt qu’elle est mariée, ferme son piano-forté, qui devient seulement un meuble inutile, cela est vrai, quand il ne retrace que le triste souvenir d’un travail sans fruit. À force de leçons, de grondes sévères, de larmes versées, elle est parvenue à jouer quelques sonates qui n’ ont jamais contribué à ses plaisirs ni à ceux des autres, n’est-il pas bien naturel qu’elle se degage de cette contrainte aussitôt qu’elle peut suivre son inclination? Qu’une jeune femme puisse accompagner à livre ouvert sur la partition; qu’après avoir fait entendre un choix d’air agréables et bien chantés, changeant obligeamment son piano-forté en orchestre, elle anime la gaieté d’une aimable réunion, son talent lui procurera sans cesse les précieux moyens de s’occuper et de plaire, et bien sûrement elle ne l’abandonnera pas.’ Here, I have used the term ‘repeated’ to emphasize the sense of repetition implied by the phrase ‘à force de’. Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. The original orthography of all French documents is retained. 2 Rebecca Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom: Educating Bourgeois Girls in Nineteenth-Century France (University Park, Pa., 2005), and June K. Burton, Napoleon and the Woman Question: Discourses of the Other Sex in French Education, Medicine, and Medical Law, 1799–1815 (Lubbock, Tex., 2007). Two notable exceptions are Katharine Ellis, ‘Female Pianists and their Male Critics in Nineteenth-Century Paris’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 50 (1997), 353–85, and Katherine Hambridge and Annelies Andries, ‘Music, Women and the Allure of Napoleon’, in Thomas Stammers (ed.), The Allure of Napoleon: Essays Inspired by the Collections of The Bowes Museum (Barnard Castle, 2017), 19–22. 3 Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom; eadem, Les Demoiselles de la Légion d’honneur: Les maisons d’éducation de la Légion d’honneur au XIXème siècle (Paris, 1992); and Maureen MacLeod, ‘Schooling and Privilege: Schoolgirls at the Maison d’éducation de la Légion d’honneur during the Napoleonic Empire’, Napoleonic Scholarship: The Journal of the International Napoleonic Society, 7 (2016), 139–52. Lettres de Nancy Macdonald, duchesse de Massa à son père le maréchal Macdonald, F-Pan, AP279 14. 4 Madelyn Gutwirth, The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992); Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, 1992); Suzanne Desan, The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France (Studies on the History of Society and Culture, 51; Berkeley, 2004); and Jennifer Heuer, The Family and the Nation: Gender and Citizenship in Revolutionary France, 1789–1830 (Ithaca, NY, 2005). 5 Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 1988). 6 Olwen H. Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revolution (Toronto, 1992). 7 Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom; Burton, Napoleon and the Woman Question. 8 For a nuanced discussion about women’s influence on taste in both the public and private spheres of pre-revolutionary France, see Katharine J. Hamerton, ‘Rousseau and the New Domestic Art of Women’s Taste’, Journal of the Western Society for French History, 37 (2009), 99–115, and Jolanta Pekacz, Conservative Tradition in Pre-Revolutionary France: Parisian Salon Women (The Age of Revolution and Romanticism, 25; New York, 1999). Mark Darlow also addresses women’s roles in musical aesthetics, salon culture, and court politics in Dissonance in the Republic of Letters: The Querelle des Gluckistes et des Piccinnistes (London, 2013). 9 Heather Hadlock, ‘Sonorous Bodies: Women and the Glass Harmonica’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 53 (2000), 507–42, and Matthew Head, Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Berkeley and London, 2013). 10 Hadlock, ‘Sonorous Bodies’, 511, and Hester Bell Jordan, ‘Transgressive Gestures: Women and Violin Performance in Eighteenth-Century Europe’ (MM thesis, New Zealand School of Music, 2016), 16–20. 11 Hadlock, ‘Sonorous Bodies’, 535–40; Head, Sovereign Feminine, 214–53; and Jacqueline Letzter and Robert Adelson, Women Writing Opera: Creativity and Controversy in the Age of the French Revolution (Studies on the History of Society and Culture, 43; Berkeley, 2001), 213–18. 12 Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body (Berkeley and London, 1995), 63–117. 13 The literal invisibility of female musicians in late 18th-c. French archival sources is discussed in Sylvie Granger, ‘Les Musiciennes de 1790: Aperçus sur l’invisibilité’, Revue de musicologie, 94 (2008), 289–308. 14 Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, 69. 15 Dena Goodman has shown the ways in which 18th-c. French girls documented their journey into womanhood through letter writing in Becoming a Woman in the Age of Letters (Ithaca, NY, 2009). My work adds to the rich collection exploring music and childhood edited by Susan Boynton and Roe-Min Kok, Musical Childhoods and the Cultures of Youth (Middletown, Conn., 2006). 16 Denise Yim, ‘A British Child’s Music Education, 1801–1810: G. B. Viotti, Caroline Chinnery, and the French Influence’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 5 (2008), 25–45. 