Amy Beach’s career paralleled the rise of women’s clubs across America; the widespread amateur and professional musical organizations were important to her success. Gendered musical communities not only hosted Beach as both pianist and composer but provided commissions and audiences to purchase and perform her music, such as the thirty pieces she created for the women’s choruses associated with clubs. Beach and her compositions figured heavily in women’s organizations’ nationalistic agendas and were highlighted in their educational materials. Beach was active in the National Federation of Music Clubs, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National League of American Pen Women, and numerous other groups; her association with the NLAPW led to two White House appearances. These organizations provided her with supportive networks of like-minded women and deep friendships. In turn, Beach’s stature validated clubs’ efforts to promote America’s music and to make women central to its musical life.

This chapter by Marian Wilson Kimber explores the relation between music, dance and poetry in late nineteenth-century amateur dance performances in the United States, specifically Delsarte. With reference to little-known archival sources (musical scores, photographs, programme leaflets and educational guides), Wilson Kimber examines how elocutionists combined their recitation with posing in imitation of ancient Greek statuary. These performances grew from the expressive physical fitness movement named after the nineteenth-century French musician and teacher Delsarte. The practice is itself rooted in elocution, recitation or public speaking that was a common form of entertainment on programmes with chamber music throughout the United States. To the accompaniment of hymns, women recited and posed to entertain one another, but also with the goal of self-improvement. Describing these practices, Wilson Kimber articulates a historical case of what we might call choreographic legitimization, considering ways in which dancers sought to elevate the seemingly suspect status of their art with reference to ancient Classical values and sacred music.

With the exception of Robert and Clara Schumann, no relationship between two European musicians of different genders is as famous as that of Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, siblings who have always been linked in biographical depictions. Many of Felix's first published letters, appearing in the two decades after his death, were to Fanny, and the memoirs of friends such as Ferdinand Hiller, Eduard Devrient, and Ignaz Moscheles, who knew him from childhood, all mention his talented sister. Awareness of Fanny's musical abilities spread well outside the family circle during her lifetime; as early as 1830, John Thomson, writing in The Harmonicon, declared that Fanny composed “with the freedom of a master.” After her death, but even before the family history by her son, Sebastian Hensel, was published in 1879, recognition of “Mendelssohn's sister” began to appear in wide-ranging sources. The biographical dictionaries of Carl von Ledebur and François Joseph Fétis, both from the 1860s, contained entries on Fanny. In his 1869 inventory, Hereditary Genius, British scientist Francis Galton listed both Mendelssohn and his “very musical” sister, described as “of high genius.”