This is a little old, but I've already told the hosts that I am just recently getting into the podcast...
So this is something that makes me crazy and I think it is a real problem gay men and lesbians face as students trying to feel like they are a part of the classical music world or a classical music lineage, and that is how scholars like to avoid any identifying of gay subtext to the writings of composers and authors and historical figures.
Mike - you made a comment about Lincoln and the whole rumor that he was gay and how men might have been less afraid of having emotionally intimate friendships that weren't sexual in nature. Lincoln really isn't an example of that, though. It wasn't just that he slept in the same bed with his friend John whatever, their relationship went far beyond the occasional pat on the ass. They actually lived together for five years and in his letters the guy described how Lincoln would hug and kiss him and sometimes be so happy he was giddy.
It's kind of like the whole Schubert/Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini thing. It isn't a far flung guess that he might have been a part of a circle of well-known gay and bisexual artists, poets and intellectuals, so those people who were part of that Maynard Solomon argument who were actively denying Schubert's homosexuality really were pretty indefensible.
While society has changed since the early 19th century, it is silly to not see parallels, in Schubert's case, between his circle of artists intellectuals with the same kind of art culture that we experience as musicians and artists today. It is very marginalizing for me and others.
In terms of the Saul story, I think that there are a lot who, especially for religious reasons, don't want to read gay subtext into stories like that as though homosexuality really didn't exist before 1864. It only makes it more difficult when people refer to the perspective of looking at stories like that as having gay subtext as somehow a fringe perspective or not valid. Although some people may think that it is an attempt to inject politics into art, if people really are comfortable with gay subject matter, why can't they recognize what is a pretty blaring example of gay text?
Basically, and this isn't necessarily a direct comment on anything said on the podcast, but I think that it is a major problem in the continually stuffy and close-minded classical music administrative, education, and audience cultures. They want the music to be sacrosanct and composers to be figures without real lives and that just cheapens what we do and makes it impossible for opera to have real cultural relevance rather than an object of antiquity. GRRRR!!!
So this is something that makes me crazy and I think it is a real problem gay men and lesbians face as students trying to feel like they are a part of the classical music world or a classical music lineage, and that is how scholars like to avoid any identifying of gay subtext to the writings of composers and authors and historical figures.
Mike - you made a comment about Lincoln and the whole rumor that he was gay and how men might have been less afraid of having emotionally intimate friendships that weren't sexual in nature. Lincoln really isn't an example of that, though. It wasn't just that he slept in the same bed with his friend John whatever, their relationship went far beyond the occasional pat on the ass. They actually lived together for five years and in his letters the guy described how Lincoln would hug and kiss him and sometimes be so happy he was giddy.
It's kind of like the whole Schubert/Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini thing. It isn't a far flung guess that he might have been a part of a circle of well-known gay and bisexual artists, poets and intellectuals, so those people who were part of that Maynard Solomon argument who were actively denying Schubert's homosexuality really were pretty indefensible.
While society has changed since the early 19th century, it is silly to not see parallels, in Schubert's case, between his circle of artists intellectuals with the same kind of art culture that we experience as musicians and artists today. It is very marginalizing for me and others.
In terms of the Saul story, I think that there are a lot who, especially for religious reasons, don't want to read gay subtext into stories like that as though homosexuality really didn't exist before 1864. It only makes it more difficult when people refer to the perspective of looking at stories like that as having gay subtext as somehow a fringe perspective or not valid. Although some people may think that it is an attempt to inject politics into art, if people really are comfortable with gay subject matter, why can't they recognize what is a pretty blaring example of gay text?
Basically, and this isn't necessarily a direct comment on anything said on the podcast, but I think that it is a major problem in the continually stuffy and close-minded classical music administrative, education, and audience cultures. They want the music to be sacrosanct and composers to be figures without real lives and that just cheapens what we do and makes it impossible for opera to have real cultural relevance rather than an object of antiquity. GRRRR!!!