Book Description
In this vibrant and pioneering book, Nadine Hubbs shows how a gifted group of Manhattan-based gay composers were pivotal in creating a distinctive "American sound" and in the process served as architects of modern American identity. Focusing on a talented circle that included Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Bowles, David Diamond, and Ned Rorem, The Queer Composition of America's Sound homes in on the role of these artists' self-identification--especially with tonal music, French culture, and homosexuality--in the creation of a musical idiom that even today signifies "America" in commercials, movies, radio and television, and the concert hall.
Customer Reviews:
Okay, but there's still Unanswered Questions.......2005-10-27
When I first heard the title of Nadine Hubbs new book, I remarked to a friend, well, there's one less book I'll have to write. Which is another way of saying, issues about gay American composers, and music and gender in general, interest me (professionally and personally). On some levels, Hubbs is on the right track: noting how the definition of an "American sound" in music (basically, French-influenced neo-classicism) was largely constructed by a group of gay men who formed a closely-knit group of individuals. She also correctly focuses on Copland and Thomson at the hub of this circle of mutual influence. There are some nice tidbits of info here, involving people like Marc Blitzstein and Paul Bowles, and it's clear that Hubbs has done her homework, in referencing gay historians like George Chauncey and musicologists like Philip Brett.
Yet when I was finished reading it, I found the book curiously unsatisfying overall. I don't know how much new information I learned that couldn't have been gleaned from Rorem's diaries, Thomasini's bio of Thomson or Pollack's bio of Copland, with Chauncey's Gay New York thrown in for good measure. Moreover, Hubb's style is quite academic: first I summarize what I'm going to tell you, then I tell you it, and then I summarize what I said. As a result the book felt padded to me, like a couple of good essays that got stretched into a book.
Moreover, it seems to me if one is going to consider the gender orientation and sexuality of a composer as anything other than juicy gossip, it has to be because there's a relationship between the composer's sexual orientation and the work he produced. Susan McClary's work is consistently interesting on this very point: the whole gender issue is relevant because it helps us understand and better account for how the composer's work is put together. (Read McClary's excellent and controversial essay on Schubert in that regard.) It's less an issue of who slept with who, than why should we care? If it's relevant to better knowing the work. Copland's turn to tonal Americana in the 1930s also corresponds to a period of relatively happy stability in his sex life at the same time, and that's more to the point than who he was sleeping with. It is this failure to address the very real issue of music's impact on our own subjectivity, and its relation to the composer's subjectivity, that remains the Unanswered Question in this field of study. Perhaps Ms. Hubbs next book will explore those issues, and I look forward to reading it.
Hubbs gets it........2004-12-18
Nadine Hubbs' The Queer Composition of America's Sound marks a milestone in queer studies, musicology and American historiography. She details the relationship between self-consciously queer composers and the mid-twentieth century "American sound" with insight, compassion and finesse.
Hubbs describes the traditional if muted association of music with gender; then notes that 20th century America saw a sharp rise in overt attention to gender in music and in society. Composer Charles Ives had acidly proclaimed that a masculine musical ethos was needed in the United States, which he associated with strong harmonic dissonance. Traditional tonal neo-classical music was too soft and feminine. But it turned out to be gay Jewish composer Aaron Copland who produced an identifiably American sound that caught on--a musically conservative tonal neo-classical sound.
Copland, Virgil Thompson and their followers fashioned a musical identity that in the event coincided with their sexual identity, both of which were perceived to be French, female-influenced and generally sissified. Gay and straight composers were well aware of this. The listening public presumably was not, and did not adjudge Copland's signature music to be gay. In addition to his own compositions, Copland created a gay network, nurturing generations of rising gay composers. But after World War II, communist- and queer-baiting became rampant, diminishing the ascendancy of Copland's network. Copland's music also became suspect, due to his leftist political affiliations; the untrammeled homophobia sent gay composers further into the closet or out of the country.
Straight composers in the meantime demanded near incomprehensibility in their experimentalism, but their very success has largely led Americans to lose interest in serious music. Copland's reputation, however, has been rehabilitated with the resurgence of a parochial American patriotism, but without adknowledging his gay identity.
The sexual orientation of Thompson, Copland, Bernstein, Rorem has never been entirely secret, but now Hubbs elaborates upon that significant detail with a discussion of the nature of their music. Only someone so well-versed both in music and in queer studies could have produced this book. Hubbs embraces postmodern scholarly sensibilities as well as the need to conduct exhaustive research. She knowingly begins her account by discussing Gertrude Stein's collaboration with Thompson in the 1934 opera Four Saints in Three Acts and how Miss Stein's writing and her social prowess influenced these composers. She evinces a keen understanding of the paradoxes of homosexual camp and its role in both obfuscating and highlighting reality, and she writes homophobia into the story with exactly the pervasive influence it wielded and wields. Her understanding of music is expansive, and she accounts for anomalies such as the gay experimental modernist composer John Cage and the straight-identified conservative tonalist Ben Weber. Her ability to convey the meaning that music has for musicians is on the mark. As is the abiding reality and marked significance of all this material for pre- and post-Stonewall musicians, scholars, queer readers and indeed all Americans, whose identity has been in part framed by queer composers.
