Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

With her usual combination of erudition, innovation, and spirited prose, Susan McClary reexamines the concept of musical convention in this fast-moving and refreshingly accessible book. Exploring the ways that shared musical practices transmit social knowledge, Conventional Wisdom offers an account of our own cultural moment in terms of two dominant traditions: tonality and blues.McClary looks at musical history from new and unexpected angles and moves easily across a broad range of repertoires--the blues, eighteenth-century tonal music, late Beethoven, and rap. As one of the most influential trailblazers in contemporary musical understanding, McClary once again moves beyond the borders of the "purely musical" into the larger world of history and society, and beyond the idea of a socially stratified core canon toward a musical pluralism.

Those who know McClary only as a feminist writer will discover her many other sides, but not at the expense of gender issues, which are smoothly integrated into the general argument. In considering the need for a different way of telling the story of Western music, Conventional Wisdom bravely tackles big issues concerning classical, popular, and postmodern repertoires and their relations to the broader musical worlds that create and enjoy them.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface (p. IX)
• 1. Turtles All the Way Down (On the "Purely Musical") (p. 1)
• 2. Thinking Blues (p. 32)
• 3. What Was Tonality? (p. 63)
• 4. The Refuge of Counterconvention (p. 109)
• 5. Reveling in the Rubble: The Postmodern Condition (p. 139)
• Notes (p. 171)
• Index (p. 197)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Based on the Bloch Lectures given at the University of California at Berkeley, McClary's latest book continues her study of the ideas and issues surrounding the relationship between societal forces and music. Using examples of vocal and instrumental music from the 17th to the 20th centuries, McClary (musicology, Univ. of California, Los Angeles; Feminine Endings) analyzes each within a cultural context and examines how that context has helped to define and challenge the concept of musical convention. She argues persuasively that what began as deviations from convention have, in turn, become conventional. In addition, her assertion that analysis focusing on the purely musical does not address the inherent complexities of music history will no doubt spark much debate. While her conclusions may spark disagreement, McClary's detailed analysesDparticularly of the aria "Figlio! Tiranno!" from Alessandro Scarlatti's opera Griselda and of the first movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in A minor, op. 132Dare enlightening and follow her practice of looking at music in a critical light. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DTeresa M. Neff, Boston Univ. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Music expresses the needs of those who write and perform it, McClary says, but it does so within the context of conventions generally agreed to by the societies in which musicians live. She begins the specifics of her argument by citing an operatic aria by Stradella (1644^-1682) that manifests the influence of the "sacred erotic" on expressing emotions. Turning to examples from Mozart and Beethoven, she discusses the harmonic structures and musical forms that permit the audience to understand the music. In late modern times, the blues is a highly structured form that combines simple cadences with the expression of African American experience, and even rap has meaningful structure built upon the heritage of four centuries of music. Many composers have pushed structural boundaries with atonal music, but that, too, has roots firmly planted in cultural heritage. Musicologist McClary's chapters, adapted from a series of Ernest Bloch lectures at the University of California at Berkeley, present a view of musical history that is perhaps unconventional but also coherent and satisfying to even casual music buffs. --Alan Hirsch

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Susan McClary is Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles.