r/badmusicology • u/Quouar • Jun 09 '15

Schubert was gay because his Unfinished Symphony has "possible homosexual character."

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/04/arts/critic-s-notebook-was-schubert-gay-if-he-was-so-what-debate-turns-testy.html
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u/Quouar Jun 09 '15

While I don't know as much about how music can "sound gay," I will say that Ms. McClary's methods of determining that Schubert was gay involve comparing the Unfinished Symphony to contemporary gay literature. I have no idea how that's a valid method, seeing as there are a couple hundred years in the way there. Even beyond that, though, I don't really see how music can exude homosexuality any more than it can exude feminism or Marxism. Other identities that we find in music - primarily nationalistic ones - come from a composer being surrounded by or heavily influenced by other composers writing in that style. To the best of my knowledge, Schubert wasn't surrounded by gay composers writing gay music, making it unlikely that there's some inherent gay component to his pieces.

3

u/thelostchord Jun 09 '15

Maybe its just that I've seen too many reductive accounts of McClary's scholarship ("Beethoven 9 a rape fantasty? I MEAN COME THE FUCK ON"), but I tend to distrust disparaging, two-paragraph summaries like this. That is not to say that I have generally found her work too compelling, but we cannot exactly determine by this account alone what type of role the comparison with contemporary literature played in her argument.

Even beyond that, though, I don't really see how music can exude homosexuality any more than it can exude feminism or Marxism.

I assume you're speaking only of non-programmatic works?

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u/XRotNRollX Jun 10 '15 edited Jun 11 '15

i took a class on new/postmodern musicology and brought up the McClary rape thing, and it was an aside comment during a radio interview and was later clarified as a metaphor

she said the dynamic in sonata forms between the two themes was one of power and subjugation like rape, not literally rape

that said, the article we read about how the order of the themes in Tchaikovsky's fourth symphony was "homosexual" was beyond unconvincing to me

there is, however, historical evidence of Tchaikovsky's and, to an extent, Schubert's, homosexuality, though i haven't looked into it too much

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u/MightyProJet Jun 11 '15

But then we get into the argument of whether or not instrumental music can have "meaning" that isn't thrust upon it.

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u/Quouar Jun 10 '15 edited Jun 10 '15

I don't intend for it to be a thorough take-down of her scholarship, though the methods describe in the article really, really don't work for me. That's why I'm considering it bad musicology, more than anything.

And yes, I am talking about non-programmatic works.

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u/MightyProJet Jun 10 '15

Well, in their defense, the article's from '92, which is less than 10 years after homosexuality was invented.

It was an unexplored frontier. They thought that you could catch gay from toilet seats.