LGBTQ+ Composers
There have been numerous LGBTQ+ composers throughout the history of Western classical music. In earlier eras, society understood sexuality and gender difference unlike we do today, and often it did not accept those who veered from conventional paths. Many gay and lesbian composers remained closeted or did not accept their own homosexuality, while others like Ethel Smyth, for example, openly pursued romantic relationships with other women. In the mid-twentieth century, Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears as well as Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti formed lifelong partnerships that were both romantic and artistic in nature. The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s decimated the gay artistic community, a crisis to which John Corigliano responded in his First Symphony; its first movement is titled "Apologue: Of Rage and Remembrance." Explore the list of notable LGBTQ+ composers below. Then see the recommended books to help contextualize sexuality in classical composition more broadly.
Recommended Books
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (Print and eBook) by
When the first edition of Queering the Pitch was published in early 1994, it was immediately hailed as a landmark and defining work in the new field of Gay Musicology. In light of the explosion of Gay Musicology since 1994, a new edition of Queering the Pitch is timely and needed. In this new work, the editors are including a landmark essay by Philip Brett on Gay Musicology, its history and scope. The essay itself has become a cause celebre, and this will be its first full appearance in print. Along with this new historical essay, the editors are contributing a new introduction that outlines the changes that have occurred over the last decade as Gay Musicology has grown.
Call Number: ML55 .Q44 1994 and Taylor & Francis eBooks CompletePublication Date: 2006
The Queer Composition of America's Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity by
In this vibrant and pioneering book, Nadine Hubbs shows how a gifted group of Manhattan-based gay composers were pivotal in creating a distinctive "American sound" and in the process served as architects of modern American identity. Focusing on a talented circle that included Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Bowles, David Diamond, and Ned Rorem, The Queer Composition of America's Sound homes in on the role of these artists' self-identification--especially with tonal music, French culture, and homosexuality--in the creation of a musical idiom that even today signifies "America" in commercials, movies, radio and television, and the concert hall.
Call Number: ML200.5 .H83 2004Publication Date: 2004
My Beloved Man: The Letters of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears by
This volume comprises the complete surviving correspondence between Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. The 365 letters written throughout their 39-year relationship are here brought together and published, as Pears intended, for the first time. While the correspondence provides valuable evidence of the development of Britten's works, more significant is the insight into his relationship with Pears and their day-to-day life together. Entertaining to read, domestic and intimate, the letters provide glimpses of cultural and artistic life in the twentieth century. Above all, when read together, Britten and Pears's letters allow the clearest possible look 'behind the scenes' of one of the most productive creative partnerships of the twentieth century.
Call Number: ML410.B853 A4 2016Publication Date: 2016
Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music by
Composer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: Black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York. His music, Eastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as reflected in legendary scandals like his June 1975 performance of John Cage's Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, and the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University. In addition to analyses of Eastman's music, the essays in Gay Guerrilla provide background on his remarkable life history and the era's social landscape. The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist that is compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights.
Call Number: ML410.E21 G39 2015Publication Date: 2015
Jennifer Higdon: Composing in Color by
Renowned composer Jennifer Higdon is best known for her symphonic pieces blue cathedral, Concerto for Orchestra, City Scape, Concerto 4-3, and Violin Concerto (2010 Pulitzer Prize). These compositions illustrate her breadth of style and avant-garde technique. The author examines these works--with commentary by Higdon--as well as the music of her first opera, with a focus on compositional history, musical characteristics, formal analysis and critical reception.
Call Number: ML410.H613 R45 2018Publication Date: 2018
Lies: A Diary, 1986-1999 by
This fifth volume of composer Ned Rorem's diaries reflects the winding down of his life and world. He mourns the passing of old friends and mentors such as Virgil Thomson and Leonard Bernstein, endures the indignities of age, and notes with bitterness the collapse of taste and standards that once defined his artistic circle. He also traces the grim course of AIDS through the gay community, and comments upon the private and public discourse of the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. The most moving entries describe the decline of his longtime companion, Jim Holmes, and his eventual death.
