Volume 18, Number 1, 1997 Crossing Borders: Interdisciplinary Studies by Canadian Scholars Franchir les frontières : études interdisciplinaires de chercheurs canadiens Guest-edited by James Deaville and Susan Fast

EN:

In recent years, narrative theory has been an influential model for many writers on music. Things in musical syntax like repetitions, expectations, and resolutions make it tempting to speak of music as narrative, as an emplotment of events, yet such a model in fact involves more narrativization than narrative. It is perhaps more fruitful to focus upon the musical side of unambiguously narrative moments.

In this paper, I want to try to integrate recent approaches to musical narration by suggesting that narrative in music is a performance which functions according to the logic of the supplement. My approach will be two-fold: first, I want to justify restricting the enquiry to pre-existing narratives set to music by considering the limitations of the emplotment model; second, I shall use Kundry's Act II narrative in Wagner's Parsifal as a magnet to attract a number of narrative approaches: some will stick and some will not.

EN:

This article examines the relationship between late Medieval narrative structure in French literature and music (specifically the isorhythmic motet) and how that structure was shaped by deeply held beliefs within Medieval culture, including the idea that a person's identity and desires were directed by God. A detailed analysis of the motet De bon espoir/Puis que la douce rousee/Speravi by Guillaume de Machaut is made to support the argument.

EN:

Throughout musical history, organizations have occupied a significant role in the production of music. The article explores how scholarship might approach the study of musical organizations through organization theory. After a discussion of modernist and postmodern paradigms in organization theory, the article applies those principles, as well as the thought of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, to two case studies from the history of the New-German movement. The case studies illustrate how organization theory helps explain the failure of the Euterpe-Verein in Leipzig on the one hand, and the success of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein on the other.

EN:

Stax Records was a record label based in Memphis, Tennessee from the late 1950s through December 1975, when it was forced into involuntary bankruptcy. "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Scholar — Well You Need to Get an MBA" uses Stax Records as a case study to problematize what has often been a tendency within popular music scholarship to attempt to understand the political economy of the record industry primarily via the mechanical application of Marxist theory on a macro level. In looking in detail at the relationship between CBS Records and Stax from 1972 through 1975, the author concludes that to fully understand the nature of the distribution agreement between the two companies, its ramifications, and the consequent subsequent actions of the various principals involved, all of which eventually led to Stax's bankruptcy, one needs to take into account on a micro level the different modi operandi of independent and major labels, differences in the retail world of black and white America, and individual agency. Finally, all of the above needs to be considered very specifically within a temporal framework. The final conclusions prove to be significantly different from what would have resulted from solely from a Marxist analysis on a macro level.

EN:

This paper examines the links between Western music, Western metaphysics, and Western imperialism. Taking Derrida's reading of "White Mythology" and "Violence and Metaphysics" as its point of departure, the paper explores the relationship between the theories and practices of musical composition formalized in Europe in the eighteenth and finalized in the nineteenth century, and the theories and practices of race, racial differentiation, and empire that coincide(d) with it.

EN:

"Music Trouble" is an experimental paper, a linear re-presentation of the multi-media performance (which included costume, poetry, photographs, and musical scores, in addition to the paper) designed for the Ottawa Border Crossings Conference. "Music Trouble" explores identity construction through music and music education, specifically in relation to issues of sexuality. Judith Butler's idea of "gender is drag" and Sue-Ellen Case's "butch-femme aesthetic" are employed in conjunction with feminist auto/biography to critique current theories and practices supporting music education.

FR:

L’auteure examine la pertinence de la critique féministe étasunienne en musique en milieu francophone québécois. Dans un premier temps, elle propose une réflexion critique sur le féminisme étasunien en musique. Puis, elle pose la question de la pertinence de ses fondements et de ses méthodologies pour les jeunes musicien(ne)s issus du milieu culturel francophone du Québec qui, au moment d’entreprendre des études avancées, envisageraient de se consacrer à la recherche sur la pensée féministe.