Selma Riemenschneider’s Performance Career

Abstract

N ancy Reich’s “Women as Musicians: A Question of Class” identifies the distinction between professional and nonprofessional women musicians in the context of nineteenthcentury European music. Professional musicians, or what Reich refers to as the “artist-musician class,” were those who considered their artistry a source of income. For them, music was their livelihood. Conversely, nonprofessional musicians did not primarily participate in musical life publicly. Reich elaborates: “throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, then, we see women musicians on two tracks . . . on the one hand women who sang and played only in the privacy of their own homes, on the other hand women who appeared on concert and opera stages.” Selma Riemenschneider falls somewhere in between; she performed publicly only for a brief period in her early career, and primarily within the confines of church services and local organ recitals, which often were held at Baldwin Wallace (BW), where Selma was a member of the faculty. Ultimately, she refrained from a performance career and chose to focus on other musical activities, particularly related to the BW Bach Festival. Selma’s upper-class status certainly correlates with her professional life. Reich explains that “those from upper-class families used their skills and education at home, often to enhance a husband’s social position: a wife who could sing or play was a valuable asset. Other women searched out ways to perform, establish, and support music in their homes, churches, and communities, but always on a nonprofessional basis.” Selma’s father was John C. Marting, treasurer of BW, which meant that she came from a family of high status and therefore was not reliant upon her musical training to make a living for herself. Selma’s husband, Albert, was of a similar social class; the Riemenschneiders were well known in the community,