Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music [Paperback]

Susan C Cook (Editor), Judy S Tsou (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is a gathering of short, stimulating articles by ten thinkers actively concerned with the subject of women in music. The text is logically bound by Susan McCleary's foreword and an introductory overview that also serves as a bibliographic essay on the state of feminist musicology through 1991. The essays are accessible (only one piece includes musical examples), wide-ranging (e.g., there are essays on feminist theory, social history, performance practice, art, and folk and popular music in Europe and America), and fertile (notes and references encourage further study). This well-edited book belongs in all serious music and women's history collections.
- Bonnie Jo Dopp, formerly with Dist . of Columbia P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press (December 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252063414
• ISBN-13: 978-0252063411
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,638,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth Reading, December 27, 1999

By 

Elissa Milne (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music (Paperback)

Why do people never think of women when they think of composers? This book does not directly address this issue, but the view of great music being produced only by men only for public listening needs challenging, and this book is one of a small number successfully making a serious effort to do so. If you have any interest in how culture (particularly music) works hand in hand with social power, you will find the perspectives in this book informative, revealing, and even fascinating.

11 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Death to the Trees!, January 9, 2000

By 

Heather Johnson (Cambridge) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music (Paperback)

Not nearly as witty as its precursor, "Edna Distracted: Masculinist Perspectives on Declension and Skiing", still a truly self-important book everyone must read--or drop. Sure to secure tenure.

9 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Why this sorry state of scholarship?, January 30, 2000

By 

Tim Whistler (Norfolk) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cecilia Reclaimed: Feminist Perspectives on Gender and Music (Paperback)

Just as music theory, divorced from musicology and composition, has become an academic dumping ground for failed musicians, so musicology, divorced from music theory, has been overridden by amateur, inept "sociologists". This book is a case in point. (Oh and "Gender"--for what it's worth--is a GRAMMATICAL term. Humans and other animals don't have genders; they have sexes.)

(Ah, another aside: Now I happen to know a particular institution which at least until very recently irrationally discriminated against woman composers (that is, on the basis of their sex, not on the basis of their music or ability), and I don't suppose this institution is anomalous in this regard. Woman composer shouldn't have it tougher than men composers--men composers have it tough enough, and we should hear and read more of the outstanding woman composers of the present and past, but as someone below points out, to do so we'll have to look elsewhere than in this book.)