ALLEGHENY CHAPTER of The American Musicological Society

Confessions from the Killing Jar: “Coming-out” as Reclamation

In her 2017 American Musicological Society endowed lecture, Susan McClary compared the conclusion of Kate Soper’s dissertation to McClary’s own experience of having to “come out” as a woman in the field of musicology. Soper described writing Voices from the Killing Jar (2010-2012) as a coming-out of herself as a gendered person and a reclaiming of tragic literary woman’s selfhood. In voicing tragic woman, I argue that Soper performs her own voice. In Voices from the Killing, Soper reclamations her gender and narratives of tragic woman through a crafted confession. Soper’s crafted confession follows Chloe Taylor’s interpretation of the Foucauldian model of confession. These four steps: declared acknowledgement of truth, commitment to truth, self-exposure/vulnerability, and significant change, are the formal structure of my presentation. I apply Taylor’s interpretation directly to movement VI. Interlude: Asta Sollilja. Interlude focuses on the reality of Asta Sollilja— a tragic character from Harold Laxness’s Independent People. Soper’s music sonically forms Asta Sollilja away from her killing jar —nineteenth-century rural Iceland and anxiety. In Interlude, Soper composes an expanded representation Asta Sollilja. In performing as Asta Sollilja, Soper directly embodies her gender. In a formalist analysis of Soper’s recording of Interlude, I argue that Soper uses sonic confessional intimacies, such as a broken ground bass, vocal failure, and phrase repetition. In my paper, sonic confessional intimacies are directly tied to a lament tradition. I examine how using a historically informed confessional intimacy constructs Soper’s double reclamation of her gender and of the portrayal of tragic woman.