The First in a series of Blogs about the 31 Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadrons activated during WW2 to provide inflight nursing care to sick and wounded soldiers, tended by Army flight nurses and enlisted technicians. The focus is on … Continue reading
Tales of Sound and Seduction: Organists in Nineteenth-Century British Novels Part 2 Unlike its sister keyboard instrument the piano, the organ has not been the focus of research on music making in nineteenth-century British novels. This blog considers the role … Continue reading
Tales of Sound and Seduction: Organists in Nineteenth-Century British Novels Part 1 Unlike its sister keyboard instrument the piano, the organ has not been the focus of research on music making in nineteenth-century British novels. A reader need only delve … Continue reading
Organ Benches and Bicycle Seats: Pedalists in Victorian England Part 2 Bicycle Seats As the nineteenth century progressed, English women benefited from increasingly liberal social attitudes about their education, physical exercise and meaningful employment outside the home. For example, fashions … Continue reading
Organ Benches and Bicycle Seats: Pedalists in Victorian England Part 1 Organ Benches In a 1927 retrospective account of organs and organists, Charles Pearce, then Vice President of the Royal College of Organists, wrote that ‘The evolution of pedal playing … Continue reading
Women Organists in Victorian Fiction Part 2 Women had been serving as organists in England’s churches – though not in its cathedrals and royal and collegiate chapels – since the end of the eighteenth century, but their role was not … Continue reading
Women Organists in Victorian Fiction Part 1 The image of music in fiction, especially involving women musicians, offers a rich area of discourse for scholars of Victorian literature. Mary Burgan, Paula Gillett, Phyllis Weliver and contributors to a collection of … Continue reading
Playing Upon Versus Playing With the Organ: The Reception of the Organ Recital in Victorian England Part 2 Elizabeth Stirling certainly was not the only organist to play at the 1862 International Exhibition whose choice of music raised some eyebrows … Continue reading
Playing Upon Versus Playing With the Organ: The Reception of the Organ Recital in Victorian England Part 1 I invite you to put yourselves in the shoes of a nineteenth-century Londoner who, on an August afternoon in 1863, is strolling … Continue reading
In Memoriam World War II Army Flight Nurses Jenevieve (Jenny) Boyle Silk, who died in June 2017, was the last living of the 25 World War II US Army flight nurses whom I interviewed in 1986 for what became Beyond … Continue reading