Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music
Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music

Author: Susan McClary

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0520247345

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Susan McClary examines the mechanisms through which seventeenth-century musicians simulated extreme affective states--desire, divine rapture, and ecstatic pleasure. She demonstrates how every major genre of the period, from opera to religious music to instrumental pieces based on dances, was part of this striving for heightened passions by performers and listeners. ... McClary shows how musicians--whether working within the contexts of the Reformation or Counter-Reformation, Absolutists courts or commercial enterprises in Venice--were able to manipulate known procedures to produce radically new ways of experiencing time and the Self."--Dust jacket.

Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression
Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression

Author: Susan McClary

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2013-03-04

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1442669519

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Between the waning of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Enlightenment, many fundamental aspects of human behaviour - from expressions of gender to the experience of time - underwent radical changes. While some of these transformations were recorded in words, others have survived in non-verbal cultural media, notably the visual arts, poetry, theatre, music, and dance. Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Cultural Expression explores how artists made use of these various cultural forms to grapple with human values in the increasingly heterodox world of the 1600s. Essays from prominent historians, musicologists, and art critics examine methods of non-verbal cultural expression through the broad themes of time, motion, the body, and global relations. Together, they show that seventeenth-century cultural expression was more than just an embryonic stage within Western artistic development. Instead, the contributors argue that this period marks some of the most profound changes in European subjectivities.

Modal Subjectivities
Modal Subjectivities

Author: Susan McClary

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0520314255

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this boldly innovative book, renowned musicologist Susan McClary presents an illuminating cultural interpretation of the Italian madrigal, one of the most influential repertories of the Renaissance. A genre that sought to produce simulations in sound of complex interiorities, the madrigal introduced into music a vast range of new signifying practices: musical representations of emotions, desire, gender stereotypes, reason, madness, tensions between mind and body, and much more. In doing so, it not only greatly expanded the expressive agendas of European music but also recorded certain assumptions of the time concerning selfhood, making it an invaluable resource for understanding the history of Western subjectivity. Modal Subjectivities covers the span of the sixteenth-century polyphonic madrigal, from its early manifestations in Philippe Verdelot's settings of Machiavelli in the 1520s through the tortured chromatic experiments of Carlo Gesualdo. Although McClary takes the lyrics into account in shaping her readings, she focuses particularly on the details of the music itself—the principal site of the genre's self-fashionings. In order to work effectively with musical meanings in this pretonal repertory, she also develops an analytical method that allows her to unravel the sophisticated allegorical structures characteristic of the madrigal. This pathbreaking book demonstrates how we might glean insights into a culture on the basis of its nonverbal artistic enterprises.

Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900
Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Secular & Sacred Music to 1900

Author: Laurel Parsons

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-04

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190237031

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Through musical analysis of compositions written between the mid-twelfth to late nineteenth centuries, this volume celebrates the achievements of eight composers, all women: Hildegard of Bingen, Maddalena Casulana, Barbara Strozzi, Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Marianne Martines, Josephine Lang, Fanny Hensel, Clara Schumann, and Amy Beach. Written by outstanding music theorists and musicologists, the essays provide fascinating in-depth critical-analytic explorations of representative compositions, often linking analytical observations with questions of meaning and sociohistorical context. Each essay is introduced by a brief biographical sketch of the composer by the editors. The collection--Volume 1 in an unprecedented four-volume series of analytical studies on music by women composers--is designed to challenge and stimulate a wide range of readers. For academics, these thoughtful analytical essays can open new paths into unexplored research areas in the fields of music theory and musicology. Post-secondary instructors may be inspired by the insights offered in these essays to include new works in music theory and history courses at both graduate and upper-level undergraduate levels, or in courses on women and music. Finally, for soloists, ensembles, conductors, and music broadcasters, these detailed analyses can offer enriched understandings of this repertoire and suggest fresh, new programming possibilities to share with listeners.

Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence
Voice, Slavery, and Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence

Author: Emily Wilbourne

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 521

ISBN-13: 0197646913

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Grounded in new archival research documenting a significant presence of foreign and racially-marked individuals in Medici Florence, this book argues for the relevance of such individuals to the history of Western music and for the importance of sound-particularly musical and vocal sounds-to systems of racial and ethnic difference. Many of the individuals discussed in these pages were subject to enslavement or conditions of unfree labor; some labored at tasks that were explicitly musical or theatrical, while all intersected with sound and with practices of listening that afforded full personhood only to particular categories of people. Integrating historical detail alongside contemporary performances and musical conventions, this book makes the forceful claim that operatic musical techniques were-from their very inception-imbricated with racialized differences. Race, Voice, and Slavery in Seventeenth-Century Florence offers both a macro and micro approach to its content. The first half of the volume draws upon a wide range of archival, theatrical and historical sources to articulate the theoretical interdependence of razza (lit. "race"), voice, and music in early modern Italy; the second half focuses on the life and work of a specific, racially-marked individual: the enslaved, Black, male soprano singer, Giovannino Buonaccorsi (fl. 1651-1674). Race, Voice, and Slavery in Seventeenth-Century Florence reframes the place of racial difference in Western art music and provides a compelling pre-history to later racial formulations of the sonic"--

