At least five female flute players are known outside Scotland in the eighteenth century: two aristocratic amateurs, Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia and Alicia Astely, later Lady Tankerville; and three professionals,70 Marianne Davies, Mademoiselle Taillard, and Mademoiselle Mudrich, the last two of whom performed at the Concert Spirituel. These other flute-playing ladies show that the perceived prohibition on women and wind instruments was not prevalent in the eighteenth century, and that it was not at all
uncommon for women to play flutes.71
Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, (1723–1787), the youngest sister of the
enthusiastic flute player Frederick the Great, shared a music exercise book with her brother
68 William Hamilton of Bangour, The poems and songs of William Hamilton of Bangour; collated with the
MS. volume of his poems, and containing several pieces hitherto unpublished; with illustrative notes, and an account of the life of the author, ed. James Paterson (Edinburgh, 1850), 72. Lady Mary Montgomery was the
daughter of the 9th Earl of Eglinton and his second wife, Anne, and the stepdaughter of Susanna. 69 Chambers, The Traditions of Edinburgh, 244.
70 As with gentlemen, ladies did not perform in public, leaving that to lower class professional musicians. Judith Tick, et al., "Women in music," Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press), accessed March 11, 2016, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/52554pg2. 71 At least not in Prussia, England, or France.
in which she sought his advice. She studied organ, lute, composition, stringed instruments, and the flute. Her letters suggest her strength and her interest were in the organ and
composition;72 perhaps learning the flute was so her brother would have a duet partner other than his valet, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf,73
and his teacher, Johann Joachim Quantz.74
Alicia Astley,75 Lady Tankerville (1718–1791), was an acquaintance of Charles Burney in Shrewsbury in 1742. About Lady Tankerville’s musical studies, Burney wrote that
[s]he manifested a passion for Music very early in practicing on the German Flute wch was then little known in the country. Sr Wm Fowler Bart of
Shrewsbury & this lady were the only performers on that instrumt then that obtained or deserved the least notice. But Miss Ashley practiced the Harpd likewise and took lessons of my Brother the Shrewsbury Orgt She used to have little Matteis, the language master & 1st Violin of the place to accompany her.76 Burney and Lady Tankerville met again in London in the early 1760s.77 Her husband was suffering from gout, and she had learned to accompany on harpsichord and was continuing to play the flute. Burney writes that she was a “good” performer,78 which leads to the question of what Burney means by performance: he could mean that she was a good
player, or he could also mean that she performed in public. The former seems more likely.
72 Darrell Berg, “Anna Amalia (i), Princess of Prussia,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press), accessed 31 January 2013,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/00960.
73 J. S. Bach is believed to have composed the Sonata for flute and continuo in E major, BWV 1035, for Fredersdorf. Ardall Powell and David Lasocki, “Bach and the Flute: The Players, The Instruments, The Music,” Early Music vol 23, no 1 (Feb 1995): 9–10, 13–14, 17–29, 18.
74 E. Eugene Helm and Derek McCulloch, “Frederick II, King of Prussia,” Grove Music Online, Oxford
Music Online (Oxford University Press), accessed 31 January 2013,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/10176; Edward R. Reilly and Andreas Giger, “Quantz, Johann Joachim,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press), accessed 31 January 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/22633.
75 Burney spells the name Ashley, but Alicia was the daughter of Sir John Astley
76 Charles Burney, Memoirs of Dr. Charles Burney, 1726–1769, ed. Slava Klima, Gary Bowers, and Kerry S. Grant (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 35. In a footnote, the editors comment that the German flute first appeared in London around 1705, thanks to Jean-Baptiste Loeillet. The other Shrewsbury flute player, Sir William Fowler, was lost at sea en route to India in 1746.
77 I believe the fragment from which this entry in his memoirs originates lacks a clear date. 78 Burney, Memoirs, 137–138
Burney lost track of her after this second meeting, but writes that she moved to Prussia and became a lady in waiting to Princess Amalia.79 Perhaps they played duets.
Marianne Davies (1743/4–1818) was best known as one of the first glass harmonica virtuosi, but she also played flute and harpsichord. Her parents and her sister were
musicians, and Marianne began performing in 1751 in London, where she played two flute concertos, one of which she may have composed, and a harpsichord concerto by Handel. She was best known as a flute player until 1762, when she became possibly the first person in Europe to play Benjamin Franklin’s latest invention, the glass harmonica. Following her début on the new instrument, her glass harmonica performances became the family’s primary means of support.80
A different environment with different standards existed in France, where women could more commonly be professional musicians. Two women played flute in Paris at the Concert Spirituel over a fifty-year span. On 1 November 1735 Mademoiselle Taillard performed a flute sonata at the Concert Spirituel. The program included a suite of symphonies by Aubert, Quemadmodum by Lalande and De profundis, by Destouches.81
Mademoiselle Mudrich performed twice at the Concert Spirituel. Her first appearance was on 24 December 1779 when she performed a flute concerto by Stamitz. Other works on the program included a symphony by Sterkel, a motet by Gossec, a piano concerto by Schroetter performed by Mademoiselle Cécile, airs by Sarti, a horn concerto by Punto performed by Mademoiselle Pokorny, noels with variations for violins, and La
Nativité by Gossec. Mademoiselle Mudrich’s second performance was on 2 February
79 Ibid., 138
80 Olive Baldwin, Thelma Wilson, “Davies, Mary Ann (1743/4–1818)”, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004), accessed 30 Aug 2013,
http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7252. Glass harmonica was played almost exclusively by women. Alec Hyatt King, “Musical glasses,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online (Oxford University Press), accessed August 30, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/19422.
81 Constant Pierre, Histoire du Concert Spirituel, 1725–1790 (Paris: Société Française de Musicologie, 1975), 224.
1780 when she performed an unspecified flute concerto. Other pieces included a symphony and a motet by Gossec and airs by Sacchini.82
4.6 Conclusion
Conventional wisdom among contemporary musicians is that ladies never played wind instruments. This can be determined to be false, and a result of carrying over prevalent and vocal nineteenth-century views. While flute-playing may have been an uncommon musical pursuit for ladies in the eighteenth century, it was by no means
scandalous or prohibited. Only a few accounts of female flute players from the eighteenth century survive; there certainly were many more who are not remembered because they were either not members of the aristocracy or not professional musicians. Receipts and bills in a man’s name could obscure who the musician in the household was. For reasons such as these, the prevalence of flute playing amongst ladies in the eighteenth century cannot be determined, but it can be determined that many women did play the flute without damage to their reputations.83
82 Pierre, Histoire du Concert Spirituel, 313–314.
83 Whether or not their digestion was affected, as John Essex cautioned, cannot be determined. Such things would have been spoken of in eighteenth-century letters but suppressed in the nineteenth.