Call Number: ML410.R693 A3 2000Publication Date: 2000
Impressions That Remained: Memoirs of Ethel Smyth by
Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) was an English composer and the first woman in her field to be granted a damehood. First published in 1919, this autobiography highlights her wit and humour, while giving personal and reflective insights into her childhood and working life. Detailing her career journey, exploring her relationships with some of history's biggest names, and disclosing information regarding her activism for women's suffrage, Ethel Smyth's memoirs are a fascinating and insightful read.
Call Number: ML410.S66 A36 1946Publication Date: 1946
Claude Vivier: A Composer's Life by
Claude Vivier's haunting and expressive music has captivated audiences around the world. But the French-Canadian composer is remembered also because of the dramatic circumstances of his death: he was found murdered in his Paris apartment at the age of thirty-four. Given unrestricted access to Vivier's archives and interviews with Vivier's family, teachers, friends, and colleagues, musicologist and biographer Bob Gilmore tells here the full story of Vivier's fascinating life, from his abandonment as a child in a Montreal orphanage to his posthumous acclaim as one of the leading composers of his generation.
Call Number: ML410.V8273 G55 2014Publication Date: 2014
Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson by
Imagining Musical Pasts explores the complicated archive of sources, interpretations, and people present in queer writings on opera and symphonic music from ca. 1880-1935. It focuses primarily on the work of three turn-of-the-twentieth-century music scholars--philosopher and horror writer Vernon Lee (pseud. Violet Paget), biographer and program note annotator Rosa Newmarch, and critic and amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson. Each of the three major sections of the book is organized according to the authorial personae each author adopted in their creative and scholarly work. By reframing these ways of knowing as central to each scholar's individual approach to constructing and interpreting musical and sexual knowledge, the book draws attention to aspects of their work previously neglected or considered only in isolation.
Call Number: ML3797.4 .F73 2023Publication Date: 2023
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness by
Music and queerness interact in many different ways. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness brings together many topics and scholarly disciplines, reflecting the diversity of current research and methodology. Each of the book's six sections exemplifies a particular rhetoric of queer music studies. The section "Kinds of Music" explores queer interactions with specific musics such as EDM, hip hop, and country. "Versions" explores queer meanings that emerge in the creation of a version of a pre-existing text, for instance in musical settings of Biblical texts or practices of karaoke. "Voices and Sounds" turns in various ways to the materiality of music and sound. "Lives" focuses on interactions of people's lives with music and queerness. "Histories" addresses moments in the past, beginning with times when present conceptualizations of sexuality had not yet developed and moving to cases studies of more recent history, including the creation of pop songs in response to HIV/AIDS and the Eurovision song contest. The final section, "Cross-cultural Queerness," asks how to understand gender and sexuality in locations where recent Euro-American concepts may not be appropriate.
Call Number: ML3797.4 .O94 2022Publication Date: 2022
Wendy Carlos: A Biography (eBook) by
With her debut album Switched-On Bach, composer and electronic musician Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) brought the sound of the Moog synthesizer to a generation of listeners, helping to effect arguably one of the most substantial changes in popular music's sound since musicians began using amplifiers. Carlos's identity as a transgender woman has shaped many aspects of her life, her career, how she relates to the public, and how the public has received her and her music. Cultural factors surrounding the treatment of transgender people affected many of the decisions that Carlos has made over the decades. Additionally, cultural reception and perception of transgender people has colored how journalists, scholars, and fans have written about Carlos and her music for decades.
Call Number: ProQuest Ebook Central and Oxford Scholarship OnlinePublication Date: 2020
Recommended Recordings
Find these recordings of music by LGBTQ+ composers on the shelves of the Music Collection and through Naxos Music Library under Themed Playlists.
LGBTQ+ Composers, Pt. 1Find online at Naxos Music Library
LGBTQ+ Composers, Pt. 2Find online at Naxos Music Library
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.