Music And The Skillful Listener: American Women Compose The Natural World (music, Nature, Place)
2013 / English / PDF
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For Denise Von Glahn, listening is that special quality afforded
women who have been fettered for generations by the maxim "be
seen and not heard." In Music and the Skillful Listener, Von
Glahn explores the relationship between listening and musical
composition focusing on nine American women composers inspired by
the sounds of the natural world: Amy Beach, Marion Bauer, Louise
Talma, Pauline Oliveros, Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich,
Victoria Bond, Libby Larsen, and Emily Doolittle. Von Glahn
situates "nature composing" among the larger tradition of nature
writing and argues that, like their literary sisters, works of
these women express deeply held spiritual and aesthetic beliefs
about nature. Drawing on a wealth of archival and original source
material, Von Glahn skillfully employs literary and gender
studies, ecocriticism and ecomusicology, and the larger world of
contemporary musicological thought to tell the stories of nine
women composers who seek to understand nature through music.
For Denise Von Glahn, listening is that special quality afforded
women who have been fettered for generations by the maxim "be
seen and not heard." In Music and the Skillful Listener, Von
Glahn explores the relationship between listening and musical
composition focusing on nine American women composers inspired by
the sounds of the natural world: Amy Beach, Marion Bauer, Louise
Talma, Pauline Oliveros, Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich,
Victoria Bond, Libby Larsen, and Emily Doolittle. Von Glahn
situates "nature composing" among the larger tradition of nature
writing and argues that, like their literary sisters, works of
these women express deeply held spiritual and aesthetic beliefs
about nature. Drawing on a wealth of archival and original source
material, Von Glahn skillfully employs literary and gender
studies, ecocriticism and ecomusicology, and the larger world of
contemporary musicological thought to tell the stories of nine
women composers who seek to understand nature through music.