Concerning Gendered Discourse in Medieval Music Theory: Was the Semitone "Gendered Feminine?"

Abstract

This study reviews how medieval music theorists write about the interval of the semitone and contests the notion advanced in a recent article by Elizabeth Eva Leach (“Gendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Tone,” Musk Theory Spectrum 28 (1) [2006]: 1–21) that they collectively associated the semitone with femininity and considered it to carry connotations of lasciviousness. Examination of passages from a wide range of medieval and early Renaissance treatises indicates that a substantial majority of theorists describe the semitone in gender-neutral language. Nor does a contextually situated reading of the theorists bear out the impression promoted in “Gendering the Semitone” that within a central medieval music theoretical tradition the Greek chromatic genus, musica ficta, and progressions from imperfect to perfect consonance (“directed progressions”) in fourteenth-century music were regarded as feminine in nature and erotically charged. A careful investigation of the claims made in the article “Gendering the Semitone” raises significant issues about how historians of music theory reconstruct collective theoretical attitudes from past epochs.