Musicology and Feminism in the 1990S Author(S): Susan Mcclary Source: Feminist Studies, Vol

Reshaping a Discipline: Musicology and Feminism in the 1990s Author(s): Susan McClary Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, Women's Bodies and the State (Summer, 1993), pp. 399-423 Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3178376 . Accessed: 26/03/2013 12:58

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This content downloaded from 164.41.4.26 on Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:58:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions RESHAPING A DISCIPLINE: MUSICOLOGY AND FEMINISM IN THE 1990s

SUSANMCCLARY

Feministscholarship is not new to musicology.Research on women in music began to appearin the 1970s and has increasedsteadily ever since. Until about three yearsago, however,such researchcirculated primarily within a separatesphere-tolerated, but largelyignored by the discipline's mainstreamand little known outside musicology.But recent feminist work concerningmusic has left its ghetto and broadenedits scope to include reexaminationsof the canon, standardmethodologies, and much else. As might have been predicted,the introductionof such projects into a disciplinethat haslong resistedcritical agendas of any sort has pro- voked widespread,often bitterdebates. And althoughthe smoke has not yet cleared,enough has takenplace to warrantsome sort of report. Much of what has transpiredin feministmusicology during the last decade is ratherless controversialthan the issuesraised by feministmusic criticism. Thus, before proceedinginto the currentflap, I will review some of the unambiguoustriumphs in recent scholarshipconcerning women and music.

RESEARCH ON WOMEN IN MUSIC HISTORY Prior to 1970 very little was known-or, at least, remembered-about women in music history.Women had vanished;virtually no tracesre- mained on concert programs,on libraryshelves, or in the textbooksthat musicians(more than practitionersin most other fields)absorb as gospel. I rememberbeing told in graduateschool at Harvardthat if there had been women composers,we most assuredlywould havebeen told about them; unfortunately.... The searchundertaken by feministmusicologists in the 1970s turned up far more than anyone could have anticipated,and Eli7abethWood's 1980 review essayin Sigtts1explains well the significanceof theirfindings. FeministStudies 19, no. 2 (Summer1993) ? 1993 by FeministStudies, Inc. 399

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But not even Wood'soptimistic appraisal prepared us for the explosionof informationthat has occurredduring the past decade.Much of the new work has focused on rediscoveringthe women who participatedin the Western art tradition.To be sure, a few exceptionalwomen had been mentioned in the textbooks(as in art history,almost always because they were related to famous malecomposers). But serious, carefullydocu- mented studiesof these women now have appeared,along with editions of their music and even some recordings.Clara Wieck Schumannand FannyMendelssohn Hensel, for example,are now more easilyappreciat- ed as artistsin their own right-ratherthan merelyas wives, daughters,or sisters.2More unexpectedhas been the unearthingof some extraordinary women of the more distantpast, includingmost remarkablyHildegard von Bingen3 of the twelfth century and BarbaraStrozzi4 of the seven- teenth century.Strozzi's music is of the highestcaliber, comparing admi- rablywith that of her better-knowncontemporaries, and Hildegardquite simplyhas no peersin medievalmonophonic composition. It was not only women of the distantpast, however,who had fallen out of sight. The last centuryhas seen an increasein the numberof female composers:Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade,Ethel Smyth, Mary CarrMoore, FlorencePrice, andRuth CrawfordSeeger were only a few of those who persistedin what was still an inhospitablecultural climate and who attractedconsiderable recognition during their own lifetimes. Yet they were promptlyforgotten again;not even later generationsof feministshad heardof most of them. The life and works of these artists- and many others-arenow being broughtto light in full-lengthstudies.5 The relativeabsence of women from symphonicand operarepertories has often been cited as evidence of their inabilityto achieve"greatness." But as we havelearned more aboutthe implicitor explicitgendering of the music world, we have come to understandwhy women do not show up frequentlyin such repertorylists. For women in musicnot only have had to overcomethe obstaclesfaced by virtuallyany artist,but they also have had to contend with performinginstitutions that regardit as risky to program large-scale works with women's names attached. A few women perseveredand managed to get major works performed and even reviewed.But most adoptedthe strategyof writing music that was guaranteedperformers and a clientele;and this often meant composing works that could be presentedby the composersthemselves or by an ex- tensivenetwork of femalemusicians who purchasedsuch music for their own purposes (which were usuallydismissed as trivial).Thus, the bulk of music by women involved solo voice, piano, or small chamberen-

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sembles-genresthat do not have the sameprestige value as the orchestral and operaticrepertories from which they were usuallybarred. As in other disciplines,the more we have graspedsuch issues, the more we have realizedthe need to reassessthe canon, to explorethe his- toricalprocesses that had resultedin its formation.Most of us used to accept the idea that Mozart, Wagner,or the "3 B's" (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms) had alwaysbeen reveredfor self-evident reasons;but studies from other fields and recent researchon women composershave moti- vated us to scrutinizethe historicityof that tradition,with some rather surprisingresults. Marcia Citron initially addressedthese questions in 1990 in the firstpiece of feministcriticism in a majormusicology journal, and her forthcomingbook on the musicalcanon and women ex- ploresthe issuesin greaterdepth.6

WRITING THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN MUSIC The first contributions in feminist musicology dealt with individual women or with specific historic contexts, and anyone who has taught courses on women and music knows how it feels to hop among those isolatedislands of informationseparated by gulfs of ignorance.But a series of books from the 1980s has begun piecing togethermore continu- ous accounts of women in music. Unlike the more traditionalsurveys that trace a successionof "masters,"these new accountstend to pay attention to many kinds of activitiesbesides formal composition, and they also observe far more closely the social conditionswithin which musicians have operated.For one of the chief tenets to fall by the wayside with feministhistoriography is the notion that the individualartist oper- ates autonomouslywith respectto context. The first of these books was not an attemptat narrativehistory, but rather a collection of documents, Carol Neuls-Bates's1982 Womenin Music:An Anthologyof SourceReadingsfrom the Middle Ages to the Present.7 In her collection, Neuls-Batesincludes not only excerptsfrom lettersor statementsby women but also polemicaldebates (e.g., on the questionof whether women are capableof composing "great"music) and sources concerning women'sparticipation in variousmusical institutions as per- formers, teachers,and patrons.Despite its modest size, Womenin Music containsa goldmineof materials.Moreover, Neuls-Bates's choices and ar- rangementsof documentsencourage the readerto observethe contested natureof women'sparticipation in Westernmusic throughout its history. Another milestoneappeared in 1986: a chronologicallyarranged series

