David Owen Norris learns a thing or two from Jane Austen

David Owen Norris is a pianist, composer, broadcaster, impresario, and Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton.

Always a pleasure to visit Chawton House, the home of Jane Austen’s brother, which now houses the International Library of Women’s Writing. I had a meeting with the director, Dr Gillian Dow, to discuss ways to mark this year’s 200th anniversary of the publication of Emma. This is the novel where Jane Fairfax plays a set of variations on the song Robin Adair, and a highlight of my visit was seeing Jane Austen’s own copy of the piece. The variations are by George Kiallmark, a noted piano teacher, and perhaps because of his pedagogical bent, they act as a compendium of examples to illustrate Clementi’s Introduction to the Art of Playing upon the Pianoforte of 1801. One of the big surprises of believing that Clementi meant what he wrote is that performances could become very emotional – ‘CON ESPRESSIONE, with passionate feeling: each note has its peculiar force and energy – even the severity of time may be relaxed for extraordinary effects’. Our latest keyboard class was devoted to exploring Robin Adair, and Jane Fairfax’s party-piece will form the centre of many a meeting of lovers of Jane Austen this year. I shall use it to conclude my keynote recital at the RAM’s Historical Pianists conference at the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands in April.

If you’d like to see Jane Austen’s Music Collection, it’s all online at https://archive.org/details/austenfamilymusicbooks