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In the German states in the late eighteenth century, women flourished as musical performers and composers, their achievements measuring the progress of culture and society from barbarism to civilization. Female excellence, and related feminocentric values, were celebrated by forward-looking critics who argued for music as a fine art, a component of modern, polite, and commercial culture, rather than a symbol of institutional power. In the eyes of such critics, femininity-a newly emerging and primarily bourgeois ideal-linked women and music under the valorized signs of refinement, sensibility, virtue, patriotism, luxury, and, above all, beauty. This moment in musical history was eclipsed in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and ultimately erased from the music-historical record, by now familiar developments: the formation of musical canons, a musical history based on technical progress, the idea of masterworks, authorial autonomy, the musical sublime, and aggressively essentializing ideas about the relationship between sex, gender and art. In Sovereign Feminine, Matthew Head restores this earlier musical history and explores the role that women played in the development of classical music.

Music --- Women musicians --- Gender identity in music. --- Musicians, Women --- Women as musicians --- Musicians --- Art music --- Art music, Western --- Classical music --- Musical compositions --- Musical works --- Serious music --- Western art music --- Western music (Western countries) --- History and criticism. --- Social aspects --- History --- Gender identity in music --- History and criticism --- Identité sexuelle dans la musique --- Musiciennes --- Musique --- Histoire --- Histoire et critique --- 18th century. --- 19th century. --- art. --- authorial autonomy. --- beauty. --- bourgeois ideal. --- classical music. --- classical. --- commercial culture. --- engaging. --- female composers. --- female excellence. --- female musicians. --- femininity. --- feminocentric values. --- fine arts. --- gender studies. --- german states. --- luxury. --- masterworks. --- music. --- musical canons. --- musical composers. --- musical history. --- musical performers. --- musical. --- patriotism. --- performing arts. --- refinement. --- sensibility. --- sex. --- social issues. --- virtue. --- womens history. --- womens issues.