Customer Reviews

Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon (Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis)

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Asian-American Hisama analyzes only seven post-tonal works by female modernist composers Crawford, Bauer, and Gideon, and those who appreciate their music should enjoy this book. She applies formalist analysis (statistics and counting, considered objective and scientific), inspired and then interpreted by what is known of the cultural, historical, and personal context of the composer in question.

This controversial approach is often known as cultural analysis (considered postmodern), and, though you may disagree, the final reading of the pieces are compelling. For example, she suggest an alternate interpretation for the first work she close reads, Crawfords String Quarter 3rd movement, that is based on near-canonic cyclic registral weaving of voices rather than the prevalent reading of the movement as consisting of one free-form sound mass which builds to a climax and subsides. Though the reasoning may be speculative, a performance inspired by this would be perfectly valid and bring to light new aspects of the work.

Though Hisma quite clearly explains the biographical or cultural details and then clearly explains the formal details after a brief explanation of their connection, she does not then go back over and reshow the connection once the formal details are explained.