Annotated Bibiliography

Agawu, Kofi. "Schubert's Sexuality: A Prescription for Analysis?" 19th-Century Music 17.1, Schubert: Music, Sexuality, Culture (1993): 79-82. JSTOR. Web. 21 May 2014.

Agawu’s article serves as a possible “prescription” for how he sees analysis the way it should be. His work centers around Maynard Solomon’s article on Schubert’s sexuality. He critiques the ways that fellow scholars may have elicited favor due to lacking evidence.

Boyd, Melinda. "Gendered Voices: The "Liebesfrühling" Lieder of Robert and Clara Schumann." 19th-Century Music 23.2 (1999): 145-62. JSTOR. Web. 21 May 2014.

In “Gendered Voices,” Melinda Boyd analyzes the Schumanns’ “Liebesfrühling” in order to try to figure out which one wrote which part. The music is set to text that is at times ambiguous. Boyd discusses each movement and gives reasons for or against any particular identity.

Burstein, L. Poundie. "Their Paths, Her Ways: Comparison of Text Settings by Clara Schumann and Other Composers." RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. EBSCO, 2002. Web. 15 May 2014.

L. Poundie Burstein’s article acts as a pure comparison of Clara Schumann’s song-settings of famous texts. The selected texts were also set by male contemporaries, and in a couple cases, by another female composer. Burstein seems to follow in Susan McClary’s idea of the womanly narrative as there are some consciously-made differences in the works by these men and women.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Random House, 1990. Print.

Foucault’s The History of Sexuality is a book written in three volumes. Just a small, almost illegitimate portion of volume one is used for this paper. Foucault attempts to map out an in depth history of sexuality from around the time of the Renaissance to the time of the book’s writing. More than simply a gender studies or plain philosophy book, Foucault begins his book describing and expounding upon the reception of sex itself throughout the last few centuries.

Gramit, David. "Constructing a Victorian Schubert: Music, Biography, and Cultural Values." 19th-Century Music 17.1 (1993): 65-78. JSTOR. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.

Gramit’s article looks at ways various music scholars throughout the last 200 years or so have viewed and written about Schubert. He attempts to bring to light the possible inconsistencies and biases that may have been implanted in these people’s writings.

Green, Lucy. Music, Gender, Education. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.

Lucy Green’s book takes the modern music classroom and invites the reader to view it as a reflection of a patriarchal society. She attempts to catalogue various episodes in a gendered music history that bolster or threaten femininity within music. It is the chapters that threaten this structure that I have used. In particular, the portions on Ethel Smyth; especially as she is at once compared to Schubert.

Hyde, Derek. "Ethel Smyth." New Found Voices: Women in Nineteenth Century English Music. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. 153-88. Print.

This chapter from Derek Hyde’s book Newfound Voices, is a brief biography of Ethel Smyth. He positions this biography in contrast to a patriarchal society. His entire book consists of these types of biographies that attempt to bring light to women’s work throughout the last couple of centuries.

Knittel, K. M. "The Construction of Beethoven." The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 2002. 118-50. Print.

Knittel’s article begins as an anecdotally-driven work. It contains accounts from various people that outline, however plausible, Beethoven’s life. Ultimately, she discusses the myth of Beethoven—what it was (and is), and possible reasons for it.

McClary, Susan. "Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert's Music." Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology. By Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas. New York: Routledge, 1994. 205-33. Print.

This article is McClary’s follow-up to her original ideas from her review of the Steblin/Solomon debate. She uses examples from Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony to help the reader to hear an alternate subjectivity from the one(s) we may be used to. This narrative is based on Solomon’s ideas that Schubert was homosexual.

McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1991. Print.

In a book that deserves much more time that I was able to give it during this process, Susan McClary’s Feminine Endings is a staple in gender-centric musicology. She attempts to outline a history of gendering in music theory (masculine/feminine cadences, form types, theme structures). She also invites the reader to begin to hear a “womanly” subjectivity emanating from a few female composer/artists’ work. These are women that chose to enter a man’s world and have their own music be successful.

McClary, Susan. "Music and Sexuality: On the Steblin/Solomon Debate." 19th-Century Music 17.1, Schubert: Music, Sexuality, Culture (1993): 83-88. JSTOR. Web. 21 May 2014.

This is McClary’s original statements with which she first entered the debate concerning Schubert’s alleged homosexuality. The article seems to agree with Solomon’s argument that composer was indeed gay, and does not really even mention Steblin’s opinions at all. McClary attempts to answer whether or not Schubert’s sexuality should even be considered in a musicological study, and thereafter makes claims for it. Regretfully she does not make a case against those ideas, and merely seems to assume the infallibility of her aforementioned reasons.

Solomon, Maynard. "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini." 19th-Century Music 12.3 (1989): 193-206. JSTOR. Web. 21 May 2014.

This is the article that seems to have started them all. Maynard Solomon tries to shed light on what he hears as alternate narrative in Schubert’s music. Through deductive reasoning, Solomon concludes that Schubert was gay due to the lack of success in female relationships, a hedonistic personality, and the tight-knit bond of members in Schubert’s circle.

Webster, James. "Music, Pathology, Sexuality, Beethoven, Schubert." 19th-Century Music 17.1, Schubert: Music, Sexuality, Culture (1993): 89-93. JSTOR. Web. 21 May 2014.

James Webster’s article is a musicological critique of discourse about Schubert’s sexuality. He questions whether or not one can actually hear homosexuality in music. Whereas, he also hears something “else” in Schubert’s music, Webster is not so quick to judge what that is based on the composer’s alleged hedonistic life. After all, this only reflects his artistic persona, not his actual personality (which would be the true subjectivity described by McClary). Webster lines up with Agawu in thinking that people such as Steblin and McClary argue their cases for purely political reasons as there is no true, respectable, empirical (or even overwhelmingly plausible) evidence connecting a 19th-century composer’s sexuality to his or her music. 

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