Susan McClary - Feminine Endings

One of her best known works is Feminine Endings (1991; ISBN 0-8166-4189-7). ("Feminine ending" is a musical term once commonly used to denote a weak phrase ending or cadence.) The work covers these topics:

1. Musical constructions of gender and sexuality.
2. Gendered aspects of traditional music theory.
3. Gendered sexuality in musical narrative.
4. Music as a gendered discourse.
5. Discursive strategies of women musicians.

This work combines musicology within feminism. McClary suggests that sonata form may be interpreted as sexist or misogynistic and imperialistic, and that, "tonality itself - with its process of instilling expectations and subsequently withholding promised fulfillment until climax - is the principal musical means during the period from 1600 to 1900 for arousing and channeling desire." She interprets the sonata procedure for its constructions of gender and sexual identity. The primary, "masculine" key (or first subject group) represents the male self, while the allegedly the secondary, "feminine" key (or second subject group), represents the other, a territory to be explored and conquered, assimilated into the self and stated in the tonic home key.