Emily Eubanks
My OrigiNOLE Story: Emily Eubanks | English | October 24, 2022
Emily Eubanks is a PhD candidate at Florida State University, where she also completed a master’s degree in musicology in 2019. Her research centers on various intersections of women’s music culture, including music patronage and management, domestic music-making, and nineteenth-century salon culture.
Emily’s dissertation analyzes the theatrical works, keyboard music, and lieder performed in Karoline Pichler’s (1769–1842) Viennese music salon from 1815 to 1830. This project reconsiders women’s creative and political agency in the context of the Biedermeier era. This period has traditionally been characterized by intense censorship and a pervasive secret police presence to suppress ideas that had recently led to revolutions in America (1775–1783), France (1789–1799), and Haiti (1791–1804), leading many Austrians to radically re-center their lives around the private sphere. By identifying the attendees of Pichler’s salon and reconstructing the soundscape of a typical middle-class Viennese home, Emily explores the hybrid nature of the salon and reveal the extent of censorship and cultural policing. Contextualizing music performances in Pichler’s salon centralizes women’s contributions to cultural and political life in Biedermeier Vienna and the lasting importance of Austrian salon culture today. Her dissertation research has been funded by the American Musicological Society, the Central European History Society, and the Fulbright Austria program.