Anna Pauder †

Musical aptitude was regarded a central ornament of feminine decorum for upper-class women throughout the American Civil War, particularly in the South’s culture of gentility. As such, numerous Confederate women recorded expressive accounts of their musical engagements—whether it be their own music making or commenting on that of others—in their wartime diaries and memoirs. This project studies 60 of those texts, tracing patterns of musical references through the lenses of race, class, gender, and nation. In a textual analysis, it thus examines how elite women from different parts of the Confederacy used the predominantly feminine vocabulary of music-making to position themselves in relation to their own performances of feminine conduct, their status as ladies, their identity as subjects of a new nation, and their pronounced whiteness. Considering the transformative nature of war, the focus on wartime life writing is established to explore women’s musically framed responses at a time when previously ingrained notions began to crumble and lines between prescribed behavioral expressions were blurred. Only somewhat recently have historians begun to engage with the aurality of the past. Just as music had to be deliberately performed to allow for its reception—at a time of widespread musical activity, yet just predating recording technologies—so did these women purposefully reflect on their engagement with the aural aspects of their existence during wartime induced social and cultural upheaval. Thus, this project’s analysis aims not only to grasp the experiential musical dimension of the war as experienced by certain white Confederate women but further to gain an understanding of how they participated in the recalibration and perpetuation of idea(l)s that have persisted beyond their writing, and ultimately, through the height of the Lost Cause narratives, have come to shape how the southern past and its female inhabitants are understood to this day.