Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology

by Philip Brett (Editor), Elizabeth Wood (Editor), Gary C. Thomas (Editor)

The first collection of gay and lesbian work in musicology. Contributors cover a wide range of subjects from analysis of the work of gay composers to queer readings of Schubert's 'Unfinished Symphony.'

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Feminism

368 pages, Perfect Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Kate Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for an opera class at school... it's a fascinating collection of essays. The best one is about how queer people apparently listen to music differently than the rest of the population.

[Steven Benson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again, like "Queer Ear"( reviewed earlier) fab/useful,reparatively gay on composers like Smyth's and Schubert's lives and loves (much needed); but reductive, even I say(as an uber gay-gay-gay super-gay man....); music, unless with words(lieder, songs, opera) is ultimately NON- referential: non(harmonic-) resolution, for example, or an unresolved cadence CAN be some vague metaphorical representation of the composer's /character's (if programmatic music) troubled state of mind; but the mechanism making it DEFINITIVELY so is-at best-insubstantial, a childlike(beautifully so!) EKPHRASTIC EQUIVALENCE; at best, disingenuous.

(instrumental)Music is the only art-form where the musical essence {CALL me an essentialist on this.....!}-instrumentation, harmony, structure -is not a sexual or gender identity; though its historical context, and its composer's life, can certainly be.

Remember, we struggle NOT because we are homosexual[QUA], we struggle because hegemonic society makes life difficult to impossible for homosexuals.

Where, there are clear referents (signifiers and signiFIEDS), yes, PLEASE bring on the gay gay gay...literature being a clear example.