Women and Musical Education in the Regency Era | Kathryn Libin

Jane Austen and other women who enjoyed music, and who aspired to even a modest level of musical accomplishment, needed some training. What kind of musical education could women in the Regency era expect to receive? What does it indicate that Marianne Dashwood plays concertos, why is Mary Bennet interested in thoroughbass, and how would Jane Fairfax have encountered the compositions of J.B. Cramer? Contemporary manuals on female education offer a glimpse into what was then considered appropriate for musical study, and help us understand what it took for Austen, her characters, and the women of her time to achieve their musical goals.

Kathryn L. Libin, Mary Conover Mellon Professor of Music at Vassar College, earned BM and MA degrees in piano performance at the Oberlin Conservatory and New York University, and a PhD in musicology at NYU. She has lectured and published on Mozart’s music and manuscripts, on music in Jane Austen’s life and works, and on musical sources in the Lobkowicz Library near Prague. Her articles on Jane Austen and music may be read in Persuasions (19, 22, 28, and 46), in the collection Elegance, Propriety, Harmony: Jane Austen and the Arts (2013), and in the Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts (2024). At Vassar she teaches a course on Jane Austen and Music in the Domestic Sphere.