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of essaysedited by Jane Bowers andJudith Tick, WomenMaking Music: The WesternArt Tradition,1150-1950.8 These essaysexamine the partici- pation of women in music at variousmoments; about one-third of them concentrateon a single composer,and the restfocus on contexts (clois- ters, women'sorchestras) or time periods.Because of the wealthof information it offers, this collection quicklyproved indispensable. It also es- tablisheda high standardof scholarshipfor furtherwork in the areaof women's music history,for each essayis groundedcarefully in historical sources. If the history of women in music is worth researching,it is worth takingas seriouslyas any other branchof musicology,and Bowers and Tick made that point very well. With WomenMaking Music, they won the discipline'srespect. Although the scholarlystudy of women in music flourished,the more practicalenterprises-pedagogy and performance-facedother difficulties. A greatdeal of this work hasbeen impededby the unavailabilityof scores by women, for until very recently,even some of the foremostresearch li- brarieslacked such music.This situation,although still deplorable,is im- proving. In 1987 JamesR. Briscoe publishedthe HistoricalAnthology of Musicby Women,which offersrepresentative pieces from thirty-five women, from the ninth century to the 1980s. A brief biographical/critical essayaccompanies each score, makingit an extremelyuseful volume for classroomuse. And in 1991 Briscoe releaseda series of cassettesso that we now can hearreasonably good performancesof the compositionsin- cluded in the anthology.The samplesincluded in the HistoricalAnthology of Musicby Womenmake one impatientto know more aboutwomen one might not even have encounteredwithout the collection.And it has had the effect of spurringon the processof bringinginto printmuch more of this music,which now has an eagerlyawaiting audience. The pedagogicalefforts started by Briscoe havebeen extendedby the appearanceof a new textbookedited by KarinPendle, Womenand Music: A History.9This collection of essaysis designedexpressly to coordinate with Briscoe'santhology and cassettes,so thata completepackage of ma- terialsis now availablefor anyonewho wantsto teach a courseon women and music or to implementa standardcourse with informationcon- cerning women. AlthoughPendle's book is designedfor undergraduates, it is not a watered-downversion of earlierresearch. Women and Music be- gins, for instance,to correct the white, high-artbias that characterized much previousscholarship, for it includeschapters dealing with women involvedin traditionalmusics around the globe, as well as Westernwom- en of color or of the working classwho are engagedin popularmusic.

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The significanceof women to musichistory suddenly seems far more obvious when our list of long-forgottenclassical composers is supplemented by Bessie Smith, PatsyCline, Billie Holiday,Mahalia Jackson, Ella Fitz- gerald,the girl groupsof the early 1960s,Janis Joplin, ArethaFranklin, and Holly Near. Further,although there is no chapterin Pendle'sbook devoted expresslyto lesbianissues, the writersintegrate information concerning sexual orientationinto their biographicalsketches and critical comments-and this at a time when the discipline still frowns on any mention whatsoeverof sexuality. In additionto these more comprehensivesurveys, studies focusing on specific countries or regions also have appeared(see Judith Tick and Christine Ammer on the United States; Marie Therese Lefebvre on Quebec).?1Not surprisingly,the emergenceof a historyof women musicians has proved empowering to contemporarywomen composers, as they discoverhow theirpredecessors negotiated with socialrestrictions to become artists.Because of this desireto recoverrole models and to cel- ebrate-howeverbelatedly-the women of the past,some importantcontri- butionsto feministscholarship have also been undertakenby composers.l1 Bringing these materialsto light has been exhilarating,and the re- sults count among the most remarkablecontributions to musicology in the last twenty years. The number of institutionsoffering courses on women and music is increasingdramatically, and most undergraduate music history surveysnow include at least some women's music. We may have seen the last generationof musiciansto be trained without some knowledge of women'sparticipation in music history.And that is quite an accomplishment.

WOMEN IN WORLD AND POPULAR MUSICS Ethnomusicologistshave usuallyincluded women in their studies as a matterof course,but by farthe most dramaticcontribution to this field is the collection editedby Ellen Koskoff,Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspeaive.Koskoffs book containssixteen essays, ranging from studiesof women in the musicalcultures of Tunisia,India, Brazil, and Malaysiato ethnographicresearch on variousmusics in the United States(hymnody in the 1800s, jazz, women-identifiedmusic, musicalactivities of a New York Hasidiccommunity).12 In contrastwith some of the collectionsfo- cused on Westernart music, these essaysdeal explicitlywith theoretical issues surroundinggender, identity, power, and the role of music in the constructionof socialrealities.

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The relativelyhigher profile of women in popularmusic andjazz has not meant that they have alwaysreceived the attentionthey deserve.For instance,women in jazz have often been ignored,and many historiesof pop music treatthe rise of girl groupsas evidence that the early sixties was a culturalabyss-a dark, interregnumbetween classicrock 'n' roll and the British Invasion.But the 1980s saw the appearanceof a number of excellent studiesof women in jazz13and popularmusic. The work of Daphne Duval Harrison, Hazel V. Carby,and Angela Davis14has in- creased substantiallyour knowledge and understandingof women's blues-an importantcultural site for the developmentof specificallyfe- male articulationsof desireand pleasure-andGillian Gaar's She's a Rebel: The Historyof Womenin Rock& Roll15offers a comprehensivetreatment of rock, extending from "Big Mama"Thornton to Queen Latifahand DiamandaGalas. Until recently,most studies of popular music came from sociology ratherthan musicology,and they often paid more attentionto the com- mercialaspects of pop cultureproduction than to the musicper se. They also were more frequentlyBritish than American. One of the best of such historiesis CharlotteGreig's Will YouStill Love Me Tomorrow?Girls Groupsfromthe FiftiesOn,16 which strikesan admirablebalance between the women involved in this movement and the complex conditions within which they had to work. Other importantstudies concentrate rathermore pointedly on the victimizationof women within the pop music industry.17 In the last few years,a numberof U.S. musicologists,including myself, have begun to addresspopular music from a ratherdifferent viewpoint. We tend to assumealthough popular music is unquestionablya commod- ity, it isn'tjust a commoditybut is also a publicmedium that helps shape our notions of self, feelings,gender, desire, pleasure, the body, and much more. Thus, insteadof focusingexclusively on the exploitativedimen- sions of the industry,we alsodiscuss what is being articulatedthrough the performativeand musical aspectsof the enterprise. Studies by Susan Cook (on Irene Castle),Tricia Rose and VeniseT. Berry (on rap), and Robert Walser(on heavy metal)18concentrate on the ways music con- tributesto social formationsof gender-despite,or even by meansof; its commercialmediation. Similarly,MTV has become a criticalarea of study,for it is crucialto know what imagescirculate, how they arearticulated, and how fansinter- pret them. The books on MTV by E. Ann Kaplan(Rocking around the Clock: Music Television,Postmodernism, and ConsumerCulture)19 and Lisa

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Lewis (GenderPolitics and MTV: Voicingthe Difference)20both approach this medium from a feminist perspective. They arrive at significantly different conclusions (Kaplan is skeptical that MTV can be made to serve other than the interests of those in power; Lewis regardsthe medium as poten- tially liberatory for women), but they concur that music videos cannot be dismissed.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? In her review essay twelve years ago, Elizabeth Wood presented a survey of what feminists in musicology had achieved up until that time. Despite the wealth of scholarship cited in her review, however, she stated in her closing remarksthat musical scholarshipon women will remain conceptuallyirrelevant to work in other fieldsso long as it continuessome of its contemporarylimitations.... Above all, what is required are theoretical analysesthat link the work of feministsin music to what is emerging elsewhere in the new feministscholarship. ... Only then will researchon women in music situateitself amid the more theoreticallydeveloped work of other feminist scholarsand capturea wider audiencefor itself.21

The kinds of work Wood could report on in 1980 fell largely into cat- egories sanctioned by the discipline-archival research,biographies, music editing, compilations of reference materials. As we have seen, many women and men trained within standard musicological methodologies have diverted their energies from the traditional canon to the study of women. Yet for the most part, their publications have continued to ad- dress the concerns of other musicologists. Although the contentof these contributions differs from the predominantly male-oriented work of the discipline up until now, most of them do not challenge explicitly the assumptions and methods that have undergirded musicological research for the past generation. But along with the rediscovery of this long-buried music comes almost inevitably a difficult set of questions. First, how do we assessthe quality of our discoveries? Do we admire them, simply because they were composed by women? Or should we try to find ways of dealing critically with these artists? Second, are the premises of these women composers the same as those of their male contemporaries? Or did women sometimes try to write in ways that differed from what they heard around them? Is it possible, in other words, to write music as a uwoman? Responding to any of these fairly obvious questions takes us outside the established guidelines of the profession. For although assessing rela-

