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Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form
 
 
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Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form [Hardcover]

Susan McClary (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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From Library Journal

Based on the Bloch Lectures given at the University of California at Berkeley, McClary's latest book continues her study of the ideas and issues surrounding the relationship between societal forces and music. Using examples of vocal and instrumental music from the 17th to the 20th centuries, McClary (musicology, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Feminine Endings) analyzes each within a cultural context and examines how that context has helped to define and challenge the concept of musical convention. She argues persuasively that what began as deviations from convention have, in turn, become conventional. In addition, her assertion that analysis focusing on the purely musical does not address the inherent complexities of music history will no doubt spark much debate. While her conclusions may spark disagreement, McClary's detailed analysesDparticularly of the aria "Figlio! Tiranno!" from Alessandro Scarlatti's opera Griselda and of the first movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in A minor, op. 132Dare enlightening and follow her practice of looking at music in a critical light. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DTeresa M. Neff, Boston Univ.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Music expresses the needs of those who write and perform it, McClary says, but it does so within the context of conventions generally agreed to by the societies in which musicians live. She begins the specifics of her argument by citing an operatic aria by Stradella (1644^-1682) that manifests the influence of the "sacred erotic" on expressing emotions. Turning to examples from Mozart and Beethoven, she discusses the harmonic structures and musical forms that permit the audience to understand the music. In late modern times, the blues is a highly structured form that combines simple cadences with the expression of African American experience, and even rap has meaningful structure built upon the heritage of four centuries of music. Many composers have pushed structural boundaries with atonal music, but that, too, has roots firmly planted in cultural heritage. Musicologist McClary's chapters, adapted from a series of Ernest Bloch lectures at the University of California at Berkeley, present a view of musical history that is perhaps unconventional but also coherent and satisfying to even casual music buffs. Alan Hirsch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars I would recommend, Nov 12 2002
By 
Mikhail Lewis (Missoula, MT, USofA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (Paperback)
This book is better than Feminine Endings. Its conclusions and assumptions are less questionable, but it also explains her approach in Feminine Endings. Only a very basic knowledge of music theory is necessary, I imagine you could have a friend in their first year of music theory explain it to you while you listened to the music she discusses. Yet she explains more than most first year theory classes would.
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1.0 out of 5 stars not the slightest bit intimidating; what did you expect?, Mar 9 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (Hardcover)
You know, I don't think this author's or any author's physical appearance is either here or there. And please, let's not take ridicule for "ardent hatred". If you fed an English dictionary into a computer program that generated random permutations, one of the more improbable combinations of words it might spit out could be: "as if pointing out the sexual agenda in the 9th Symphony needed an apology". "The sexual agenda in the 9th Symphony"?
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5.0 out of 5 stars Music's favorite renegade does it again, Dec 12 2000
By 
Jeff Abell (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (Hardcover)
If you ever met Susan McCalry, you'd find it hard to believe that this petite, soft-spoken, witty woman could inspire such ardent hatred from scores of musicologists. Moreover, the sociological and feminist concepts that she brings to bear on Western art music are already old hat in literary and art criticism. But musicology is, to a large extent, still in denial about Modernism, so Post-Modernism is way beyond the pale. So McClary's first book, "Feminine Endings," rocked the world of musicology to its hardbound, white-male foundation, and provoked round after round of McClary-bashing. Her new book, based on a series of lectures given at UC Berkeley, therefore occasionally sounds a bit defensive. (At one point she notes that she *can* say something nice about Beethoven, as if pointing out the sexual agenda in the 9th Symphony needed an apology.) For any reasonably intelligent reader who has wondered how Western music works, this new book is superb at explaining those mechanisms. McClary uses her usual catholic tastes to discuss everything from Vivaldi to the Blues, and you will come away understand how both of them function, and why we feel moved when listening to either one. Armed with her usual wit and unusual perceptivity, McClary lays bare the workings of Western music with clarity and grace. In the process, she nearly redeems musicology as a discipline worth taking seriously. You go, girl.
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