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Book Review
Jun. 1st, 2016 10:20 pmFeminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality
by Susan McClary
This book originally came out just before I went to college, and I remember a bit about the controversy it stirred up in musical circles at the time. Looking at music through the lens of gender and sexuality had not really been done before, and was clearly not something people were comfortable with. McClary definitely Went There in this book, exploring how the tonal and thematic plan of a sonata-allegro movement can be interpreted as an enactment of 18th and 19th century ideas about masculinity and femininity, what the musical depictions of female characters in vocal music say about attitudes towards men and women, and how desire and its construction permeate so much musical structure.
Feminine Endings is divided into six chapters, each dealing with a specific piece, set of pieces, or artist. McClary examines such disparate examples as the nymph character in a Monteverdi madrigal, Carmen, Laurie Anderson's "O Superman", and Madonna. I especially enjoyed the chapters on Carmen and "O Superman". I didn't necessarily always buy everything McClary was selling, but she certainly gave me lots and lots to think about regarding how Western art music works.
Most of all, I really appreciated McClary's argument that we should subject music to criticism that connects it to things like gender and sexuality and views it through the lens of different aspects of society, history, sociology, etc. Music does not always have to be viewed as a abstract, pure object that transcends its milieu.
by Susan McClary
This book originally came out just before I went to college, and I remember a bit about the controversy it stirred up in musical circles at the time. Looking at music through the lens of gender and sexuality had not really been done before, and was clearly not something people were comfortable with. McClary definitely Went There in this book, exploring how the tonal and thematic plan of a sonata-allegro movement can be interpreted as an enactment of 18th and 19th century ideas about masculinity and femininity, what the musical depictions of female characters in vocal music say about attitudes towards men and women, and how desire and its construction permeate so much musical structure.
Feminine Endings is divided into six chapters, each dealing with a specific piece, set of pieces, or artist. McClary examines such disparate examples as the nymph character in a Monteverdi madrigal, Carmen, Laurie Anderson's "O Superman", and Madonna. I especially enjoyed the chapters on Carmen and "O Superman". I didn't necessarily always buy everything McClary was selling, but she certainly gave me lots and lots to think about regarding how Western art music works.
Most of all, I really appreciated McClary's argument that we should subject music to criticism that connects it to things like gender and sexuality and views it through the lens of different aspects of society, history, sociology, etc. Music does not always have to be viewed as a abstract, pure object that transcends its milieu.
