The Dean of Gay American Composers

Abstract

Scholars and commentators are becoming increasingly aware of the contributions homosexual and bisexual composers have made toward the growth and development of serious American music in the twentieth century. In her article on Classical Music and Opera for the St. James Press Gay and Lesbian Almanac, Nadine Hubbs, for instance, discussing in particular the prominence of Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein, speaks of the central role and formidable, even saturating, presence of queer persons in the twentiethcentury American... culture of classical music.' For various reasons, we still do not know-nor is it likely that we ever will-the full extent of this contribution. But those prominent American composers already identified as homosexual or bisexual include, in addition to the three already named, Charles Griffes, Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, Marc Blitzstein, Samuel Barber, Paul Bowles, Gian Carlo Menotti, David Diamond, Ben Weber, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Ned Rorem, Pauline Olivieros, William Flanagan, David Del Tredici, and John Corigliano. What has gone largely unremarked, however, is the centrality of Copland, not only to American composers generally, but to gay American composers in particular (and, if we include Benjamin Britten and Colin McPhee, gay English and Canadian composers as well). Of the composers already mentioned, Copland was an especially seminal figure to Thomson, Blitzstein, Bowles, Diamond, Bernstein, Rorem,