Susan McClary

Susan Kaye McClary (born October 2, 1946)[1] is an

American musicologist associated with "new Susan McClary
musicology". Noted for her work combining Born October 2, 1946
musicology with feminist music criticism, McClary is St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
professor of musicology at Case Western Reserve Occupation Musicologist
University. Education Southern Illinois University
(BA)
Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Early life and education Subject Music, feminism
Notable Feminine Endings: Music,
McClary was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and received works Gender, & Sexuality
her BA in 1968 from Southern Illinois University. She Spouse
Robert Walser
attended graduate school at Harvard University where
she received her MA in 1971 and her PhD in 1976. Her
doctoral dissertation was on the transition from modal to tonal organization in Monteverdi's works. The
first half of her dissertation was later reworked and expanded in her 2004 book, Modal Subjectivities:
Self-fashioning in the Italian Madrigal. She taught at the University of Minnesota (1977–1991), McGill
University (1991–1994), University of California, Berkeley (1993), and University of California, Los
Angeles (1994–2011), before becoming a Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve University.
She has also held a five-year professorship at the University of Oslo (2007–2012).

Career
One of her best known works is Feminine Endings (1991). "Feminine ending" is a musical term once
commonly used to denote a weak phrase ending or cadence. The work covers musical constructions of
gender and sexuality, gendered aspects of traditional music theory, gendered sexuality in musical
narrative, music as a gendered discourse, and discursive strategies of women musicians.[2][3]

McClary suggests that sonata form may be interpreted as sexist or misogynistic and imperialistic, and
that, "tonality itself – with its process of instilling expectations and subsequently withholding promised
fulfillment until climax – is the principal musical means during the period from 1600 to 1900 for arousing
and channeling desire." She interprets the sonata procedure for its constructions of gender and sexual
identity. The primary, "masculine" key (or first subject group) represents the male self, while the
secondary, "feminine" key (or second subject group), represents the other, a territory to be explored and
conquered, assimilated into the self and stated in the tonic home key.

McClary set the feminist arguments of her early book in a broader sociopolitical context with
Conventional Wisdom (2000). In it, she argues that the traditional musicological assumption of the
existence of "purely musical" elements, divorced from culture and meaning, the social and the body, is a
conceit used to veil the social and political imperatives of the worldview that produces the classical canon
most prized by musicologists. She examines the creation of meanings and identities, some oppressive and
hegemonic, some affirmative and resistant, in music through the referencing of musical conventions in
the blues, Vivaldi, Prince, Philip Glass, and others.

While seen by some as extremely radical, her work is influenced by musicologists such as Edward T.
Cone, gender theorists and cultural critics such as Teresa de Lauretis, and others who, like McClary, fall
in between, such as Theodor Adorno. McClary herself admits that her analyses, though intended to
deconstruct, engage in essentialism.[4][5]

"Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music"

"Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music" first appeared as a paper delivered at the
American Musicological Society in 1990 and then in a revised version as a symposium presentation
during the 1992 Schubertiade Festival in New York City. At the time McClary was influenced by
Maynard Solomon's claim in his 1989 paper "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini" that
Schubert was homosexual. McClary's paper explored the relevance of Solomon's research to what she
termed the uninhibited, "hedonistic" luxuriance of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. The symposium
paper elicited some mild controversy.[6] Following evidence that Solomon's conclusions may have been
flawed[7] and largely based on his own psychoanalytic reading of a dream narrative Schubert set down in
1822,[8] McClary revised the paper again. Its definitive version was printed in the 1994 edition of the
book Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood,
and Gary Thomas.

