Margaret Fuller on Musical Life in Boston and New York, 1841-1846

Abstract

spective centered on Europe and the concert hall,' as Richard Crawford has cogently asserted, then Margaret Fuller (1810-50) can serve as an intelligent guide to its early period. An eminent literary critic who was an intermediary of German, Italian, and French works for American readers, she also enthusiastically championed music through concert notices and reviews of biographies of European composers written for journals and the press of the 1840s. Her thought on musical matters has received some attention in studies2 connecting her to the New England Transcendentalists, but the full range of her writings, with emphasis on the important New York years, has not been considered from this perspective. Although she was not a professional musician or music critic, Fuller wrote seven entries on music, including an important essay on composers, from 1840 to 1844 for the Dial,3 the major journal of the Transcendentalists, which she edited during its first two years of publication. She also wrote at least twenty-nine articles on musical topics for the New-York Tribune,4 the influential newspaper for which she served as the first literary critic from 1844 to 1846. She described concerts and books on music in the years before William Henry Fry assumed the post of music critic for the Tribune on his return from Europe to America in 1852 and before (John Sullivan) Dwight's Journal of Music was established that same year. In such positions of importance

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