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Copyright by Sarah Marie Schoonhoven 2017 Copyright by Sarah Marie Schoonhoven 2017 The Report Committee for Sarah Marie Schoonhoven Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: Gender, Timbre, and Metaphor in the Music of Wendy Carlos APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Eric Drott John Turci-Escobar Gender, Timbre, and Metaphor in the Music of Wendy Carlos by Sarah Marie Schoonhoven, B.A. Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Music The University of Texas at Austin May 2017 Dedication This paper is for Wendy Carlos, in the hopes that one day her list of respectful authors will far outnumber her “list of the cruel.” This paper is also for the 13 Trans women who have been murdered in the United States since the beginning of this project. We see you. Rest in power. Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the assistance of many fine people, a few of whom I should like to extend my gratitude towards here. My advisor, Dr. Eric Drott, has possibly read through this document more times than I have, and encouragingly nudged me in the right direction more times than should be possible in a one-year span and reminded me that music theory is “whatever a music theorist does.” My second reader, Dr. John Turci-Escobar, has been a much-needed support and guide through my time at the University of Texas, for which I will be forever obliged. I am much indebted to the Music Theory department of the Butler School of Music for their support, encouragement, and countless lessons on the work that theorists can do. I am also forever grateful for the work being done at the UT Gender and Sexuality Center, both by the professional and student staffs. The support I received both as a scholar seeking information and as a person seeking advocacy and affirmation were a gift that I feel incredibly lucky to have experienced this past year. I hope centers like the GSC will continue to grow and flourish on college campuses, no matter the political climate currently being endured. Katherine, there is no way I could ever put into words how impossible this project would have been without you, so I will say only that I sincerely owe you one, and I hope you will let me repay you in years of our life together. May there be a hundred more. v Abstract Gender, Timbre, and Metaphor in the Music of Wendy Carlos Sarah Marie Schoonhoven, M.Music The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Eric Drott The music of Wendy Carlos has been examined in many arenas, her soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange being no exception. The polarizing film has been analyzed and dissected by numerous film critics, film scholars, music scholars, and journalists, with reviews ranging from glorifying to damning. Yet the musical compositions of Wendy Carlos often seem to be accompanied by another topic of discussion, a topic not often deemed necessary in discussions of Kubrick: Carlos’s gender identity. Simply put, Carlos’s gender has been a major part of the discourse surrounding her works in a manner unlike that of most composers. The critical response to which Carlos has been subject since publicly coming out in 1979 has largely revolved around ideological assumptions about her identity, as well as misconceptions and conflations of identity terms and nuances. As a result, her works are often not only (mis)gendered, but (mis)sexualized. This thesis draws on critical and scholarly reception of synthesized works by Carlos ranging from the 1969 release of “Switched-On Bach” through the present day to explore and unpack the gendered implications of the timbral metaphors used to describe vi her works. My analysis builds on the work of Tara Rodgers surrounding timbral metaphor and its use in electronic musics. Similarities in the metaphors used to describe her music over the past half century provide insight into not only the “tone color” of the sound but also the music’s cultural implications and the audience’s perceptions of the music’s creator. This paper will examine, compare, and analyze metaphors to characterize Carlos’s “March from Clockwork Orange” in order to analyze the ways that perceptions of Carlos and her perceived gender identity have fed into interpretations of her music. By way of contrast, this paper will then compare some of the critical reception of another influential electronic outfit, Kraftwerk, and the differences in critical reception relating to Kraftwerk’s masculine and male identities. The extensive body of literature on Kraftwerk and their inclusion in both the academic electroacoustic and popular electronic canons will allow for discussion centering on the gendering of electronic timbres across multiple artists and continents. vii Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Wendy Carlos and Gendered Timbral Metaphor .............................................................. 5 Classical Music Associations ...................................................................................... 12 Weight, Complexity, Seriousness ............................................................................... 13 The Simple and Unserious .......................................................................................... 14 Connections to Nature ................................................................................................ 15 Synthetic and Artificial ................................................................................................. 16 Commercialized, Commoditized ................................................................................. 17 Unearthly and New ..................................................................................................... 18 Contradictory ............................................................................................................... 18 Metaphor and Perceptions of Gender ......................................................................... 19 Natural or Like Nature ................................................................................................. 21 Movement/Motion ........................................................................................................ 23 Synesthesia ................................................................................................................ 24 Analysis: “March from A Clockwork Orange” .................................................................. 26 Kraftwerk and the Merge of Man and Machine ............................................................... 32 Critical Metaphors of Kraftwerk ................................................................................... 35 Repetition and Hypnosis ............................................................................................. 35 Twentieth Century Futurism ........................................................................................ 36 Dark, Ominous ............................................................................................................ 38 Physical Appearance .................................................................................................. 38 viii Similarities and Differences ......................................................................................... 39 Conclusions .................................................................................................................... 41 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 43 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 43 Discography ................................................................................................................ 43 Vita .................................................................................................................................. 46 ix Introduction When Switched-On Bach was released in 1968, there was nothing on the musical market to which it could adequately be compared. It was only the second Classical album to go platinum in the USA, and sat atop the classical music charts from 1969 to 1972. Switched-On Bach was not only a Grammy-winner,1 it was also a milestone in electronic music whose legacy still remains today. A complete list of the artists citing the album and its creator as influences on their compositional and performance styles would be nearly impossible, but it is safe to say that the album had a significant impact on the genres of classical, electronic, and popular music. An interesting dilemma arises, however, when one attempts to research this album. While it is mentioned in nearly every text related to histories of electronic music and synthesizers, very rarely is more than a paragraph dedicated to the role the album played in Western music.2 Further, much less is said about the album than its composer, Wendy Carlos. Carlos, an American composer and synthesizer pioneer, worked closely with Robert Moog in order to assemble her first album, Switched-On Bach, which was released to critical acclaim in 1968. While writers at that time were interested in the album’s contents, timbres, and cultural implications, later writers were noticeably more interested in her identity as a transgender woman. 1 “Col’s ‘Switched-On Bach’
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