Gretchen Ehrenberg wrote:

>AM I late to this news or is this the first mention of it? Score one for
>our team!
>
>Gay composer John Corigliano is the recipient of...

Locutions like this one lose me ...not to say sound simply jejune to my
ear.  What do the particulars of his horizontal encounters have to do
with the music-making? Where do his sexual acrobatics impinge upon his
compositional talents? How, except perhaps in plotting an opera, would
the sex of those he embeds affect his art?

Imagine the outcry if one were to qualify 'female composer Thea Musgrave,'
or 'woman musician Grazyna Bacewicz'; the very qualification seems to
suggest something odd or freakish in these combinations.  Nonsense:
many a man should be so lucky to be as splendid a composer.  How
about 'visually-challenged composer Dmitry Shostakovitch,' or
'vertically-delimited master Igor Stravinsky'? Outrageous!

More to the point: irrelevant.

It doesn't surprise me in the least when companies that are eager to cash
in on trends corral composers under such criteria, and then issue bits of
their music with such howler titles as "Gay Composers," or some such.  That
a self-respecting music-lover should follow suit seems to me, well, rather
odd.

Dissuade me.

Bert Bailey