Lives in Musicology: A Life in Musicology—Stradella and Me

Part of a series that includes autobiographical accounts by Bruno Nettl and Albrecht Riethmüller, this essay traces my professional development as a musicologist. The works of Alessandro Stradella inspired me to move in several important directions, and I frame the essay with my various interactions with his music, as music theorist, historian, performer, dramaturg, playwright, and feminist critic. I also examine the influence of an array of cultural theorists during my career, as I sought to make sense of procedures that operate according to premises other than those of eighteenth-century tonality. Eventually my attempts at understanding Stradella's strategies led me to find ways of reading tonality and its forms as ideological constructs. Finally, this venture encouraged me to deal seriously with other repertories (e.g., recent concert works and popular musics) that also required different analytical methods than those associated with the standard canon.