- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: University of Minnesota Press (7 Jan 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0816618992
- ISBN-13: 978-0816618996
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15 x 1.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 835,399 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Feminine Endings
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Product Description
Book Description
When it was originally published in 1991, Feminine Endings was immediately controversial for its unprecedented intermingling of cultural criticism and musical studies, an approach that came to be called "the New Musicology." Through case studies of works ranging from the canonical-operas by Monteverdi and Bizet-to the contemporary-the performance art of Diamanda Galás and popular songs by Madonna-Susan McClary focuses on the ways music produces images of gender, desire, pleasure, and the body, and explores the gender-based metaphors that circulate in discourse about music. The now classic work features a new introduction that discusses the critical reception it received and the debates it has inspired.
"A major book . . . [McClary's] achievement borders on the miraculous." Village Voice
"McClary writes with a racy, vigorous, and consistently entertaining style. . . . What she has to say specifically about the music and the text is sharp, accurate, and telling; she hears what takes place musically with unusual sensitivity." New York Review of Books
Susan McClary, professor of musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, specializes in the cultural criticism of music, both the European canon and contemporary popular genres. Her most recent book is Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (2000). --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In FEMININE ENDINGS: MUSIC, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY, Susan McClary applies the insightful and provocative approach to music and its meanings that has made her one of the most widely read music scholars of the twentieth century, and for which she earned the prestigious MacArthur Award in 1995. McClary argues that music, being a fundamentally social phenomenon, constitutes a particular mode of social discourse. Music can articulate social meanings in various ways, and like any semiotic system it uses a defined, yet flexible, repertory of codes -- gestures, rhetorical devices, narrative strategies, associations with and allusions to extra-muical events or phenomena, and so on. While this would seem obvious to anyone who has ever heard a horn call, a funeral dirge, a national anthem, or a distinctive bolero, scholarly writing on music has until recently been reluctant to assess critically how meanings are inscribed, circulated, and mediated through musical practices. As McClary explains, the process by which musical sounds, phrases, and gestures assume meanings is complex and is open to modification, challenge, and redefinition. Therefore, critics who portray McClary's rich hermeneutic interventions as reductive or essentialist grossly misrepresent her line of argument. For as she demonstrates, there is nothing essential about musical meanings -- they are subject to the contingencies of time and place; they are shaped by contemporary social and historical realities; and they rely upon the formal and stylistic conventions specific to the musical traditions in which they participate. McClary brings these factors to bear on musical practices, and in so doing she engages music to perform a powerful cultural critique.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Susan McClary's 'Feminine Endings' is one of the most important musicological and feminist texts of the twentieth century. McClary's arguments are convincing, lucid and interesting. As a Women's Studies major with a strong interest in music and gender, this book was a God-send.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have had to read McClary's book for my music degree, and I am puzzled by some of the supposedly factual assertions she makes; so puzzled that I am compelled to question her scholarship. For example, in the course of a discussion of the work of Madonna, McClary asserts (this was in the early 90s) that few women in popular music play a significant role in writing or producing their own material. This is certainly not true now, but it wasn't true in 1991 either; female singer-songwriters such as Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Janis Ian, Rickie Lee Jones and Laura Nyro had been among the most conspicuous women in popular music since the early 70s, and all of these had their followers and imitators. Punk, the New Wave and the 80s independent scene had produced figures such as Laurie Anderson, Debbie Harry, the Slits, Lydia Lunch, Cyndi Lauper, Tracy Chapman, the Indigo Girls and countless others. Not all of these produced their own work but many did, including King, Mitchell, Nyro, Jones, Bush and Anderson (who often worked with Roma Baran, a woman co-producer). By 1991, if a woman performer didn't write her own material she ran a serious risk of not being taken seriously. McClary appears to be entirely ignorant of all this, and treats Madonna as an isolated phenomenon, thereby seriously weakening her argument. I have not been able to take McClary's book seriously since I noticed the flaws in her scholarship.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Feminism still buys paternalism
Does the term "blinded with science" mean anything to you? Men have "blinded with science" for as long as I can remember (which is about 35 years). Read more
Published on 9 July 2000
insipid and absurd
Doubtless music has anthropological and cultural significance (but it has musical significance too). As far as I can tell, no one has ever disputed this. Read more
Published on 20 May 1999
Weak arguments shouted loudly
At a time when feminist scholars the world over are making valuable contributions to music studies, McClary's attempt at a feminist musicology in this volume (and for that matter... Read more
Published on 18 April 1999
very silly
It's not a bad thing to invent fantastical narrative glosses for musical forms. The composer and pianist George Antheil imagined the first theme of a sonata form movement to be... Read more
Published on 17 April 1999
mystical musings
It seems reasonable to me to suppose that in certain cases music can be (in some way or other) an expression of sexuality, but it seems no less reasonable to me to suppose that... Read more
Published on 1 April 1999
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