Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This book focuses on the role of education in relation to music and gender. Invoking a concept of musical patriarchy and a theory of the social construction musical meanings, Lucy Green shows how women's musical practices and gendered musical meanings have been reproduced, hand in hand, through history. Covering a wide range of music, including classical, jazz and popular styles, Dr Green uses ethnographic methods to convey the everyday interactions and experiences of girls, boys, and their teachers. She views the contemporary school music classroom as a microcosm of the wider society, and reveals the participation of music education in the continued production and reproduction of gendered musical practices and meanings.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Musical Meaning and WomenÆs Musical Practice
• 2 Affirming femininity: women singing, women enabling
• 3 From affirmation to interruption: women playing instruments
• 4 Threatening femininity: women composing/improvising
• 5 Towards a model of gendered musical meaning and experience
• Part II Gendered Musical Meaning in Contemporary Education
• 6 Affirming femininity in the music classroom
• 7 From affirmation to interruption of femininity in the music classroom
• 8 Threatening femininity in the music classroom
• 9 The music curriculum and the possibilities for intervention
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book examines the concept of femininity as it affects music and musical meaning. The author (Univ. of London) has organized the book into two parts. Part 1 provides a history of women in music as a foundation for a theory of gendered musical meaning and experience. Here Green explores singing, instrumental performance, composing, and teaching from the standpoint of gender and its effects on the musical experience. In part 2, the author looks at the contemporary music classroom in the context of gendered musical practices and meanings. She traces theories presented in part 1 to reveal their workings in contemporary British schools. The author outlines a series of practical steps for teachers who wish to combat gender politics of music through education. Scholars who have a particular interest in the sociology of music and music education from a feminist perspective will find this book absorbing and informative. The comprehensive bibliography is especially noteworthy. Undergraduates, however, will probably be put off by the author's turgid prose. E. Franklin; Winthrop University