You can now read another article of mine, a labor of love that’s been in the works for about a year now. It’s through Textes & Contextes, a journal connected to the Interlanguage Center at the University of Burgundy. The theme is “Lullabies: Historic and Cultural Circulations, Transmissions of the Intimate,” and considers the lullaby writ large as a transcultural and mobile expression of intimacy. My contribution to the discussion it entitled “Instrumental Lullabies and 19th Century Representations of Childhood, Girlhood, and Motherhood,” and examines lullabies that have been recontextualized several times over, not functional in their original care-taking sense, and not performed in adult performance contexts as art songs or virtuosic berceuses. These are instrumental lullabies that children practice and perform in their own homes, imaginatively playing out roles of childhood, girlhood, and (future) motherhood. I look at the dynamics of performance as self-regulation, the roles of mothers as domestic teachers, and adult mimicry in musicalized doll play. My final section looks at examples that have more problematic depictions of lullabies, both by female composers from the USA, Florence Newell Barbour and Juliet Adams, aka Mrs. Crosby Adams. The latter is particularly interesting for her pedagogical perspective which she articulated in a wealth of publications, journals, and letters. I’d like to make a larger project of her in the future.
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