Music Theory Online

The Online Journal of the Society for Music Theory

Volume 7, Number 2, April 2001
Copyright � 2001 Society for Music Theory

New Books

This book explores the work of three significant American women composers of the twentieth century: Ruth Crawford, Marion Bauer and Miriam Gideon. It offers a unique approach to a rich body of music that deserves theoretical scrutiny and provides information on both the lives and music of these fascinating women, skillfully interweaving history and musical analysis in ways that both the specialist and the more general reader will find compelling. In this important new study, Ellie Hisama has employed new forms of analysis by which she links musical characteristics with aspects of the composers' identities. This is revealing both for questions of music and gender and the continuing search for meaning in music. The book thus draws attention to the value of the music of these three composers and contributes to the body of analytical work concerned with the explanation of musical language.

Chapter Contents
1. Cultural analysis and post-tonal music
2. The question of climax in Ruth Crawford's String Quartet, mvt.3
3. Inscribing identities in Crawford's String Quartet, mvt.4
4. The politics of contour in Crawford's Chinaman, Laundryman
5. Gender, sexuality, and performance in Marion Bauer's Toccata
6. Musical sublimation in Bauer's Chromaticon
7. A Woman's Way of Responding to the World: Miriam Gideon's Night is My Sister
8. Feminist agency in Gideon's Esther
9. Epilogue.

Ellie M. Hisama is Associate Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York and is Director of the Institute for Studies in American Music at Brooklyn College.

Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis
Ian Bent, General Editor

Price: GBP 40.00
ISBN: 052164030X
Binding: Hardback
Size: 256 x 181 mm
Pages: 215
Weight: 0.547kg
Figures: 10 line diagrams 9 tables 6 graphs 25 music examples

Published: 22 February 2001

� Cambridge University Press 2001
Cambridge University Press
Edinburgh Building
Shaftesbury Road
Cambridge CB2 2RU
Tel: +44 (0)1223 312393
Fax: +44 (0)1223 315052

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Wagner, Nike. The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty. Translated by Ewald Osers and Michael Downes. Princeton University Press.

For Members of Princeton University Press's E-mail List for Music and European History

We are pleased to send you the following information about this newly published book:

The Wagners: The Dramas of a Musical Dynasty
Nike Wagner
Translated by Ewald Osers and Michael Downes
http://www.pup.princeton.edu/titles/7035.html

In this virtuoso piece of cultural history, the great- granddaughter of Richard Wagner narrates the Wagner family's turbulent history. In the process, she shares her considerable insights into the operas and gives an inside account of the internecine struggles that have surrounded the Wagner family jewel: the Bayreuth Festival.

Nike Wagner draws on history, biography, and psychoanalysis to interpret both her family's history and her great-grandfather's operas. She focuses on Bayreuth, revealing how this showcase for Wagner's sublime art so readily served the Third Reich. With clear, often ironic eyes, she examines her family's extraordinary role in German culture-and its connections to right-wing ideology.

Particularly fascinating is the tug-of-war between Nike's visionary but enigmatic father, Wieland, and her astute but aesthetically stodgy uncle, Wolfgang. It was Wieland Wagner who inaugurated a daring new style of Wagner production-characterized by absence of scenery, spare acting, and dramatic lighting-that led to a wider revolution in how operas are produced. But Wolfgang Wagner, now entering his eighties, has controlled the Festival and quarreled with family members since Wieland's premature death in 1966. The author concludes with a look at the current contenders for this family throne, herself among them, and presents her vision for the Festival's future.

Wagnerites will need this book on their shelves. As an example of cultural journalism at its finest, it will also appeal to readers interested in German cultural history or those simply drawn to the melodrama that is the Wagner family story.

Nike Wagner is a music critic and cultural commentator living in Berlin. She holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and is the author of numerous reviews and essays on European cultural history and contemporary German history. She is the great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner.

0-691-08811-X Cloth $29.95 US
For sale only in the U.S. and the Philippines
384 pages, 8 illus. Pages, 6 x 9.

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prepared by
Rusty Jones, editorial assistant
Updated 14 November, 2002