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tive worth was of considerableconcern to an earliergeneration of musicologists who had to decide what to include or exclude, the canon has now been stablefor severaldecades; most of us simplyhave internalized the hierarchyas it was given to us as students.To be sure,a musicologist will occasionallyadvance an argumenton behalfof an artistdeemed to have been undervalued.But in such instances,the criteriabrought forward are usuallythose that alreadysupport the reputationsof those labeled as "great." Such criteria-mostof them linked with formalinnovation or contributions to the large-scalegenres-turn out not to be very useful when applied to women. Consequently,when feminist scholars have held their women composersup to the scrutinyof these criteria,they have sometimesfelt pressedto admitthat the music might be of lesserquali- ty; or they have tried to claim "greatness,"often with little evidence brought forward;or they have deferredthe question of "the music itself."This impassehas createda situationthat reinforces,in some ways, what the discipline has alwayssaid: if there were women composers, they are not worth knowing about. What are we to make of all this music that has been dredgedup? Should it have been left at peace with the music that is best forgotten-amongthe "gratefuldead"? Yet if women's music frequentlydoes not show to advantageunder the criteriawe have absorbedthrough our training,then might there be other, more appropriatecriteria? For perhapssome of them were not trying to duplicatewhat they had learned;maybe they were attempting to articulatea differentsense of the world. Certainlythis position has worked well within literarystudies and the visualarts, as feministcritics have identifieddifferent goals or prioritieson the part of women writ- ers or painters.And such argumentsusually hinge on issuesof content, with formaldesign regardedas partof the representationalapparatus. But it is hardto make a case of this kind in music, for music'sclaim to fame has long been its successin having escapedrepresentation or referenceof any kind to the "outsideworld." It would seem, then, to be imperviousto the sortsof interpretativetechniques that have permitted feministcritics in other artsto arguefor deliberatedifferences, as opposed to unintentional discrepancies(i.e., simple failuresto measure up). If music is just music and alwaysis neutral with respect to social cate- gories, then it would seem that many of these women were justly ignored, inasmuch as they do not meet the objective standardshoned throughthe ages.

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THE PROBIT-FM OF CRITICISM AND MUSICOLOGY As had occurred earlier in other disciplines, the accumulation of information concerning women has begun to affect-directly or obliquely-the assumptions underlying the entire field. For in order for this project to advance any further, there have to be ways of getting at the music itself, such that differences can be understood as something other than mere matters of competence. And this requires that we pass over into the for- bidden terrain of criticism. Criticism-that is, criticism that addresses content and not merely technical proficiency-has long been virtually absent from musicology. This is in part because Romantic idealism still organizes the ways most of us think, about music. Since the emergence of wordless instrumental music as the most prestigious of nineteenth-century genres, music has been declared to have transcended not only language but also social signification. Its success at having thus escaped social influence has been en- vied and emulated by literary figures (e.g., Mallarme), and even many literary critics continue to regard music as free from the constraints in- posed by language or visual representationon the other arts. But a second reason for the ban on music criticism has to do with the history of this enterprise. The groups who most notoriously brought criticism to musical content were the Nazis and the Soviets, both with the purpose of censoring whatever was regarded as "decadent."Much of what got purged-especially by the Nazis-was music by Jewish composers; but jazz, sexually provocative operas, and modernist techniques were also targeted. In the wake of World War II and the Stalinist episode in Soviet history, many scholars retreated into formalism or (as in the New Criticism) into readings that favor liberal ambiguity. The situation in music was even more sensitive than in literary studies or art history because most of the music of the canon-indeed, the force behind the formation of the musical canon-is German. Since World War I, when England and the United States found themselves on the opposite side from Germany, the German core of the repertory valued by these countries has been a source of tension. Joseph Horowitz has ex- plained how the American cult of Toscanini developed in part because he could give us Beethoven without any German associations.22Tosca- nini's performances of the (German) canon "universalized"it, cleansed it of any lingering traces of its origins, making it possible for both Ger- many and the Allied Forces to use the motto from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony as an emblem of nationalist strength during World War II. (It was resurrected yet again on CNN during the Gulf War.)

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Beginning in the 1930s, FrankfurtSchool critic Theodor W. Adorno undertookan ideologicalreading of the musicalcanon from his position as a GermanJew threatenedwith annihilationby the culturehe had in- ternalizedas his own. During the courseof his career,he tracedthe con- tradictionsthat had eruptedso hideouslyin the twentiethcentury back throughthe nineteenthcentury, where he found evidencealready in late Beethoven of irreconcilabletensions that were finally"resolved" forcibly by Nazi totalitarianism.23Focusing on the very instrumentalmusic that presumablyhad escapedsuch issues,Adorno arguedthat it was precisely the "autonomy"of this music, its apparentnonrepresentationality, that createdthe necessaryconditions for composersto play out, in even the smallestmusical details, the incompatibledesires for both individualfree- dom and socialconsensus that eventuallyexploded. As he presentsit, the German canon offers an account of what went wrong with the liberal humanisttradition of Kant, Goethe, and Beethoven:the sagaof how the society that gave us the pinnacleof civilizationalso producedthe death camps. Adorno'sis not a pleasantstory; nor is it an easy one to follow, because his argumentsassume the reader'sintimate knowledge of a conm- plex philosophicaltradition and hundredsof compositions.Not surprisingly,his accounthas not been well receivedin the United States.Noth- ing less is at stake than the music many of us find most compelling, which we want to hear as beautyand order-notas symptomsof a struggle that would end so disastrously.Because we cannot affordto consider what it might signify, we insist on elevating it above critique, above meaning. Like postwarformalists in poetic theory,we want to hold that a symphonyshould not mean but be. Consequently,the firsttentative steps of feministmusic criticismhave met resistancenot only because they addressgender and sexuality (although that certainlyhas contributedto the hysteria:idealist music had escapednot only languageand significationbut also the body so dreaded in Westernmetaphysics). More important,it is the fact that anycontent- oriented criticismviolates the prohibitionthat still protectsmusic from cultural debate. Yet the alternativeto practicing cultural criticism- whether Adorno-basedor feminist-is to accept without question (and as ultimatelymeaningless) the works of the canon. Moreover,it is to continue dismissingvarious kinds of music many of us care about, including not only music by women, but also popularmusic, non-West- ern musics, postmodernmusic, music before 1700, and even music of the last two hundredyears that emergedfrom somewhere(Italy, France,

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the Americas)besides Germany.So long as that canon determinesthe "universal"standards against which all musics are to be evaluated,the others arewritten off as incompetentor trivial. As was suggestedearlier, it is not solely feministwork that has precipi- tated this crisis in musicology.Pressures also came from these other di- rections,as they have in the other humanitiesdisciplines. Many very different constituenciesare tired of having African drumminglabeled as "primitive,"Philip Glass'sminimalism castigated as simplistic,Montever- di damned with the faint praiseof being "almosttonal," Charlie Parker dismissedas commercial,Virgil Thomson'scollaborations with Gertrude Stein labeled as naive and technicallynonprogressive. The canon, which has held its Archimedeanposition by Othering all the alternatives,suddenly has begun to be regarded(in Paul Ricoeur'swords) as an "'other' among others."24It is now as open to culturalcritique as any of the kinds of music it had successfullymarginalized for so long. Yet feminist criticismhas been singled out for blame-and for good reason. Although ethnomusicologistshave occasionallyventured to ad- dress Western high culture, they have concentratedtheir efforts elsewhere and thus seem comparativelyinnocuous. Similarly,the study of popular culturehas not posed any genuine threats.Because musicology was in part establishedin an antagonisticrelationship with such music, it simply ignores questionscoming from those quarters.Moreover, most pop music practitionerstend not to care what is going on in high art. With regardto neglected categoriesof Western music (earlyor non- German):because the advocatesof those musicshave usuallybeen thor- oughly steepedin the premisesof the canon, they usuallyaspire to nothing more than havingtheir favoredcomposers included. And the discussion of postmodernismin musicis only startingto takeshape. In contrastwith most of these other areas,the concerns of feminist criticismaddress the canon where it lives-in two importantsenses. First, the women who have composedmusic throughout Western history have coexisted within the same culturalcontexts as their better-knownmale counterparts.Thus, if we are to understandhow they might have operated differentlywithin the same stylisticand syntacticalprocedures as men, we have to begin unpackingwhat and how those apparentlyneu- tral proceduresthemselves signify. Second, once we startto regardthese proceduresas culturalconstructs that interactwith social values, then questionsemerge rapidlyconcerning whose valuesare being articulated and what is being constructed.If we permit ourselvesto notice gender representationor patternsassociated with sexuality,then the canon ap-

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pearsvery differentindeed. And no one who has seen the canon in this light-bristlingwith meaningsof all sorts-islikely to retreatquietly back into the obedientposition of denial.

