Authors

Sasha Rasmussen¹;  ¹ University of Oxford, UK

Discussion

The question of historical listening has recently attracted historians and musicologists alike. The rapidly-changing soundscape of the early twentieth century, when social and technological developments drastically altered listening habits and environment, appears as a moment of particular salience. This paper will examine how women listened within the microcosm of formal musical education, reconstructing the experiences of female students at the St Petersburg Conservatoire. Women studying at the Conservatoire occupied cultural space somewhere between dilettantes and professionals, navigating wider discursive shifts around women’s education, professionalism, and creative potential.

Drawing on enrolment data, scholarship records, personal files, and published reminiscences, this paper outlines the supportive networks of musically-minded women which existed within the institutional framework of the St Petersburg Conservatoire. I argue that these relationships between women facilitated their involvement in musical activities on both a practical and an emotional level, and that this should prompt us to reconceive of the Conservatoire not only as a masculine monolith, but also as an environment which fostered – or even encouraged – close communities of women. By better understanding the social and personal dynamics of the Conservatoire, we also become more alert to the possibility of alternative listening cultures which diverged from dominant conventions.