Claribel in Context
A large part of the fascination of Claribel's story comes from the context in which she was composing and publishing her works. Models of the music business were shifting, and while Claribel found fans in some aspects of British music culture, other people and institutions were not so accepting. The following sources should provide insight into the larger business, musical, and cultural landscapes of England in the 1860s.
The business of music
Copyright Law and the Public Interest in the Nineteenth Century by Isabella Alexander
Find it near you on WorldCat
Authors, composers, publishers, judges, and legislators alike were all actively shaping England's copyright laws in the 1800s, and Isabella Alexander's book provides a detailed look at how and why laws shifted over time. While many publications on the subject focus on copyright as it applies to books (e.g. Authors and Owners by Mark Rose), Alexander brings the music publishers Chappell and Boosey into the picture. Of note, in particular, is her analysis of the court case Jeffreys v Boosey (1854) and its context. Analyzing the landscape of international music copyrights is beyond the immediate scope of this project, but suffice it to say that (1) Boosey and Sons did not hesitate to go to court for their copyrights, and (2) there is a good chance that most, if not all, of the American editions of Claribel's sheet music were pirated.
The House of Novello: Practice and Policy of a Victorian Music Publisher, 1829-1866 by Victoria Cooper
Find it near you on WorldCat
Victoria Cooper dove deep into the archives and business ledgers of Novello, a publisher that operated contemporaneously with Boosey and Sons, to deliver this detailed story about how Novello and the Victorian music business evolved over time. Even if someone writes a similar book about Boosey and Sons, this will be among the best in-depth looks at the era's music business practices.
"The Business of Composition: Measuring Economic Relationships at Breitkopf & Härtel, 1798–1838" by Derek Strykowski
DOI link
This article may seem an odd choice because it focuses on (A) a German publisher that operated (B) before Claribel's time. However, Derek Strykowski's quantitative analysis of how long composers maintained relationships with Breitkopf & Härtel -- i.e. a year or shorter in most cases -- provides concrete data against which Claribel's later and considerably more resounding success can be measured.
Victorian musical cultures
"Women and the Music Profession in Victorian England: The Royal Society of Female Musicians, 1839-1866" by Deborah Rohr
DOI link
Music as a profession was not always open to women like Claribel, even during her lifetime. Deborah Rohr's study of the Royal Society of Female Musicians sheds necessary light on the challenges fellow female composers, musicians, and music teachers faced in their quest to be recognized as professionals. One of the most important functions of the RSFM was an economic one; their brother organization, the male-only Royal Society of Musicians, provided financial support to (mostly male) musicians who had fallen upon hard times, and the RSFM went to great lengths to specifically support female musicians in comparable straits. We can see evidence of similar networks of support in Joyce Andrews' analysis of Claribel and Charlotte Sainton-Dolby's professional relationship -- and indeed, an eighteen-year-old Sainton-Dolby was one of the founding members of the RSFM.
"The Sexual Politics of Victorian Musical Aesthetics," Derek B. Scott
JSTOR stable URL
Victorians in general were anxious about a lot of things -- social class, perceived sexual immorality or decadence, and gender roles among them. Much of the trade-press backlash to Claribel's music (and, in a sense, to her success) has distinct overtones of sexism, and this article by Derek B. Scott draws out and analyzes the specific concerns people in that era had about masculinity and femininity as they applied to the musical spheres.
The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour by Derek B. Scott
Find it near you on WorldCat
While examining trade periodicals like The Orchestra and The Musical World is invaluable for several reasons -- mapping new Claribel releases and concert performances, seeing how media opinions of her and her work changed over time, &c -- it would be foolish to suggest, in line with the agenda-setting theory of media, that the opinions expressed in these papers were equivalent to public opinion on Claribel. Indeed, item #8 seems to suggest that although media opinions of Claribel skewed decidedly negative during the late 1860s, the public at large still enjoyed her music. Herein lies one of the major sources of value in The Singing Bourgeois, namely that it focuses far less on the media outlets of the era and more on both the songs themselves and their audiences. This book is also valuable for the attention it pays to the music theory behind these songs, which is something I will freely admit I am not equipped to analyze.
"Mass Culture and the Reshaping of European Musical Taste, 1770-1870" by William Weber
DOI link
Understanding the musical and cultural landscape of Claribel's time is crucial for understanding her place in it. Though William Weber first published this article in 1977, his historical analysis is still foundational to this sort of understanding. Weber traces how music publishers helped define categories of classical versus popular music (and in particular how dead composers became venerated figures), and how concerts as a form of mass entertainment arose in the mid-1800s. Claribel wrote popular music that was often performed in ballad concerts, a performance niche that was basically made possible by the exact forces Weber describes.