17 Jennifer J. Popiel, Rousseau’s Daughters: Domesticity, Education, and Autonomy in Modern France (Durham, NH, 2008), 9, 14, 26–51. 18 Ibid. 130. 19 In response to Susan McClary’s Inaugural AMS Women and Gender Endowed Lecture at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting in Rochester, New York, on 11 Nov. 2017, Jacqueline Warwick and Kyra Gaunt placed a strong emphasis on the woeful gap in scholarship on music and girlhood. While both Warwick and Gaunt have filled this lacuna in 20th-c. music studies, the gap persists in musicological scholarship on earlier topics. See Jacqueline Warwick, ‘“He Hit Me, and I was Glad”: Violence, Masochism and Anger in Girl Group Music’, in Laurie Stras (ed.), She’s So Fine: Reflections on Whiteness, Femininity, Adolescence and Class in 1960s Music (Farnham and Burlington, Vt., 2010), 89–112; eadem, Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s (New York, 2007); and Kyra D. Gaunt, The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (New York, 2006). 20 Jill Lepore, ‘Historians Who Love too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography’, Journal of American History, 88 (2001), 129–44 at 133. 21 Matthew Head has recently revealed such a scenario in late 18th-c. and early 19th-c. Germany in Sovereign Feminine. 22 Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 1, 16–18. 23 See, for example, Bonnie Gordon, ‘The Courtesan’s Singing Body as Cultural Capital in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, in Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon (eds.), The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-cultural Perspectives (New York and Oxford, 2006), 182–98; and Tia DeNora, ‘Embodiment and Opportunity: Bodily Capital, Gender, and Reputation in Beethoven’s Vienna’, in William Weber (ed.), The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914: Managers, Charlatans, and Idealists (Bloomington, Ind., 2004), 185–97. Elsewhere, Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital has been used by historical musicologists in the study of ‘great’ composers. For example, Kimberly Francis proposes the concept of cultural capital as a way of shifting the narrative focus away from ‘great’ (male) composers and their musical works to the field in which those composers and works are created and circulated, a field that is influenced by women in myriad ways. She cites Nadia Boulanger as one example of a woman who used her cultural capital—her knowledge of the field (habitus), her background, and her specifically gendered status—to shape 20th-c. musical production profoundly; see Kimberly Francis, ‘Her-storiography: Pierre Bourdieu, Cultural Capital, and Changing the Narrative Paradigm’, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 19 (2015), 169–77. For an example of this framework as it applies to ‘great’ composers, see Emily H. Green, ‘ A Patron among Peers: Dedications to Haydn and the Economy of Celebrity’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 8 (2011), 215–37. Jane F. Fulcher has employed Bourdieusian frameworks widely; see, most recently, Renegotiating French Identity: Musical Culture and Creativity in France during Vichy and the German Occupation (Oxford, 2018). 24 Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Okonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital’, in Soziale Ungleichheiten, ed. Reinhard Kreckel (Soziale Welt, Sonderheft, 2; Göttingen, 1983), 183–98; translated as ‘The Forms of Capital’ by Richard Nice, in J. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (Westport, Conn., 1986), 241–58. All translations of Bourdieu are by Nice. 25 Head, Sovereign Feminine, 89–92; Leppert, Sight of Sound, 67–70. 26 Regarding time invested, Bourdieu asserts: ‘The accumulation of cultural capital in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of what is called culture, cultivation, Bildung, presupposes a process of embodiment, incorporation, which insofar as it implies a labor of inculcation and assimilation, costs time, time which must be invested personally by the investor’; Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 244. 27 James Davies offers a similar perspective on scores as commodities in ‘Julia’s Gift: The Social Life of Scores, c. 1830’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 131 (2006), 287–309, in which he argues that a score given to an 11-year-old girl represents, on the one hand, an intrusion of consumer culture into the most personal experience, and on the other, a social gesture symbolizing the mother–daughter bond. Davies focuses on the socio-economic meaning of these transactions, and offers what might be an ultimate consequence, or perhaps continuation, of the networks of exchange traced here. 28 On social capital, Bourdieu explains, ‘relationships [social capital] are more or less really enacted and so maintained and reinforced, in exchanges’; ‘Forms of Capital’, 249. 29 ‘Reçois mon compliment sur ton nouveau grade, il est pour moi la preuve que le merite n’est jamais sans récompence.’ Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 8 germinal an 7 (28 Mar. 1799), F-Pan, AP279 14. 30 Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 249. 