According to McClary, Schubert, in the second movement of his Unfinished Symphony, foregoes the
usual narrative of the sonata form by "wandering" from one key area to another in a manner which does
not consolidate the tonic, but without causing its violent reaffirmation:

What is remarkable about this movement is that Schubert conceives of and executes a
musical narrative that does not enact the more standard model in which a self strives to
define identity through the consolidation of ego boundaries...in a Beethovian world such a
passage would sound vulnerable, its tonal identity not safely anchored; and its ambiguity
would probably precipitate a crisis, thereby justifying the violence needed to put things right
again.[9]

While maintaining that attempting to read Schubert's sexuality from his music would be essentialism, she
proposes that it may be possible to notice intentional ways in which Schubert composed in order to
express his "difference" as a part of himself at a time when "the self" was becoming prominent in the arts.
Schubert's music and often the man himself and the subjectivity he presented have been criticized as
effeminate, especially in comparison to Beethoven, the model and aggressive master of the sonata form
(Sir George Grove, after Schumann: "compared with Beethoven, Schubert is as a woman to a man"; Carl
Dahlhaus: "weak" and "involuntary").[10] However, McClary notes: "what is at issue is not Schubert's
deviance from a "straight" norm, but rather his particular constructions of subjectivity, especially as they
contrast with many of those posed by his peers."[11]
Some of the ideas about composition as subjective narrative proposed in "Constructions" were developed
by McClary in her 1997 article, "The Impromptu that trod on a loaf", which applies this analysis to
Schubert's Impromptu Op. 90, Number 2.[12] "Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music"
and the ideas in it continue to be discussed, sometimes critically.[13] However, the article influenced a
number of queer theorists,[14] and in 2003 was described by the musicologist, Lawrence Kramer, as still
an important paper in the field.[15] The paper, and the reactions to it are also discussed in Mark Lindsey
Mitchell's Virtuosi: A Defense and a (sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great Pianists.[16]

Criticism
In the January 1987 issue of Minnesota Composers Forum Newsletter, McClary wrote of Ludwig van
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:

The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying
moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which
finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.

This sentence elicited and continues to elicit a great range of responses. McClary subsequently rephrased
this passage in Feminine Endings:

'[...] [T]he 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 problem
Beethoven has constructed for this movement is that it seems to begin before the subject of
the symphony has managed to achieve its identity. (128)

She goes on to conclude that "The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in
music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment"
(129). The critiques of McClary discussed below refer primarily to the original version of the passage.
Several commentators have objected to McClary's characterizations, including Robert Anton Wilson,[17]
Elaine Barkin,[18][19] and Henry Kingsbury.[20]

Music theorist Pieter van den Toorn has complained that McClary's polemics negate the asocial autonomy
of absolute music; he is concerned with formal analysis in the tradition of Schenker.. Van den Toorn
complains, for example, that "Fanned by an aversion for male sexuality, which it depicts as something
brutal and contemptible, irrelevancies are being read into the music."[21] Van den Toorn's complaint was
rebutted by musicologist Ruth Solie.[22] Van den Toorn responded with a book on these issues.[23][24]
Musicologist Paula Higgins, in another critique of McClary's work, has observed that "one wonders ... if
[McClary] has not strategically co-opted feminism as an excuse for guerrilla attacks on the field."[25]
Higgins complains of McClary's "truculent verbal assaults on musicological straw men",[25]: 176 and
observes that "For all the hip culture critique imported from other fields, McClary has left the cobwebs of
patriarchal musicological thought largely intact."[25]: 178 Higgins is also critical of McClary's citation
practice as it concerns other scholars in the area of feminist musical criticism.
The pianist and critic Charles Rosen has also commented on the famous passage. He avoids taking
offense on any of the grounds mentioned above, and is willing to admit sexual metaphors to musical
analysis. Rosen's disagreement is simply with McClary's assessment of the music:

We have first her characterization of the moment of recapitulation in the first movement of
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:

The phrase about the murderous rage of the rapist has since been withdrawn [as noted
above], which indicates that McClary realized it posed a problem, but it has the great merit
of recognizing that something extraordinary is taking place here, and McClary's metaphor
of sexual violence is not a bad way to describe it. The difficulty is that all metaphors
oversimplify, like those entertaining little stories that music critics in the nineteenth century
used to invent about works of music for an audience whose musical literacy was not too
well developed. I do not, myself, find the cadence frustrated or dammed up in any
constricting sense, but only given a slightly deviant movement which briefly postpones
total fulfillment.

