Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical FormWith her usual combination of erudition, innovation, and spirited prose, Susan McClary reexamines the concept of musical convention in this fast-moving and refreshingly accessible book. Exploring the ways that shared musical practices transmit social knowledge, Conventional Wisdom offers an account of our own cultural moment in terms of two dominant traditions: tonality and blues.McClary looks at musical history from new and unexpected angles and moves easily across a broad range of repertoires--the blues, eighteenth-century tonal music, late Beethoven, and rap. As one of the most influential trailblazers in contemporary musical understanding, McClary once again moves beyond the borders of the "purely musical" into the larger world of history and society, and beyond the idea of a socially stratified core canon toward a musical pluralism. Those who know McClary only as a feminist writer will discover her many other sides, but not at the expense of gender issues, which are smoothly integrated into the general argument. In considering the need for a different way of telling the story of Western music, Conventional Wisdom bravely tackles big issues concerning classical, popular, and postmodern repertoires and their relations to the broader musical worlds that create and enjoy them. |
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African American aria articulation artists audience Bach Bach's Beethoven Bessie Smith cadence Cambridge century chapter Chicago Clapton closure coherence composers composition concerto context conventions cresc critical Cross Road cultural dance devices discussion dominant effect eighteenth eighteenth-century enacts Eric Clapton erotic European formal Fredric Jameson gender genres German Griselda guitar harmonic instance invidio jazz Jeter John Zorn Joseph Kerman k.d. lang kind listeners means measure Modernist movement Mozart music history musicians musicology narrative Nighttrain nineteenth-century opening opera seria Oxford pattern performance pieces Politics popular music Postmodern practices procedures purely musical recording repertory rhetorical rhythmic ritornello Robert Johnson Robert Walser Rose Rosengard Subotnik sense seventeenth-century sexuality signify social solo soloists song sound Stradella structures style surface Susan McClary Susanna Swan Silvertones Symphony Thinking Blues tion tonality tonic trajectory trans turtles University Press verse virtuosity Vivaldi women York Zorn Zorn's