31 ‘The more the official transmission of capital is prevented or hindered, the more the effects of the clandestine circulation of capital in the form of cultural capital become determinant in the reproduction of the social structure’; ibid. 254. 32 Ibid. On the status projected by musical instruments and scores see Leppert, Sight of Sound, 63–117, and Jeanice Brooks, ‘Musical Monuments for the Country House: Music, Collection, and Display at Tatton Park’, Music & Letters, 91 (2010), 513–35. 33 Bourdieu notes the risk of cultural capital due to its intangibility: ‘More precisely, cultural capital, whose diffuse, continuous transmission within the family escapes observation and control (so that the educational system seems to award its honors solely to natural qualities) and which is increasingly tending to attain full efficacy, at least on the labor market, only when validated by the educational system, i.e., converted into a capital of qualifications, is subject to a more disguised but riskier transmission than economic capital.’ Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 254. Kathryn Libin also explicates both the positive and negative effects of women’s musical practices at the turn of the 19th c. in ‘Daily Practice, Musical Accomplishment, and the Example of Jane Austen’, in Natasha Duquette and Elisabeth Lenckos (eds.), Jane Austen and the Arts: Elegance, Propriety, and Harmony (Bethlehem, Pa., 2014), 3–20. 34 Although Rogers claims that in 1795 the National Institute enrolled one hundred students, and by 1800 over three hundred, recent archival research by Geneviève Haroche-Bouzinac shows that it had about eighty students enrolled in 1800 and 115 by 1802. See Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, 46; and Geneviève Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan: Comment la femme de chambre de Marie-Antoinette révolutionna l’éducation des femmes (Paris, 2017), 213 and 296. 35 These are the figures for tuition and fees in 1802. Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 300. 36 Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, 51. 37 Ibid. 51. Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 231–2. 38 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 236. 39 See David G. Chandler (ed.), Napoleon’s Marshals (New York, 1987), 238–54; and John R. Elting, Swords around a Throne: Napoleon’s Grande Armée (New York, 1997), 138–9. 40 Chandler (ed.), Napoleon’s Marshals, 238–54, and Elting, Swords around a Throne, 138–9. 41 Haroche-Bouzinac claims that Campan gave music an important place in her curriculum; see La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 245–7. 42 Jean-Louise-Henriette Genet-Campan, Correspondance inédite de Madame Campan avec la reine Hortense, ed. J. A. C. Buchon (Paris, 1835); Gabrielle Réval, Madame Campan: Assistante de Napoléon (Paris, 1931), 172; and J. Terrie Quintana, ‘Educating Women in the Arts: Madame Campan’s School’, in Frederick M. Keener and Susan E. Lorsch (eds.), Eighteenth-Century Women and the Arts (Contributions in Women’s Studies, 98; New York, 1988), 237–44 at 241. Quintana incorrectly identifies Théodore Mozin, son of Benoît, as a teacher at Campan’s school. This cannot be correct, as Théodore, born in 1818, would have been too young to teach there. 43 On Bonesi, see Bertil H. Van Boer, Historical Dictionary of Music of the Classical Period (Lanham, Md., 2012), 89. 44 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 22 Dec. 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14. 45 ‘Le Ministre de l’Intérieur, Objets nécessaire à la maison d’éducation de la Citoyenne Campan’, an 4 (Sept. 1795–Sept. 1796), F-Pan, F17 1344 (36) fo. 7. Although the supply request is undated, it is found with the set of correspondence between Madame Campan and her Directory government contact discussed below, so it probably dates from sometime before or during the summer of 1796. See Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden, ‘ A Lady-in-Waiting’s Account of Marie Antoinette’s Musical Politics: Women, Music, and the French Revolution’, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 21 (2017), 72–100 at 94–5. 46 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 203 and 247. 47 Ibid. 249–50. Haroche-Bouzinac states that professional aspirations were useful to students who faced uncertain futures. Quintana similarly argues in ‘Educating Women in the Arts’ that lessons in the arts were both practical and social. 48 Constant Pierre, Le Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation: Documents historiques et administratifs (Paris, 1900), 545, 533–4. 49 ‘Rapport présenté au Directoire Exécutif par le Ministre de l'Intérieur’, 27 messidor, an 4 (15 July 1796), F-Pan, F17 1344. 50 Pierre-Michel Menger, Le Travail créateur: S’ accomplir dans l’incertain (Paris, 2009), 12–13. 51 Campan, De l’éducation, i. 189. 52 Ibid. i. 269. 53 In From the Salon to the Schoolroom, Rogers emphasizes the public nature of Campan’s curriculum. 54 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, n.d., c.1801, and 16 July 1803, F-Pan AP279 14. 55 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 262. 56 Fanny Burney D’Arblay, The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D’Arblay), ed. Joyce Hemlow with Curtis D. Cecil and Althea Douglas, 12 vols. (Oxford, 1972–84), v. 369. 