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Cette thèse se propose de faire une analyse du discours sur les représentations du féminin et les implications du sexe/genre dans la chanson québécoise contemporaine, à travers les œuvres et la persona de trois auteur·ice·s-compositeur·ice·s-interprètes (ACI): Ariane Moffatt, Pierre Lapointe et Philémon Cimon. Notre analyse part d’abord du constat que les chansons de Moffatt, Lapointe et Cimon figurent des sujets lyriques, dont la parole et le geste sont modulés par les enjeux énonciatifs que posent le lyrisme. Pour rendre compte de la spécificité de la chanson comme pratique poétique réunissant paroles, musique et interprétation, nous proposons de faire une étude sémantique des chansons pour chacun·e des ACI, en nous attardant dans un premier temps aux questions soulevées par le lyrisme, puis en faisant la somme des aspects relevant du sexe/genre présents dans leurs univers sonores respectifs avec le renfort de la théorie féministe et des études de genre, d’après une perspective postmoderne. Notre lecture cherche à souligner les reconduites et les poncifs liés au féminin, mais également à saisir les propositions et les configurations qui s’écartent des lieux communs, tant pour les modèles féminins valorisés que pour les modèles amoureux et les rapports sociaux de sexe et de genre suggérés par les chansons. La comparaison entre les chansons des trois artistes permet ainsi de dégager des points de convergence, tout en révélant les particularités de leurs œuvres.

Women have been active as performers of instrumental music since the Medieval period, and yet their contributions are often overlooked. This dissertation examines the history of women’s orchestras outside the United States, and explores their development, as well as reasons for existing. Several factors regarding their development are taken into consideration, including time period, country, and culture in which the ensemble is present. The birth of the women’s orchestra is traced from the ospedali of the 18th century Venice to today. All-female ensembles from England, Canada, Cuba, and Afghanistan are profiled, as well as the Women’s Orchestra in Auschwitz. Two modern-day women’s orchestras – the Allegra Chamber Orchestra in Vancouver, British Columbia, and my recital orchestra at the University of Maryland – were surveyed in an attempt to learn more about the culture of women’s orchestras. This paper seeks to answer the questions “What is the culture of women's orchestras today, and should they continue to exist?”

Cette dissertation se penche sur les interactions entre le jazz, l'identité, la nation et la modernité durant le soi-disant âge d'or du jazz à Montréal (1925-1955). À la croisée de la musicologie, des études de la condition féminine (études féministes noires et méthodes de recherche féministes en particulier), des études des médias et des études culturelles, je propose une réécriture critique de l'histoire du jazz montréalais, attentive au rôle que les femmes racisées et ethnicisées ont joué dans le développement de la scène jazz, et plus largement dans la formation des identités, des plaisirs, et des sons de la modernité québécoise. Le statut particulier de Montréal comme ville-spectacle en fait un riche laboratoire pour étudier les relations de collaboration créative entre les artistes (musiciens.ennes, chanteurs.euses, danseurs.euses) actifs sur le circuit du spectacle de variété noir du début du XXe siècle. Cette recherche met également en lumière la relation discursive qu'entretiennent le jazz et le vice dans l'entre-deux-guerres québécois, en particulier quant à l'incarnation sexuée et racisée de la moralité. Finalement, cette dissertation présente la première écoute critique ainsi que les premières notes biographiques détaillées d'artistes féminines de jazz montréalaises telles que les pianistes Vera Guilaroff et Ilene Bourne, des ensembles féminins comme les Sœurs Spencer et le Montreal Melody Girls Orchestra, des danseuses et chanteuses de variété noires telles que Tina Baines Brereton, Bernice Jordan Whims, Mary Brown, Natalie Ramirez, et Marie-Claire Germain, ainsi que l'enseignante de piano Daisy Peterson Sweeney et les enseignantes de danse Ethel Bruneau et Olga Spencer Foderingham.

Cette étude inclut les œuvres de Mara Tremblay, Ariane Moffat et Salomé Leclerc et vise un objectif double : d’une part, il s’agit d’analyser des textes lyriques qui ont une indéniable qualité poétique et d’autre part, de réaliser une étude intermédiale alliant texte, musique et clip-vidéo afin de voir comment le sens d’un de ces éléments est infléchi, modifié ou complété par celui des autres éléments. L’hypothèse de recherche est qu’aujourd’hui, les auteurs-compositeurs-interprètes conçoivent leur art à travers trois langages esthétiques (le texte, la musique et la vidéo), faisant de la musique une expérience plurisensorielle et intermédiale. Pour faire émerger le message de ces artistes, on mobilisera les théories du care et l’écoféminisme afin d’analyser le discours portant sur le sujet et le monde. On vise à dégager les grands thèmes de ces œuvres à travers une synthèse de ces trois approches critiques. L’analyse du corpus vise à déterminer la qualité poétique des textes et la vision du monde que ces trois artistes diffusent.

