Gendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Tone: Fourteenth-Century Music Theory and the Directed Progression

Reading and Theorizing Medieval Music Theory: Interpretation and Its Contexts

“…This response will also continue to refer to Leach in the third person as the author of Leach (2006a), without regard for the fact that the authors of the present work and of Leach (2006a) supposedly share an identity. In part this rhetorical move is designed to depersonalize the potential polemic: Leach and Fuller are scholars whose sole contact has been through the reading of each other's work, since they have never met.…”

“…But the potential absurdity of an author referring impersonally and objectively to her own work will additionally serve to flag one of the central issues at stake here-the impossibility of impersonal scholarly objectivity. In separating the author of Leach (2011) from that of Leach (2006a), I do not mean to disown or disavow the work (which I still find scholarly, imaginative, and stimulating), but rather to emphasize that my defense of it here is based on exactly what Fuller has access to-that is, the text of Leach (2006a)-rather than any additional knowledge to which I might be privy. Using such a rhetorical strategy may also be read as indicative of my current acceptance of the illusory substance of the subject, a critical feature in more recent gender and psychoanalytical theories of the self (e.g., in the work of Judith I She reserved additional fire for Ernest Sanders; see Fuller (1985-86, esp.…”

“…1 In 1998 Fuller published two separate responses to publications by Peter Lefferts and Christian Berger respectively, critiquing the former's 1995 attempt at a total tonal taxonomy of medieval song, and the latter's 1992 book proposing that fourteenth-century polyphony took its tonal basis from the ecclesiastical modes. 2 Her 2011 article "Concerning Gendered Discourse in Medieval Music Theory" reacts to Leach (2006a) in her now-familiar mode and asks specifically whether the semitone was gendered feminine. In the course of answering this question, Fuller raises many objections to the very principle of reading "neutral" medieval music theory texts for what they might say about gender, as well as questioning Leach's standards of accuracy, choice of context, level of knowledge, and understanding of Latin.…”

“…What follows here will refrain from restating the main arguments of Leach (2006a), which interested readers may read for themselves. This response will also continue to refer to Leach in the third person as the author of Leach (2006a), without regard for the fact that the authors of the present work and of Leach (2006a) supposedly share an identity.…”

“…Assessing someone's reading of medieval sources is difficult, since it relies on one's independent knowledge of a range of medieval sources with their attendant practical difficulties. But assessing one scholar's reading of another's article should be relatively easy-both texts are readily available and one can compare one's own reading of Leach (2006a) with the reading presented in Fuller (2011). At the outset of the present article, therefore, Fuller's reading of Leach-especially in the details of its rhetoric and argumentative strategies-will be used as a case study in Fuller's own reading strategies.…”