Extraordinary Measures Disability in Music [Paperback]

Approaching disability as a cultural construction rather than a medical pathology, this book studies the impact of disability and concepts of disability on composers, performers, and listeners with disabilities, as well as on discourse about music and works of music themselves. For composers with disabilities--like Beethoven, Delius, and Schumann--awareness of the disability sharply inflects critical reception. For performers with disabilities--such as Itzhak Perlman and Evelyn Glennie--the performance of disability and the performance of music are deeply intertwined. For listeners with disabilities, extraordinary bodies and minds may give rise to new ways of making sense of music. In the stories that people tell about music, and in the stories that music itself tells, disability has long played a central but unrecognized role. Some of these stories are narratives of overcoming-the triumph of the human spirit over adversity-but others are more nuanced tales of accommodation and acceptance of life with a non-normative body or mind. In all of these ways, music both reflects and constructs disability.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Composers with Disabilities and the Critical Reception of their Music
Chapter 2. Musical Narratives of Disability Overcome: Beethoven
Chapter 3. Musical Narratives of Disability Accommodated: Schubert
Chapter 4. Musical Narratives of Balance Lost and Regained: Schoenberg and Webern
Chapter 5. Musical Narratives of the Fractured Body: Schoenberg, Stravinsky,
Bart?k, and Copland
Chapter 6. Disability within Music-Theoretical Traditions
Chapter 7. Performing Music and Performing Disability
Chapter 8. Prodigious Hearing, Normal Hearing, and Disablist Hearing
Glossary of Musical Terms
Works Cited
Index

[A] meticulously researched book that connects disability narratives with composing, theorizing, performing, and hearing music. --Journal of the American Musicological Societyl3,