See da Sousa Correa’s section ‘Music and the Woman Writer’, pp. 173).Īnne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, edited by Herbert Rosengarten (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. Weber, ‘Thomas Hardy Music: With a Bibliography’, Music and Letters, 21 (1940), 172–178 (p. Pinion notes that ‘such ecstasy was roused in him as he performed his father’s music that he could hardly hide his tears’, Thomas Hardy: His Life and Friends (London: Macmillan, 1992), p.

Martin Seymour-Smith, Hardy (London: Bloomsbury, 1995), p. Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors.

7 This conclusion is echoed by Robert Gittings who notes that ‘the chief draw, as always in his life, was music’. Weber, whose exhaustive bibliography of Hardy’s ‘musical poems’ concludes that ‘throughout his long life music remained one of Hardy’s chief interests’. 5 And maturation did not see a discernible diminishing in his passion, leading Sherman to ask whether ‘music is the greatest unifying factor in his poetry and prose alike?’ 6 A question answered in the affirmative by Carl C. 2 This early musicality is a characteristic upon which most modern critics agree: 3 Michael Millgate notes that ‘the sounds of his father’s violin of an evening could move him to dance and weep simultaneously’ Martin Seymour-Smith that ‘as a boy he sought relief in the joy to be found in music’ 4 and Elna Sherman that Hardy ‘possessed a sensitive ear … was quickly and profoundly moved by the music he heard as he matured his musical taste became discriminating’.

1 Memories of his youth are dominated by evocative descriptions of his ‘adventures with the fiddle’ in the villages neighbouring Bockhampton. Through the pages of The Life Hardy recounts that as an infant he was ‘extraordinarily sensitive to music’, with a ‘sensitiveness to melody… remained with him through life’.

Michael gibson musicality