Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prelude

Chapter 1
Childhood
“I attend singing school”

Chapter 2
School Days
“You know what it is to ‘love school’”

Chapter 3
The Avid Music Collector
“Home as a Waltz”

Chapter 4
The Age of the Virtuosi
“I never heard sounds before”

Chapter 5
Home Music-Making
“Sounds From Home”

Chapter 6
Edward Dickinson
“Hail to the Chief”

Chapter 7
Music-Making and the Dickinson Family Correspondence
“Vinnie is at the instrument”

Chapter 8
The American Political Struggle
“Decades of Arrogance”

Chapter 9
Fiddle Tunes, Minstrel Music, and Musical Borrowing
“No Black bid bates His Banjo — ”

Chapter 10
The Poetry Takes Hold
“ — and the noise in the Pool, at Noon — excels my Piano”

Chapter 11
Hymns and Ballads: More Musical Borrowings
“Let Emily sing for you because she cannot pray.”

Chapter 12
The White Dress
“Ossian’s Serenade”

Postlude
“Musicians wrestle everywhere”

Appendix A
Contents Listing of Emily Dickinson’s Bound Volume of Sheet Music

Notes

Index

"Aurora Waltz"