Quotessence
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Susan McClary

Susan McClary Books

Musicologist

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“Rather than protecting music as a sublimely meaningless activity that has managed to escape social signification, I insist on treating it as a medium that participates in social formation by influencing the ways we perceive our feelings, our bodies, our desires, our very subjectivities - even if it does so surreptitiously, without most of us knowning how. It is too important a cultural force to be shrouded by mystified notions of Romantic transcendence.”

IfsWayDoeImportantFeelingsBodyDesireForceSocialInfluenceActivityNotionMediumsPerceiveMeaninglessTranscendenceFormationSubjectivity
Author:Susan McClary
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“The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music....The point is not to hold up Beethoven as exceptionally monstrous. The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment. Moreover, within the parameters of his own musical compositions, he may be heard as enacting a critique of narrative obligations that is...devestating.”

FirstsMayCultureHeardMovementEnlightenmentMusicalViolentObligationNarrativeImpulseOrganizedEpisodesCompellingCompositionContradictorySymphonyCritiqueMonstrousParametersArticulationHistory Of MusicMusical CompositionRecapitulation
Author:Susan McClary
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