To continue the sexual imagery, I cannot think that the rapist incapable of attaining release
is an adequate analogue, but I hear the passage as if Beethoven had found a way of
making an orgasm last for sixteen bars. What causes the passage to be so shocking,
indeed, is the power of sustaining over such a long phrase what we expect as a brief
explosion. To McClary's credit, it should be said that some kind of metaphorical
description is called for, and even necessary, but I should like to suggest that none will be
satisfactory or definitive.[26]

McClary also notes that she "can say something nice about Beethoven",[27] saying of his String Quartet,
Op. 132, "Few pieces offer so as vivid an image of shattered subjectivity the opening of Op. 132."[28]

Writing over thirty years after its publication, McClary observed:

People often ask me if I regret having written this essay. I have lived with the consequences
for over thirty years, and no matter how much I publish on modal theory or Kaija Saariaho, I
will always be identified with this sentence, nearly always taken out of context. I hasten to
mention that I have taught a course on Beethoven quartets every other year since 1980;
unless a student has googled me and asked about the controversy, no one in my classes
would have any inkling of my presumed hatred of this composer. But no, je ne regrette rien. I
still stand by my argument and even my imagery after all these years.[29]

Personal life
McClary is married to musicologist Robert Walser.[30][31]

Selected bibliography
McClary, Susan (1987). "The Blasphemy of Talking Politics during Bach Year". In Leppert,
Richard; McClary, Susan (eds.). Music and Society: The Politics of Composition,
Performance and Reception. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press.
pp. 13–62. ISBN 0521327806.
 — (1989), "Terminal Prestige: The Case of Avant-Garde Music Composition", Cultural
Critique, 12 (12): 57–81, doi:10.2307/1354322 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1354322),
JSTOR 1354322 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354322)
— (1992). Georges Bizet: Carmen. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 9780521398978.
— (2002). Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, & Sexuality (2nd ed.). Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816641895.
— (2006), "Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music", in Brett, Philip; Wood,
Elizabeth; Thomas, Gary (eds.), Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology,
New York: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-97884-X
— (2000), Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form, Ernest Bloch Lectures,
Berkeley, California: University of California, ISBN 0-520-23208-9
— (2004), Modal Subjectivities: Self-Fashioning in the Italian Madrigal, Berkeley and Los
Angeles, California: University of California, ISBN 9780520234932
— (2012), Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
California: University of California, ISBN 9780520247345

