Jane Austen 250th: concert and conference
This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and both the University and the city of Southampton will be marking the event with a year-long programme of events.
Tickets are now on sale for a concert on 11 July at Turner Sims which showcases music from the Austen family music books. It’s part of a Global Jane Austen Conference organised by UoS and University of Stirling and running from 10-12 July. There’ll be Austen experts and enthusiasts from around the world and an extensive programme of academic speakers. Staff Matters spoke to organisers of both events:
Home and Away Concert
Jeanice Brooks is Professor of Music at UoS
What’s the background to the concert?
The concert is part of the Global Jane Austen conference organised by Dr Gillian Dow (English) and Katie Halsey (University of Stirling). The event will bring scholars from all over the world to Southampton to explore the English writer’s global outlook and influence.
What music/instruments will be played? Who are the musicians?
The concert is called Jane Austen, Home and Away and imagines Austen’s house in Chawton, Hampshire, as a window onto the world, asking how making music at home acted as a form of armchair travel for the writer and other Britons of her time.
Ensemble Hesperi is an award-winning period instrument ensemble, joined for this concert by soprano Claire Ward. Hesperi’s keyboard player, Thomas Allery will play the Music Department’s Broadwood grand piano made in 1796, built at exactly the time Jane Austen was taking piano lessons from George Chard, organist of Winchester Cathedral.
How challenging an undertaking was it to research and find out what Jane Austen’s family listened to/played?
The concert draws on the Austen Family Music Books project, a wonderful collaboration between me (Professor Jeanice Brooks) and the UoS Hartley Library’s digitisation specialists. The project brings together digital facsimiles of 18 albums of music that belonged to Jane Austen and her relations. Featuring nearly 600 pieces of music, these books provide a fascinating insight into British musical culture as an international crossroads for composers and repertory and a space for imagining lands far away.
Dr Mary-Jannet Leith recently completed her PhD at the University of Southampton with a thesis, From Caledonia to the Capital, that explored the experiences and identities of Scottish musicians who migrated to London in the eighteenth century. She brings her expertise on the global dissemination of Scottish music to the programme.
After the concert, the performers will be joined by experts on Jane Austen’s home, travel writing, and British global networks for an interactive Q&A session. Dr John Macaleer (History) and Dr Gillian Dow will participate alongside representatives from Jane Austen’s House and Chawton House.
Can you give a flavour of the role music played in the Austen’s family life day to day?
Austen herself played the piano and sang through most of her life. She and her family carefully copied music by hand into personal albums and collected the sheet music that poured from London presses. These albums of individually copied or purchased sheet
music item, bound together, provide a unique snapshot of personal tastes and wider trends – just like a digital playlist on a mobile phone would do today.
Global Jane Austen Conference
Dr Gillian Dow is Associate Professor and Co-Director of Programmes in the English Department, UoS
“The Global Jane Austen Conference is an opportunity for Austen scholars to gather in the city that Jane Austen made her home from 1806-1809. We’ll be thinking about her writing and her legacy, 250 years after her birth. Austen was a Hampshire girl, through and through, but there’s no question that her novels now have global appeal.”
“We will be joined by scholars from Australia, North and South America, China, Japan, India, and many European countries. Presentations will include considerations of her novels in translation – a research interest of my own – and indeed her novels ‘translated’ onto screens, into web series, via multi-media video games and more.”
“There will be close readings of each of her novels, and of her unpublished works, and letters. And we’ll be joined by colleagues from the Austen House Museum, Chawton House and from 8, College Street, Winchester, where she died in 1817. In short, there will be something for everyone, in a packed programme across three days.”
Staff Matters will bring you more news about Jane Austen events in the next few months. You may be interested in some of the following activities:
- July – book the Home and Away Concert here.
- Winchester Cathedral: Running a series of events this year called Celebrating Jane. These include:
- June – Friday 6th Professor Michael Wheeler, UoS Visiting Professor of English will hold a talk entitled: To begin at the beginning: A talk by Professor Michael Wheeler
- September – Friday 19th Dr Gillian Dow is giving a talk entitled: The Tell-Tale Compression of the Pages: Jane Austen’s Endings.
Southampton city events
Archives
- There are Austen-related items in the Hartley Library archives. They include letters handwritten by Jane Austen.
- And at WSA there’s a knitted Jane Austen book Jane Austen in the Library | Winchester School of Art Library Blog
