Conventional Wisdom The Content of Musical Form [Paperback]

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 Wisdomoffers 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 Wisdombravely tackles big issues concerning classical, popular, and postmodern repertoires and their relations to the broader musical worlds that create and enjoy them.

Susan McClaryis Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author ofFeminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality(1991) andGeorges Bizet: Carmen(1992).

Conventional Wisdomis a contribution to musicology of the first order. The field will have to reckon with it for years to come, for it will become the point of departure for discussions not only on the foundation of classical tonality and the American blues, but also for its deconstruction of the borderlands of 'the purely musical. Jos? David Sald?var, author ofBorder Matters

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