Queer as folk, queer as classical.......2004-11-08
"The Queer Composition of America's Sound", a new contribution by Nadine Hubbs, tackles a subject which is as fascinating in concept as it is mystifying in content. How is it that the premiere American composers of the twentieth century happened to be identified as gay and to what end has that influenced their compositions?
Centering around Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, whom Hubbs refers to as essentially the "father and mother" of American composers, the author (adding several more composers to "the circle") seeks to build a case around the conception that their individual and perhaps collective sexuality contributed to what we might say is the defining American sound. Rounding out the junior colleagues of Copland and Thomson, (Marc Blitzstein, David Diamond, Leonard Bernstein, Paul Bowles and Ned Rorem) Hubbs refers to them as "gay modernists", whose works are more tonal than not, and more simple in their overall construction....therefore, more effeminate and ultimately homosexual. As a balance, the author cites the twelve-tone Schönberg-esque composers as more atonal and more masculine.
Covering roughly the period between 1925 and 1955, an early point made in the book is that before Copland came along there was no such thing as an "American sound" and save for a revival of Copland's music after the American bicentennial, the American classical sound has all but disappeared. How ironic, she points out, that the quintessential voice of American music came from a marginalized segment of the population, albeit a more accepted segment of the music profession.
What's lacking in "The Queer Voice of America's Sound" is the connection of the composers' lives to their actual compositions. Would one consider "Rodeo" to be "gay"? If so, why? What in the musical structure of the piece would make it sound so? Hubbs offers a little of that in her chapter about Thomson's "Four Saints in Three Acts" but never quite connects the dots elsewhere. One can better imagine taking a class with her and having her play musical examples to back up her theses.
The book has a dissertation-delivered feel to it rather than a narrative flow. It tends to hop around from one idea to another without a joining coalescence. Yet Hubbs has managed to give us a well-documented look into the lives of several mid-twentieth century American composers and proffer some perceptions as to how homosexuality contributed to the identity of American music and the men who figured in it.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on December 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1788 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Queer Composition of America's Sound: Gay Modernists, American Music and National Identity.(Book Review)
Author: Renee McBride
Publication:
Notes (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2005
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 62
Issue: 2
Page: 395(3)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Average customer rating:
- Everything you ever wanted to know about Superman, and more.
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Superman at Fifty!: The Persistence of a Legend
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Customer Reviews:
Everything you ever wanted to know about Superman, and more........1997-09-30
This book is extremely informative for anyone interested in the history of Superman. Dennis Dooley has done extensive research into the background of the two creators, who were born and raised in a Cleveland suburb. Along with the in depth story behind the legend, Dooley also has included various essays by professionals in all walks of life. Some are very introspective, where as others are just fun (though answered seriously) ie what sign is Superman. All in all it makes for an informative and enjoyable read as we learn there is more to the legend of Superman than just some red and blue tights. He it truly a part of our American, and worldwide culture, and should be recopgnized as such.
Book Description
ESPN: Creating an Empire tells the full story of ESPN's origins, of make-or-break decisions that were made on a seemingly daily basis, and involved a cast of characters including Howard Cosell, Ted Turner, Roone Arledge, Don King, and Peter Ueberroth.
Customer Reviews:
A complete and utter waste of time.......2007-08-20
Silly me. In looking for the definitive history of ESPN, I somehow stumbed on this this effort: nothing more than a self-written vanity project by a long-retired executive with no journalism background and waaay too much time on his hands. Readers must endure droning tales of Stuart Evey's days as glorified gofer to a son of eccentric billionaire J. Paul Getty; pointless tales that have nothing to do with the founding of a network. Other reviewers summmed it up nicely, that Evey was nothing more than a well-placed conduit for funds from Getty Oil to ESPN's true creative founders... he provided nothing more and in this excreble effort mightly attempts to snatch much of the credit. Sorry, pal, you were there as an early observer, little more. (Oh, you hired Jim Simpson? Wow.) ESPN has risen to become an important player in the twenty years SINCE your departure. The whole effort is pathetic, really.
Free with Price of Admission.......2007-03-24
This self-glorifying piece of garbage seems like the kind of book that comes free when you pay to see the author speak about modern business. Problem is, with most of these types of books as a matter of fact, the people writing them have been out of business for several years and it shows.
I received this book for Christmas because my brother thought it was actually about ESPN. The other reviewers nailed it when they said ESPN is only used to sell the book. The early days of ESPN, the operation, were dry and lifeless in this presentation.
Sports Talk Big-Time........2007-02-25
Scott Connal from Yonkers, New York and educated at Roosevelt High School, left NBC to be the pied piper of ESPN, after twenty-two years in broadcasting. His expertise and leadership aided in development of a network to change the future of sports television. It was said that "ESPN was the single most important factor for the popularity of college basketball." Connal moved up from NBC Sports to make the new network professional. He'd been made to look foolish in the 'Heidi' affair which superseded the Raiders 43-32 comeback win on the air. At the organization of ESPN, his active support and ongoing encouragement made pros out of young, ambitious media minds.
