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...

and Bert writes:

>>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?

Even as I gay person, I too have to admit that I found Gretchen's posting
rather like a pom-pom thrust in the face.:)

>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?

Tchaikovsky, for instance, found a kindred spirit in Byron's "Manfred":
he found himself sympathetic to the character's sin of unnatural love.
Surely this helped Tchaikovsky put pen to paper.  Genius is a combination
of talent *and* will, and I believe that sexual desire, sympathy and
eroticism are very important functions of will.  I'm listening to Britten's
Billy Budd as we speak.

>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.

I understand what your saying, though I wouldn't call it "corralling" as
such; I would see it as an attempt by record companies to catch the eye of
curious gay people, shifting some of those "gay dollars" away from Elton
John.  To a gay person, subjected to a precedential blackout generation
after generation, (except for the damnation part), it's empowering for us
to know that people could have flexible or diverse orientations and still
accomplish something.  (I just learned about Lully.) In other words, it's
not that some composers are/were *gay*--what's important is the fact that
some gay people were *composers.*

>That a self-respecting music-lover should follow suit seems to me, well,
>rather odd.

It's my feeling that only a gay classical music newbie would buy such an
album of excerpts--the obvious target of the marketers--and not a veteran
listener.

John Smyth
Sacramento, Ca
http://facelink.com/j63967