Feminist Aesthetics in Music

Sally Macarthur

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780313313202
• eBook ISBN: 9780313075056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Is there such a thing as women's music? Do women write and listen to music differently than men do? While recognizing that the differences among women are as distinct as the differences between genders, this bold new study examines gender's influence on music. The author's unique analytical strategy shows, in its application to actual musical compositions, that there is a fluid relationship between the music and the analyst, between the text and the context, and that 20th-century music is inextricably bound to notions of gender that transcend aesthetics. Much of the work on women's music to date has failed to deal critically with the actual compositions, settling instead for more biographical or sociological approaches. In this respect, this work fills an important void. Using many concrete examples and careful analyses of the work of such undervalued composers as Alma Mahler-Werfel, Anne Boyd, and Moya Henderson, it grounds the abstract firmly, and fascinatingly, in the practical.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: For Women's Eyes Only?
• 1 Feminist Aesthetics in Music
• 2 Music in Context and Practice
• 3 The Power of Sound, the Power of Sex: Alma Schindler-Mahler's Ansturm
• 4 Sexing the Subject of Musical Analysis: Rebecca Clarke and Elisabeth Lutyens
• 5 Meditations on Feminist Aesthetics: Anne Boyd's Cycle of Love
• 6 Framing the Case for a Feminist Reading of Elena Kats-Chernin's Postmodern Tast-en
• 7 Sexual Signatures: Feminist Aesthetics in the Music of Moya Henderson after the Death of the Author
• 8 This Music Which Is Between Two
• Bibliography
• Discography
• Index