Now, maybe I'm just hardened by years of reading criticism in the more liberal field of literary studies. So I was amused and intrigued when, a few years later, another of the four, knowing that I enjoy critical literary theory, gave me a copy of McClary's seminal Feminine Endings as a birthday present.

I remember her specifically citing an essay in which McClary claims that it's possible to tell that Tchaikovsky was homosexual just by listening to his Fourth Symphony.

My friend was a little wowed by McClary's rock-star status, but also conflicted because she found some of the critic's stances to be over the top. McClary's work is divisive among musicologists because she has dared to take methods of criticism developed in literary and sociology circles - feminist, post-colonialist, queer studies and other criticisms that interrogate social contexts of art - and to apply them to Western art music, which has traditionally considered itself immune from such interrogations of 'meaning' (many musicologists believe that music doesn't 'mean' anything, but simply exists). One of the four is currently finishing up her musicology doctorate at UCLA, and I remember that when she started her program she was intimidated by the presence, on faculty, of controversial music critic Susan McClary. Well, four of them anyway, which seems like a lot to me. 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.-The New York Review of Books'Īlthough I was an English major in college, and my primary mode of artistic connection has always been literature, I somehow ended up with a surprising number of musicologist friends. All music-lovers should read it, and cheer.OCO The WomenOCOs Review of BooksMcClary writes with a racy, vigorous, and consistently entertaining style. No review can do justice to the wealth of ideas and possibilities book presents. Exciting reading for adventurous students and staid professionals.OCO ChoiceOC Feminine Endings, a provocative OCysexual politicsOCO of Western classical or art music, rocks conservative musicology at its core. achievement borders on the miraculous.OCO The Village VoiceOC No one will read these essays without thinking about and hearing music in new and interesting ways. A groundbreaking collection of essays in feminist music criticism, this book addresses problems of gender and sexuality in repertoires ranging from the early seventeenth century to rock and performance art.

Susan mcclary feminine endings