Exploring the relationship between queer sexuality and music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity approaches modern sexuality by way of music. Through the hidden or lost stories of composers, scholars, patrons, performers, audiences, repertoires, venues, and specific works, this intriguing volume explores points of intersection between music and queerness in Europe and the United States in the years 1870 to 1950--a period when dramatic changes in musical expression and in the expression of individual sexual identity played similar roles in washing away the certainties of the past. Pursuing the shadowy, obscured tracks of queerness, contributors unravel connections among dissident identities and concrete aspects of musical style, gestures, and personae.

Contributors are Byron Adams, Philip Brett, Malcolm Hamrick Brown, Sophie Fuller, Mitchell Morris, Jann Pasler, Ivan Raykoff, Fiona Richards, Eva Rieger, Gillian Rodger, Sherrie Tucker, and Lloyd Whitesell.

Acknowledgments   ix
Introduction: Secret Passages   1
Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell

PART 1: PRIVATE PERFORMANCE
1. "Desire Is Consuming Me": The Life Partnership between Eugenie Schumann and Marie Fillunger   25
Eva Rieger
2. Ravel's Way   49
Lloyd Whitesell
3. "Devoted Attention": Looking for Lesbian Musicians in Fin-de-Siecle Britain   79
Sophie Fuller

PART 2: PUBLIC APPEARANCES
4. "He Isn't a Marrying Man": Gender and Sexuality in the Repertoire of Male Impersonators, 1870-1930   105
Gillian Rodger
5. Tchaikovsky and His Music in Anglo-American Criticism, 1890s-1950s   134
Malcolm Hamrick Brown
6. Transcription, Transgression, and the (Pro)creative Urge   150
Ivan Raykoff
7. Musicology and Sexuality: The Example of Edward J. Dent   177
Philip Brett

PART 3: DOUBLE MEANINGS
8. Cross-Dressing in Saint-Saens's Le Rouet d'Omphale: Ambiguities of Gender and Politics   191
Jann Pasler
9. The "Dark Saying" of the Enigma: Homoeroticism and the Elgarian Paradox   216
Byron Adams
10. "An Anthology of Friendship": The Letters from John Ireland to Father Kenneth Thompson   245
Fiona Richards

PART 4: QUEER LISTENING
11. Tristan's Wounds: On Homosexual Wagnerians at the Fin de Siecle   271
Mitchell Morris
12. When Subjects Don't Come Out   293
Sherrie Tucker

Contributors   311
Index   315