"Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet" by Philip Brett, from Queering the Pitch (2nd edition)

Note: I need to purchase this book- it is going to be a valuable resource...

"If musical pleasure can indeed be linked to this primordial experience then here at another level is a possible explanation for patriarchal societies' ambivelence toward it. Nonverbal even when linked to words, physically arousing in its function as initiator of dance, and resisting attempts to endow it with, or discern in it, precise meaing, it represents that part of our culture which is contructed as feminine and therefore dangerous" (Brett 12).

On how the Bach chorales taught in undergrad harmony courses become "a paradigm for the patriarchal appropriation of music": "The student, who is rarely made fully aware of the historical or stylistic context of these hymn-tune arrangements, then imbibes theirs as a "normal" technique rather than the concentration of elaboraton that is represents and is thus encouraged to see them as miniature organisms" (14).

This reading: interrupted by news of my pap's death. To be continued...