Catherine Talbot in a college hall, Oxford - 22 November, 1743
from A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770, pages 43-44:
I am sorry we have no music to heighten your idea of our amusements; but a sorrowful truth it is, that I have no sort of ear, nor any kind of genius that way. This is however a truth which I do not unnecessarily confess to all the word [world?]; and indeed I think it too unsociable a thing to dissent from any rational entertainment that the greater part of the world approves, and are fond of, so that I am really grown to love music out of deference to the better taste of … more >>
Miss Catherine Talbot and Mrs Elizabeth Carter, and Montagu Pennington (ed.), A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770, volume 1 (New York, 1973), p. 43-44. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1674735193949 accessed: 19 April, 2024
Listeners
Listening to
hide composers
Samson
written by George Frideric Handel |
Experience Information
| Date/Time | 22 November, 1743 |
| Medium | live |
| Listening Environment | in the company of others, indoors, in public |
Notes
The listening experience is found in a letter from Catherine Talbot to her life-long dearest friend Elizabeth Carter, dated 27 December 1743. Original spelling, punctuation and capitalisation retained. Elizabeth Carter was a member of the Bluestockings Society, educated women who met and exchanged letters about a wide variety of intellectual interests. The origin of the term may reference a gentleman who participated in the group wearing blue stockings, not the formal black stockings that convention required. He was welcomed none the less, suggesting a spirit of intellectual enquiry and companionship that changed by the Victorian era when ‘Bluestocking’ became a derogatory term directed at women interested in intellectual pursuits.