
The Queer Composition of America's Sound
Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity
Nadine Hubbs(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 18. October 2004
Book
Paperback/Softback
293 pages
978-0-520-24185-5 (ISBN)
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.
Reviews / Votes
"What does music have to do with homosexuality, or homosexuality with music? That is the question Hubbs explores through a breathtakingly original history of the mid-twentieth-century gay American composers who produced 'America's sound.' Hubbs shows how sexual desire, aesthetic practice, and social identity shape one another and define specific forms of human consciousness. Her recovery of the homosexual roots of American musical modernism is ultimately a study in the sexuality of culture itself." - David M. Halperin, author of Saint Foucault; "Compellingly argued and beautifully written, The Queer Composition of America's Sound will no doubt raise controversy, but it will be required reading for musicologists, Americanists, and queer theorists." - Susan McClary, author of Conventional Wisdom"More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
9 b-w photographs, 5 music examples
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
408 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-24185-5 (9780520241855)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Nadine Hubbs
The Queer Composition of America's Sound
Gay Modernists, American Music, and National Identity
E-Book
10/2004
1st Edition
Naval Institute Press
€33.99
Available for download
Person
Nadine Hubbs is Associate Professor of Music and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Content
Acknowledgments Introduction. Composing Oneself 1. Modernist Abstraction and the Abstract Art: Four Saints and the Queer Composition of America's Sound 2. Being Musical: Gender, Sexuality, and Musical Identity in Twentieth-Century America Intermezzo. My Dear Freddy: Identity Excesses and Evasions chez Paul Bowles 3. A French Connection: Modernist Codes in the Musical Closet 4. Queerness, Eruption, Bursting: U.S. Musical Modernism at Midcentury Coda. Composing Oneself (Reprise) Notes Works Cited Discography Index