Relay Column: Is the Piano a Medium of Dress Discipline? – Performative Practice of Yuja Wang & Gen Hirano (Rei Haimachi)

The video mentioned at the beginning features the Beijing-born pianist Yuja Wang performing the 3rd movement of Prokofiev's "Piano Sonata No. 8" (1944). Her performance showcases a clear touch with a flicking finger technique that shines particularly in handling rapid note repetitions and repeated motifs. Yuja Wang's lively playing style pairs well with Prokofiev's crisp piano music. However, I would like to revisit a topic that has been mentioned ad nauseam regarding Yuja Wang: her stage attire. Although the situation has gradually changed, female performers, especially soloists, often wear evening dresses or similarly formal attire at concerts categorized as classical music. This custom can be seen as both an aspiration and an oppression for emerging artists.

However, Yuja Wang’s fashion is somewhat different from that of typical soloists. As evident in the video above, her dresses are often quite revealing (or appear to be so), and the materials are glossy. She is known to love Christian Louboutin shoes, which seem to make pedaling difficult due to their high and slender heels. In essence, her clothing resembles an opera stage costume, embodying a sense of excess as a form of presentation.

The history of what is now termed classical music has severely restricted the existence of female bodies. Musicologist Freia Hoffmann describes the historical relationship between views of women and musical instruments in Germany from the late 18th to early 19th centuries in her work "Instrument und Körper" [1]. For example, string instruments like the cello, woodwinds like the oboe, and percussion like the timpani were regarded as unsuitable for women to perform in public concerts within bourgeois society. The perception of instruments and women as linked to unruly or sensual behavior has been documented in the works of Dirck van Baburen and others. During this period, the bourgeoisie, in their efforts to shape their societal morals, sought to distance themselves from the perceived moral decay of the aristocracy, and thus they suppressed women’s performances on instruments deemed unseemly for their sex.

However, the bourgeoisie did not uniformly create a society based solely on what they referred to as "nature." For instance, within the bourgeois setting, opera represented a demi-monde, and female singers were celebrated as alluring nighttime figures. Corsets, once discarded as aristocratic attire, experienced a revival among the bourgeoisie after 1822, compelling sometimes even female instrumentalists to perform with shallow breaths. While thin waists and emphasized busts were permitted and even encouraged, spreading legs widely to play the cello was considered inappropriate. In other words, there was a duality in bourgeois society that both suppressed women's activities seen as vulgar while simultaneously adhering to a regulated form of "femininity" based on specific contexts or degrees (or deviations from norms rooted in "femininity").