News and Events
She Played and Sang: Jane Austen and Music
published by Manchester University Press in March 2024.
In her surviving letters, Jane Austen mentions music occasionally, not always with enthusiasm. However, we know that she played the piano and sang, practising regularly. In her novels there are subtleties and ambiguities in the way she uses music and musicianship to illuminate the characters, sharpening in various ways the differences between them, and adding extra facets to her portraits of young women – and indeed young men – in the crucial time of their lives just before marriage.
Until quite recently we have only had the opinions of relations who were still young when Austen died to tell us how accomplished a musician she was, but there is now a rich source of evidence for her capacity and her taste in the surviving music books from her family circle, now digitised on Internet Archive.
In this book we meet Jane Austen the musician: the musical literate who wove music into the fabric of her novels, who made musical jokes in her letters, and who spent much of her precious leisure time carefully copying music into her own manuscript books for herself to play and sing.
Jane Austen-related talks and events, 2024
Monday 22 January 2024: 'Born under the Sign of St Cecilia: Jane Austen and Music', online lecture for Inspirare Arts Foundation, India.
26-28 February: Jane Austen, Yasmine Gooneratne and Australia. conference paper at Acharya Nagarjuna University, India.
18-19 April: Dusklands and Northanger Abbey, conference paper at conference on J.M. Coetzee's 1974 novel Dusklands, Cape Town, South Africa.
June: 'Haydn repurposed in Austen and Flinders', conference paper in Auckland, NZ.
3-7 June: York Festival of Ideas (online)
1-8 August: 'The outs and not outs are beyond me' : Jane Austen, Mary Hayes and Amelia Opie as female creative writers in Georgian Britain. International philosophy conference, Rome.
13-21 September: Jane Austen Festival, Bath, September 2024.
17 October: 'Drama in Words and Music: Jane Austen Sings' - a special session including live music at the JA Society of North America AGM, Cleveland, Ohio.
Interviews, podcasts etc relating to the publication of She Played and Sang (see home page for details)
Jane Austen's Four Last Songs - concert
3pm, Sunday 23 April 2023, St David's Anglican Church, 492 Glynburn Road, Burnside, South Australia
Jane Austen’s niece Caroline, who was 12 when Austen died, wrote more than 50 years later of three songs she remembered her aunt singing towards the end of her short life, at a time when she ‘had nearly left off singing’. One of Caroline’s cousins added a fourth song, the memory of which ‘half a century had no power to efface’.
This program of music from the Austen family music books centres on these four songs – two Scottish songs, one French, and one from the English theatre – making audible these traces of Austen at her piano in her last years, playing and singing for the entertainment of her young relatives, and for her own pleasure. Along with these songs, we will perform other music from the Austen family collection.
Program curated by Dr Gillian Dooley from Flinders University. Image: Cassandra Austen's watercolour portrait of her sister Jane.
Repeated at the Adelaide Lyceum Club on 2 May and at Living Choice Fullarton on 23 August 2023.
Music culture in Britain in the late Georgian period (1770-1820) as reflected in Jane Austen’s writings and music collection of the Austen family
Nominated Fellowship at Edinburgh University, July 2023
Including a public lecture at Edinburgh University on 20 July and a concert at the Scottish Arts Club on 22 July.
Jane Austen Society UK - events in June and August 2023
Including
10 June - Lecture at Summer event at Godmersham House, Kent - Austen's musical links with Godmersham.
17 June - Lecture at at St Columba's Church, London - What Caroline Austen can tell us about Jane Austen the musician
5 August - Lecture and performance at Jane Austen's House Museum, Chawton - Jane Austen's Four Last Songs
Details will be available on the JAS Events Listing web page
Jane Austen's Four Last Songs - illustrated lecture
10.00am, 27 September 2023, The Johnston Collection, East Melbourne.
Jane Austen’s niece Caroline, who was 12 when Austen died, wrote more than 50 years later of three songs she remembered her aunt singing towards the end of her short life, at a time when she ‘had nearly left off singing’. One of Caroline’s cousins added a fourth song, the memory of which ‘half a century had no power to efface’. This illustrated presentation will put these songs in the context of Austen’s life and her music collection.
This talk will be repeated at the Jane Austen Society of Melbourne on 28 October 2023.
There will be a presentation about Austen and music at the Jane Austen Society of Adelaide, 1.30pm, 18 November 2023 - topic to be confirmed.