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Music, Memory and Loss in Victorian Painting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2011

Suzanne Fagence Cooper
Affiliation:
Victoria and Albert Museum

Extract

In his collection of essays Music and Morals (1871), music critic the Rev. H.R. Haweis devoted several pages to the relationship between music and memory. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed that music could trigger recollections in acute and intense ways. He suggested that there are ‘many mediums which connect us vividly with the past but for freshness and suddenness and power over memory’ the sense of hearing is paramount. He imagines a middle-aged woman caught unawares by a few bars of music.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

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References

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6 Examples of seventeenth-century Dutch still-lives, incorportating musical instruments as vanitas symbols, could be found in many Victorian collections. These included Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life (Harmen Steenwyck, oil on oak, c.1640),Google Scholar featuring a lute and a flute, presented to the National Gallery, London by Baron Savile, 1888 or Vanitas Still Life (Jan Janz. Treck, oil on oak, 1648)Google Scholar , featuring a lute, bought by the Liverpool merchant Robert Philip Wood (1818–1898), now in the National Gallery, London.

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