57 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 262. 58 D’Arblay, Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, v. 370. 59 Ibid. 367. 60 D’Arblay describes two English women dressed in a ‘totally passé’ fashion: ‘Madame Campan desired to know how they came in, & by what Tickets? & a message came to say that Margravine d’Anspach, happening to pass through St Germaine en laye [sic], had heard at the Auberge, of the Seminary & Examination, & had therefore come to see it. Made [sic] Campan seemed extremely surprised’ (ibid. 373) 61 Ibid. 364. 62 Ibid. 366–9. 63 Ibid. 368. 64 D’Arblay explains (ibid.) that her entourage arrived late, and she does not mention music except that prizes were awarded in it, and so it is my conjecture that she probably missed this segment of the examinations, since she describes the other portions that she witnessed in detail. 65 Campan, Correspondance inédite, 8. 66 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 262. 67 Bourdieu argues that holders of cultural capital are kept in control by those with economic capital through competition: ‘Everything suggests that as the cultural capital incorporated in the means of production increases (and with it the period of embodiment needed to acquire the means of appropriating it), so the collective strength of the holders of cultural capital would tend to increase—if the holders of the dominant type of capital (economic capital) were not able to set the holders of cultural capital in competition with one another. (They are, moreover, inclined to competition by the very conditions in which they are selected and trained, in particular by the logic of scholastic and recruitment competitions.)’ Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 247. 68 D’Arblay, Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, v. 372. 69 Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 245. 70 D’Arblay, Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, v. 371. 71 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 24 Aug. an 13 (probably 1805), F-Pan AP279 14. Nancy conflated the Gregorian and Revolutionary calendars when dating this letter, but it was probably written in Aug. 1805 (as she states), since year 13 ran from Sept. 1804 to Sept. 1805. 72 On women’s virtuosic repertory, see, Elizabeth N. Morgan, ‘Virtuous Virtuosa: Women at the Pianoforte in England, 1780–1820’ (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2009); Libin, ‘Daily Practice’, 64, 89; and Head, Sovereign Feminine, 76–119. 73 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, undated, response from General Macdonald dated 25 v … an 10 (Oct. 1801–Mar. 1802), F-Pan, AP279 14. She also mentions a sonata by ‘Boyer’, perhaps one of the three trio sonatas with instrumental accompaniment composed by Pascal Boyer and published by Gaveaux. François Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens, 8 vols. (2nd edn., Paris, 1866–8), ii. 50. The pieces mentioned in Nancy’s letters are similar to those identified at Chawton House by Libin in ‘Daily Practice’. Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 7 June 1806, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘un joli rondeau de Steibblt [sic] j’apprenderai le concerto pour l’examen’. 74 Libin, ‘Daily Practice’, 64, 89. Head discusses the technical difficulty of works marketed to women in Sovereign Feminine, 76–119. 75 See Frank Dawes, Karen A. Hagberg, and Stephan D. Lindeman, ‘Steibelt, Daniel (Gottlieb)’, Grove Music Online, accessed 27 Oct. 2017. 76 Édouard Fétis, ‘Histoire et origine des concerts’, France musicale (1839), 500. 77 Dana Gooley, ‘Liszt and his Audiences, 1834–1847: Virtuosity, Criticism, and Society in the Virtuosenzeit’ (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1999), 105. 78 Morgan, ‘Virtuous Virtuosa’, 109. 79 Cited in Libin, ‘Daily Practice’, 62–4. This also corroborates Yim’s assertion in ‘ A British Child’s Music Education’ that there were shared practices in women’s music education in France and England at this time. 80 Head, Sovereign Feminine, 102. 81 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 13 ventôse an 11 (4 Mar. 1803), F-Pan, AP279 14. 82 Musicologists have noted this paradox in other Western contexts during this period; here I aim to nuance how this paradox unfolded in Napoleonic France, in particular. See especially Libin, ‘Daily Practice’, and Head, Sovereign Feminine. 83 Joseph Patrat, La Pension de jeunes demoiselles: Pièce morale, en vers, en un acte, mêlée de musique (Paris, c.1800), Bibliothèque nationale de France, RF 79057. 84 Ibid., p. vii. On conduct dramas, see Leslie Ritchie, Women Writing Music in Eighteenth-Century England: Social Harmony in Literature and Performance (Aldershot and Burlington, Vt., 2008), 38. 85 The opera is not listed among Alexandre Piccinni’s works in Grove Music Online. 86 Joseph Patrat, La Pension genevoise, ou l’éducation: Drame en un acte et en vers (Geneva, 1778). 87 Patrat, La Pension de jeunes demoiselles, 25. 88 Campan’s plays and comedies were published posthumously together with volumes of her didactic works, such as De l’éducation, vol. 2. 89 Geoffroy-Schwinden, ‘ A Lady-in-Waiting’s Account of Marie Antoinette’s Musical Politics’, 77–86. 