THE EMERGENCE OF FEMINIST MUSIC CRITICISM The earliestinstances of feministcriticism in music appearedin Europe, beginning with Eva Rieger's Frau, Musik, und Mannerherrschaft,best known here throughthe excerptspublished in GiselaEcker's 1986 Fem- inistAesthetics.25 These excerptsreflect only a faint glimmerof the power and scope ofRieger's book, but they give notice to English-speaking scholars that feminist music criticism is possible. The book ranges through many differentareas of inquiry,as is properfor an initialstudy of this sort. Rieger examinesthe variousways musicianshave gendered (and thereby assignedvalue to) their activities,and she was among the firstto analyzethe languageused to describesuch "idealforms" as sonata (in which "masculine"themes are aggressive,while "feminine"themes arepassive and in need of resolution). The second Europeanto influenceAmerican musicology is Catherine Clement, a prominentFrench intellectual well known for her work in psychoanalysisand her collaborationwith Helene Cixous. In 1979 Cle- ment publisheda book, Op&a,ou la defaitedesfeimmes, that sparkedwide- spreaddiscussion in France,yet remainedobscure here until its transla- tion in 1988.26This book proceedsthrough the centraloperas of the canon, from Mozartthrough Schoenberg, offering feminist readings that go againstthe grain of standardinterpretations. In opera after opera, Clement demonstrateshow the heroinemust die or be subjugatedin order for the plot to work (thatno one before had even addressedgender with respect to the storiesof operasindicates how very taboo feminist music criticism had been). Clement'sstyle-attacked as "subjective"in many Americanreviews-seems to me one of her strongestassets, for she identifiesherself as one who adoredopera in her youth, who internalized its patternsof love and victimization,and who now returnsto those formativeworks to analyzetheir power to seduceand betray. Also in 1988, the firstcluster of papersin feministcriticism appeared at the annualmeeting of the AmericanMusicological Society. This was an unparalleledhistoric event. Most of us had been laboringin our own isolatedcubicles-in touch with feministwork in other fieldsbut largely unawarethat therewere othersout there askingsimilar questions of music. The 1988 meeting consolidateda communitymade up of both the

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scholarswho had been researchingwomen's music history and a new group steepedin feministtheory and criticalmethods. At and following this conference,several landmark collections were conceived. My book FeministEndings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality,27ap- pearedin 1991 and servedas the lightningrod for the initialcontroversy. But I will soon have company:Ruth Solie inviteda numberof scholars to contributeto a collectioncalled Musicology and Difference, and SusanC. Cook and Judy S. Tsou began planning CedliaReclaimed: Feminist Per- specivesin Genderand Music.28A bit later, Leslie Dunn and Nancy A. Jones (literarycritics interested in the uses of "music"in EnglishRenais- sance texts) formulatedanother collection, Embodied Voices: Female Vocali- ty in WesternCulture,2 which includesa numberof musicologists.These are all now in production,and all are eagerlyawaited as the firstflower- ings of a feministcommunity concerned with musiccriticism. This community met for the firsttime as a constituencyin the summer of 1991, when three internationalconferences focusing explicitly on feminismand music occurredin Utrecht, Minneapolis,and London. As a participantin two of these events, I can testify that I have never seen such energy at musicologicalgatherings. In session after session, women and men presentedtheir contributionsand began makingcriti- cal connections, building intellectualnetworks right before one's very eyes. What had seemed a remote daydreama mere two yearsbefore was now reality.

OBJECTIONSTO FEMINISTMUSIC CRITICISM These changes have not occurredwithout considerableresistance from a number of quarters.Trinh T. Minh-ha has written that it is sometimes difficultfor women today to assesstheir positionswith regardto their professionsbecause "sexismno longer expressesitself as blatantly as it once did."30But we have no such difficultyin musicology.Because the disciplinewas insulatedagainst feminist concerns for so many years, the cases againstthem often appearto have been launched from the Stone Age. Before any feminist music criticism even made it into print, there were alreadyominous signs of backlashin the discipline.For instance,a prestigiousnew seriespublished by Prentice-Hallsported the incredible label Man and Music.This series releasedits firstvolumes in 1989, long after such languagehad been thoroughlycritiqued and abandonedby other fields, and many of us could readthe label as nothing other than

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in-your-facedefiance. After severalindividuals protested to the publisher (whose representativeexplained to me that "man"doesn't have the same connotationsin musicologyas in other fields),the seriestite was altered to Musicand Society, but the originalgesture remains fresh in the memory. When feministcriticism actually did begin to appear,the reactionwas predictablyhostile. In a lead articlein the Fall 1991 issue ofJournalof Musicology,Pieter van den Toorn crownedhis extraordinarycaricature of my work (the only instanceof this new scourgehe knew) with: Women are urged to charttheir own course, to shapetheir own destiniesin ways that are independentof men and the MSD [="MaleSex Drive":his term]. But they are to deny themselves the single fiunction-thebearing of children-thatseparates and distin- guishes them unproblematicallyin this respect.And this function is to be denied in order that they mightjoin the other group (men . .) from which they wish to distinguish themselvesnonetheless.31 In most respects,such candor is reassuring:when scholarsrant about how women would be betteroff barefootand pregnant,one knows pret- ty well what is at stake.Fortunately, the Journalof Musicologyhad the de- cency to invite Ruth Solie to respondto van den Toorn, and her article32 presentsan elegant,compelling defense of the feministenterprise within music studies. But it has become ever clearerthat we are introducingfeminism into a new disciplineat a time when many fieldsare declaringthe adventof "postfeminism,"a time when criticssuch as ChristineSommers (backed by culturalconservatives in the academyand the state)are denouncing feminism.33Much of what has occurred in the musicological debate during the past year owes a great deal to this chilling climate.But beyond misogyny and the general backlashthat plagues our moment, feministmusic criticismfaces other forms of oppositionmore particular to the disciplineand its intellectualhistory. And these need to be articulated if we are to understandwhy some of the feministwork in music has proceededas it has. First, there are the ideological objectionsto music criticism of any stripe.As discussedabove, critical discussions of content in music are still associatedwith the abusesof totalitarianregimes, and some detractors still compare feministswith Nazis or Stalinists,without distinguishing between a context of state-imposedinterpretations and one in which readingsmay be freelydebated and contested.Others object on grounds that one's reactionsto music ought to be kept privateand personal,un- contaminatedby verbalmediation. This position obviouslyowes a great deal to Romantic mysticism,even though it has been reworkedby late-

