Music in Women’s Words: Scholarship and Sensibility in German Female Musicology, 1860–1895

Abstract

Histories of musicology have traditionally foregrounded the contributions of male scholars. Such narratives obscure the influence of research by women who actively contributed to the field during its earliest stages, including Lina Ramann, Marie Lipsius (La Mara), and Anna Morsch. Although these women have received little modern recognition, their work played a significant role in shaping the discipline. Reassessing existing origin narratives of musicology, this study foregrounds women who received positive critical reception despite being forced to operate outside higher academic institutions. It explores themes of gender and authorship, illuminating how women wrote music histories within a patriarchal society that sharply defined gender roles. Critical responses often interpreted a distinct “feminine sensibility” in their writing, and their status as women affected both who they chose to write about and how they wrote about them. This work has important implications for feminist historiography and biography; by studying historical narratives written by women we can better understand how their perspectives would have influenced musicology had they been included in the discipline’s institutional memory.