Frasier Ends; a Comic Novelist Returns
I REALLY WASN’T EXPECTING another novel from Joe Keenan. …
MoreBrowsing: September-October 2006
September-October 2006
Blog Posts
Letters to the Editor
Reader’s thoughts
MoreSongs of the Sirens
The following is excerpted from Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig, by Judith A. Peraino. University of California Press, Copyright 2006.
MoreNuremberg Trials for AIDS
AIDS has been a plague since 1982, although officially it never has been called one. I was recently asked by The New York Times to participate in a public forum entitled “AIDS at 25: What next?” I was not allowed to make the following remarks
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Armistead Maupin: Leaping to the Big Screen
I spoke to Maupin via phone in San Francisco about his novel and the new film adaptation, about his æsthetic sensibility in general, and about his views on the future of gay and lesbian people.
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Josephine Baker’s Hungry Heart
BEAUTIFUL, charming, talented, and celebrated, the toast of Europe and South America during the heyday of her career, Josephine Baker was born in a black slum area of St. Louis in 1906. …
MoreSchubert After Dark
SCHUBERT DIED in November 1828, long before his final resting place, the Viennese cemetery known as Zentralfriedhof, was opened in 1874. At first, he was buried in the local cemetery of Währing, near the grave of Beethoven, whom he had idolized. In 1888, the remains of both composers were transferred to the Zentralfriedhof, an occasion marked by festivities that included thousands of amateur choral singers. …
MoreThe Lieder and Homoerotic Love
OPERA QUEENS are not in short supply, but gay men who love Lieder seem to be few and far between. The German word Lieder is the plural of Lied, which means simply “song.” But it has acquired a particular association, especially among English speakers, with the Romantic German art song. Mozart and Beethoven may be considered the earliest composers of Lieder, though the genre only came into its own with Franz Schubert, who was followed by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, and others.
MoreA composer invents his own rules.
“The composer’s success lies less in comprehending the words he is setting than in feeling them musically, and in being able to convince us of the necessity of his feeling.”
– Ned Rorem in Pure Contraption (1974)
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