Singing a Different Tune
Re-sounding Intersectional Voices in Classical Music
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/kkf.v38i2.149911Nøgleord:
Classical Music, Intersectionality, Feminist Musicology, Gendered Exclusion, Women Composers, Multisensory MethodsResumé
This article explores the intersectional exclusion of women composers in Western classical music. While feminist musicology has long challenged this exclusion, many approaches remain constrained by additive frameworks that do not sufficiently interrogate the institutional and aesthetic structures through which exclusion is continually reproduced. We integrate intersectional feminist theory with Karen Barad’s concept of material-discursive entanglements to move beyond fixed identity categories, demonstrating how marginalisation emerges through entangled systems of power, institutional practice, and sonic hierarchy. In response to the dominance of text-based academic knowledge, we develop a diffractive, multisensory methodology that invites readers to listen as they read, foregrounding the affective, embodied, and sensory dimensions of musical exclusion. This materialises a feminist epistemic intervention that re-sounds intersectional voices within and through classical music, while also reconfiguring how exclusion is understood, felt, and resisted. In doing so, we contribute to feminist musicology and intersectional studies by offering a method for both analysing and unsettling exclusionary norms, with implications for institutions, pedagogies, and practices of cultural legitimacy.
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