References
1. Pasler, Jann. "McClary, Susan (Kaye)". Grove Music Online.
doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.46978 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fgmo%2F97815
61592630.article.46978).
2. Sayrs, Elizabeth (1993). "Deconstructing McClary: Narrative, Feminine Sexuality, and
Feminism in Susan McClary's Feminine Endings". College Music Symposium. 33/34: 41–55.
ISSN 0069-5696 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0069-5696). JSTOR 40374248 (https://ww
w.jstor.org/stable/40374248).
3. "Feminine Endings" (https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/feminine-endings).
University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved 2020-04-03,, citing a review from The Village
Voice.
4. Sayrs, Elizabeth. "Deconstructing McClary: Narrative, Feminine Sexuality, and Feminism in
Susan McClary's Feminine Endings – College Music Symposium" (https://symposium.music.
org/index.php/33-34/item/2098-deconstructing-mcclary-narrative-feminine-sexuality-and-fem
inism-in-susan-mcclarys-feminine-endings). symposium.music.org. Retrieved 2020-04-03.
5. Taruskin, Richard (2009). "Material Gains: Assessing Susan MCclary". Music & Letters. 90
(3): 453–467. doi:10.1093/ml/gcp049 (https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fml%2Fgcp049).
ISSN 0027-4224 (https://search.worldcat.org/issn/0027-4224). JSTOR 40539033 (https://ww
w.jstor.org/stable/40539033). S2CID 191466798 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:1
91466798).
6. See, for example Horowitz (1992); Rothstein (1992); Holland (1992)
7. Summarized in Tellenbach (2000)
8. Horowitz (1992).
9. McClary (1994) p. 215
10. Quoted in McClary (1994), p. 214
11. McClary (1994) p. 214
12. Originally published in the journal Narrative, 5 (1), January 1997 reprinted in Bal (2004)
13. See for example, Ross (1994); Tommasini (1995); Rothstein (1995); Tellenbach (2000);
Hatten (2004)
14. Tommasini (2004); Peraino (2006), p. 256
15. Kramer (2003), p. 99.
16. Mitchell (2000), pp. 113–114.
17. Wilson, Robert Anton; Hill, Miriam Joan (1998). Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies,
Cults and Cover-ups. New York: HarperCollins. p. 64. ISBN 006273417-2.
18. "either/other", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 30/2 (1992) pp. 206–233, [p. 219]
19. "A Response to Elaine Barkin", Perspectives of New Music, vol. 30/2 (1992) pp. 234-38
20. Sexual Politics, The New Musicology, and the Real World (http://www.henrykingsbury.net/aa
aa.htm) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20110321041428/http://www.henrykingsbury.
net/aaaa.htm) 2011-03-21 at the Wayback Machine
21. Van den Toorn, Pieter C. (1991). "Politics, Feminism, and Contemporary Music Theory". The
Journal of Musicology. 9 (3): 275–299 [293]. doi:10.2307/763704 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2
F763704). JSTOR 763704 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/763704).
22. Solie, Ruth A. (1991). "What Do Feminists Want? A Reply to Pieter van den Toorn". Journal
of Musicology. 9 (4): 399–410. doi:10.2307/763868 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F763868).
JSTOR 763868 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/763868).
23. Van den Toorn, Pieter C. (1995). Music, Politics and the Academy. Berkeley: University of
California Press. ISBN 0-520-20115-9.
24. McCreless, Patrick (1997). "Music, Politics, and the Academy. By Peter C. van den Toorn".
Book Reviews. Notes. 53 (3): 753–756. doi:10.2307/899715 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F899
715). JSTOR 899715 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/899715).
25. "Women in Music, Feminist Criticism, and Guerrilla Musicology", 19th-Century Music, vol.
17/2 (1993) pp. 174–192 [p. 178]
26. Rosen (2000), Chapter 15.
27. McClary, 1991, p. 119
28. McClary, 2000, p. 119
29. McClary (2019), p. 16.
30. "Susan McClary – Department of Music" (https://music.case.edu/faculty/susan-mcclary/).
Retrieved 2020-04-03.
31. "Susan McClary – MacArthur Foundation" (https://www.macfound.org/fellows/519/).
www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2020-04-03.