This research-creation dissertation focuses on the emergence of electroclash as a dominant form of electronic dance music in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Electroclash combines the extended pulsing sections of techno, house and other dance musics with the trashier energy of rock and new wave. The genre signals an attempt to reinvigorate dance music with a sense of sexuality, personality and irony. Electroclash also emphasizes, rather than hides, the European, trashy elements of electronic dance music. This project addresses the following questions: what is distinct about the genre and its related practices, both in and out of the studio? Why do rock and electro come together at this point and in this way? Why is electroclash affectively powerful for musicians, audiences and listeners? And, what does the genre portend in terms of our understandings of the politics of electronic music? The coming together of rock and electro is examined vis-à-vis the ongoing changing sociality of music production/distribution and the changing role of the producer. Numerous women, whether as solo producers or in the context of collaborative groups, significantly contributed to shaping the aesthetics and production practices of electroclash, an anomaly in the history of popular music and electronic music where the role of the producer has typically been associated with men. These changes are discussed in relation to the way key electroclash producers often used a hybrid approach to production involving the integration of new(er) technologies, such as laptops containing various audio production software with older, inexpensive keyboards, microphones, samplers and drum machines to achieve the ironic backbeat laden hybrid electro-rock sound.

The life story of Mrs. Daisy Sweeney, an African Canadian native of Montreal, Quebec, helps fill a void in the historical documentation of Montreal Blacks (especially female elders). Of particular significance is her prominence as a music educator and othermother during her life. The current literature on African Canadian othermothering experiences is not synonymous with both White or African American females and inclusion of their voices in academic, as well as mainstream spaces, is virtually non-existent. This dissertation asks: What did it mean to be a first generation 'Negro' working class bilingual female in a largely hostile White francophone Quebec metropolis in the early 20th Century? How can her narratives help shape and inform life history and African Canadian othermothering research? My sojourn with Mrs. Daisy Sweeney referenced African centered epistemology in my conceptual understanding of herself and community mothering. Capturing her conversations meant engaging with multiple methodologies articulated through African oral traditions, life history, archival canons and interdisciplinary inquiries. It is striking to note that there were not only certain tensions associated with memory loss and physical limitations (prompted by the aging process) that destabilized and enriched our 'interactive' communication, but also revealed a rupture and reversal of the participant/researcher dynamic. In spite of blatant racial discrimination that plagued Montreal's Black communities during that time, Daisy Sweeney fulfilled a life-long dream and taught hundreds of children the canon of classical piano for over 50 years. She lived her voice through her music, finding ways to validate her own identity and empowering others in the process. She used the musical stage as her platform to draw invaluable connections between race, gender, language and social class. Daisy Sweeney's generation of othermothers is dying out and, as the carriers of culture, the urgency to tell their stories must be emphasized. The account respects, reclaims and reflects those voices. It is time to write in African Canadian female elders and diversify the exclusionary genre of life history and archival research.

Throughout his ascendancy in fame and cultural visibility, singer/songwriter and gay pop icon Rufus Wainwright's output has been consistently related, by scholars and critics alike, to camp aesthetics, modes of artistic expression typically understood as emerging from queer communities, particularly certain gay male populations, but ones whose political potential is highly contested. Traditional conceptions of camp, as most famously articulated by Susan Sontag in the 1960s, emphasize style over content, necessarily rendering it politically-disengaged. However, scholars have vehemently challenged conceptions like Sontag's, in order to reclaim camp as a potent means to facilitate queer world-making and a powerful resistance to heteronormativity. I examine Wainwright's image and music in order to theorize a new queer interpretive listening position. Specifically, I draw upon the literary perspective of “reparative reading,” articulated by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in opposition to what she describes as “paranoid reading,” to propose a uniquely queer approach to musical and cultural historiography, exemplified by Wainwright's music. Much of the current queer musicology focuses on lost histories, systematic marginalization, and the commoditization of queer identities. While such approaches have produced important insights, thorough examination of the relationships between queer cultural products and their queer reception has proven elusive. This project suggests a unique approach to understanding the musical construction of a specific kind of queer masculinity, one which combines authorial creation with reparative conceptions of reception, in order to theorize a uniquely gay male interpretive position. When viewed through a theoretical lens combining politically-potent conceptions of camp performativity with a reparative reading position, Wainwright's music strikingly enacts Philip Brett's call to claim, not historical evidence, but the right of interpretation, emerging as an act of resistance via the reclamation and consolidation of a queer interpretive authority. In this way, Wainwright articulates both a rupture in the history of queer masculinity and a powerful means of resistance to the often-exclusionary relationships between literary, musical, and artistic objects and the heteronormative cultural systems in which they are created.

