Women and Music
In this room, you will learn about women’s role in music-making practices in 19th-century Colombia. Using Ana and Cristina Echeverría’s binder’s volume as the main example, this room showcases the conditions under which young women participated in music performances, most of which took place in private spaces and semi-private locations such as salons. You will also find audio recordings of 19th-century writings (recited by Juana Monsalve and Natalia Bohórquez), which address women’s music education and performance practices of the time. These literary fragments shed light on how these music activities went about as well as the social implications of music-making in women’s lives during this era.
Music and Marriage
“(…) The young ladies from Bogotá appear in front of the great hall before the most lucid citizens of Bogotá to receive a new award due to their talents and musical culture,[...] running their timid, snowy fingers on the ivory keys and giving us through their very sweet and delicate sopranos an idea of what the immortal Billingtons and Malibranchs [sounded like]. "
Click here to listen to this text recited in Spanish
El Día, febrero 7 de 1847, pág. 4.
Voice: Natalia Bohórquez. Grabación y mezcla: Natalia Bohórquez
Repertoire for the “señoritas”
“These creatures start out very formal. Their parents assign them a teacher who earns a [coin] or two for each lesson. These [young ladies] begin to learn their theory and to play scales and exercises; but after two or three months, tired of moving their fingers uselessly, they say to their teacher in a pleading tone: - "Assign me a little piece that sounds tasty, even if it's a little waltz."
Click here to listen to this text recited in Spanish.
Caicedo Rojas, “Estado actual de la música en Bogotá”,
El Semanario, 1886, 42
Voice: Natalia Bohórquez. Grabación y mezcla: Natalia Bohórquez
Señoritas in Colombian salons
A UNA VIEJA
Cheap pianist,
Singer without vocation,
As an object of ridicule
You are a marvel,
Worthy of exposure
Click here to listen to this text recited in Spanish
Poem by Gonzalo Vidal, published in La miscelánea in 1895
Voice: Juana Monsalve. Grabación y mezcla: Natalia Bohórquez
The music that these young ladies performed became an important part of the soundscape of the new urban bourgeoisie that was settling in urban cities across the Colombian territory. However, the technical skills that these performers displayed were disparate, and for this reason, they could receive affectionate and heartfelt praise or be made into a subject of ridicule.
Rosa Echeverría
The works for piano of composer Rosa Echeverría (born in Santa Marta, Colombia) collected in this binder’s volume, are quite rare given that the wealthy classes considered composing as a purely masculine activity. Back then, these elites thought that the idea of the tormented genius composer, reserved almost exclusively for (white and European) men, was not compatible with the innocent and pure ideals that nineteenth-century women were supposed to embody.
Rosa was Ana’s and Cristina's cousin, and several of her pieces are dedicated to them. However, the information available about the composer herself is scarce. These works were intended for performance in the private sphere, since “reputable” young ladies were not encouraged to partake in the city’s public life. Below, you can listen to some of Rosa’s compositions.
Intérprete: Manuela Osorno. Ingeniería de grabación y mezcla: Noelia Rego y Daniel Eduardo Rodríguez Castellanos.
Women in the Shadows
Despite belonging to a distinguished family, the information that we have on Ana and Cristina Echeverría is almost non-existent, which tells us a lot about the role of women in 19th-century Colombia. There is a lot of information about León Echeverría, their father, but his daughters are not even mentioned in his obituaries. Women were confined to the private sphere and it was frowned upon for them to appear publicly, so all their creative and intellectual display took place behind closed doors. This is also the case with Rosa Echeverría, who clearly had a talent for composition, but could only aspire to compose small works for piano, which were only performed by her closest circle of female friends.
“The activity of the arts, such as music, dancing, singing, is a very pleasant way of using time, provided that these occupations are not given preferential and exclusive attention; because a mother of a family, usually, cannot be an artist, and because a distinction must be made between what is essential to know, and what is only pleasant ”.
Click here to listen to this text recited in Spanish.
Josefa Acevedo de Gómez, Tratado sobre economía doméstica, 1869, 11
Voice: Juana Monsalve. Grabación y mezcla: Natalia Bohórquez
Manuals of Civility and Etiquette
Canciones del álbum
The Songs in the Echeverría Binder’s Volume
In Ana and Cristina's binder’s volume we find, in addition to a repertoire for piano, two songs arranged for two voices. The text of the anonymous two-part song "La Cocinera" reminds us of the roles established in straight relationships in a heteropatriarchal world. Interestingly, the thoughts that are expressed in this song are not compatible with the notion of decorum of the time, one clearly exposed in the manuals of civility, according to which women should be discreet and learn to be silent.
Intérprete: Manuela Osorno. Ingeniería de grabación y mezcla: Noelia Rego y Daniel Eduardo Rodríguez Castellanos. Valentina Sánchez, primera voz; Juana Monsalve, segunda voz.
Women’s Networks
“After the meal we returned to the living room where we asked the young ladies to play the piano, according to the new style, which is very well in vogue,, and which is of recent date. Several followed one another, and in almost all of them we found excellent execution, sensitivity and good taste. 'You see', I said to my friend D. Tiburcio, 'what an immense difference in this branch of the education of the fair sex between the present and 1803!' At that time the forte-pianos that were in Santafé did not reach four; and today there are more than one hundred and fifty: at that time the one who played an adagio, or an andante, passed through a teacher, and today you heard pieces of the most difficult European composition, as an easy and ordinary thing;
[...] It is a pity that they have not made the same progress in singing; with the exception of two or three [women]...But the fault lies not with our young ladies but with the teachers: until now they have not been taught anything other than monotonous tones of church singing ”.
Haz click aquí para escuchar el fragmento
Variedades: Bogotá entre 1803 y 1843 (III)", El Día, 25 de febrero, 1844, pág. 2.
Voz: Juana Monsalve. Grabación y mezcla: Natalia Bohórquez
Fuentes
Afanador, María Isabel y Báez, Juan Fernando. 2015. “Manuales de urbanidad en la Colombia del siglo XIX: Modernidad, pedagogía y cuerpo”. Historia y Memoria, n.º 11 (julio-diciembre): 57-82.
Duque, Ellie Anne. 1996. “La sociedad filarmónica o la vida musical en Bogotá hacia mediados del siglo XIX”. Ensayos: Historia y Teoría del Arte, n.º 3 (julio):75-92. https://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/ensayo/article/view/46482.
Head, Matthew. “If the pretty little hand won’t stretch” en Sovereign Feminine: Music and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Oakland: University of California Press, 2013.
Narvaja de Arnoux, Elvira. 2017. “Los manuales de retórica y los de urbanidad del siglo XIX: El control de las emociones como marca de distinción”. RÉTOR 7 (2): 110-134.
Velásquez, Juan Fernando. “El encanto de las damas: Las mujeres y la práctica musical a finales del siglo XIX en Medellín, Colombia” en Mujeres en la música en Colombia. El género de los géneros, ed. Carmen Millán de Benavides y Alejandra Quintana Martínez, 141-159. Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2012.