Rating: 
Summary: Weak arguments shouted loudly
Review: At a time when feminist scholars the world over are making valuable contributions to music studies, McClary's attempt at a feminist musicology in this volume (and for that matter elsewhere) stands out as an example of how not to do it. Blandly reductive, nothing if not essentialist, and hoping to make up for its lack of theoretical sophistication by a tone of shrillness and violence, this book is everything that feminist musicology must try to avoid if it is to be taken seriously, not just by the "establishment" but by other feminists and even by undergraduates. Music and musicology, including the very concepts and "feelings" that they rely on and convey, ARE related to gender and sexuality, but not in the unmediated, simplistic manner that McClary espouses. Instead of clarifying the complexity of the matter, McClary has managed to give us something that resembles Stalinist versions of Marxism: your "social position" (read: gender, sexuality), is a direct, unmediated determinant of your music. The cultural politics this implies ought to be obvious to all. For a more enlightened approach to music and gender, read most of the studies included in the book "Rediscovering the Muses," a volume which actually deals with non-western music. (Unlike McClary, whose concerns with the "Other" and the "marginalized" simply function as academic straw men--sorry for the gender-specific metaphor).
Rating:
Summary: insipid and absurd
Review: Doubtless music has anthropological and cultural significance (but it has musical significance too). As far as I can tell, no one has ever disputed this. It's just that this particular set of essays happens to be vapid and ludicrous. Strange and reckless--yet not especially imaginative or interesting--assertions are tossed about wholly unsubstantiated. (Beware of writers who use vague and slippery buzzwords such as "rich"--unless they're talking about money or food--and "engages"--unless they're talking about gears or marriage.) sex: n. 1. The property or quality by which organisms are classified according to their reproductive functions. 2. Either of two divisions, designated "male" and "female", of this classification. gender: n. 1. A subclass within a grammatical class of a language that determines agreement with and selection of words or grammatical forms. 2. Membership of a word or grammatical form in such a subclass. 3. An inflectional form showing membership in such a subclass.
Rating: 
Summary: ENLIGHTENING BOOK
Review: I assigned this book to my WOMEN AND MUSIC class when I taught at the University of Tennessee. It opened their eyes and ears. They have an entirely new and valuable perspective. A must read for any musician! Dr. Benjamin Boone, California State University Fresno
Rating:
Summary: Controversial Milestone
Review: In Feminine Endings, Susan McClary went "outside the box," critically examining a lot of the unquestioned conventions of traditional musicology. This was a groundbreaking book, attempting to talk about "the semiotics of desire" and how composers/performers construct meaning through the creation and manipulation of musical pleasure. McClary received extremely harsh criticism for her rethinking of "classical" composers and musicology, the vehemence of which was, at times, shocking. This in itself indicated that Feminine Endings had touched a sensitive nerve (McClary herself characterizes her inquiry as one of Bluebeard's wives daring to open the forbidden door). While the musicology establishment mostly viewed McClary as a misguided heretic, many other scholars and critics found Feminine Endings brilliant, liberating, and a breath of fresh air (I'd vote for all three). While criticism of this book, published in 1991, still hasn't stopped, McClary indeed opened a door with Feminine Endings, providing a critical space for a variety of subsequent music criticism, including even traditional musicology, which found Feminine Endings too important to ignore. This book is aimed at a scholarly readership, though undergrad students (music majors and non-majors alike) can also get a lot out of these essays, which are very readable considering the scholarly content.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful cultural critique
Review: In FEMININE ENDINGS: MUSIC, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY, Susan McClary applies the insightful and provocative approach to music and its meanings that has made her one of the most widely read music scholars of the twentieth century, and for which she earned the prestigious MacArthur Award in 1995. McClary argues that music, being a fundamentally social phenomenon, constitutes a particular mode of social discourse. Music can articulate social meanings in various ways, and like any semiotic system it uses a defined, yet flexible, repertory of codes -- gestures, rhetorical devices, narrative strategies, associations with and allusions to extra-muical events or phenomena, and so on. While this would seem obvious to anyone who has ever heard a horn call, a funeral dirge, a national anthem, or a distinctive bolero, scholarly writing on music has until recently been reluctant to assess critically how meanings are inscribed, circulated, and mediated through musical practices. As McClary explains, the process by which musical sounds, phrases, and gestures assume meanings is complex and is open to modification, challenge, and redefinition. Therefore, critics who portray McClary's rich hermeneutic interventions as reductive or essentialist grossly misrepresent her line of argument. For as she demonstrates, there is nothing essential about musical meanings -- they are subject to the contingencies of time and place; they are shaped by contemporary social and historical realities; and they rely upon the formal and stylistic conventions specific to the musical traditions in which they participate. McClary brings these factors to bear on musical practices, and in so doing she engages music to perform a powerful cultural critique.
