Margaret Mikulska <[log in to unmask]>:

>Pablo Massa wrote:
>
>>That's funny.  Musicologists tracing sexual profiles?.
>
>This trend in musicology has been extremely fashionable for the last two or
>three decades.  Gender issues, gay/lesbian issues - all that was very, very
>much en vogue.  Actually, it's beginning to abate a bit, and it is becoming
>gradually acceptable to return to less speculative source-based research.

I can understand that a musicologist may evaluate the sexual condition of
a composer as an important element in his creative life, but I laugh at
the opposite:  that a musicologist may determinate if a composer is gay
or hetero by studying his works.

>>Sounds like engineers researching on the oedipus complex.
>
>Why? Don't you think Britten would have chosen different libretti for
>his operas had he been hetero?

Frankly, I don't think so.  This is just my opinion, but I think that after
all this stuff of the gender studies, the sexual orientation of people has
been overrated as a factor of too precise choices.  For example, I had once
the disgrace of hearing with my own ears that Britten picked "Billy Budd"
because he had there an entire ship full of fuzzy sailors ready for his
fantasy (read "inventive").  What should we have to say about Melville,
then?.  I mean:  I don't think that being gay determines such choices, or
makes you being so obvious.  Let's do the same question about Tchaikowsky:
would he have chosen different subjects instead of "Romeo and Juliet" or
"Francesca da Rimini" had he been hetero?.  The response seems not so clear
as in the case of Britten.

>The question why a composer wrote a particular piece is musicologically
>valid.

Traditionally, the "valid" questions were "who, how, where and when".
"Why" was often considered as belonging to the realm of "literature", but
it became "valid" since some decades ago.  I would say that this is the
most difficult of those questions.

>If his/her sexual orientation had anything to do with the circumstances
>of the writing of the piece then one has to mention that.

The problem is the following:  have musicologists psychological training
enough or theoretical instruments fitted in order to find out if (and how)
the sexual orientation of the composer is related to the circumstances of
the writing of a piece?.  A possible consequence of this may be a new
Maynard Solomon...

Pablo Massa
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