music book

for the study

of voice, piano

& choral word chor

a Dickinson Family

Library copy.

EDR 469. copy mss

Houghton Library.

Harvard University

(Cambridge, MS). —

Pianoforte; Renaissance

revival square piano;

floral and scroll carved

legs and apron. Hallet,

dooms Davis & Co., Boston, as it
redeems

Massachusetts; c.1845.

Brazilian rosewood,

Brazilian rosewood

veneer, spruce, ivory,

iron; height 93.9 cm.,

width 207.0 cm.,

depth 99.0 cm.

E. Dickinson

received this

piano from her

father in 1845,

when she was

fourteen.

Piano stool; pedestal-

based with hexagonal

seat upholstered in

plush; hexagonal

pedestal flares to ring

and base with three ball

and ring feet; screw

mechanism for raising

and lowering seat.

unknown

American

maker;

circa 1845.

Brazilian rosewood,

Brazilian rosewood

veneer, upholstery;

height 49.5 cm.,

diameter 35.5 cm.

This stool most

likely was acquir-

ed by Ed. Dickinson

when he purchas-

ed the pianoforte

for his daughter

Emily in 1845.

a bottle of otto

of rose to go

with it, a sheet

of music, a china

mug with Forget

me not upon it

from S. S.,—

Herself and not her

music was what we

seemed to love

One of the make sweet

mortal musics music.

Jupiter denies Pussy

I stop the birds to listen. goes

These behaviours down

of the year hurt there

almost like music, too,

shifting when

it ease us most.

these core

materials

this mooSic

H. Vendler: ‘The

FAScinat-ing

CHILL that

MUsic LEAVES.’

‘The FAScinAting Anton

CHILL that Rubinstein

MUsic LEAVES.’ eared h

but not to

our Creator —

earthly estrangement

worlds Core. —

shoreshe’s

how? read s

timid &

tumultuous

germ soul

cRealt or I

and now am

I have very

a pia happy

issi played

m o & sang

him hymn Father Father psalm

I want a Piano

I want all together.

I prefer Rosewood

3 pedals—and a

stool. Stun with

Bolts of melODE!

study time in

lyric (choral) time

could our we might

thoughts be in fact shatter

pitched as time with

the lyric’s, the deter

mined voice of our

musings

To Susan Gilbert, 1853:

‘Dear Susie – I send

you a little air – The

‘Music of the Spheres’

The ear

is the

last face.

E. Dickinson

included in

this lettre

a sketch

ascending

musical

notations (scales)

and puffs of

ascending clouds.

This then is a book.

And there are more

of them. Why is

any other book needed?

and the open leaf

of the book makes

the tears come

We hear

after we see,

which to tell

you first is still

my destiny.

open me carefully

Put up my lute!

Lines lyres

sole line

y M sic

Notes to Cantone 5a.

1. The Dickinson Cantone. Sharon Cameron, in the remarkable book Lyric Time: Dickinson and the Limits of Genre (1979) writes that the contradiction of lyric speech arises from a new reality emergent in distinct as well as collective (harmonised) voices: ‘At the center of the contradiction rises the lyric’s choral voice, however disguised under the cloak of a customary first-person speaker’ (207).
2. Private lyric (accomp. lyre) in contrast to public choral odes (kithara), but both may be deployed as lyric, broadly defined. Dickinson as a choral poet, a social poet in recluse. No ‘pure’ poem.
3. Dickinson’s piano. Cantone takes interest in a bound volume of Dickinson’s miscellaneous sheet music. Books: Carolyn Lindley Cooley, The Music of Emily Dickinson’s Poems and Letters: A Study of Imagery and Form (2003). Notation letter to S. Gilbert featured on the 1990 cover of Judy Jo Small’s Positive as Sound: Emily Dickinson’s Rhyme. 3 registers.