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twentieth-centurymodernists, and it refusesto accept that culturalarti- facts (includingmusic) are alwaysalready multiple mediated.34 Still others wish the canon to be above criticism-exempteven from work that merely addressessignification. When many feel that to interpreta piece by Bach, Mozart, or Schubert-howeveraffirmatively-is to do irrepara- ble damage,then how much greaterthe hysteriawhen a critic actually takesissue with a passagein a canonicwork! A second group of objectionscome from music theory-a discipline that can trace its roots back to Pythagorasin the sixth century B.C.E. and prides itself on its ability to deal with music in "purelymusical terms."As Joseph Kerman35has argued,music theory is the branchof musicology that fills the place occupied in literarystudies by criticism, except that insteadof producingcritical readings of works,it offersself- contained formal analysespurported to be the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. To be sure, the technicaldimensions of musical constructiondemand that we have some specialistswho focus on struc- ture and syntax. But theory monopolizes the discussion, effectively blocking all questions of social signification.Many of the attackson feministcriticism follow frombasic disagreements about what a piece of music is and what we might want to know about it. Another theoretical obstacle has to do with the discipline'slong- standinginvestment in positivisticmethods, wherebyone is either right or wrong. As can be imagined,such attitudeshave severelystunted the development of intellectualdialogue of any kind in music studies:the multiple readingsthat characterizeliterary studies are virtually nowhere to be found. Because musicologistsare not accustomedto entertaining divergentinterpretations (we want either to find one meaning that can be unambiguouslydocumented or to allow none at all), an alternative readingis deemed sufficientto discredita whole argument.Perhaps one day we will be able to regardmultiple readings as cause for celebration ratherthan dismissal(we are dealing,after all, with extremelyrich cultural texts). But the debate right now, unfortunately,is littered with gleeful counterreadingsdesigned to demonstratethe impossibility of meaning, toutcourt. Still anothercriticism launched at feministreadings is that they fail to deal with the music in adequatedetail. In some cases, such objections are warranted.If a readingis not groundedat least in partin the notes, then the argumentsmay well be concerned with somethingother than the music (lyrics,video images,etc.). Yet what such critiquesoften de- mand are analysesthat accountsystematically for every pitch, that pay at-

This content downloaded from 164.41.4.26 on Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:58:59 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 414 SusanMcClary tention to musicaldetails alone. Sometimesone can only make an im- portantpoint by digging deeply into the technicaldetails of the music, in which case the critic certainlyhas the responsibilityto deliver the goods. But sometimesthe connotationof a passageis relativelyeasy for any nonspecialistto explain, and requiringthe critic to interrogateall the other formal dimensionsof the score in question is pure obfusca- tion. It pulls the discussionaway from the social contexts within which the piece acquiresmeanings and mires it again in music defined as a self-contained,totalizable entity. Finally,there also have been some attacksfrom the Left-or at least from those who argue from the position of knowing something about current literaryand/or feminist theory. Some come from the vantage point of deconstruction,which has calledinto questionthe whole issue of representation.At a time when critics of literatureor film are concerned with revealingthe artificialityof texts, it may seem quite embar- rassingthat musicologistsshould be trying to argueformeaning in their medium. Without question, deconstructionhas had a salutoryeffect in many areasof study.Because many readershave regardedwvriting as transpar- ent, they often have acted as if there were some realityin or behind the text; reading involved simply reachingthrough to grasp the meanings manifestlythere. But over the last fifteen years,literary theorists have turned to examininghow texts are constructedthrough the ramshackle apparatusof language.Sentences that formerlyhad seemed unequivocal were revealedas clustersof words and rhetoricaldevices, each resonat- ing promiscuouslywith infinite numbersof other texts or spiralingoff through puns to far-flungassociations. Centered, unambiguous speech was revealedas illusory. Because musicianshave been restrictedto formalistexplanations for so long, we do not thinkwe need this lesson, for we learned to deny meaning in our chosen medium long ago. Thus it is relativelyeasy for new projects dealing with significationin music to be discreditedby those who "know"from the latest French theories that meaning can never be presentin human artifacts.And such arguments-despitetheir rathersuspicious continental pedigrees-are quite welcome in the discipline, because they maintainthe statusquo whereby questions concerning significationare quicklydismissed. But skepticismwith respectto meaning is only part of deconstruction. More important,critics such asJacques Derrida also have revealed how discoursesare groundedin assumptionsabout the world that often

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remain invisible,albeit transmittedindefinitely through cultural transac- tions. Thus, anotheraspect of the deconstructionistproject is to make us aware of how language-in both our habits of speech and our literary texts-participatesin producingand reproducinga particularkind of social world. And this second, more politicalaspect of deconstruction-the uncoveringof the ideologicalapparatus that structuresdiscourse-is over- due in makingits appearancein music. For as LawrenceKramer,36 among others, has begun to argue,music no less than literatureis organizedaccording to structureswe overlook because we regardthem as "natural."Yet before we can begin taking these apart,we have to demonstratehow they operatein a medium that has long claimedto have transcendedrepresentation and signification.If meaning seems too immanentin literature,it has been too absentfrom music studies.Thus, in order to achievethe same kinds of resultsas in contemporaryliterary criticism, we firsthave to reconstructhistorically grounded social meanings... in order to deconstructthem, that is, to expose the ideological premisesof the most basic proceduresand to open the possibilityof multiplereadings. Yet this particularconcern with significationis not the old metaphysicalquest of earliereras but almost its opposite. It focuseson how humansocieties have produced meanings for themselvesthrough music. Another attack that announces itself as coming from a position of greatertheoretical sophistication is one in which the dreadedword "essentialism"is held up like a crucifix to ward off vampires.The debate concerning essentialismhas been one of the most divisiveand yet pro- ductive to have emerged in feminismin the last ten years,and we have all benefited from having to rethink our very most basic assumptions concerning gender,sexuality, and even identity.37When we bring feminist concernsinto a new discipline,we want to avoidrepeating the same mistakes.In particular,it is importantnot to assumetoo quicklythat we know what we mean by "women,"especially when the resultis the mar- ginalizationof women who differfrom some white, middle-class,het- erosexual"norm." But many of the chargesof "essentialism"in musicologyare misuses of the term. The problemseems to be the issueof "difference."Many mu- sicologistswant to declarethat difference(whether articulated along lines of gender, sexualpreference, race, or ethnicity)ought to be-in fact has been-transcended.The idea that anyonemight want to claima positionof differenceis seen as astonishingand ludicrous.38 Yet, as Drucilla Cornell has arguedso cogenty, to adopt the "univer-

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sal"position is to accommodate,to colludein self-erasure.39Accordingly, it is not essentialistto identify oneself professionallyas a woman and one's work as feminist;it is, rather,to make a political choice-not to submit to some notion of biologicaldetermination. Nor is it essentialist to researchthe ways in which repertoriesof past and present cultures have operatedaccording to essentialistassumptions, for if we ignore the codes according to which "masculine"is representedas aggressiveor "feminine"as passive, then we fail to grasp how these constructions helped to regulatelives in the pastand still continueto affectus today in the music we hear. It is not even essentialistfor women to compose in waysthat deliberatelyconstruct alternative articulations of the body from those offeredby the male-dominatedcanon, even if doing so risksrein- scribing the age-old associationof "woman"with "body."Inasmuch as body metaphors alreadypermeate musical procedures,certain artists (e.g., LaurieAnderson, Pauline Oliveros)treat this as a crucial site for producingcounterimages. Admittedly,the tacticalzone between accommodationand essentialism is difficultto negotiate,which is why so much recentcultural theory (feminist,queer, postcolonial, etc.) focuseson these issues.But the prob- lem never has been differenceper se, but ratherintolerance of difference. And it is this same intolerance,albeit in liberaldisguise, that has lifted buzzwordsfrom the debateswithin feminismin orderto shut down the enterpriseof feministmusic criticism before it gets started. Yet despite the ferocityof such responsesto feministmusic criticism, too many scholars-menas well as women-have now entered into this prohibitedterrain for the old statusquo to return.Musicology's founda- tions have shifted;the disciplinewill neverbe the sameagain.

