Reading Music: Selected Essays

This outstanding collection of Susan McClary's work exemplifies her contribution to a bridging of the gap between historical context, culture and musical practice. The selection includes essays which have had a major impact on the field and others which are less known and reproduced here from hard-to-find sources. The volume is divided into four parts: Interpretation and Polemics, Gender and Sexuality, Popular Music, and Early Music. Each of the essays treats music as cultural text and has a strong interdisciplinary appeal. Together with the autobiographical introduction they will prove essential reading for anyone interested in the life and times of a renegade musicologist.

CONTENIDO:

Introduction: the life and times of a renegade musicologist
Bibliography

Part 1
Interpretation and Polemics: Pitches, expression, ideology: an exercise in mediation
The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year
Narrative agendas in 'absolute' music: identity and difference in Brahms's 3rd symphony
Terminal prestige: the case of avant-garde music composition

Part 2
Gender and Sexuality: A material girl in Bluebeard's castle
Stuctures of identity and difference in Bizet's Carmen
Constructions of subjectivity in Schubert's music

Part 3
Popular Music: 'Same as it ever was': youth culture and music
Living to tell: Madonna's resurrection of the fleshly
Thinking blues

Part 4
Early Music: The cultural work of the madrigal
Cycles of Repetition: Chacona, Ciaccona, Chaconne, and the Chaconne
Index