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MARY JANE NEWMAN, JULIANE BAIRD, ANTHONY NEWMAN JANE'S HAND: THE JANE AUSTEN SONGBOOKS Vox Classics

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From: The Boston Globe
Date: 19970102
Author:Richard Dyer, Globe Staff

Jane Austen was a good musician and an admirable keyboard player; her lifelong interest in music is reflected in her novels, where ability and taste in musical performance are indexes of character. In Austen's day, printed music was expensive and hard to come by, so in her neat hand, Austen copied pieces she enjoyed playing and singing into eight volumes which are preserved in the Austen Museum in England. Now the fortepianist Mary Jane Newman has begun a project to record all of this music; the first volume, "Jane's Hand," concentrates on vocal music -- three Handel arias, Orfeo's famous ...

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