Sara Gross Ceballos
Gender, Performance and the Sociable Self in the Accompanied Sonatas of Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy

Performers and listeners in the late eighteenth century, inspired by new discourse on radical individuality from authors like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and by identification of so-called “original genius” in expressive works like the free fantasias of C. P. E. Bach, were increasingly likely to perceive a composer in his works and to view the performances of composer-performers as episodes of self-expression of what modern critics have described as an authentic, individualized, and interiorized “romantic self.” Yet these expectations did not extend to all genres because of a competing model of selfhood. I will suggest that the “self” expressed in composition and in performances in the accompanied sonata, a genre of accompanied keyboard music especially beloved by female amateur keyboardists, is what has been described as a “sociable self.” In this model of selfhood—promoted by period thinkers including the third Earl of Shaftesbury and the abbé Morellet, largely dismissed by Rousseau, and explored in recent studies on eighteenth-century philosophy, salon culture and literature—the “sociable” individual moderates emotions, defers to social partners, and cultivates harmony through politeness.
In reflecting on sociable selfhood in performance in the accompanied sonata, I want to complicate recent scholarship on the genre that has focused largely on female executors to consider the subjectivities of all performers. The sociable model of selfhood applied to both men and women, though was considered to be more natural in the latter and best developed in men through exchange with women. As a case study, I will investigate the performance dynamics in the accompanied works of French composer, keyboardist, and salonnière Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (1744-1824), an accomplished musician and socializer amongst whose friends numbered Morellet and Benjamin Franklin and amongst whose accompanists numbered professional violinist André-Noël Pagin. I will suggest that in cultivating and displaying the sociable selves of both the keyboardist and her male accompanist(s), performances of the genre were as valuable to displays of masculine sociable selfhood as to feminine.