Musical Homophobia - or The Homophobia Histories

[Barbirollians]

No, as there is no promotion of anything apart from the music and performers as far as I'm aware.

The First Violin Concerto of Szymanowski is one of my favourite works which I've loved for over 30 years.

You do know that it is one long gay love song Scotty don't you ?

[ahinton]

You do know that it is one long gay love song Scotty don't you ?

Well, I didn't know that - and I've known the work even longer than has scotty! It is not "long" and, as with any other instances of works by gay composers, I do not see how it could be provably identified as "gay" purely because its composer was. If one is to see it as a "love song", the love object would appear to be the violin itself. It is indeed an utterly exquisite score.

[Barbirollians]

Well, I didn't know that - and I've known the work even longer than has scotty! It is not "long" and, as with any other instances of works by gay composers, I do not see how it could be provably identified as "gay" purely because its composer was. If one is to see it as a "love song", the love object would appear to be the violin itself. It is indeed an utterly exquisite score.

The emoticons appear to have gone missing otherwise my post would have been accompanied by a wink !

[ahinton]

The emoticons appear to have gone missing otherwise my post would have been accompanied by a wink !

Which, as I seem to recall, is supposedly as good as a nod to a blind horse (not thet I ever understood what that was supposed to mean) - but, yes, I did get that nuance quite easily, actually!

For the record, incidentally, an English composer friend once described the Szymanowski first violin concerto to me as "the way to write a violin concerto"; that he said this in the immediate aftermath of the première of his own volin concerto speaks eloqunetly for it, methinks...

[Barbirollians]

It is indeed a wonderful work - and I have been falling in love with it all over again by getting a copy of Wilkomirska's recording.

[ahinton]

It is indeed a wonderful work - and I have been falling in love with it all over again by getting a copy of Wilkomirska's recording.

That recording was my first experience of the work! - well, my first listening experience of it, anyway - I happened to get a copy of the score and tried to read through it first before I ever actually heard it.

[scottycelt]

That recording was my first experience of the work! - well, my first listening experience of it, anyway - I happened to get a copy of the score and tried to read through it first before I ever actually heard it.

Just to keep the three of us in rare accord I first heard the work around 1980 in the Free Trade Hall with the Halle and the soloist was the aforementioned WW. I was so smitten with the performance that the following day I frantically searched the old Gibbs record shop nearby for an LP recording of the work. I remember finding two and one was the WW recording ... so no contest!

On-topic I couldn't care less about the composer's alleged sexuality or what is supposed to have inspired the music. Much of what you read about the personal lives of composers is often pure speculation, anyway, and sometimes discovered later to be complete and utter trash.

The music is the only thing that matters in music!

[Barbirollians]

Gibb's Bookshop sadly missed - I cannot quite remember where it was - somewhere up Mosley Street close to PIccadilly Gardens .

I spent a year in Manchester in the late 1980s and was in there virtually every lunchtime.

[scottycelt]

Gibb's Bookshop sadly missed - I cannot quite remember where it was - somewhere up Mosley Street close to PIccadilly Gardens .

I spent a year in Manchester in the late 1980s and was in there virtually every lunchtime.

Yes, that's it, though it was much closer to St Peter's Square further down Mosley Street.

If you were there in the late 1980's at lunchtimes we almost certainly crossed paths, Barbirollians.

Both younger and much more handsome without a doubt!

[Richard Barrett]

and sometimes discovered later to be complete and utter trash.

An example perhaps?

The music is the only thing that matters in music!

So what is "the music"? Surely it consists largely or completely of sounds whose significance and interrelationships you understand as a result of being more or less immersed in the culture of a particular society at a particular time. In other words there's no real dividing line between "the music" and its social/cultural environment (and perhaps that of the composer too), so when you say "the music is the only thing that matters" what exactly is it that's the only thing that matters, as far as you're concerned?

[Barbirollians]

An example perhaps?
So what is "the music"? Surely it consists largely or completely of sounds whose significance and interrelationships you understand as a result of being more or less immersed in the culture of a particular society at a particular time. In other words there's no real dividing line between "the music" and its social/cultural environment (and perhaps that of the composer too), so when you say "the music is the only thing that matters" what exactly is it that's the only thing that matters, as far as you're concerned?

I tend to agree. The same question arises in relation to all aspects of the arts - does one need to know about the life and times of the artist to appreciate the art . The novels of EM Forster have so much more to say for example if you know about his life and his sexuality . Austen's novels are intensely political and of their time - the same could be said for so many authors.