90 Campan, De l’éducation, i. 253 (emphasis added). 91 For one excellent example of this complicated issue, see Bailey’s analysis of a performance by two girls on their balcony, which became public when gentlemen eavesdropped on their playing; Candace Bailey, Music and the Southern Belle: From Accomplished Lady to Confederate Composer (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill., 2010), 26–7. 92 Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, 45–75. 93 Popiel, Rousseau’s Daughters, 12. 94 Ibid. 165. 95 Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, 72. 96 Popiel, Rousseau’s Daughters, 175. 97 Nancy MacDonald to General MacDonald, 19 Apr. 1809, F-Pan, AP279 14; Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, 72. 98 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 16 July 1803, F-Pan, AP279 14, and Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 16 July 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14. 99 See below, n. 101, for full quotation. 100 Campan, De l’éducation, i. 253, and Campan, Correspondance inédite, 21. Madame Genlis used precisely the same adjective to describe the music of her salon, as quoted in Richard J. Viano, ‘By Invitation Only: Private Concerts in France during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century’, ‘Recherches’ sur la Musique française classique, 27 (1991–2), 131–62 at 143. 101 Campan, Correspondance inédite, 27–8: ‘Les progrès en musique sont inconcevables chez moi depuis six mois; aussi aurai-je un grand concert après celui-là; où j’aurai soin d’attirer des oreilles célèbres: il faut qu’ on le sache bien à Paris.’ 102 ‘Le système d’éducation adopté par Madame Campan se ressentait-t-il un peu de la légèreté et de l’irréflexion de l’époche’; W. F. Van Scheelten, Mémoires sur la reine Hortense, aujourd’hui duchesse de Saint-Leu, 2 vols. (Paris, 1833), i. 57. 103 Ibid. 104 ‘Madame Campan … cru s’y reconnaître. Elle se plaignit à l’autorité, qui se moqua d’elle. Le public, bientôt dans le secret, se porta en foule aux représentations et rit aux dépens de la susceptible institutrice’; J. F. Reichardt, Un hiver à Paris sous le consulat, 1802–1803, ed. A. Laquiante (Paris, 1896), 238. 105 Charles Guillaume Étienne and Charles Gaugiran-Nanteuil, La Pacha de Suresne, ou l’amitié des femmes: Comédie-anecdote en un acte et en prose (Paris, 1802). 106 Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, 53. 107 Haroche-Bouzinac also mentions this episode in La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 326–7. 108 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, around 1802 or 1803, F-Pan AP279 14: ‘Madame Campan a été bien contente de moi. L’ on m’a bien applaudi surtout le general Bonaparte qui m’a bien embrasse [sic] et ma [sic] demandé quand tu revenois et je lui ai repondu que tu revenois après la comédie.’ The letter is dated in a different hand. In the following letter, she says that Napoleon promised he would write of her performance to her father and she said: ‘je desire qu’en même temps il le marque de revenir bien vîte’. 109 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 18 June 1806, F-Pan, AP279 14. 110 Ann Piéjus, Le Théâtre des demoiselles: Tragédie et musique à Saint-Cyr à la fin du grand siècle (Publications de la Société française de musicologie, troisième série, 7; Paris, 2000); Jean Racine and Jean-Baptiste Moreau, Esther: Tragédie, ed. Anne Piéjus (Publications de la Société française de musicologie, première série, 25; Paris, 2003). Libin, ‘Daily Practice’, lists Esther among the music scores held at Chawton House, and so it is possible that this tradition extended outside France. 111 Louis-Sébastien Mercier confirmed this perception in late 18th-c. France: ‘the prestige which covers an actress renders her the most dangerous woman one can imagine’; Nouvel essai sur l’art théâtrique (Amsterdam, 1773), 361, as cited in Jacqueline Letzter and Robert Adelson, ‘French Women Opera Composers and the Aesthetics of Rousseau’, Feminist Studies, 26 (2000), 69–100 at 69–70. 112 For example, she stated: ‘Quand ils ne placent sur la scène que des sujets tragiques … parviennent jusqu’au cœur par la seule impression des sens’; Campan, De l’éducation, i. 216. 113 Louis Bonneville de Marsangy, Madame Campan à Écouen: Étude historique et biographique (Paris, 1879), 19. 114 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 3 brumaire an 13 (25 Oct. 1804), F-Pan, AP279 14. 115 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 17 Dec. 1804, F-Pan, AP279 14. 116 ‘Madame Campan voudrois faire jouer Esther au printems et desireroit que je fisse Elise et si cela ne te deplaisois par elle me feront apprendre ce rôle elle m’a dit de te dire qu’il y avois peu de monde mais à la vérité des personnes marquantes je me suis haserdée à te faire une seconde fois cette demande parce que l’on se jouera cette tragédie que sur le fin du printems.’ Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 4 Mar. 1806, F-Pan, AP279 14. In the original letter, Macdonald writes this as a single sentence and I have maintained her punctuation and capitalization here. 117 Haroche-Bouzinac also finds that after 1802, Esther was only performed for smaller audiences at the Institute. La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 298. 