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This is the second in a series of articles showcasing the wide variety
of notable gays and lesbians that have made contributions throughout
history. In this installment, we highlight European composers of
(mostly classical) music. As was mentioned in the first article in this
series, when dealing with historical persons, there may well not be any
obvious direct evidence of their gayness--historians, until recently,
have tended to ignore the homosexuality of some of the people they are
researching or writing about--so in many cases, only circumstantial
evidence is available. With that said, on to the music...
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) was a gay Italian-born French
composer.
George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) was born in Germany, but composed
much of his music in England. Handel learned the spinet, organ, oboe,
and harpsichord as a child. His most famous works are the oratorio
Messiah and two suites, Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music. Samuel
Butler wrote that Handel "is so great and so simple that no one but a
professional musician is unable to understand him."
Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) was a gay Czech composer and pianist.
Carl Czerny (1791-1857) was a gay Austrian composer, pianist, and music
teacher. Franz Liszt was one of his students.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was an Austrian composer. Since Schubert
died at the age of 31, years before his music became famous, everything
we know about him as a person is from the memoirs of his friends who
outlived him. These sentimental pictures portray Schubert as "a
character out of Viennese operetta--a bohemian artist, poor but happy."
Most of Schubert's friends never married; it seems reasonably certain
that he "travelled in a circle that was predominantly gay;" despite the
limited information we have about his life, it seems very likely that
he was gay.
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) was a gay Polish composer and pianist. Best
known for his piano music, Chopin also composed a number of waltzes.
Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921) was a gay French composer, pianist, and
organist. Saint-Saens was a child prodigy, and pursued his musical
career until his death at age 86. There's no question about his
homosexuality; he was reported to have had a marked preference for
Algerian boys, and was a devotee of Parisian pissoirs even in old age.
Saint-Saens' best known work is Carnival of the Animals.
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (1839-1881) was a gay Russian composer. One
of the most popular pieces in the classical repertoire, Mussorgsky's
famous work Pictures at an Exhibition was based on an exhibit of
watercolors by the handsome young architect and painter Viktor Gartman,
with whom Mussorgsky was painfully in love. Mussorgsky was one of "The
Mighty Five" group of Russian nationalist composers (the others were
Alexander Borodin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Cesar Cui, and Mily
Balakirev).
Petr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was a gay Russian composer.
Tormented by his homosexuality, Tchaikovsky's life was full of
emotional crises, nervous breakdowns, and bouts of heavy drinking.
Despite this, he composed some glorious music, including six
symphonies, a violin concerto, three piano concerti, operas (Eugene
Onegin and The Queen of Spades), and ballets (Swan Lake, The Sleeping
Beauty, and The Nutcracker). His last symphony, Pathetique, was
dedicated to his nephew "Bob" (Vladimir) Davydov, with whom he had
fallen hopelessly in love; Tchaikovsky's diaries described his
"darling" Bob as "incomparable, enchanting, ideal." Some evidence
indicates that as Bob grew older, their relationship became more than
platonic; Bob was named as Tchaikovsky's sole heir in his will.
Tchaikovsky's younger brother, Modest (1850-?), was also gay.
Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) was a British composer...yes, the gay
half of Gilbert and Sullivan. Although Sullivan's homosexuality was an
open secret among his contemporaries, he practiced it discreetly--the
British upper classes could get away with such "vices" as long as there
was no threat of public scandal. It must have been discreet; Sullivan
was the one who was knighted!
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) was a gay Norwegian composer. In old age,
Grieg was taken by the boyish charms of curly-haired blond Percy
Grainger (see below). Grieg's best known work is his incidental music
(and suite) for Peer Gynt.
Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a gay French composer. His best known
pieces are Iberia, La Mer, and Clair de lune.
Frederick Delius (1862-1934) was a gay British composer.
Erik Satie (1866-1925) was a French composer. Since we know little of
his personal life, the conclusion that Satie was gay is based on his
circle of friends and acquaintances. Satie, together with gay French
playwright Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) and Italian artist Pablo Picasso,
created Parade for gay Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929).
Satie was eccentric, to say the least. After he died, the contents of
the tiny Parisian room where he lived were of great interest: there
were "hundreds of umbrellas, many of them still in wrapping paper"
(Satie usually carried a brand new umbrella in public).
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) was a gay French composer. His best known
piece is Bolero. He also orchestrated Pictures at an Exhibition for
Modest Mussorgsky (see above) .
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) was a gay Spanish composer. He was rumored
to have been involved in a homosexual menage a trois with French
composer Maurice Ravel (see above) and Spanish pianist Ricardo Vines
(1875-?).
Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was a gay Australian composer and pianist.
Grainger was dazzlingly good-looking; both Edvard Grieg (see above) and
gay American poet Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) lost their hearts to the
young man.
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was a gay French composer and pianist. He
studied music formally with gay Spanish pianist Ricardo Vines (1875-?);
Poulenc later said "I owe him everything." According to gay American
composer Ned Rorem (1923-), Poulenc, like the gay French painter Eugene
Delacroix (1798-1863) and gay French composer Camille Saint-Saens (see
above), chased pretty Arab boys through the back streets of French
North Africa. Some of Poulenc's works were written specifically for his
life partner, gay French baritone Pierre Bernac (1899-?).
Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-) is a gay Italian composer. His operas
include The Consul and The Medium, but he is probably best known for
Amahl and the Night Visitors. Menotti has also composed commissioned
works for gay choruses. He and gay American composer Samuel Barber
(1910-1981) were lovers for 30 years.
Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) was a lesbian Australian composer.
She was one of very few women with an international reputation as a
composer of operas. Glanville-Hicks began studying composition at the
age of fifteen, and "at the age of nineteen, she won an open
scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London." In 1942, she
moved to the United States, and most of her large catalog of works were
written here. During the 1950s, Glanville-Hicks wrote extensively on
contemporary classical music. In 1959, she moved to Athens, returning
to Australia in the 1980s, where she "was a major figure in the music
scene."
Sir Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) was the most important English
composer of this century. He started composing at age five; by
fourteen, he had written ten piano sonatas, six string quartets, three
piano suites, and an oratorio. He composed incidental music for thirty
film documentaries between 1935 and 1939, collaborating on two of them
with gay English-born American poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973), a
schoolmate during Britten's teenage years. Some of his works (including
the opera Peter Grimes) were written specifically for his life partner,
gay English tenor Lord Peter Pears (1910-1986), whom Britten first met
in 1934; they were together for 40 years. Britten was awarded a life
peerage in 1976.
In the next installment, we'll cross the Atlantic to take a look at gay
American composers.
Our Gay and Lesbian Heritage by Bruce Britton - Part 1
Our Gay and Lesbian Heritage by Bruce Britton - Part 3
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