Kevin Sutton wrote:

>Here is a more legitimate example.  I adore the music of Benjamin Britten.
>He is my hero and I forgive him many of his faults (and he had a few)
>because he was one of the first successful openly gay musicians.  My
>initial attraction to him is that we had our orientation in common and
>he was a role model for me in many ways.

I came to Britten's homosexuality exactly the opposite way:  I first loved
several of his pieces, and then, after I discovered his homosexuality, I
was eager to explore more.  I can't honestly say whether or not our common
orientation led me to a deeper understanding of his music or caused me to
'love' it more, but it did lead me to seek out just about everything the
man created.  This also led me to other gay composers:  Poulenc, Rorem,
Del Tredici, Tippett, etc.---some of whose music I adore (and some which
I can't tolerate at all).  Britten still remains my favorite 'homosexual'
composer and I find several of his works that deal with homosexuality
extremely moving and important to my life (musical and otherwise).  I guess
the conclusion that could be drawn is that a similar personality may lead
one to explore certain composers, but I, for one, don't automatically like
a certain music just because of that fact.  In fact, I can think of a
couple of works by gay composers that I think represent gay people *poorly*
(a recent song cycle by one of my teachers springs to mind), which I find
much more offensive than I think I would find a unrepresentative homosexual
point of view by a heterosexual composer.  I'll stop here before I ramble
on further.

Cheers,

Marcus Maroney
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http://www.geocities.com/marcus.maroney