Sources
Bal, Mieke, ed. (2004). Narrative Theory: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies
(https://books.google.com/books?id=3DZnQwNrBWwC&pg=PR5). London: Taylor &
Francis. ISBN 0-415-31661-8.
Holland, Bernard (February 17, 1992). "Dr. Freud, Can Tea Really Just Be Tea?" (https://que
ry.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE1DC133CF934A25751C0A964958260&sec=&
spon=&pagewanted=all). The New York Times.
Hatten, Robert S. (2004). Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart,
Beethoven, Schubert (https://books.google.com/books?id=MfVZQTfYSbMC&pg=PA267).
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34459-X.
Horowitz, Joseph (January 19, 1992). "Schubert: Eternally Feminine?" (https://query.nytime
s.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE1DE1530F93AA25752C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&p
agewanted=print). The New York Times.
Kramer, Lawrence (2003). Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song (https://books.googl
e.com/books?id=J-kKUHKTidUC&pg=PA99). Cambridge studies in music theory and
analysis. Vol. 13. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-
54216-2.
McClary, Susan (2019). "Lives in Musicology: A Life in Musicology—Stradella and Me" (http
s://muse.jhu.edu/article/727281/pdf). Acta Musicologica. 91 (1): 5–20.
 Mitchell, Mark Lindsey (2000). Virtuosi: A Defense and a (sometimes Erotic) Celebration of
Great Pianists (https://books.google.com/books?id=K2lA-nUvmNIC&pg=PA113).
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33757-7.
Peraino, Judith Ann (2006). Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity
from Homer to Hedwig (https://books.google.com/books?id=c7hjOUzqu7EC&pg=PA256).
Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21587-7.
Rosen, Charles (2000). Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New (https://archive.org/deta
ils/criticalentertai00char). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-17730-4.
Ross, Alex (June 27, 1994). "The Gay Connection in Music and in a Festival" (https://query.n
ytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E1DC173CF934A15755C0A962958260&sec=&spo
n=&pagewanted=print). The New York Times.
Rothstein, Edward (February 16, 1992). "And If You Play 'Bolero' Backward ..." (https://quer
y.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE0DB163AF935A25751C0A964958260&sec=&s
pon=&pagewanted=all) The New York Times.
Rothstein, Edward (August 6, 1995). "Was Schubert Gay? If He Was, So What? Debate
Turns Testy" (https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7DC1730F937A35751
C0A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all). The New York Times.
Tellenbach, Marie Elisabeth (2000). "Franz Schubert and Benvenuto Cellini: One Man's
Meat". The Musical Times. 141 (1870): 50–52. doi:10.2307/1004370 (https://doi.org/10.230
7%2F1004370). JSTOR 1004370 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1004370).
Tommasini, Anthony (August 6, 1995). " 'Outing' Some 'In' Composers" (https://query.nytime
s.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE2DA1639F935A3575BC0A963958260&sec=&spon=&pa
gewanted=all). The New York Times.
Tommasini, Anthony (October 24, 2004). "What's So Gay About American Music?" (https://q
uery.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE2DA1639F935A3575BC0A963958260&sec=
&spon=&pagewanted=all). The New York Times.

Further reading
Miller, Leta E.; Lieberman, Frederic (1998). Lou Harrison: Composing a World. New York:
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511022-6.
Sleeman, Elizabeth, ed. (2003). "McClary, Susan K(aye)". International Who's Who of
Authors and Writers. Routledge. p. 348. ISBN 1-85743-179-0.
Solomon, Maynard (1989). "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini". 19th-
Century Music. 12 (3): 193–206. doi:10.2307/746501 (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F746501).
JSTOR 746501 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/746501).

External links
Susan McClary - Curriculum Vitae (as of August 2013) (http://artscimedia.case.edu/wp-cont
ent/uploads/2013/07/14183045/McClary-CV1.pdf)
Quotations related to Susan McClary at Wikiquote
TRANS 15 (http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/p16/trans-15-2011) (2011), Celebrating the 20th
anniversary of Feminine Endings by Susan McClary: Special issue dedicated to Gender
Studies, Feminism, and Music.
UCLA Department of Musicology, Biography of Susan McClary (https://web.archive.org/web/
20100707175444/http://www.musicology.ucla.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti
cle&id=105%3Asusan-mcclary-bio&catid=6&Itemid=225)
Susan McClary, "In Praise of Contingency: The Powers and Limits of Theory" (http://mto.soc
ietymusictheory.org/issues/mto.10.16.1/mto.10.16.1.mcclary.html), Keynote Address,
 Society for Music Theory 2009 Annual Meeting, Montréal, Canada
Lawrence Kramer with reply by Charles Rosen, "Music à La Mode" (http://www.nybooks.co
m/articles/2143), The New York Review of Books, Volume 41, Number 15, September 22,
1994
La Susanna, opera by Alessandro Stradella (part 1) as performed by the College of Music,
Case Western Reserve University, production directed by Susan McClary (2018) (https://ww
w.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyJkUnG9bg)

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