Conventional Wisdom : The Content of Musical Form

Re-examining the concept of musical convention, this text explores the ways that shared musical practices transmit social knowledge, and offers an account of our own cultural moment in terms of two dominant traditions: tonality and blues.McClary looks at musical history from new and unexpected angles and moves easily across a broad range of repertoires - the blues, 18th-century tonal music, late Beethoven, and rap.

McClary moves beyond the borders of the "purely musical" into the larger world of history and society, and beyond the idea of a socially stratified core canon toward a musical pluralism.