ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book argues for an expanded view of the cultural importance of performance. It asserts that eighteenth-century singers enjoyed considerable compositional powers and an authoritative cultural position opens historiographic and musicological prospects to wider considerations of women's contributions to music. The book considers the ways in which women communicated their social knowledge of cultural rules to one another. It stresses the importance of the linkage between social harmony and musical harmony as both a controlling and an enabling force for the production of music by women in the latter eighteenth century. In songs of charity, women could benefit from the intersection of patronage and charity to inscribe, perform or receive charitable actions. As writers and performers, they could articulate divergent responses to such stereotyped objects of pity as prostitutes and madwomen.