Tchaikovsky i am not so sure - perhaps to a degree they were deliberately divorced. Szymanowski joking apart the First Violin Concerto does sound to me to be music of yearning .

[Mr Pee]

An example perhaps?
So what is "the music"? Surely it consists largely or completely of sounds whose significance and interrelationships you understand as a result of being more or less immersed in the culture of a particular society at a particular time. In other words there's no real dividing line between "the music" and its social/cultural environment (and perhaps that of the composer too), so when you say "the music is the only thing that matters" what exactly is it that's the only thing that matters, as far as you're concerned?

I fell under the spell of Wagner's music, for example, at the tender age of about 15, long before I knew any of the political or cultural baggage that went along with it. Likewise, the first time I got to know Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony was when I was due to perform it with my county youth orchestra, and I borrowed an LP from the library. I loved the music, and still do, but at the time had no idea about the composer's homosexualism. It didn't matter then and it doesn't matter now.

If you want to deepen your understanding of a composer's works by reading up on the cultural, biographical and historical background, be my guest. But to suggest that you need to know any of it to appreciate the music is nonsense.

As scotty said:- The music is the only thing that matters.

[EdgeleyRob]

Gibb's Bookshop sadly missed - I cannot quite remember where it was - somewhere up Mosley Street close to PIccadilly Gardens .

I spent a year in Manchester in the late 1980s and was in there virtually every lunchtime.

Yes, that's it, though it was much closer to St Peter's Square further down Mosley Street.

If you were there in the late 1980's at lunchtimes we almost certainly crossed paths, Barbirollians.

Both younger and much more handsome without a doubt!

Small world,I would have been there too.
I worked in Piccadilly (Portland Street)up until 1988.
I loved that shop,Charlotte Street IIRC

[Richard Barrett]

If you want to deepen your understanding of a composer's works by reading up on the cultural, biographical and historical background, be my guest. But to suggest that you need to know any of it to appreciate the music is nonsense.

Indeed, although in fact I didn't suggest that at all. What I'm saying is that it's impossible to say where "the music" ends and what isn't "the music" starts. Wagner's music could only have been produced at a particular historical moment in a particular social/cultural environment, whether one is aware of the details of it or not, and the reason you can tell the difference between Wagner's music and a sequence of random sounds is likewise conditioned by the historical, geographical and social circumstances which enabled you to "fall under its spell". There's no abstract ahistorical realm from which to hear music, or from which to write it for that matter.

Returning to the thread subject, I think it's interesting to speculate about whether there might be traces of a composer's sexuality in the music he/she writes; I would say, though, that this becomes much more apparent in the 20th century once it gradually begins to become possible for this to be explicitly addressed, for example in Tippett's The Knot Garden and numerous works composed since then. On the other hand it seems to me impossible at this point to "hear" Tchaikovsky's sexuality in his music, as opposed to knowing about it and attributing this feature or that to it.

[jayne lee wilson]

It all depends what you mean by "appreciate" doesn't it...

If you think you can understand Mahler or Shostakovich without reference to their lives I would VERY respectfully suggest you are kidding yourself. Oh yes, you can ENJOY almost any sequence of sounds if your ear can make the basic tonal and melodic connections. If that's enough for you, OK - but how very limiting to your pleasure and your (undoubted) intelligence.
Music doesn't exist in an aesthetic or sonic vacuum. Hearing Wagner at 15 you came to it across innumerable experiences of music, film, social and solitary life, your own dreams and early sexual feelings, friendships and relationships.... All this bears down upon what you make of Wagner, howsoever unconsciously. No-one's denying the power of the sounds themselves to "move" you, but even if you see the musical responses of your brain as existing in some tiny secret cerebral compartment, those experiences are transformed as they become emotions, memories and a part of your identity.

Personally, if someone has an intense experience with Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, I am amazed that they WOULDN'T want to know more about how it came into existence... (which brings us back to exactly why my threadstarter protested about the Russian Government's pressure upon a filmmaker to airbrush Tchaikovsky's homosexuality out of his biography).

Beethoven and the Heiligenstadt testament? Mahler removing the third hammer blow from the finale of his 6th? Even Bruckner's battle with fear and doubt in the 9th is the more terrifying if you understand how he saw His Creator...

Go on enjoying your tunes, but accept how very limited an experience of music it is.