PUBlic professor series strikes a sentimental note
By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on February 26, 2025.
Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Emily Gale, assistant professor of musicology and ethnomusicology at the University of Lethbridge, will be presenting "Sentimental songs for sentimental people" during Thursday's PUBlic Professor Series.LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com
The University of Lethbridge’s PUBlic Professor Series will host Emily Gale Thursday night for a presentation on “Sentimental songs for sentimental people.”
Gale, who is an assistant professor of musicology and ethnomusicology in the department of music, says her talk will be based on her current book research.
“I have been working on this project for about 12 years now, and it is a long history of where the idea of the sentimental song comes from, where did we first started to encounter this idea, in print media in reference to songs, in the covers of sheet music, so I am going back to the mid 18th century as this is where this idea first emerged,” says Gale.
Some of the work that she has done going through the 19th century is looking at how people were talking about the idea of a sentimental song. This, in turn, starts to bring some ideas about judgment of taste around songs that are thought to be overly emotional, embarrassing or songs about love, longing, or loss.
“There is a sense that people are referring to this often as mawkish and they say things like ‘namby-pamby,’ so they are dismissed and denigrated as not very important musical outputs,” says Gale.
On the other hand, they are immensely popular, and this is the kind of history that is kind of falling out of history.
The presentation will look at two examples. One of them will be from the 1850s by a very popular songwriter named Septimus Winner from Philadelphia, who published all of his sentimental songs under the pseudonym Alice Hawthorne.
“So, I will be looking at examples of that, how his music was talked about and how it was received.”
Gale says that she believes Winner used a female pseudonym, because of the cultural history equating sentimentality with being overly emotional, which shows that women are the better expressers of emotion.
“So, I am very interested in the idea of how musicians would be participating in this idea of the feminized version of a sentimental song,” says Gale.
Most of the examples she is looking at are songs that are written by male musicians, which are very popular.
“So, there are some interesting questions about masculinity and how the common idea is that sentimental songs are women’s musical expression, but we have lots of examples of men who were very much participating in constructing this idea of a sentimental song.”
She says the crooning is very important for thinking about the history of overly emotional songs that are trying to connect with the listener.
“The crooners are an interesting example too, because that’s the moment in which we’re transitioning from having to use your voice to an acoustic audience, to using a microphone.”
She adds that the microphone, with its amplification of the voice, allows for a sense of whispering the song directly into the listener’s ear. And this adds a sense of intimacy in the recording itself.
Gale says choosing the topic of sentimental songs goes back a few years for her, when she encountered a book that was published in 2007 where the author wrote about Celine Dion and was tracing the sentimental song idea, but said it was too much material for his book.
“He says this is a field awaiting a scholar,” says Gale. “So I wanted to be that scholar, and it has a personal connection for me as my dad was a singer, and he sang in a barber shop chorus.”
She adds that the chorus had 80 members who sang in four-part harmony and usually sang sentimental songs.
“So, I have a personal connection to this music, and I think the question for me is around masculinity, a group of men deeply emotional songs seems like an interesting phenomenon and one that is not talked about within music studies,” says Gale.
Gale says in addition to her talks, she’ll also be giving a presentation of items, so at some point may have a “show-and-tell” feel to it.
“Through this work I ended up doing a lot of collecting, so I have a lot of materials that I will be showing and talking with the audience in terms of the historical documents that are telling the story of the sentimental song,” says Gale.
She adds that there will be a little bit of music involved in the presentation as well, and a period for questions from the audience at the end.
The PUBlic professor talk is sold out, but it will become available in the university of Lethbridge Youtube channel under the PUBlic Professor Series category soon after.
25-24
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