MUSIC THEORY AS A TOPIC FOR FEMINIST STUDY
What relation might music theory have to feminist thought?(1)
This question might be heard as proposing an interdisciplinary linkage, a cooperation between two initially self-sufficient discourses. But before trying to construct such a linkage, it is important to consider another issue. What does the contemporary field of professional music theory have to do with gender? This second question (or second way of hearing the first question), rather than depicting music theory and feminist criticism as separate enterprises that might interact, opens the possibility that music theory is already related to gender in some way. In that case feminist thought, rather than somehow linking up with music theory, might take the present-day practices of music theory as a topic of inquiry. (more…)
Differences. (Critical Theory of Music)
IN THIS AGE OF DIFFERENCE, a “postmodern” era which (on the surface) proclaims its difference from the Modern with all the naive historicizing fervor of any past avant-garde, this fin-de-siecle which hysterically celebrates the centrifugal as it sees increasing global dominion and concentration of capital and (not coincidentally) an increasingly Americanized world pop “culture,” dancing out its fatal anxiety in a purgative tarantella, Panic evacuating its every essence–in such surroundings, stepping carefully in counterpoint, do we dare make a difference? For every act of difference is power. (more…)