VARIE'TIESOF FEMINIST MUSIC CRITICISM TODAY In the very few years since feministmusic criticismfirst burst on the scene, a wide range of projectshas begun to unfold, quickly creatinga field of extraordinaryheterogeneity. Some of this work examinesmusic of the Europeantradition but with a more criticaleye/ear than has pre- viously been the case. Ruth Solie's readingof Schumann'sFrauenliebe songs, for instance,reveals a musicalarticulation of the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity;Jeffrey Kallberg has researchedattitudes toward the genre of the nocturne and has found how "the feminine"was pro- jected on to that repertory,the composerswho wrote such pieces, and even the piano itself;Suzanne Cusick has discovereda possibleinstance

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of a woman composing as a womanin the early seventeenthcentury; LawrenceKramer has producedstudies concerning gendered power re- lations in Liszt, Strauss,and others; CarolynAbbate has analyzedcon- structionsof heroinesand patriarchsin Wagner;Caryl Flinn has interro- gated the gendered ideologies underlyingmusic composed for classic films; and Linda Austern and Richard Lepperthave investigatedhow gender has influenced musicalproduction and performancein various moments in Westernmusic history.My own work has been concerned with discerninghow historicallyconstituted ideas of gender, sexuality, and the body have informedeven the most basic of musicalprocedures from the sixteenthcentury to the present.40 Parallelwith the growth of feminist music criticism has been the emergence of researchand theoreticalwork on gay and lesbian issues. The individualmost responsiblefor securinga spacefor such work within musicology is Philip Brett, who-despite the expressdisapproval of many of his peers-beganhosting gay/lesbiancocktail parties at discipli- nary meetings in the mid-1980s, organizedthe firstpanel on gay musicology in 1990, and servesin generalas the patronsaint of newsletters, caucuses,and much else within the discipline.Brett's work on Benjaniin Britten41courageously insists on the relevanceof the composer'ssexuality to his music. FlizabethWood hasbeen the centerof lesbianwork in musicology,because of both her work on Ethel Smythand her talksthat in- troduceda very differentstyle of speakinginto our stuffyacademic context. Brett, Wood, and GaryThomas have compiled a collection of essays on lesbian and gay musicology,42Queering the Pitch (a pun on a Britishtechnical term). This areais too rich for me to do it justice here, but some of the projectscurrently underway in gay/lesbianmusicology include work on specific artists(Handel, KatherinePhillips, k.d. lang, and Schubert)and on lesbianand gayreception.43 The recent turn in feministtheory to "performativity"would appear crucialto the work that lies beforeus in music criticism,for it is the ac- tualizationof music through real bodies and real voices that brings it down from the stratosphereto participatein everydaypractices. The work being done at presentby SuzanneCusick explores what it is like to perform and listen by means of a lesbianbody.44 By locating herself in the nexus between seeminglyabstract procedures and hands,feet, lungs, and sites of erotic pleasure,she breaksopen the barrierthat has blocked listeners/performersmethodologically from their own responses.And BarbaraEngh has examinedthat vulnerableorgan, "the ear"(the orifice that cannotbe closed), as it is definedas a thresholdof both pleasureand

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anxietyin Nietzsche,Adorno, and Derrida.45 Other areasof music have similarlyopened up to questionsof gender. As was mentioned earlier,ethnomusicology has alwaysbeen concerned with this dimensionof musicalactivity, although recent events have in- creasedthe concentrationon women's issuesin world musics.46Music education, which has long been populated mostly by women under male supervision,has begun to rethinkphilosophical premises and revise curricularplanning.47 Perhaps most surprising,given the insularnature of their area, a number of music theoriststoo have starteddeveloping ways of dealingwith gender.48

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MUSICOLOGY TO FEMINIST THOUGHT All of us working in these new areashave been heavily influencedby feministsfrom other disciplines.Yet feministmusicology has now reached a stagewhere it can begin payingback the debt, for many culturalissues can be addressedmore thoroughlyif music is factoredinto the equation. Becausemusic specialistshave long held themselvesaloof from interdisci- plinarydiscussions, most scholarsin other fieldshave learned to overlook music in their theoreticaland historicalstudies. But feministmusicology promisesto changethis situationby makingissues involving music acces- sible andrelevant to the communityat large.As HaydenWhite writes: What literary theory and criticism can contribute to musicology and music criticism is insight into the nature of discourse in general. It would follow that musicology could profit from this exchange only insofar as music could be considered as a form or mode of discourse. And in that case, the exchange would run both ways, for if music were a form or mode of discourse, then literary theory would have as much to learn from musicology as music criticism has to learn from literary studies.49 The projectsnow emergingin feministmusic criticismoffer severalan- gles that ought to be of interestto ongoing and new debates.As music leavesthe elevated,mystified realm it has occupied, it becomes identifi- able as a culturalpractice, a discoursethat participatesheavily in social formation.This may seem unlikelyat firstglance: because many people cannot label the elementsthey hear,they often acceptthe specialists'ver- dict that they "don'tknow anythingabout music"and thus assumethat music cannot affectthem. Yet those who producemusic (for film, advertising,popular and classi- cal repertories)know that individualswho havegrown up within a given culture respondwith remarkableaccuracy to musicalstimuli. They can

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discriminate among affective, dramatic,rhetorical, and rhythmic de- vices and react by experiencing sorrow or surpriseor by dancing as the music suggests. Music helps shape our internalized ideas about feelings, the self, gender, the body, pleasure,and even models of social organization. The fact that many cannot account for these reactions only makes it all the more powerful. Music pushes our buttons with impunity. Those of us engaged in music criticism today seek to uncover the ways music achieves these effects. Instead of focusing exclusively on music's formal integrity, we try to understandhow it arousesdesire, provokes anxiety, or transmitsits seductive narratives.Such work is clearly relevantto studentsof film or video, who risk missing crucial parts of the apparatusif they ignore music. But it also concerns the ca- sual listener who absorbs-withoutquite knowing how-various models of subjectivity or of the body, simply by switching on the radio or watching a movie with a John Williamsscore. Like all culturalmedia, music has a history,and it is possibleto trace how the principalaims of music change from period to period, from group to group, and how its various"structures of feeling"compete for dominance. As polemicists from Plato to Allan Bloom make clear, nothing less is at stake in musicalstyles than social order. Music is far too importantfor any of us to ignore, especiallythose who want to ex- amine how gender,subjectivity, or the body arehistorically constituted. The specificityof musicalscores-even while they appearto be non- referential-cantell us in great detail how feelingswere felt or how the body moved in various moments in history.I do not mean to imply that we can hear straightthrough the music to formerrealities, for music is an artificialconstruct that reliesno less than does languageon dis- placements, analogies,and deferralsof meaning. Yet its patternsoffer invaluableinsight into how the body is understood,how emotions are experienced, how gender is organized.As theoristsin other areasbegin to explore the historicity of the body, subjectivity,gender, desire, or pleasure,the contributionsof musicologistsshould prove indispensable. This is one reasonwhy the excavationof women'smusic throughout history is so crucial. If music is engaged in transmittingsuch vital as- pects of social reality,then we need to listen closely to those voices from the marginsthat may be articulatingdifferent versions. Of course, before we can discern properlywhat is going on in compositions by women we have to have a better graspof the conventions of musical representationlong denied within the discipline. And we have only

