Bert replies to Gretchen:

>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?

"Hurray! That is one for our team!"

The remark caused me to guffaw.  First, I didn't know that art was busy
keeping score of what gay people did versus what straight people did - our
artistic life would be immensely poorer if this were so.  Second, because
while there have been many barriers to winning the Pulitzer, being gay
hasn't ever been one of them.  Of the winners of the prize - Copland,
Barber (2), Menotti (2), Thomson, Rorem, Del Tredici are or were - with
Barber and Menotti being a couple.  I have been told that Wourinen is also
gay, but I may well be wrong.  That means at least 7, and perhaps more,
winners, accounting for 9 prizes out of the total are or were gay.

In many respects homosexuality has been to composition in the last half of
the 20th century what jewishness was in the first part of the 20th century
- a condition which was intergral to european society, but not acceptable,
making its open presence known for the first time.  This change - from
Tchaikovski's guilt and Sans Saens sly avoidance - to Rorem's out spokeness
- is no small social phenomenon.  But it seems to me not to be an artistic
one of great import.  Naturally ones life, and culture, will impinge on
ones work.  One can see how Jewishness, in the cultural sense, forms part
of the psychology of composers such as Mahler, Korngold, Schoenberg and
others - one cannot help think that Corigliano's first symphony was
certainly a very personal response to what was happening in his subculture
at that particular point in the AIDS crisis - where it seemed a bottomless
pit ready to swallow gayness in America whole.  Rorem has commented
extensively on the relationship between his work and his life.  Other
composers have been less obvious, but that is not, in itself, proof that
there is no relationship.

But an artist's sexuality, like his culture or location, is part of what
the artist is reacting against - it shapes them, but ultimately it is there
ability to stand out from it that makes them interesting or worthwhile.

The problem with the winning work is not the composer's sexuality, but that
it is a very bland and uninteresting essay - derived from a previous work
of no great distinction.  If the string quartet didn't win - why should its
orchestration for string orchestra win? It seems, like the Ives award, a
second bite at the apple.  Or perhaps a way one trio of judges using this
particular year when they were in agreement to honor a career - even though
the career has is certainly overshadowed by many others.

Or perhaps they just had bad taste, and, as with the award going to a gay
man, hardly precedent setting.

Stirling Newberry
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http://www.mp3.com/ssn