This provocative volume of essays is now available in paperback. The contributors to this volume - musicologists, sociologists, cultural theorists - all challenge the view that music occupies an autonomous aesthetic sphere. Recently, socially and politically grounded enterprises such as feminism, semiotics and deconstruction have effected a major transformation in the ways in which the arts and humanities are studied, leading in turn to a systematic investigation of the implicit assumptions underlying the critical methods of the last two hundred years. Influenced by these approaches, the writers here question a prevailing ideology that insists there is a division between music and society and examine the ways in which the two do in fact interact and mediate one another within and across socio-cultural boundaries.

"When it was originally published in 1991, Feminine Endings was immediately controversial for its unprecedented intermingling of cultural criticism and musical studies, an approach that came to be called the "new musicology." Through case studies of works ranging from the canonical - operas by Monteverdi and Bizet - to the contemporary - the performance art of Diamanda Galas and popular songs by Madonna - Susan McClary focuses on the ways music produces images of gender, desire, pleasure, and the body, and explores the gender-based metaphors that circulate in discourse about music. This classic work features a new introduction that discusses the critical reception the book received and the debates it has inspired."--BOOK JACKET.

《沉思音乐:挑战音乐学》是一个音乐家对音乐的现代观念和意识形态的分析，涉及音乐学及音乐研究的其他领域，分析基于自己对二战以来英美这些学科的理解。书中具体围绕：音乐学与实证主义：战后的年代、民族音乐学与“文化音乐学”等内容展开。