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begun that task-largely,however, thanks to questionsraised by feminist studies. In addressingfinally why music has tried to seal itself off from the culturalworld we run headlonginto the metaphysicalapparatus that deconstructionhas been busy dismantling.For far more than literatureor the visual arts,both of which have obvious referentialties to the "outside world," music has a venerablehistory of associationswith mathe- matics and ideal form. Yet this history is riddled with gendered associations-metaphorsthat serve to make musical/metaphysicalconcepts more comprehensiblebut also to naturalizeexisting gender hierarchies. At the same time, music has often been identifiedas the most "feminine" of the arts,because of its relativevagueness, its fluidity,its appar- ent "handmaiden"relationship to lyrics, its abilityto arouse,its connections with dance,and even its resonanceswith memoriesof coextension with the mother. Because of its claims of transcendentalorder, on the one hand, and imputationsof its ties to materialexistence, on the other, music serves as an ideal site for examining the always-genderedstruggle between mind and body that has characterizedWestern culture from its begin- nings. Even our reluctanceto study its effects can be tracedto this set of attitudes. We confer metaphysicalstatus on this medium and yet denigrate it as trivial because it is so closely bound up with complex desires. That music conjures up feelings that escape precise linguistic translationcannot be denied. Yet it is, for all that, no less culturally mediated and socially constructed. It might even be said that music holds the dubious honor in the West of being the essentializedOther that guaranteeslanguage. In 1980 Liz Wood could point proudlyto musicologicalresearch on "women worthies,"while lamenting the absence of work that might attractthe attention of other feminists.A mere twelve yearslater, the situationhas changed beyond our wildest hopes. Not only is our pic- ture of women in music historynow filled out in ever-increasingdetail but those cross-disciplinaryconversations are happening on a regular basis. The benefits are no longer confined to musicology alone, for many in other fields are taking advantageof questions that had re- mained unaskedor only half-answereduntil music entered the discussion. It is anybody'sguess what will have transpiredby the year 2000, but this much is clear: musicologyhas been permanentlytransformed by its encounter with feminism.

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NOTES

1. ElizabethWood, "Review Essay:Women in Music,"Signs 6 (Winter 1980): 283-97. 2. Nancy Reich, ClaraSchumann: The Artistand the Woman(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985); MarciaJ. Citron, The Lettersof FannyHensel to Felix Mendelssohn(Stuyvesant, N.Y.: Pendragon, 1987); and Julia Moore, "Theorizinga FeministMusical Aesthetics: Clara Schuman- n's Subversionsof MasculineDiscourse" (project in progress). 3. Peter Dronke, WomenWriters of the MiddleAges (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1984); Bruce Holsinger, "The Flesh of the Voice: Erotic Embodimentin the Music of Abbess Hildegardvon Bingen," Signs(forthcoming). 4. Ellen Rosand, "The Voice of BarbaraStrozzi," in WomenMaking Music: The WesternArt Tra- dition, 1150-1950, ed. Jane Bowers and Judith Tick (Urbanaand Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 168-90. 5. Adrienne Fried Block, Amy Beach(1867-1944), AmericanComposer and Pianist(Oxford: Ox- ford University Press, forthcoming); MarciaJ. Citron, Cecile Chaminade:A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1988); CatherineParsons Smith and Cynthia Richardson, Mary CarrMoore, American Composer (Ann Arbor:University of MichiganPress, 1986); MatildaGaume, Ruth CrawfordSeeger: Memoirs, Memories, Music (Metuchen, NJ.: ScarecrowPress, 1986); Eliza- beth Wood, "Women, Music, and Ethel Smyth:A Pathwayin the Politics of Music," Massachu- setts Review24 (Spring 1983): 125-39; and Ellie Hisama, "The Question of Climax in Ruth Crawford'sString Quartet, Mvt. 3" (Paperdelivered at "FeministTheory and Music:Toward a Common Language"conference, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota,June 1991). 6. MarciaJ. Citron, "Gender,Professionalism, and the Musical Canon,"Journal of Musicology8 (Winter 1990): 102-17, and Genderand the MusicalCanon (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 7. Carol Neuls-Bates, ed. Womenin Music:An Anthologyof SourceReadings from the MiddleAges to the Present(New York: Harper& Row, 1982). 8. Bowers and Tick. 9. JamesR. Briscoe, ed., HistoricalAnthology of Musicby Women(Bloomington: Indiana Universi- ty Press, 1987); and KarinPendle, Womenand Music: A History(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 10. Judith Tick, AmericanWomen Composers before 1870 (Ann Arbor:UMI ResearchPress, 1983); ChristineAmmer, Unsung:A Historyof Womenin AmericanMusic (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980); and Marie-ThereseLefebvre, La Creationmusicale desfemmes au Quebec(Saint-Lau- rent, Quebec: Les Editions du remue-menage,1991). 11. Judith Zaimont, ed., The Musical Woman:An Interational Perspective(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press); Nicola Lefanu, "MasterMusician: An ImpregnableTaboo?" in Contact:A Journalof ContemporaryMusic 31 (Autumn 1987): 4-8; Elaine Barkin,"Questionnaire for Women Composers and Responses," Perspectivesof New Music 19 (Fall/Winter 1980-Spring/Summer 1981): 460-62; Perspectivesof New Music20 (Fall/Winter-1981Spring/Summer 1982): 288-330; AmericanWomen Composers News (Washington,D.C.: AmericanWomen Composers, 1979-82); (continued as AWC News/Forum), (McLean, Va.); InternationalLeague of Women Composers Newsletter,1981-89 (continuedas ILWCJournal),(Arlington, Va.); InternationalCongress of Women in MusicNewsletter, 1983-89 (continuedas WorkingPapers), (Los Angeles). 12. Ellen Koskoff, ed., Womenand Musicin Cross-CulturalPerspecive (Urbana and Chicago: Uni- versity of Illinois Press, 1989). 13. Linda Dahl, StormyWeather: The Musicand Livesof a CenturyofJazzwomen (New York: Pan- theon, 1984); Sally Placksin, AmericaWomen inJazz: 1900 to the Present(New York: Wideview Books, 1982); Mary Unterbrink,Jazz Womenat the Piano(efferson, N.C.: McFarland,1983). 14. Daphne Duval Harrison,Black Pearls: Blues Queensof the 1920s (New Brunswick and Lon- don: Rutgers University Press, 1988); Hazel V. Carby, "'ItJus Be's Dat Way Sometime':The Sexual Politics of Women's Blues,"in UnequalSisters: A MulticulturalReader in U.S. Women'sHis-

