Making Sense of Music

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Susan McClary (Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, Case Western Reserve University)

Making Sense of Music

Susan McClary (Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, Case Western Reserve University)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
08 November 2025

Theory of music & musicology; Music reviews & criticism; Music: styles & genres

One of the best-known prose stylists in contemporary musicology, Susan McClary brings together a fascinating set of essays in Making Sense of Music that focus on temporality and the body as ways of understanding music. Prefaced by a Foreword from celebrated theatre director Peter Sellars, the chapters engage variously with ribald songs of the Renaissance, the performance of Bach fugues, time-bending in seventeenth-century keyboard works, Grieg's Norwegian swerve, Florence Price's reclaiming of the spiritual, erotic scenarios in Mahler, representations of motherhood in Kaija Saariaho's operas, and queer elements in classical and popular repertories. McClary grounds her readings within the specifics of historical time and place, even as she shows how the music itself relies on gesture and the body. In sum, this book demonstrates in case studies taken from a wide variety of practices how music draws upon and shapes human subjective experience.

By: Susan McClary (Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music Case Western Reserve University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 25mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 235mm
Weight: 583g
ISBN: 9780197779750
ISBN 10: 0197779751
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 08 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Susan McClary (Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, Case Western Reserve University; Distinguished Professor Emerita, UCLA) specializes in the cultural criticism of music. Her books include Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality; Georges Bizet: Carmen; Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form; Modal Subjectivities: Renaissance Self-Fashioning in the Italian Madrigal; Reading Music; Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music; Structures of Feeling in Seventeenth-Century Expressive Culture; The Passions of Peter Sellars: Staging the Music. She previously taught at University of Minnesota, McGill, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. McClary received a MacArthur Foundation ""Genius"" Fellowship in 1995, and her work has been translated into at least twenty languages.