Marcus Maroney wrote:

>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.

Let's see.  I became aware of Tchaikowsky's homosexuality while I was in
high school (in the mid 1940s when the issue was more taboo than it is now)
and it didn't affect my appreciation for his music any more than my
unawareness of homosexuality in other composers, like Beethoven, Wagner,
and Verdi, affected my appreciation of their music.

As for my feelings towards the music of composers with whom I share a
common basis for social exclusion in some circles, I never felt more
attracted to the music of Mendelssohn, Mahler, Bernstein, Copland or
Meyerbeer than I did to that of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms,
Wagner or Bartok (just to select Aryan and non-Aryan composers at random).

Walter Meyer