Stuart Evey, a 26-yr-veteran of Getty Oil Company, directed the development and launch of ESPN. He served as chairman and, in 1985, negotiated its sale to ABC-TV. "As I gained experience in the television industry, I endured another wild business chase, this time in the area of pay-for-view movies." It started as a collaboration between ESPN President Chet Simmons and his friend Al Ruch who had left NBC to take a job in acquisitions for MCA/Universal Pictures. The Getty Oil building just up the street from the Ambassador Hotel, where Robert Kennedy was hot and killed. Evey called this "the tragedy that ruined a nation's optimism." And it's never been the same.
Ignorance is sometimes bliss. The first president of ESPN was Chet Simmons. He discovered that every sport has its own dance and one should learn "how to relax in action." He had an office on the 18th floor, but did much of his business over drinks at the Wilshire Country Club with Glenn Davis, a Heisman Trophy winner at Army football, and Felix Blanchard, a distanct cousin of Lowell and Happy's. You could see over the skyline of Los Angeles on to the San Gabriel Mountains in Pasadena.
Timing was everything. Ice skating is an art to emotional and intricate. The costumes are as important as the performances. Sports stars like Peyton Manning are turned into heroes by their fans. He was on the cover of "Sports Illustrated" as the one player who "takes the Colts to the Super Bowl" where they played better than the Chicago Bears. Who would have believed it! He gets more attention and adoration anywhere else than his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee (here, he's known as not ever leaving a tip.), although they did release his Webb School video of doing a tango to the media. His goal now is to become a movie star -- high hopes. Most football players who get attention are exhibitionists like the New Orleans' Saints Reggie Bush who does a somersault "touchdown" flip -- to show off. What has happened to the dignity of the game?
It is said that these "clowns" get caught up in the emotion of the game, and it's part of the drama of the play. Coaches make the game of sport a psychological, as well as physical, demonstration. Those who enjoy these highjinks (and get a kick out of seeing someone make a fool of himself), they are letting off a little steam after they make a great play. Did Joe Namath throw the ball into the ground? Would cerebral Joe Dimaggia put on a show -- well, he did marry Marily Monroe. ESPN's "Mike and Mike in the morning" show encourages such actions. Most sports announcers are carried away with the game themselves. Now, baseball I can take: Mickey Mantle was my star and even had a song about him, "I Love Mickey" by Teresa Brewer.
J. Paul Getty had an interest in sports. George Getty, a good-looking fellow, loved horse racing and posed with Willie Shoemaker at Santa Anita. Even golf, as boring to watch as can be, got their attention. A photo of Jack Nicklaus signing a contract with ESPN took centerfold. There's also a phto of the large tall Getty Building and Universal Studios out in L. A.
Martin Haulot of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team, now coached by a former member, Denis Savard (one of five Blackhawks to have his number retired -- he scored 377 goals in 13 seasons), aggressive "someone" shown in Sports Illustrated to bring them national attention. The Knox Ice Bears are amazing, a joy to watch.
Great insight about what really happened!.......2004-11-30
Mr. Evey did a wonderful job on this book! He prefaced the beginning of the book with his work at Getty Oil and described his important role with the company and how it lead to the start of ESPN. If it were not for Stu Evey, this deal possibly would not have transpired! I believe all sports enthusiasts will find this book of great value as it details an important part of history with the rise and success of ESPN. Wonderfull job Mr. Evey!
ESPN..a "wildcat" story.......2004-10-19
The ESPN company was created in the tradition of Texas oil "wildcat" entrepreneurship. Mr. Evey, the Getty Oil executive who authors the story, ESPN Creating An Empire, describes his role as starting quarterback, coach and general manager of this far fetched idea and fledgling television endeavor. How ESPN gets "off the ground" and into outer space is one of the great dramas in the growth of American media and entertainment history. The story is told well in the first person, but credit is apportioned generously to the shakers and makers of what has become the household icon of sports entertainment. Ambitious and visionary entrepreneurs would do well to study the management of risks and opportunities described in Mr. Evey's book.
Book Description
A comprehensive program of textbook, lab manual and software, this Microsoft Official Academic Course provides everything students need to build the knowledge and skills necessary to install, configure, administer, and support the primary services in the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system and to prepare for the Microsoft Certified Professional examination 70-290: Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment. A complete set of instructor resources supports the book.
Book Description
A complete program with textbook, lab manual, and software, this Microsoft Official Academic Course provides everything students need to build the knowledge and skills necessary to install, configure, administer, and support the primary services in the Windows Server 2003 operating system. In addition, this textbook will help students to prepare for Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) Exam 70-292: Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment for an MCSA Certified on Windows 2000. A complete set of instructor resources supports the book.
Product Description
Instructor Resource CD with testbank, answer to all questions from textbook, exams, and testbank. All powerpoint slides, lecture notes, and sample syllabi.
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