Description: "From the theatrical stage to the literary salon, the figure of Sappho--the ancient poet and inspiring icon of feminine creativity--played a major role in the intertwining histories of improvisation, text, and performance throughout the nineteenth century. Exploring the connections between operatic and poetic improvisation in Italy and beyond, Singing Sappho combines earwitness accounts of famous female improviser-virtuosi with erudite analysis of musical and literary practices. Esse demonstrates that performance played a much larger role in conceptions of musical authorship than previously recognized, arguing that discourses of spontaneity--specifically those surrounding the improvvisatrice, or female poetic improviser--were paradoxically used to carve out a new authority for opera composers just as improvisation itself was falling into decline"--
Brief description: Melina Esse is associate professor of musicology at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.
Review Quotes: "With her perceptive readings, Esse illuminates the role of the improvvisatrice in nineteenth-century opera and the musical dimensions of improvisation. Revealing that nineteenth-century authorship was a fluid combination of creative, performative, collaborative, and contingent elements, she challenges an accepted narrative about the increasing dominance of the written work and the composer's authority. This fascinating study is deeply relevant to literary-cultural studies as well as to musicology."-- "Angela Esterhammer, University of Toronto"