Feminine Endings
Feminine Endings

Author: Susan McClary

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9781452906362

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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. ". . . this is a major book . . . [McClary's] achievement borders on the miraculous." The Village Voice"No one will read these essays without thinking about and hearing music in new and interesting ways. Exciting reading for adventurous students and staid professionals." Choice"Feminine Endings, a provocative 'sexual politics' of Western classical or art music, rocks conservative musicology at its core. No review can do justice to the wealth of ideas and possibilities [McClary's] book presents. All music-lovers should read it, and cheer." The Women's Review of Books"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."-The New York Review of Books

Gender and Song in Early Modern England
Gender and Song in Early Modern England

Author: Leslie C. Dunn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1317130472

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Song offers a vital case study for examining the rich interplay of music, gender, and representation in the early modern period. This collection engages with the question of how gender informed song within particular textual, social, and spatial contexts in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Bringing together ongoing work in musicology, literary studies, and film studies, it elaborates an interdisciplinary consideration of the embodied and gendered facets of song, and of song’s capacity to function as a powerful-and flexible-gendered signifier. The essays in this collection draw vivid attention to song as a situated textual and musical practice, and to the gendered processes and spaces of song's circulation and reception. In so doing, they interrogate the literary and cultural significance of song for early modern readers, performers, and audiences.

Masculinity in Opera
Masculinity in Opera

Author: Philip Purvis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-07-18

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1136182152

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book addresses the ways in which masculinity is negotiated, constructed, represented, and problematized within operatic music and practice. Although the consideration of masculine ontology and epistemology has pervaded cultural and sociological studies since the late 1980s, and masculinity has been the focus of recent if sporadic musicological discussion, the relationship between masculinity and opera has so far escaped detailed critical scrutiny. Operating from a position of sympathy with feminist and queer approaches and the phallocentric tendencies they identify, this study offers a unique perspective on the cultural relativism of opera by focusing on the male operatic subject. Anchored by musical analysis or close readings of musical discourse, the contributions take an interdisciplinary approach by also engaging with theatre, popular music, and cultural musicology scholarship. The various musical, theoretical, and socio-political trajectories of the essays are historically dispersed from seventeenth to twentieth- first-century operatic works and practices, visiting masculinity and the operatic voice, the complication or refusal of essentialist notions of masculinity, and the operatic representation of the ‘crisis’ of masculinity. This volume will not only enliven the study of masculinity in opera, but be an appealing contribution to music scholars interested in gender, history, and new musicology.

The Music History Classroom
The Music History Classroom

Author: James A. Davis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-17

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1317023501

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Music History Classroom brings together essays written by recognized and experienced teachers to assist in the design, implementation, and revision of college-level music history courses. This includes the traditional music history survey for music majors, but the materials presented here are applicable to other music history courses for music majors and general education students alike, including period classes, composer or repertory courses, and special topics classes and seminars. The authors bring current thought on the scholarship of teaching and learning together with practical experience into the unique environment of the music history classroom. While many of the issues confronting teachers in other disciplines are pertinent to music history classes, this collection addresses the unique nature of musical materials and the challenges involved in negotiating between historical information, complex technical musical issues, and the aesthetics of performing and listening. This single volume provides a systematic outline of practical teaching advice on all facets of music history pedagogy, including course design, classroom technology, listening and writing assignments, and more. The Music History Classroom presents the 'nuts-and-bolts' of teaching music history suitable for graduate students, junior faculty, and seasoned teachers alike.

The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy
The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy

Author: Assistant Professor of Music and Ad Astra Fellow Tomás McAuley

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-12-30

Total Pages: 1151

ISBN-13: 0199367310

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Whether regarded as a perplexing object, a morally captivating force, an ineffable entity beyond language, or an inescapably embodied human practice, music has captured philosophically inclined minds since time immemorial. In turn, musicians of all stripes have called on philosophy as a source of inspiration and encouragement, and scholars of music through the ages have turned to philosophy for insight into music and into the worlds that sustain it. In this Handbook, contributors build on this legacy to conceptualize the rich interactions of Western music and philosophy as a series of meeting points between two vital spheres of human activity. They draw together key debates at the intersection of music studies and philosophy, offering a field-defining overview while also forging new paths. Chapters cover a wide range of musics and philosophies, including concert, popular, jazz, and electronic musics, and both analytic and continental philosophy.