118 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 5 June 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Il est vrai que je ne travaillais pas autant mon piano que mon chant … [maintenant] sitôt que j’ai un instant de reste dans ma journée … je l’emploi à étudier mon piano de préférence à tout autre chose.’ 119 Campan, De l’education, i. 284. 120 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 1 Nov. 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14. 121 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 6 Nov. 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14. 122 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 25 Nov. 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14. 123 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 7 Mar. 1808, 3 Mar. 1808, and 1 Aug. 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14. 124 ‘Cet musique étoient presque toujours des sonates et des morceaux de piano et les morceaux de chant que j’y ai acheté sont ceux que j’ai laissées à Paris pour relier avec ceux qui resteront habituellemens à la campagne.’ Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 19 Mar. 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14. 125 Brooks, ‘Musical Monuments for the Country House’, shows that women’s manuscript collections in late 18th-c. England marked social status in a manner similar to men’s book collections and that such musical manuscripts contributed to the overall prestige of the newly conceptualized country house. Although an in-depth study of French women’s manuscript-collection practices during this period has not yet been conducted, it is possible that such activity demonstrated some level of social prestige. Candace Bailey’s work similarly reveals the connection between women’s manuscript collections, French musical taste, and social status in 19th-c. America, as outlined in ‘Performing Paris in Antebellum Charleston: Music as Cultural Capital’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Rochester, NY, 9 Nov. 2017. 126 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 19 Mar. 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14. 127 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 22 Dec. 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14. 128 See Libin, ‘Daily Practice’, 59, 64–5, and 89; and Head, Sovereign Feminine, 76–199. 129 Campan, De l’éducation, i. 180. 130 On boarding-school communities as imagined families, see Rogers, From the Salon to Schoolroom, 71–5. 131 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 14 Nov. 1807, F-Pan, AP279 14. In this letter Macdonald articulates her diminished contentment at the school in Campan’s absence. 132 See Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 354–67; and Rogers, Demoiselles de la Légion d’honneur, 19–32. 133 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 18 Jan. 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘ni talens ni instruction rien ne me rendra la satisfaction que me pourreroit le Bonheur d’étre près de toi’. 134 Macdonald’s decision to begin harmony when Campan left had nothing to do with Campan’s educational philosophy, since harmony was already taught at the school before she departed, and Macdonald continued to study harmony with Carbonel when she eventually transferred to Écouen. 135 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 7 Jan. 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘J’attends avec impatience la permission d’apprendre l’harmonie … je veux attender ta réponse pour la commencer.’ 136 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 11 Jan. 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14. 137 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 28 June 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14. Macdonald was forced to suspend her lessons for a time when Carbonel lost his wife, leaving two young girls at the school. She explained to her father that Carbonel ‘did not have the head’ to give harmony lessons after her death because of the complex explanations they required (Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 19 July 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14). She later took up lessons with him again, certainly by the spring of 1809. 138 Authors of conduct books for girls in Enlightenment France worried both about ‘the harmful consequences of learning on women’s social image’ and about ‘the potential threat that it posed to the fulfillment of domestic obligations’; Nadine Bérenguier, Conduct Books for Girls in Enlightenment France (Farnham and Burlington, Vt., 2011), 92. 139 At the time, the average marriage age for bourgeois women in northern France was 21. See Bonnie Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1981), 223. Campan’s students were betrothed and married earlier than the women in Smith’s study. Haroche-Bouzinac’s biography of Campan, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, particularly chapter 22, confirms this assessment. 