Masculinity and Western Musical Practice

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Contents: Introduction, Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson
Section 1 Effeminate and Virile Musics and Masculinities: Introduction, Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson
Music and masculinity in the Middle Ages, Elizabeth Eva Leach
Music, melancholy and masculinity in early modern England, Kirsten Gibson
Of Mars I sing
Monteverdi voicing virility, Richard Wistreich
Haydn and the consequences of presumed effeminacy, Howard Irving
Virile music by Hector Berlioz, Fred Everett Maus. Section 2 National Masculinities, National Musics: Introduction, Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson
Gendered reception of Brahms: masculinity, nationalism and musical politics, Marcia J. Citron
Aspiring to manliness: Edward Elgar and the pressures of hegemonic masculinity, Corissa Gould
'I am blessed with fruit': masculinity, androgyny and creativity in early 20th-century German music, Claire Taylor-Jay
Hellenism, the divine and ideal masculinity in Manuel de Falla's AtlA!ntida, Esther Zaplana. Section 3 Identities, Voices, Discourses: Introduction, Ian Biddle and Kirsten Gibson
Knives and tears: representations of masculinity in late 19th-century Italian opera, Annamaria Cecconi
Caught in the silken throat: modernist investments in the male vocal fetish, Ian Biddle
Hermaphrodism and the masculine body: Tippett's aesthetic views in a gendered context, Iain Stannard
Select bibliography
Index.

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How have men used art music? How have they listened to and brandished the musical forms of the Western classical tradition and how has music intervened in their identity formations? This collection of essays addresses these questions by examining some of the ways in which men, music and masculinity have been implicated with each other since the Middle Ages. Feminist musicologies have already dealt extensively with music and gender, from the 'phallocentric' tendencies of the Western tradition, to the explicit marginalization of women from that tradition. This book builds on that work by turning feminist critical approaches towards the production, rhetorical engagement and subversion of masculinities in twelve different musical case studies. In other disciplines within the arts and humanities, 'men's studies' is a well-established field. Musicology has only recently begun to address critically music's engagement with masculinity and as a result has sometimes thereby failed to recognize its own discursive misogyny. This book does not seek to cover the field comprehensively but, rather, to explore in detail some of the ways in which musical practices do the cultural work of masculinity. The book is structured into three thematic sections: effeminate and virile musics and masculinities; national masculinities, national musics; and identities, voices, discourses. Within these themes, the book ranges across a number of specific topics: late medieval masculinities; early modern discourses of music, masculinity and medicine; Renaissance Italian masculinities; eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideas of creativity, gender and canonicity; masculinity, imperialist and nationalist ideologies in the nineteenth century, and constructions of the masculine voice in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century opera and song. While the case studies are methodologically disparate and located in different historical and geographical locations, they all share a common concern for a critical revaluation of the role of masculinity (in all its varied representations) in art music practices.

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Having a scope from medieval to modern Western art music, the essays reexamine effeminate composers, national masculinities, how men use music, and the various discourses that have been avoided concerning masculine ideas of creativity, participation, and canonicity. [...] This is a resource for music majors and specialists. Summing Up: Highly recommended

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