Was John Cage gay?
Vance Maverick
In article <Dvur7...@logic.uc.wlu.edu> jder...@liberty.uc.wlu.edu (James P. DeRossitt IV) writes:
> I just saw a feature in the New Yorker about Merce Cunningham, and noticed
> that he is a man, and I thought that Cunningham and Cage were companions,
> but for some reason I always thought that Cage had a wife, so now I'm
> confused. Maybe I had always just read about John Cage and Merce and
> assumed that Merce was a woman. I'm just curious.
John Cage did have a wife. (Xenia.) From sometime after their
divorce (late '40s, I think) to the end of his life, he lived with
Cunningham. Was he gay? The story goes that someone at a talk Cage
gave had the temerity to ask what his relationship with Cunningham
was. Brief tense silence. Cage: "Well, I cook and Merce does the
dishes."
Vance
James P. DeRossitt IV
CRInyc
In Lou Harrison's liner notes to the collection Gay American Composers, he
writes:
"My two main mentors, Henry Cowell and Virgil Thomson, were gay and I
early learned that Thaikowsky and the divine Mr. Handel also were. My
friend John Cage was gay..."
It doesn't take a young politically motivated musicologist to sometimes
say the truth!
Michael A. Abelson
CRInyc wrote:
>
> In Lou Harrison's liner notes to the collection Gay American Composers, he
> writes:
>
> "My two main mentors, Henry Cowell and Virgil Thomson, were gay
Henry Cowell had a wife named Sidney. Was he or she a she or a he? I
don't have access to much biographical info on Cowell beyond his
professional relationship with Ives.
Roger L. Lustig
Cowell's wife was female. Cowell, like many other gay men, married.
This did not stop the authorities from imprisoning him on a trumped-
up charge of corrupting the morals of (male) minors. The episode
was discussed in "The imprisonment of Henry Cowell" by Michael
Hicks, in _Journal of the American Musicological Society_, Spring
1991.
Roger
lanza
Does anybody know the documentation of Handel's homosexuality?
*****************************************
"Troll--to Thyself be enough!"
--*Peer Gynt*
*****************************************
Allan Jones
"Roger L. Lustig" <juli...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
> Michael A. Abelson wrote:
> >
>> [cut]
> >
> > Henry Cowell had a wife named Sidney. Was he or she a she or a he? I
> > don't have access to much biographical info on Cowell beyond his
> > professional relationship with Ives.
>
> Cowell's wife was female. Cowell, like many other gay men, married.
> This did not stop the authorities from imprisoning him on a trumped-
> up charge of corrupting the morals of (male) minors. The episode
> was discussed in "The imprisonment of Henry Cowell" by Michael
> Hicks, in _Journal of the American Musicological Society_, Spring
> 1991.
There are a few pages on the Cowell affair in Nicolas Slonimsky's
autobigraphy 'Perfect Pitch'. The tone of the book is fairly
jocular, but for this episode Slonimsky adopts a more serious
tone. Slonimsky was a friend of Cowell, Varese, Ives and various
other avant garde US musical figures between the wars. Ives does
not emerge at all well from the incident. (Varese does if memory
serves me correctly.)
When Cowell was incarcerated, Ives didn't reply to his letters and
didn't visit him. This was devastating to Cowell, who regarded Ives
as a supporter and friend. Some kind of reconciliation was effected
when Cowell was released, but probably only because Cowell 'proved'
himself to Ives by getting married (i think I'm remembering the sequence
of events correctly.) Given that Ives was inclined towards a
kind of dogmatic, democratic libertarianism (nothing wrong
with that in itself), he emerges from the Cowell incident with
more than a whiff of the humbug, in my eyes.
Slonimsky was convinced that Cowell's conviction was a frame up.
Allan Jones
MBunday
Perhaps Cage and/or Cowell were bisexual. Please consider *all* the
options!
Mark Starr
No. But Henry Cowell, Gesualdo and Salieri were.
Frank Eggleston
Peter Maxwell Davies.
Frank Eggleston
DiscFild
Bernstein, Copland, Rorem, probably Schubert, maybe Chopin... Present
day classical music is run by the gay mafia...
Disc...@aol.com
Sara Freeman
In <504v2t$6...@decaxp.harvard.edu> dcl...@fas.harvard.edu (David
Cleary) writes:
>
>DiscFild (disc...@aol.com) wrote:
>: Present>I would like to see proof of this statement. Who specifically is
involved
>here? And what are they doing?
>
>Or are you just trolling?
>
>Dave
He may be a troll, but he's good.
--
"If you think of reality as the software for the universe,
all it would take is for someone to change a comma in the
program, and the chair you are sitting on wouldn't be a
chair at all."--Jacques Vallee
David Cleary
Bradford Kellogg
Actually, if you want the plain truth, the council on foreign affairs is
waging a pitched battle with the international brotherhood of left-handed
agnostics over control of the northern Siberia rubber tappers association,
so they can determine whether the music played by the Baffin Island Symphony
Orchestra will be in the key of C sharp or D flat. Meanwhile, the Ellesmere
Island Philharmonic is playing everything in the key of C flat. Go figure.
---
__
\ \
\ \ _
Bradford Kellogg \_\ ( ) There is nothing, absolutely nothing,
kel...@atb.teradyne.com \ / \ half so worth doing as simply messing
_______________\/___)_____________ about in boats.
\ \ /
~~~~~~~~~~~~`~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~\~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Matthew H. Fields
In article <504v2t$6...@decaxp.harvard.edu>,
David Cleary <dcl...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>DiscFild (disc...@aol.com) wrote:
>: Present
>: day classical music is run by the gay mafia...
>: Disc...@aol.com
>
>I would like to see proof of this statement. Who specifically is involved
>here? And what are they doing?
>
>Or are you just trolling?
>
Michael Feldman is always trolling. The Gay musical mafia is a front
for the hidden, behind-the-scenes composers with big tits, remember
his post on that topic a year ago?
--
_ || Composer and educator
/ \ * || URL:http://www-personal.umich.edu/~fields
* | * || URL:mailto:fie...@umich.edu
Dr. Matthew H. / ields || Phone 313-936-7579 days, 313-769-4836 eves.