Rating:
Summary: because it IS awful
Review: It's a very strange thing when "extremely harsh criticism" is cited as evidence of value. Is it just possibly that this book was harshly criticized because it deserves to be, because it is a very sorry excuse for a work of musical--and, for that matter, sociological--scholarship? I think it IS possible. I think it is more than possible; I think it is quite likely. It is "readable" for non-musicians not in spite of its "scholarly content", but only in that it lacks "scholarly content"; it is not particularly well written. Obviously, it has its partisan proponents--the sort of people who don't like having to think subtly or deeply but who still want to be taken seriously, the sort of pseudo-intellectual people who want to have it both ways--, but this is no recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: very silly
Review: It's not a bad thing to invent fantastical narrative glosses for musical forms. The composer and pianist George Antheil imagined the first theme of a sonata form movement to be his wife and the second theme to be his more alluring mistress. By the recapitulation his mistress becomes as familiar as his wife and hence is represented in the tonic key. George Antheil's sonata form story helped him to perform sonata form movements. I, in contradistinction, think of Hansel and Gretel to help me compose sonata form movements. Susan McClary's sonata form story goes like this: The first theme is the male repressing the female second theme--he gets to go first. Then in the recapitulation he forces her into his own key, which to McClary's mind makes him--and his composer--a rapist. If Susan McClary can get something out of her story, that's fine--for her. Just let's not call her book a sociological or musicological critique. Let's call it making up foolish stories. By the bye, "gender" is a grammatical term only.
Rating:
Summary: Historically important.
Review: McClary's oftly maligned _Feminine Endings_ is an important contribution to feminist musicology. Warts and all, it lays out several issues that have got musicology past the question of "why have there been so few women composers?" and will most likely influence at least the next generation of scholars. McClary's prose is always engaging, and she is to be commended for her ability to distill complex social theories down to the essentials. Occasionally, she lumps things together (witchcraft persecutions and Poppea, for example) that make some arguments forced. But for the sheer synthesis of material, the volume remains stunning.
Rating:
Summary: eminently forgettable
Review: No, this book certainly does not address the question, "Why have there been so few women composers?". Rather, it addresses the question, "Why does Madonna wear underwear outside her outerwear?" I'm not making this up. It goes on at length about the musical significance of Madonna (without actually discussing her music, such as it is). This sort of thing is not a blemish, not a minor flaw; it's the whole book, front to back. This book may well influence a new generation of pseudo-scholars, but it is unlikely to influence a generation of scholars--or, for that matter, a single scholar--, because it is not itself a work of scholarship. It is "maligned" for a very good reason, but it is better ignored. (By the way, my unabridged dictionary and I are unfamiliar with the term "oftly". "Oft" is an adverb already.)
Rating: 
Summary: Read Conventional Wisdom
Review: This book changed me from a Stravinsky-like "music has no meaning" stance. I still don't think that music is sad or happy or like a day in the country, things are more complicated than that, but I no longer feel that music is an empty if beautiful vessel. Instead music, like all actions (and non-actions), is political. I only give it a four because I would recommend her next book far more.
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