Introduction

This chapter discusses diverse range of questions relating to masculinity and Western musical practices–the gendering of music pedagogy, the voice, music theory and reception, the masculinization of creativity and cultural-historical constructions of the male body, especially that of the male listener. Masculinity belongs to that group of critical terms that has been used to productively destabilize musicology's disciplinary assuredness and bring the study of music into meaningful relation with critical re-fashionings of the social domain. As Lydia Goehr points out, Franz Lisztt's desire for a 'museum' of musical works was not entirely new. Indeed the exclusion of women in musicology, itself another discursive 'musical museum', is far from having been annulled. Women in musicology are thus stuck in a double-bind. They are rallied in defence of classical music, avatars of that scholarship's new liberalism, open-mindedness and radicalization. Their visibility has been consistently curtailed, their genderedness silenced and their radical potential reined in.