ABSTRACT
After a promising increase in activity among women musicians in the Baroque era, the musical eras labeled “Classical” (approximately 1750-1800) and “Romantic” (1800-1870) were times of musical restrictions on women who could afford an arts education. As in the Baroque, eighteenth-and nineteenthcentury musical families still generated a cohort of well-educated and wellknown musicians, and many women from these families received formal music instruction that rivaled that of their male siblings. But while men could aspire to careers in music, women’s music education was a preparation for expected roles in the home as entertainer, musical centerpiece, and, if wealth allowed, promoter of the arts.
