ABSTRACT
Adorno infamously claimed that phonographic recordings of female voices are problematic because a woman’s singing voice requires the presence of her body (Engh 2001: 120). He believed that listening to a mechanical recording prevents the appreciation of the female voice by removing it from the body that gives it subjective meaning for the listener.1 Adorno’s claim reflects a longstanding ambivalence towards the voices and bodies of women, displayed throughout the history of musical performance.2 As Dunn and Jones argue, “the female voice, whether it is celebrated, eroticized, demonized, ridiculed or denigrated, is always stigmatized, ideologically ‘marked,’ and construed as a ‘problem’ for the (male) social critic/auditor, who demands concern if not control” (2001: 9). And the stigma attached to the female voice is exacerbated by the presence of the female body.
