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Susan McClary | |
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Born | St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. | October 2, 1946
Occupation | Musicologist |
Education | Southern Illinois University (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD) |
Subject | Music, feminism |
Notable works | Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, & Sexuality |
Spouse | Robert Walser |
Susan Kaye McClary (born October 2, 1946) [1] is an American musicologist associated with "new musicology". Noted for her work combining musicology with feminist music criticism, McClary is professor of musicology at Case Western Reserve University.
McClary was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and received her BA in 1968 from Southern Illinois University. She attended graduate school at Harvard University where she received her MA in 1971 and her PhD in 1976. Her doctoral dissertation was on the transition from modal to tonal organization in Monteverdi's works. The first half of her dissertation was later reworked and expanded in her 2004 book, Modal Subjectivities: Self-fashioning in the Italian Madrigal. She taught at the University of Minnesota (1977–1991), McGill University (1991–1994), University of California, Berkeley (1993), and University of California, Los Angeles (1994–2011), before becoming a Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve University. She has also held a five-year professorship at the University of Oslo (2007–2012).
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One of her best known works is Feminine Endings (1991). "Feminine ending" is a musical term once commonly used to denote a weak phrase ending or cadence. The work covers musical constructions of gender and sexuality, gendered aspects of traditional music theory, gendered sexuality in musical narrative, music as a gendered discourse, and discursive strategies of women musicians. [2] [3]
McClary suggests that sonata form may be interpreted as sexist or misogynistic and imperialistic, and that, "tonality itself – with its process of instilling expectations and subsequently withholding promised fulfillment until climax – is the principal musical means during the period from 1600 to 1900 for arousing and channeling desire." She interprets the sonata procedure for its constructions of gender and sexual identity. The primary, "masculine" key (or first subject group) represents the male self, while the secondary, "feminine" key (or second subject group), represents the other, a territory to be explored and conquered, assimilated into the self and stated in the tonic home key.[ dubious ]
McClary set the feminist arguments of her early book in a broader sociopolitical context with Conventional Wisdom (2000). In it, she argues that the traditional musicological assumption of the existence of "purely musical" elements, divorced from culture and meaning, the social and the body, is a conceit used to veil the social and political imperatives of the worldview that produces the classical canon most prized by musicologists. She examines the creation of meanings and identities, some oppressive and hegemonic, some affirmative and resistant, in music through the referencing of musical conventions in the blues, Vivaldi, Prince, Philip Glass, and others.[ dubious ]
While seen by some as extremely radical, her work is influenced by musicologists such as Edward T. Cone, gender theorists and cultural critics such as Teresa de Lauretis, and others who, like McClary, fall in between, such as Theodor Adorno. McClary herself admits that her analyses, though intended to deconstruct, engage in essentialism. [4] [5]
"Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music" first appeared as a paper delivered at the American Musicological Society in 1990 and then in a revised version as a symposium presentation during the 1992 Schubertiade Festival in New York City. At the time McClary was influenced by Maynard Solomon's claim in his 1989 paper "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini" that Schubert was homosexual. McClary's paper explored the relevance of Solomon's research to what she termed the uninhibited, "hedonistic" luxuriance of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. The symposium paper elicited some mild controversy. [6] Following evidence that Solomon's conclusions may have been flawed [7] and largely based on his own psychoanalytic reading of a dream narrative Schubert set down in 1822, [8] McClary revised the paper again. Its definitive version was printed in the 1994 edition of the book Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary Thomas.
According to McClary, Schubert, in the second movement of his Unfinished Symphony, foregoes the usual narrative of the sonata form by "wandering" from one key area to another in a manner which does not consolidate the tonic, but without causing its violent reaffirmation:
What is remarkable about this movement is that Schubert conceives of and executes a musical narrative that does not enact the more standard model in which a self strives to define identity through the consolidation of ego boundaries...in a Beethovian world such a passage would sound vulnerable, its tonal identity not safely anchored; and its ambiguity would probably precipitate a crisis, thereby justifying the violence needed to put things right again. [9]
While maintaining that attempting to read Schubert's sexuality from his music would be essentialism, she proposes that it may be possible to notice intentional ways in which Schubert composed in order to express his "difference" as a part of himself at a time when "the self" was becoming prominent in the arts. Schubert's music and often the man himself and the subjectivity he presented have been criticized as effeminate, especially in comparison to Beethoven, the model and aggressive master of the sonata form (Sir George Grove, after Schumann: "compared with Beethoven, Schubert is as a woman to a man"; Carl Dahlhaus: "weak" and "involuntary"). [10] However, McClary notes: "what is at issue is not Schubert's deviance from a "straight" norm, but rather his particular constructions of subjectivity, especially as they contrast with many of those posed by his peers." [11]
Some of the ideas about composition as subjective narrative proposed in "Constructions" were developed by McClary in her 1997 article, "The Impromptu that trod on a loaf", which applies this analysis to Schubert's Impromptu Op. 90, Number 2. [12] "Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music" and the ideas in it continue to be discussed, sometimes critically. [13] However, the article influenced a number of queer theorists, [14] and in 2003 was described by the musicologist, Lawrence Kramer, as still an important paper in the field. [15] The paper, and the reactions to it are also discussed in Mark Lindsey Mitchell's Virtuosi: A Defense and a (sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great Pianists. [16]
In the January 1987 issue of Minnesota Composers Forum Newsletter, McClary wrote of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:
The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.
