Queering the Pitch

Is music the patriarchy's most powerful weapon in constructing and controlling sexual roles? If you scratch an opera queen, will you find a lesbian? "Queering the Pitch" aims to provoke readers into questioning what it is that makes music pleasurable, and how it is shaped by notions of sexuality and sexual identity. A collection of gay and lesbian work in music and musicology, this book contains a wealth of diverse approaches which signal a controversial advance in the field. Musicologists, scholars, academics, critics, performers and composers examine the areas of musical education, voice and listening, history and biography, as seen through an interdisciplinary and political eye. The essays cover a broad range of topics: lesbian experience and the process of making music; the part gay choruses play in the personal, political and theoretical understanding of what it means to be gay; and a discussion of the way specific musical elements configure female or lesbian adolescent sexuality. Readings of musical works are given - such as Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" and little-known 17th-century songs - as well as discussions of modern gay composers.