Emily Dickinson's Music Book: A Live Performance of an American Poet’s Musical Life

After years of studying piano as a young woman in her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson had her large collection of published sheet music bound into a keepsake book, a common practice at the time. Now part of the Dickinson Collection in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, this bound volume of 107 pieces includes the poet’s favorite instrumental piano music and vocal music, ranging from theme and variation sets to vernacular music.

Join us virtually or in-person as musicologist George Boziwick discusses his recent publication Emily Dickinson's Music Book and the Musical Life of an American Poet. Offering a fresh historical perspective on a poetic voice that has become canonical in American literature, Boziwick brings this artifact to life, documenting Dickinson’s early years of musical study through the time her music was bound in the early 1850s, which tellingly coincided with the writing of her first poems. Boziwick uses Dickinson’s letters and poems alongside sheet music, newspapers, and other archival sources from the American Antiquarian Society to explore the various composers, arrangers, and publishers behind this music, presenting new insights into the multiple layers of meaning that music held for her.

During the program, attendees will hear selections from Dickinson’s music book performed live by pianist Kit Young and soprano Maria Ferrante. Nineteenth-century parlor songs to be performed will include “Oh the Merry Days When We Were Young," “The Old Armchair,” and “Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms.”