PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre is having a Jane Austen fest this winter, beginning January 13, showing film versions of all six of her completed novels and a drama about her life. Austen was known to be a music lover, perhaps more than anyone else in her family. Her life coincides with the time when structured musical education was available to a much wider audience than ever before and pianos began to be sold to anyone and everyone. Music-making was one of the required accomplishments of a proper young lady of marriageable age, and many of her most odious characters show no taste or talent for music. Before all the swooning and the insults and offenses to bourgeois sensibilities begins, here’s a primer on the types of music you’ll encounter in her stories and some of the musical names frequently associated with her life.

“Yes, yes, we will have a pianoforte, as good a one as can be got for thirty guineas, and I will practise country dances, that we may have some amusement for our nephews and nieces, when we have the pleasure of their company.” — Jane Austen writing to her sister, Dec. 27, 1808.

Whenever the family had a piano, Austen would play before breakfast, mostly for her own enjoyment. At the time, the three most famous names in the English piano circles were John Broadwood (1732-1812), Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), and Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858). All three were involved in the manufacturing of pianos, and Clementi and Cramer were touring pianists and music publishers. It’s a Broadwood piano that Jane Fairfax receives as a gift in Emma and it’s Cramer’s music that she plays. Austen owned a Clementi square piano similar to the restored 1810 model now in her Chawton house museum.

John Kourhi (on a Broadwood piano) - Cramer: Sonata in E major, Op. 62 “Le retour à Londres”
Peter Katin (on a Clementi piano) - Clementi: Sonata in F sharp minor, Op. 25/5

The music Austen played is left in eight books of music hand-copied by her or other family members from magazines and other sources. These are where filmmakers and film composers usually go to whenever they need music for dance scenes in Austen films. Much of it is country dances and songs of the day, meant for use in the home or at local gatherings. Scottish and Irish airs were very popular, even being set by Beethoven and Haydn. Public concerts were not often found outside of London, but the Austen music books show that art music was also encountered and appreciated in the country. There are arias by Paisiello, Cimarosa, Gluck, and Grétry; instrumental pieces (and songs set to instrumental pieces) by Handel, Mozart, and Pleyel; and songs by Arne, Boyce, and other contemporary English composers. You can find a few recordings based on what’s in the Austen music books, played on period instruments.

Handel: Susanna - Ask if yon Damask rose
Pleyel: Sonata No. 5 - Andantino
Charles Dibdin: The Joys of the Country

And, there’s even an album of the music that Jane Austen might have heard at those London concerts, when she was lucky enough to attend.

J.C. Bach: Symphony in E major, Op. 18/5
Boyce: Symphony in A major, Op. 2/2 - Vivace

For more on the composers and music in Jane Austen’s music books, look here.