Composers for Gay Pride Week

June 25, 6:26 PMSF Classical Music ExaminerScott Foglesong

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There have been a lot of composers writing a lot of music over the years, and it's pretty safe to assume that not all of them have been exclusively heterosexual. In honor of the current Gay Pride Week here in San Francisco, I offer a brief look at composers and their gender preferences.

To begin with, it appears on the surface that a lot more contemporary composers are gay than in the past. That has little to do with actual gender preference per se, and a lot to do with public attitudes towards homosexuality. For the most part, composers in earlier eras couldn't be 'out' in the modern sense — well, not if they wanted to work, and in some cases, not if they wanted to retain their freedom. So they kept mum about it all.

For example, the Renaissance composer Nicolas Gombert was quite likely gay, but the best evidence we have pointing in that direction is, alas, that he was busted for pederasty. Such is the nature of things when the only unambiguous, surviving evidence is limited to criminal records.

But in the 20th century, composers could start letting it speak its name. Thus Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Lou Harrison, Benjamin Britten, Marc Blitzstein, John Corigliano, Harry Partch, Ned Rorem, Michael Tippet, Francis Poulenc, and Thomas Adès just to name a few. Some of these are very big-time, household-name composers indeed (Copland and Britten) whereas other ones aren't quite as well known to the general public.

Move back into previous centuries, and the situation changes. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky is one of the few A-list composers who was definitely, unquestionably gay, in the same sense that Johann Sebastian Bach, with his 20-plus children and two happy marriages, was definitely, unquestionably heterosexual. But Tchaikovsky is a rarity in that regard.

Something I find intriguing are those A-list composers of the past who were possibly gay, at least based on whatever evidence has managed to survive.

George Frideric Handel is a strong candidate, at least as a closet case. He never married; only rumors survive of a mysterious relationship with a woman very early in his career, and then nothing more. His sexuality was a popular gossip item during his own lifetime, in fact. There is a story (probably apocryphal) that King George II, suspicious of Handel's bachelor status, asked him bluntly whether or not he liked women; Handel is supposed to have said he had no time for anything except his music. Ellen T. Harris's book "Handel as Orpheus" goes into the issue in some detail, as well as the relation of creativity to sexuality.

Franz Schubert's gender preference has been a hot topic of discussion since Maynard Solomon's 1989 article "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini." Solomon took a good look at Schubert's (short) life, and deduced that there was a likelihood that Schubert was sexually active (carelessly so, it would appear) within a gay subculture in early 19th-century Vienna. The evidence is only circumstantial, but Solomon definitely put forward a compelling argument.

As a result, before too long common wisdom had it that Schubert was gay, a state of affairs which musicologist Rita Steblin found unacceptable. Her rebuttal to Solomon's article set off a chain reaction of disputation and argument, even to the point of the subject's virtually hijacking a session of the American Musicological Society. The jury is still out, and may never render a final verdict.

Perhaps a larger question to ask is: does it matter? Personally I don't think so. Sometimes commentators look for "gay" aspects within a composer's work — but that seems dreadfully one-sided. (Why not look for "heterosexual" elements in, say, Mozart?) If we're interested in the details of a composer's life, then certainly gender preference is part of that interest. But as gender preference having influence over the actual music a composer creates — even if that music sets a gay-themed text — I remain highly skeptical.