If you've ever wondered what a fly might have heard on the wall of
Jane Austen's parlor, Jane Austen's Songbook may be just the thing for you.
Austen, like many of her fictional characters, was an accomplished amateur musician, and she collected and copied many songs for her own use. Her personal songbook, written in her own hand, is the source for this album. The songs themselves are trifles -- very short, very simple, and very much a product of their times. Few if any of them transcend the parlor aesthetic. These are genteel songs that, while occasionally witty, are never rude, and that make only modest demands on performers. So, as a document of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century home music-making, and especially that of a famous literary figure, Jane Austen's Songbook is a fascinating document. As a listening experience it is less so. Recorded in a church, and minimally engineered, the album sounds distant, thin, and poorly focused. The performers themselves all deliver capably, but none of them, even the usually more interesting
Julianne Baird, manage to breathe much life into the material. The ensemble -- fortepianist
Karen Flint, violinist
Martin Davids, and flutist
Colin St. Martin -- acquits itself adequately, but without much élan. If your interest is historical, literary, or just curiosity, you may find much to enjoy about Jane Austen's Songbook. But if you're looking for parlor music delivered with energy, polish, imagination, and production values, you'd be better off looking elsewhere.