140 Leppert discusses this phenomenon at length in chapters 4 and 5 of Sight of Sound, 63–118. Libin similarly notes: ‘ A few of the more serious educational treatises [for women] offer instruction on the theory of music, explaining the musical scale, basic aspects of notation, and very occasionally venturing into the science of acoustics as then understood, though that is more common in books designed for boys’; ‘Daily Practice’, 5. Libin is corroborated by Ritchie, in the Introduction to Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England, 1–30. In Music and the Southern Belle, Bailey notes only one composition course offered for women (p. 137), and the study of harmony seemed to be rare among southern women during the Antebellum period. 141 See Yim, ‘ A British Child’s Music Education’, 5. 142 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘ Accompagnement’ and ‘Harmonie’, Dictionnaire de la musique (Paris, 1768), 6–15 and 239–46. 143 Letzter and Adelson, ‘French Women Opera Composers’, 69–70; and Robert Adelson, ‘Mozart fille: Lucile Grétry (1772–1790) and the Forgotten Tradition of Girl Musical Prodigies’, in Brigitte Van Wymeersch (ed.), Mozart aujourd’hui (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2006), 249–61. I am grateful to Dani Van Oort for bringing the latter chapter to my attention. 144 Pierre, Le Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation, ii. 545, 533–4. 145 Dorothea Baumann, ‘Die Musiksammlung der Königin Hortense auf Arenenberg’, Librarium: Zeitschrift der Bibliophilen Gesellschaft, 28 (1985), 110–37; Antonio Baldassarre, ‘Music, Painting, and Domestic Life: Hortense de Beauharnais in Arenenberg’, Music in Art: International Journal for Music Iconography, 23 (1998), 49–61; and Marilyn Portman, ‘“Romances” mises en musique par Hortense, Duchesse de Saint Leu, Ex-Reine de Hollande’, Crescendo: Bulletin of the International Association of Music Libraries, 79 (2008), 24–6. 146 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 263–4. 147 Ibid. 148 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 25 May 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Je ne t’ai prié de cela que pour avance[r] davantage [sic] dans les talens d’agrémens.’ 149 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 400. 150 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 19 Apr. 1809(?), F-Pan, AP279 14. It is impossible to discern the final digit in the year that Nancy wrote on the letter. It looks like ‘9’ and her discussion in the letter corroborates this dating. 151 MacLeod, ‘Schooling and Privilege’, and Rogers, From the Salon to the Schoolroom, explain the difference between younger and older students at pensions, and particularly at Écouen. 152 Macdonald gave Sidonie piano lessons and attested to Adèle’s progress at the keyboard. Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 12 June 1810, and 26 July 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. 153 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 1 May 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Tu m’as demandé combien je crois avoir besoin d’argent j’oublis de te le dire je crois que 400 pour nos leçons de Mr. Carbonel pendant quatre ou cinq moins serait suffisants et 50 chacune par mois pour notre entretien. Tu n’ai surmener pas l’adresse de Mr. Carbonel pour les paiements la voilà: Rue Flipeaux no. 42 au Marais.’ 154 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, April 19, 1809 (?), F-Pan AP279 14: ‘parcequ’il a trois cordes pour chaque note le son est plus beau’. See date explanation in n. 150. 155 Similarly, Yim, in ‘ A British Child’s Music Education’, describes how Caroline Chitterny’s schedule included large blocks of harp study after she had progressed significantly on the piano. 156 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 12 May 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. 157 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 30 June 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. 158 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 398. 159 Louis Bergeron, France under Napoleon (Princeton, 1981), 124. 160 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 6 June 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Tu me demandes mon bien tendre et excellens Père, si je ne serais point flattée d’être appelée la comtesse de Massa.’ Haroche-Bouzinac misdates the period of Macdonald’s courtship and marriage to Régnier as 1811 rather than 1810, as it is clearly indicated on all of her letters. 161 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 22 August 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Il n’est point mal sa figure est douce et assez spirituelle … il ne m’a pas paru mal.’ 162 Morgan, ‘Virtuous Virtuosa’, 117–53, makes a similar claim about women performing on the pianoforte in Britain. 163 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 6 Oct. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘J’avais déjà fais plusieurs fois de la musique devan[t] Mr Regnier.’ 164 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 22 Aug. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Il a l’air assez timid il a parlé peu la conversation a roulé sur la Dessein, la musique, sur Mr et Mme Destillères, sur l’Empereur et l’Impératrice, et bien plus que tout cela sur un bon et tendre Père qui est en Espagne.’ 