Singer-composer Rufus Wainwright uses specific musical gestures to reference historical archetypes of urban, gay masculinity on his 2002 album Poses. The cumulative result of his penchant for pastiche, eschewal of traditional musical boundaries, and self-described hedonism, Poses represents Wainwright's direct engagement with the politics of identity and challenges dominant constructions of (homo)sexuality and masculinity in popular music. Drawing from a vast lexicon of musical styles, he assembles an idiosyncratic persona, ignoring several decades of pop with an "utter lack of machismo [and] a freedom that comes to outsiders disinterested in meeting the requirements of the dreary status quo." Though analysis of musical and lyrical characteristics of Poses, I establish a dialectic between Wainwright's musical persona and four historical modes of urban gay masculinity: the 19th Century English Dandy, the French flaneur, the 20th Century gay bohemian, and the "Clone." In doing so, I introduce Wainwright as a reinvigorating force, resuscitating the subversive potential of radical gay sexuality as a 21st Century model for imagining gay male subjectivity.

La chanson « Montréal », d'Ariane Moffatt, a remporté un vif succès durant l'été 2006. Ce mémoire examine les causes de cette popularité. Après une revue des diverses méthodes existantes en recherche en musique populaire, trois types d'analyse se succèdent. En premier lieu, l'étude présentée ici décrit la chanson de manière théorique; on y observe le fonctionnement de la voix, de la mélodie, de la métrique, de la basse, des phrases, de la tonalité, des accords et des instruments utilises, images par une transcription précise de l'enregistrement de la chanson. Puis, le présent travail étudie les codes musicaux qui se retrouvent dans «Montréal». Dans cette deuxième section, le message musical du morceau est analysé, en tenant compte du contexte socioculturel de l'été 2006, de l'histoire nationale et musicale qui a précédé la sortie de cette pièce et des paroles de la chanson. Finalement, cette étude investigue la composante identitaire de «Montréal» en examinant les croyances nationalistes des Québécois, la place de la chanson dans l'imaginaire collectif de ce peuple, et la tradition musicale populaire de la province.

For this study, I have interviewed fourteen women composers of electroacoustic music in or near the three Canadian urban centres of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Montreal: Ciaire Pich6, Lucie Jasmin, Pascale Trudel, Monique Jean, Helen Hall and Kathy Kennedy; Toronto: Gayle Young, Sarah Peebles, Wende Bartley, Elma Miller, Ann Southam, and Carol Ann Weaver; Vancouver: Hildegard Westerkamp and Susan Frykberg. These interviews were all conducted between January and November of 1993. References to the development of electroacoustic music in Canada are sparse in the existing literature, both in general histories of electroacoustic music, and in histories of Canadian music. And even though there seem to be some areas of change (for instance, recent publications in Quebec), women composers are under-represented in writings and recorded collections of electroacoustic music in Canada. Chapter Two situates the work of women composers in the Canadian scene, discussing particularly the work of Norma Beecroft, Marcelle Desch§nes, Diana McIntosh, and Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux. Chapter Three describes the metaphors, images and myths invoked in malestream discourses associated with electroacoustic music, in popular magazines, course texts and software. I investigate how my consultants’ language reflects and/or contests mainstream imagery, or how it might be framed by entirely different assumptions and experiences. Chapter Four is concerned with the institutional structures of electroacoustic music. I discuss how gendering exhibits itself in the division of labour in electroacoustic studio courses at universities, as well as in concert halls, conferences, and professional organizations. Excerpts from the interviews record my consultants experiences in these institutions, as students, teachers, and composers. In Chapter Five, I point out the variety of strategies that each composer uses to construct her identity within the world of electroacoustics. Each entry takes the form of a three or four page sketch, with quotes from the interview regarding the social environment, equipment choices, compositional styles, and particular pieces that my consultant discusses. Chapter Six discusses three pieces in detail: one by Susan Frykberg, Woman and House; one by Wende Bartley, A Silence Full of Sound; and one by Hildegard Westerkamp, Breathing Room. I focus on how each of the composers chooses to work with technology, and how her culturally-constructed position as a woman affects her work. I describe how my consultants imagine other stories to tell, and other possible lived social relations. The conclusions in Chapter Seven, in addition to suggesting areas for future research, discuss three themes that run throughout the study: the idea of gender as performance, the doubleness of my consultants' responses to technology, and the importance of the linguistic and musical metaphors that they use.