Construction Of Classical Music and Gender

Paper Summary:

Analysis of whether music can be gendered. Examines several Sonatas & symphonies of Beethoven & Shubert as gender models. Development of the musical themes with reference to the identity of the self. The virility of Beethoven's music characterized by its directness & ferocity. The flexibility of Shubert's music as female. The Sonata as a model for experimentation. Biographical elements of the two composers that inform their musical expression.

From the Paper:

"Susan McClary examines the second movement of Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" with reference toward gender and constructions of subjectivity, and she poses the idea that during the early nineteenth century, concepts such as identity and masculinity were being newly defined, with art being one of the defining processes. In literature, the bildungsroman (or the novel of character development) were part of the "privileged genre," and through these novels, the middle class became educated as to the proper role of a civilized man. McClary finds that the sonata was the musical equivalent of the bildungsroman. The construction of the movements of the sonata shows the development of a theme that goes though many changes of identity and then resolves in the original key and theme. A sonata provided a model for experimentation that would resolve ..."

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