This sentence elicited and continues to elicit a great range of responses. McClary subsequently rephrased this passage in Feminine Endings:
'[...] [T]he point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music. The problem Beethoven has constructed for this movement is that it seems to begin before the subject of the symphony has managed to achieve its identity. (128)
She goes on to conclude that "The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment" (129). The critiques of McClary discussed below refer primarily to the original version of the passage. Several commentators have objected to McClary's characterizations, including Robert Anton Wilson, [17] Elaine Barkin, [18] [19] and Henry Kingsbury. [20]
Music theorist Pieter van den Toorn has complained that McClary's polemics negate the asocial autonomy of absolute music; he is concerned with formal analysis in the tradition of Schenker.. Van den Toorn complains, for example, that "Fanned by an aversion for male sexuality, which it depicts as something brutal and contemptible, irrelevancies are being read into the music." [21] Van den Toorn's complaint was rebutted by musicologist Ruth Solie. [22] Van den Toorn responded with a book on these issues. [23] [24] Musicologist Paula Higgins, in another critique of McClary's work, has observed that "one wonders ... if [McClary] has not strategically co-opted feminism as an excuse for guerrilla attacks on the field." [25] Higgins complains of McClary's "truculent verbal assaults on musicological straw men", [25] : 176 and observes that "For all the hip culture critique imported from other fields, McClary has left the cobwebs of patriarchal musicological thought largely intact." [25] : 178 Higgins is also critical of McClary's citation practice as it concerns other scholars in the area of feminist musical criticism.
The pianist and critic Charles Rosen has also commented on the famous passage. He avoids taking offense on any of the grounds mentioned above, and is willing to admit sexual metaphors to musical analysis. Rosen's disagreement is simply with McClary's assessment of the music:
McClary also notes that she "can say something nice about Beethoven", [27] saying of his String Quartet, Op. 132, "Few pieces offer so as vivid an image of shattered subjectivity the opening of Op. 132." [28]
Writing over thirty years after its publication, McClary observed:
People often ask me if I regret having written this essay. I have lived with the consequences for over thirty years, and no matter how much I publish on modal theory or Kaija Saariaho, I will always be identified with this sentence, nearly always taken out of context. I hasten to mention that I have taught a course on Beethoven quartets every other year since 1980; unless a student has googled me and asked about the controversy, no one in my classes would have any inkling of my presumed hatred of this composer. But no, je ne regrette rien. I still stand by my argument and even my imagery after all these years. [29]
McClary is married to musicologist Robert Walser. [30] [31]
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, formal sciences and computer science.
Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short life, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works, seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music, and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include the art songs "Erlkönig", "Gretchen am Spinnrade", "Ave Maria"; the Trout Quintet, the unfinished Symphony No. 8 in B minor, the "Great" Symphony No. 9 in C major, the String Quartet No. 14 Death and the Maiden, a String Quintet, the two sets of Impromptus for solo piano, the three last piano sonatas, the Fantasia in F minor for piano four hands, the opera Fierrabras, the incidental music to the play Rosamunde, and the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin, Winterreise and Schwanengesang.
Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is a highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies music from a historical point of view. In theory, "music history" could refer to the study of the history of any type or genre of music. In practice, these research topics are often categorized as part of ethnomusicology or cultural studies, whether or not they are ethnographically based. The terms "music history" and "historical musicology" usually refer to the history of the notated music of Western elites, sometimes called "art music".
Polytonality is the musical use of more than one key simultaneously. Bitonality is the use of only two different keys at the same time. Polyvalence or polyvalency is the use of more than one harmonic function, from the same key, at the same time.
