ABSTRACT
The nature of science is an essential part of the explanation of its social roles. Similarly, a deep explanation of the causes and effects of music and musical experience lies in the nature of music and musical experience. This chapter explores there a way that one can make sense of the urge to describe music and musical experience in social and political terms, without making a real connection. It claimed that formalist view of music can be combined with a particular understanding of social and political descriptions of music. The chapter explores this idea with two examples. The first is of descriptions of music in terms of culture, the second in terms of gender. The thought is that musical qualities are nonarbitrarily grouped together with other culturally significant non-musical aspects of the culture. Susan McClary is effective in drawing attention to gendered descriptions of music by music critics when they describe music as 'male' or 'masculine' or 'female' or 'feminine".
