The history of music at Tudor Place offers a nuanced lens through which to understand the intersections of class, gender, domesticity and cultural change from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The material legacy of instruments, sheet music, decorative objects and early sound technology owned by the Peter family reveals how music was more than just a form of entertainment, but a social language of refinement and adaptation. Within the walls of Tudor Place, the Peter family curated a private world of sound that echoed the evolving rhythms of American life.

Instruments and sheet music held both audible and symbolic value in elite households like Tudor Place. The music book (ca. 1783) owned by Martha Parke Custis Peter (1777-1854) attests to the significance placed on musical education for young women in elite families (1). Her grandmother, Martha Washington, insisted on musical training, reflecting how music as a domestic art form was viewed as essential to elite womanhood during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The theme of musical study continued for the entire span of the Peter family’s occupancy of Tudor Place. The spinet piano by John Broadwood & Son, built in 1804 and later purchased by Washington Peter, was not merely a musical instrument, but a marker of affluence (2). Armistead Peter Jr. brought it into the house, signaling the family’s alignment with tradition and their desire to display refinement through musical skill and patronage. Britannia Peter Kennon (1815-1911) confirmed that the transverse flute (ca. 1784-1798) belonged to her father, Thomas Peter (1769-1834)(3). Records also show that the Martin guitar (ca. 1895) as well as the family’s multiple banjos dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were enjoyed and played by multiple generations of the family, including Dr. Armistead Peter, Armistead Peter Jr., B.Kennon Peter and Armistead Peter 3rd (4).

By the 19th century, long-standing gendered aspects of music were shifting. The guitar and the lute were originally associated with women’s parlor music because they allowed women to play in graceful poses while maintaining their “decorum” and were not viewed as an instrument for professional male musicians outside of the home(5). Later, the guitar migrated into popular genres in American music such as folk music and later, country and rock, quickly becoming a masculine instrument (6). In contrast, the flute, which was historically a masculine instrument became more associated with femininity when women were permitted to perform in marching and concert bands (7). The decorative arts at Tudor Place, including music-themed figurines, music boxes and a ladies’ worktable painted with musical imagery by America P. Peter (1803-1842), further reflect the idealization of music in feminine education as well as a general aesthetic taste (8).

Technological innovations transformed the way music was experienced in American homes by the early 20th century. Radios, phonographs and music boxes, many of which remain in the Tudor Place Collection & Archive, marked a shift from active performance to passive listening. The presence of commercial recordings and sheet music by African American musicians like Lizzie Miles (1895-1963) and Hazel Scott (1920-1981), even at Tudor Place, a household traditionally adhering to Eurocentric music, hints at how technology exposed people to previously unfamiliar musical genres(9).

Finally, the presence of the banjos and extensive collection of banjo music books in the collection draws attention to the African roots of American folk music(10). While the Peters did not engage directly with African American musical traditions, instruments like the banjo, descended from West African instruments such as the akonting, remind us that major aspects of American music are built on cross-cultural exchange(11). The musical lives of enslaved and free Black Americans deeply shaped the nation’s music, even as they remained marginalized within spaces like Tudor Place. Tudor Place’s layered history of sound mirrors cultural shifts, technological advancements and shifting identities over time.

– Isabella Quartiere, 2025 Spring Collections Intern

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