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tory,ed. Ellen Carol Dubois and Vicki L. Ruiz (New York: Routledge Press, 1990), 238-49; An- gela Davis, "BlackWomen and Music: A HistoricalLegacy of Struggle,"in Wild Womenin the Whirlwind:Afro-American Culture and the ContemporaryLiterary Renaissance, ed. Joanne M. Braxton and Andree Nicola McLaughlin(New Brunswick,NJ.: Rutgers UniversityPress, 1990). 15. Gillian Gaar,She's a Rebel:The Historyof Womenin Rock& Roll (Seattle:Seal Press, 1992). 16. Charlotte Greig, Will You Still LoveMe Tomorrow?Girl Groupsfrom the Ffties On (London: Virago, 1989). 17. Robyn Archer and Diana Simmonds,A StarIs Tom (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986); and Sue Steward and Sheryl Garratt,Signed, Sealed, and Delivered:True Life Storiesof Womenin Pop (Boston:South End Press, 1984). 18. Susan C. Cook, "The Career and Times of Irene Castle:Revolutions in Music and Man- ners," Worldbeat1 (1991): 34-46; Tricia Rose, BlackNoise: Rap Musicand BlackCultural Resistance in ContemporaryAmerican Popular Culture (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, forthcoming); Venise T. Berry, "Feminine or Masculine:The Conflicting Nature of Female Images in Rap Music,"in CeciliaReclaimed: Feminist Perspectives in Genderand Music, ed. SusanC. Cook andJudy S. Tsou (Urbana:University of IllinoisPress, 1993); Robert Walser,Running with the Devil:Power, Gender,and Madness in HeavyMetal Music (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1993). 19. E. Ann Kaplan,Rocking around the Clock:Music Television, Postmodernism, and ConsumerCul- ture(New York and London:Methuen, 1987). 20. Lisa Lewis, GenderPolitics and MTV: Voicingthe Difference(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990). 21. Wood, "Review Essay,"295. 22. Joseph Horowitz, UnderstandingToscanini: How He Becamean AmericanCulture-God and HelpedCreate a New AudienceforOld Music(New York:Knopf, 1987). 23. Theodor W. Adorno, Introductionto the Sociologyof Music,trans. E.B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), and Prisms,trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (Cambridge:MIT Press, 1981); Rose RosengardSubotnik, Developing Variations: Style and Ideologyin West-ernMusic (Min- neapolis:University of MinnesotaPress, 1991). 24. Paul Ricoeur, "Civilizationand National Cultures,"in Historyand Truth,trans. CharlesA. Kelbley (Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1965), 278. 25. Eva Rieger, Frau,Musik, und Mannerherrschaft(Frankfurt, Germany: Ullstein, 1981); excerpt- ed as "'Dolcesemplice'? On the ChangingRole of Women in Music," in FeministAesthetics, ed. GiselaEcker, trans.Harriet Andersen (Boston: Beacon, 1986), 135-49. 26. Catherine Clement, Opera,or the Undoingof Women,trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis:Uni- versity of MinnesotaPress, 1988). 27. Susan McClary, FeminineEndings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality(Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1991). 28. Ruth Solie, ed., Musicologyand Difference(Berkeley and Los Angeles:University of California Press, 1993); and Cook and Tsou. 29. Leslie Dunn and Nancy A. Jones, eds., EmbodiedVoices: Female Vocality in WesternCulture (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 30. Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman,Native, Other (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 84. 31. Pieter van den Toorn, "Politics, Feminism, and ContemporaryMusic Theory,"Journal of Musicology9 (Summer1991): 298. 32. Ruth Solie, "WhatDo FeministsWant? A Reply to Pieter van den Toom," Journalof Musi- cology9 (Fall 1991): 399-410. 33. ChristineSommers, byline in WallStreetJournal, 7 Nov. 1991, Section A, 14. 34. Elaine Barkin, "Either/Other"(critical essay on work by SusanMcClary), Perspectives of New Music30 (Summer1992): 206-33. 35. Joseph Kerman, ContemplatingMusic: Challenges to Musicology(Cambridge: Harvard Universi- ty Press, 1985). 36. Lawrence Kramer, "Cultureand Musical Hermeneutics:The Salome Complex," Cambridge OperaJournal2 (November 1990): 269-94.

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37. See, in particular,Judith Buter, GenderTrouble: Feminism and the Subversionof Identity(New York and London: Routedge Press, 1990). 38. Leo Treiter, "Genderand Other Dualitiesof Music History,"in Musicologyand Difference. 39. Drucilla Cornel, BeyondAccommodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Law (New York and London:Roudedge, 1991). 40. Ruth Solie, "Whose Life?The GenderedSelf in Schumann'sFrauenliebe Songs," in Musicand Text: CriticalInquiries, ed. Steven Paul Scher (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992), 219-40; Jeffrey Kallberg,"The Harmony of the Tea Table: Gender and Ideology in the Piano Nocturne," Representations39 (Summer 1992): 102-33; SuzanneCusick, "FrancescaCaccini's La Liberazionedi Ruggierodall'isola d'Alina (1625): A FeministMisreading of Orlandofurioso?" in Mu- sicologyand Difference;Lawrence Kramer, Music as CulturalPractice, 1800-1900 (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1990); CarolynAbbate, UnsungVoices: Opera and Musical Narrativein the NineteenthCentury (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Caryl Flinn, Strainsof Utopia:Nostalgia, Gender, and HollywoodFilm Music(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); LindaAustern, "'Sing againe Syren':The FemaleMusician and Sexual Enchantment in ElizabethanLife and Literature,"Renaissance Quarterly 42 (Autumn 1989): 427-38; Richard Leppert, Musicand Image:Domesticty, Ideology, and SocioculturalFormation in Eighteenth-Century England(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 41. Philip Brett, BenjaminBritten: Peter Grimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 42. Philip Brett, ElizabethWood, and GaryThomas, eds., Queeringthe Pitch:The New Gay and LesbianMusicology (New York and London:Routedge, 1993). 43. Gary Thomas, "WasGeorge FridericHandel 'Gay?'On Closet Questions and CulturalPoli- tics," in Queeringthe Pitch;Lydia Hamessley, "Henry Lawes's Setting of KatherinePhilip's Friend- ship Poetry in His SecondBook of Ayresand Dialogues,1655: A MusicalMisreading?" in Queering the Pitch;Martha Mockus, "Some Queer Thoughts on CountryMusic and k.d. lang,"in Queering the Pitch;Maynard Solomon, "FranzSchubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini," Nine- teenth-CenturyMusic 12 (Spring 1989): 193-208; Susan McClary, "Constructionsof Subjectivity in Schubert'sMusic," in Queeringthe Pitch;Judith Peraino, "'Rip Her to Shreds,'Evaluating and Redefining Women's Music According to a Butch-Femme Aesthetics,"repercussions 1 (Spring 1992): 19-47; Karen Pegley and Virginia Caputo, "Growing Up Female(s):Retrospective Thoughts on Musical Preferencesand Meanings,"repercussions 1 (Spring 1992): 65-80; Mitchell Morris, "On Gaily Reading Music," repercussions1 (Spring 1992): 48-64, and "Reading As an Opera Queen," in Musicologyand Diference;Wayne Koestenbaum,The Queen'sThroat: Opera, Ho - mosexua'lty,and the Mysteryof Desire(New York:Poseidon/Simon & Schuster,1993). 44. Suzanne Cusick, "On a Lesbian Relationship with Music:A Serious Effort Not to Think Straight,"in Queeringthe Pitch. 45. BarbaraEngh, "Adornoand the Sirens:Tele-phono-graphic Bodies," in EmbodiedVoices, and "Nietzsche'sEars" in Musicologyand Difference. 46. Jane Bowers and Urban Bareis,"Bibliography on Music and Gender-Womenin Music," The Worldof Music33 (1991): 65-103. 47. Roberta Lamb, IncludingWomen Composers in MusicCurricula: Development of CreativeStrategies for the GeneralMusic Class, Grades5-8 (Ed.D. diss., ColumbiaUniversity Teachers College, 1987). 48. Marion A. Guck, "The Model of Domination and Competitionin MusicalAnalysis" (Paper delivered at "Feminist Theory and Music: Toward a Common Language"conference, Min- neapolis, University of Minnesota, June 1991); MarianneKielian-Gilbert, "Musical Structures and the Outside World: RelationalModels and a FeministAesthetic" (Paper delivered at "Femi- nist Theory and Music: Toward a Common Language"conference, Minneapolis,University of Minnesota,June 1991); David Lewin, "Women'sVoices and the FundamentalBass," Journal of Musicology10 (Fall 1992): 464-82. 49. Hayden White, "Form,Reference, and Ideology in MusicalDiscourse," in Musicand Text, 319.

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