Renovating Music Analysis

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, women composers have continued to be sidelined, with some of the research suggesting an inbuilt culture of sexism and bias against their music.1 Against this backdrop, these three recently published books potentially counter this negativity. Each shines a radiant light on the rich and diverse contribution to music by women, showing how they are changing the fields of composition, music analysis and musicology. Two of the books, Reconceiving Structure in Contemporary Music by Judy Lochhead and Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers edited by Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft, engage close readings of music, locating themselves in the field of music theory/music analysis. Both deal with twentieth-century and twenty-first-century female composers in the western classical tradition. The third book, Gender, Age and Musical Creativity edited by Catherine Haworth and Lisa Colton, covers a range of historical periods, genres and musical styles. This book overlaps the body of work in critical musicology as well as more broadly reaching out to gender, queer and cultural studies. It makes a unique contribution by extending the categories routinely used to study music—gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality—to include the rarely addressed category of age. It questions the