Rosemary Isabel Brown was an English composer, pianist and spirit medium who claimed that dead composers dictated new musical works to her. She created a small media sensation in the 1970s by presenting works purportedly dictated to her by Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Program music or programmatic music is a type of instrumental art music that attempts to musically render an extramusical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience through the piece's title, or in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music. A well-known example is Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf.
New musicology is a wide body of musicology since the 1980s with a focus upon the cultural study, aesthetics, criticism, and hermeneutics of music. It began in part a reaction against the traditional positivist musicology—focused on primary research—of the early 20th century and postwar era. Many of the procedures of new musicology are considered standard, although the name more often refers to the historical turn rather than to any single set of ideas or principles. Indeed, although it was notably influenced by feminism, gender studies, queer theory, postcolonial studies, and critical theory, new musicology has primarily been characterized by a wide-ranging eclecticism.
In Western musical theory, a cadence is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of full or partial resolution, especially in music of the 16th century onwards. A harmonic cadence is a progression of two or more chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music. A rhythmic cadence is a characteristic rhythmic pattern that indicates the end of a phrase. A cadence can be labeled "weak" or "strong" depending on the impression of finality it gives. While cadences are usually classified by specific chord or melodic progressions, the use of such progressions does not necessarily constitute a cadence—there must be a sense of closure, as at the end of a phrase. Harmonic rhythm plays an important part in determining where a cadence occurs. The word "cadence" sometimes slightly shifts its meaning depending on the context; for example, it can be used to refer to the last few notes of a particular phrase, or to just the final chord of that phrase, or to types of chord progressions that are suitable for phrase endings in general.
Absolute music is music that is not explicitly "about" anything; in contrast to program music, it is non-representational. The idea of absolute music developed at the end of the 18th century in the writings of authors of early German Romanticism, such as Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder, Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann but the term was not coined until 1846 where it was first used by Richard Wagner in a programme to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
The First Viennese School is a name mostly used to refer to three composers of the Classical period in Western art music in late-18th-century to early-19th-century Vienna: Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Sometimes, Franz Schubert is added to the list.
The String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, D 804, Op. 29, was written by Franz Schubert between February and March 1824. It dates roughly to the same time as his monumental Death and the Maiden Quartet, emerging around three years after his previous attempt to write for the string quartet genre, the Quartettsatz, D 703, that he never finished.
"Die Forelle", Op. 32, D 550. is a lied, or song, composed in early 1817 for solo voice and piano with music by the Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797–1828). Schubert chose to set the text of a poem by Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, first published in the Schwäbischer Musenalmanach in 1783. The full poem tells the story of a trout being caught by a fisherman, but in its final stanza reveals its purpose as a moral piece warning young women to guard against young men. When Schubert set the poem to music, he removed the last verse, which contained the moral, changing the song's focus and enabling it to be sung by male or female singers. Schubert produced six subsequent copies of the work, all with minor variations.
Maynard Elliott Solomon was an American music executive and musicologist, a co-founder of Vanguard Records as well as a music producer. Later, he became known for his biographical studies of Viennese Classical composers, specifically Beethoven, Mozart (biography), and Schubert. Solomon was the first to propose the highly disputed theory of Schubert's homosexuality in a scholarly publication.
Susan Youens is the author of many books on German lieder. A musicologist, her work on Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf is considered some of the most scholarly and useful material on these composers. Both musicologists and performers have often cited her work.
Lewis H. Lockwood is an American musicologist whose main fields are the music of the Italian Renaissance and the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Joseph Kerman described him as "a leading musical scholar of the postwar generation, and the leading American authority on Beethoven".
Philip Brett was a British-born American musicologist, musician and conductor. He was particularly known for his scholarly studies on Benjamin Britten and William Byrd and for his contributions to the development of lesbian and gay musicology. At the time of his death, he was Distinguished Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Rita Katherine Steblin was a musicologist, specializing in archival work combining music history, iconography and genealogical research.
Rose Rosengard Subotnik is a leading American musicologist, generally credited with introducing the writing of Theodor Adorno to English-speaking musicologists in the late 1970s.
Women in musicology describes the role of women professors, scholars and researchers in postsecondary education musicology departments at postsecondary education institutions, including universities, colleges and music conservatories. Traditionally, the vast majority of major musicologists and music historians have been men. Nevertheless, some women musicologists have reached the top ranks of the profession. Carolyn Abbate is an American musicologist who did her PhD at Princeton University. She has been described by the Harvard Gazette as "one of the world's most accomplished and admired music historians".
Birgit Lodes is a German musicologist and lecturer at the University of Vienna.