Retrato de familia a contraluz: el aprendizaje musical de Angélique Diderot y la educación ilustrada de las mujeres

Abstract

The musical education painstakingly planned by the French philosopher Denis Diderot for his daughter Angélique included not only a wide repertoire for the keyboard, but also advanced rudiments of harmony and musical theory. This inusual pedagogical choice, set against the theories of Diderot regarding the deficient education of women as being at the root of their supposed intellectual inferiority, is the starting point of this article. The aim is to analyse the possible influence of Enlightenment ideas on the musical life of women in France during the last third of the eighteenth century. In addition, our analysis to the repertoire for harpsichord interpreted by Angélique, valuable evidence of musical life in the domestic sphere in this period, will give us an insight into an aspect of the history of music often overlooked by the official account, whose protagonists were mostly women.