Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1960-2000

Laurel Parsons, Ph.D., is a music theorist who has taught at the University of Victoria, University of British Columbia, Queen's University, and the University of Oregon. Her research interests include post-tonal music by Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, and Danish electroacoustic composer Else-Marie Pade, representation of Inuit poetry in late 20th-century Canadian and British music, and post-secondary music pedagogy for students with learning differences. She has published articles on Lutyens's music in Theory & Practice and Canadian University Music Review, and on aural skills pedagogy for students with dyslexia in Music Theory Online. In addition, she has contributed chapters to Arctic Discourses (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010) and British Modernism and Music 1895-1960 (Ashgate, 2010). From 2012 to 2015, she chaired the Society for Music Theory's Committee on the Status of Women. Brenda Ravenscroft, Ph.D., is Professor of Music Theory and the Dean of the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. Her research focuses on post-tonal American music, text and music, rhythmic organization, the music of South African composer Priaulx Rainier, and pedagogy in higher education. She has published on the music of Elliott Carter, John Cage and Lou Harrison in Music Analysis, Perspectives of New Music, Music Theory Spectrum, and Tempo, and on the flipped model and peer learning in Music Theory Pedagogy. She wrote on Carter's vocal music in Elliott Carter Studies (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and authored the "Case Study on Music Analysis" in The Flipped College Classroom (Springer, 2016). From 2006 to 2009 she chaired the Society for Music Theory's Committee on the Status of Women.

Acknowledgments

About the Companion Website

Chapter 1. Introduction
Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft

PART I
Order, Freedom and Design

Chapter 2. Ursula Mamlok, Panta Rhei, Third Movement (1981)
"Twelve Tone in My Own Way": An Analytical Study of Ursula Mamlok's Panta Rhei, Third Movement, with Some Reflections on Twelve-Tone Music in America
Joseph N. Straus

Chapter 3. Norma Beecroft, Improvvisazioni Concertanti No. 1 (1961)
Improvvisazioni Concertanti No. 1 by Norma Beecroft: Serialism, Improvisatory Discourse, and the Musical Avant-Garde
Christoph Neidhöfer

Chapter 4. Joan Tower, Silver Ladders (1986)
"Octatonicism," the Octatonic Scale, and Large- Scale Structure in Joan Tower's Silver Ladders
Jonathan W. Bernard

PART II
Gesture, Identity and Culture

Chapter 5. Sofia Gubaidulina, String Quartet No. 2 (1987)
"Difference Inhabits Repetition": Sofia Gubaidulina's String Quartet No. 2
Judy Lochhead

Chapter 6. Chen Yi, Symphony No. 2 (1993)
The Transformative Power of Musical Gestures: Cultural Translation in Chen Yi's Symphony No. 2
Nancy Yunhwa Rao


PART III
Music, Words and Voices

Chapter 7. Kaija Saariaho, "The claw of the magnolia..." From the Grammar of Dreams (1988)
Superposition in Kaija Saariaho's "The claw of the magnolia..."
John Roeder

Chapter 8. Libby Larsen, Chanting to Paradise (1997)
Music as a Mirror: Libby Larsen's Chanting to Paradise
Brenda Ravenscroft

Chapter 9. Elisabeth Lutyens, Essence of Our Happinesses (1968)
This Imaginary Halfe-Nothing: Temporality in Elisabeth Lutyens's Essence of Our Happinesses
Laurel Parsons
Glossary

Bibliography

Index