Susan McClary

Susan McClary
Name	Susan McClary
Birth date	1946
Occupation	Musicologist, author, academic
Nationality	American
Notable works	Feminine Endings

Susan McClary Susan McClary is an American musicologist and scholar known for applying feminist theory, cultural criticism, and narrative analysis to Western art music. She has taught at leading institutions and contributed influential critiques of tonal music interpretation, engaging with figures across musicology, literary criticism, and cultural studies. Her work intersects with debates involving scholarship by scholars and critics in the humanities and has provoked responses from performers, historians, and theorists.

Early life and education

Born in 1946, McClary completed undergraduate and graduate studies that bridged music performance and historical study. Her formative training involved engagement with curricula at conservatories and universities influenced by scholars associated with Harvard University, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, Juilliard School, and Eastman School of Music. She studied repertoire that included works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Claudio Monteverdi, and Franz Schubert, while encountering critical theory from thinkers linked to Theodor W. Adorno, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Louis Althusser.

Academic career and positions

McClary has held faculty appointments and visiting positions at universities and conservatories that interact with departments such as musicology, ethnomusicology, and cultural studies. Her employment history includes institutions comparable to Case Western Reserve University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Michigan, Columbia University, New York University, and guest engagements at centers like the Institute for Advanced Study, the American Academy in Rome, and the British Academy. She has lectured at conferences organized by groups such as the American Musicological Society, Society for Music Theory, International Musicological Society, and interdisciplinary associations linked to Modern Language Association and American Council of Learned Societies.

Scholarly contributions and theories

McClary advanced analyses that read tonal structures as culturally encoded narratives and contested claims that musical structure is ideologically neutral. She drew on methodologies associated with Feminist theory, Queer theory, Post-structuralism, and Narrative theory as developed by thinkers like Judith Butler, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Edward Said, Jacques Lacan, and Stuart Hall. Her approaches juxtaposed historical figures such as Heinrich Schenker and Arnold Schoenberg with critics like Charles Rosen and Carl Dahlhaus, and with performers and composers including Igor Stravinsky, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Claudio Monteverdi. She emphasized the intersections between musical analysis and cultural artifacts addressed by scholars like Simon Frith, Tia DeNora, Theodor Adorno, Christopher Small, and Kofi Agawu.

Major publications

Her books and essays respond to repertoires spanning from early music to nineteenth-century symphonism and twentieth-century modernism. Notable monographs and essays engage with works associated with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mozart's Don Giovanni, Schubert's Lieder, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Monteverdi's Vespers, and repertoire cited in anthologies alongside writings by Leonard B. Meyer, Charles Rosen, Carl Dahlhaus, Jerrold Levinson, Susan McClary, Theodor Adorno, and Joseph Kerman. Her influential book pioneered interdisciplinary discourse among audiences familiar with publications by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Duke University Press, Princeton University Press, and journals such as Journal of the American Musicological Society, Music Theory Spectrum, Cultural Critique, and New Literary History.

Reception and influence

Responses to her work range from enthusiastic adoption in curricula to sharp critique by traditionalists. Supporters in gender studies and cultural studies draw connections to scholarship by Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Martha Nussbaum, bell hooks, and Nancy Fraser, while critics from analytic and historicist traditions include figures associated with Heinrich Schenker-inspired circles, Charles Rosen, Carl Dahlhaus, Kofi Agawu, and commentators in The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Her interventions shaped programs and debates at conferences organized by Modern Language Association, American Musicological Society, Society for Music Theory, and departments at Yale University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Chicago.

Awards and honors

McClary’s work has been recognized in fields that bridge musicology and humanities scholarship, with citations in award lists and invited lectureships. She has delivered keynote addresses at institutions and societies such as the American Musicological Society, Society for Music Theory, Modern Language Association, British Academy, and research centers including the Institute for Advanced Study and the American Academy in Rome. Her books have appeared on recommended reading lists at Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Duke University Press, and in syllabi at Columbia University, New York University, University of Michigan, and Indiana University Bloomington.

Personal life and advocacy

McClary has engaged in public humanities work connecting scholarship to activism, collaborating with community arts organizations and academic networks. Her advocacy aligns with initiatives in feminist scholarship promoted by organizations such as National Organization for Women, Association for Women in Higher Education, Modern Language Association, and university centers like the Bunting Institute and Center for the Study of Women. She has participated in panels with scholars from Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and arts institutions including Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Category:American musicologists Category:Women musicologists