Content area
Full text
The North German Enlightenment saw an increase of published music composed by women, particularly in the realm of female domestic music making, such as lieder and keyboard works.1 Anna Bon di Venezia (1738-?), a virtuoso harpsichordist trained at the Ospedale della Pieta, contributed to this growing trend, though she chose a different and unusual route to success. Her op. 1 was a collection of six flute sonatas (1756) that would have been consumed and performed exclusively by male amateur musicians, since the flute was not considered an appropriate instrument for women.2 Rather than publish her first opus for her primary instrument, the harpsichord, Bon strategically chose to boost her reputation by attempting to gain acceptance among mostly male amateur flutists.
The title page of the collection, reading "composte da Anna Bon di Venezia, Virtuosa di Musica di Camera" not only bore witness to Bon's playing abilities but also alluded to her training at the famed Venetian Ospedale. Bon thereby capitalized on her femininity by carefully constructing her identity as one of the famed "vestal virgins of the Pieta" as they were known, implying at once morality and sexuality through her virtuosity and youth. While this constructed identity may have intrigued buyers at the outset, the published collection also facilitated an interaction less documented in the era: an intimate experience between a young female composer and a male amateur musician. According to eighteenth-century con cepts of aesthetics and character, music was a critical practice for the formation of individual and moral identity. In this context, Bon's collection can be interpreted as offering men an opportunity to develop an internal sense of feminine identity as a balance to the rational, hegemonic masculinity expected of men at the time.3
A reconstruction of Bon's identity through the experiences of the audience that purchased her op. i reveals a complex concept of femininity both in her publication itself and in accounts by travel writers reporting on performances by the Ospedale musicians. By probing the historical concept of character in eighteenthcentury musical and aesthetic theories, I propose a means to locate female character in Bon's sonatas and identify how consumers may have internalized that character. Finally, an examination of editorial interventions in a manuscript copy of Bon's sonatas preserved in the...