We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
On 18 June 1864 John Addington Symonds was at a concert at the St James’s Hall in London. The New Philharmonic Society, conducted by Dr Henry Wylde, performed a programme that included Carl Maria von Weber’s Konzertstück in F minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 79, Ludwig Spohr’s ‘Dramatic’ Concerto No. 8 in A minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 47, and overtures by Mendelssohn and Rossini.
The second chapter focuses specifically on A Passage to India, examining the ways in which Forster’s representations of Western musical instruments in the novel destabilize and subvert – that is, queer – colonial norms. It continues the previous chapter’s interrogation of the conventional dissociation of modernist aesthetics from politics by bypassing Forster’s preference for a formalist, ‘abstract’ reading of the novel and going against his consistent dilution of the novel’s political resonance with contemporary nationalist movements in India. Documenting Forster’s awareness of the dissemination of Western musical instruments as an embodiment of the empire’s material invasion of the colony, the chapter explores his rarely discussed attention to the material existence of music as part of his criticism of colonialism. Drawing upon postcolonial theories, material culture studies, and queer musicology, the chapter suggests that Forster’s descriptions of Ronny Heaslop’s viola, the Maharajah’s harmonium, and a piano in a European Guest House delineate the individual subjection to and negotiation of external forces in a colonial environment.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.