165 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 9 Oct. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. 166 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 20 Oct. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. 167 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 24 Oct. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. 168 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 16 Nov. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Annoncez venir votre bien Père’. 169 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 12 Nov. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Nous chantons ensemble toutes les fois qu’il vienne. Il m’a envoyé hier sous l’enveloppe de Mme Campan un duo sur lequel il me prie de jeter un coup d’œil afin de l’envoyer quand il viendra.’ 170 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 25 Aug. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘ Accoutumé de servir les personnes d’un rang distingué’. 171 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 1 Nov. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘un beau piano pour mettre dans ma boudoir ou cabinet d’attente qui est près de ma chambre’. 172 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 10 Apr. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘Dis moi si je dois laisser des ordres pour faire venir notre piano à Paris et par quel moyen nous pourrons la faire transporter.’ 173 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 1 Nov. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14: ‘J’espère que ma complaisance de pincer de la harpe demain m’est rendra une belle qui figurera très bien avec la piano.’ 174 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 16 Sept. 1808, F-Pan, AP279 14. 175 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 12 Nov. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. 176 Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 25 Dec. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. Her first letter, written from a school at Fontainebleau, is Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 26 Dec. 1797, F-Pan, AP279 14. 177 Madame Campan’s investment in Macdonald would also pay off. When she was once again ruined during the Bourbon restoration, Marshal Macdonald secured a pension and safety for her through his valuable military reputation. Yvan David and Monique Giot, Madame Campan (1752–1822): Châteu de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, 21 juin à 30 octobre 1972 (Paris, 1972), 106. Surprisingly, this is not mentioned in Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan. 178 Suzanne D’Huart, ‘Fonds Massa (1621–1961), Répertoire numérique détaillé (279AP/1–279AP39)’ (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, 1968), 3–4. (Pdf accessible at https://www.siv.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/siv/rechercheconsultation/consultation/ir/pdfIR.action?irId=FRAN_IR_000718.) 179 ‘La danse est necessaire à la santé des élèves, mais il faut un genre de danse gaie et qui ne soit pas danse d’opéra. J’accorde aussi la musique, mais la musique vocale seulement.’ Quoted in Réval, Madame Campan: Assistante de Napoléon, 227. 180 Haroche-Bouzinac, La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 375–6. 181 Rogers, Demoiselles de la Légion d’honneur. 182 Steven Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 (Baltimore, Md. and London, 2004), 88–91. 183 There were women composers in France during the 19th c., but this is not the social category into which Macdonald and her peers would have fallen. See Florence Launay, Les Compositrices en France au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2006). 184 Haroche-Bouzinac uses this term, which corroborates my own view of Napoleonic marriages as a kind of market. La Vie mouvementée de Henriette Campan, 318. 185 Ibid. 293. 186 Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 241. 187 Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 4. See also Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 241. 188 ‘If economics deals only with practices that have narrowly economic interest as their principle and only with goods that are directly and immediately convertible into money (which makes them quantifiable), then the universe of bourgeois production and exchange becomes an exception and can see itself and present itself as a realm of disinterestedness’; Bourdieu, ‘Forms of Capital’, 242. 189 Sophie Drinker, Music and Women: The Story of Women in their Relation to Music, afterword by Ruth Solie (rev. edn., New York, 1995; first published New York, 1948). 190 D’Huart, ‘Fonds Massa’. 191 ‘Je veux être un exemple dans le monde. Tu n’auras jamais qu’à te louer de l’éducation que tu m’as donné.’ Nancy Macdonald to General Macdonald, 10 Dec. 1810, F-Pan, AP279 14. © The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Music as Feminine Capital in Napoleonic France: Nancy Macdonald’s Musical Upbringing
JF - Music and Letters
DO - 10.1093/ml/gcz047
DA - 2019-05-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/music-as-feminine-capital-in-napoleonic-france-nancy-macdonald-s-0vfxedAbxq
SP - 302
VL - 100
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -