The T is little on purpose, not a typo. trumpland. Little T, li’l P.
This is not an actual mixtape, but an expanded version of a radio show I had to prerecord because of work. The theme of the show was, and this mix is, gay American composers, which occurred to me as a good idea when I realized it would justify playing two Julius Eastman tunes. It was a good show, and I recorded it so I expanded it some for this Mixcloud version, including the full versions of longer works and a couple other things I didn’t have time for.
One is by Eastman and the other by my favorite American composer – or tied for first w/ Charles Ives (more a Hemingway-ish figure when it comes to the sissified influences on music). Which would be Samuel Barber, whose music always seems lacquered with an impenetrable varnish of melancholy that I tend to think owed something to his homosexuality. Sort of like the American version of Benjamin Britten – a similar grimness, a similar death fog looming as the night falls.
And then after Barber, there’s Who’s Who names like Copland and Cage who were gay, and then great obscure ones like Cowell and Harry Parch, and then other miscellaneous guys, some of them subdued and others more in the Todd Haynes range (e.g. John Corigliano, who wrote a “Pied Piper Fantasy”). So it is easy to do a gay American composers show.
Still, I’m leaving out a few important composers in this 2.5 hour set: As Alex Ross noted in The Rest Is Noise that a disproportionate number of the great American composers were gay. A coincidence? When you look at a general-consensus “200 most influential composers” from around the world and from Bach to the present-day list,it is the heterosexuals who occupy a disproportionate slice of the pie (if based on the generally-accepted 10% rule). Maybe that says something about America, where the cowboy and the gangster still rule the mythical spheres – the frontier of limitless vastness and the teeming ant colony-world of the urban jungle respectively.
According to a question I saw answered on Quora, of the 500 Most Influential Composers (according to some publication) in Classical Music History (from Bach and the wig-wearing “dudes” up to the present) a disproportionate number of them were heterosexual, if the ten per cent estimate holds. There’s Pyotr Tchaikovsky (11), Benjamin Britten (26), Copland (32), Barber (53), Francis Poulenc at 54, Cage at 59, Leonard Bernstein at 78, then a huuuuge dropoff to Jean Baptiste Lully (who I’ve never heard of before) at 122. Take the Americans out and that’s a 3% rate. Even if some of the wigged dudes were closet cases, it doesn’t approach wider society numbers. So what gives? I wonder if the American cult of hypermasculinity has anything to do with the disparity. Ostracization gives one a lot of time to think in America, and then one may start to read… and so on down the flowery path.
You can call it a coincidence. But I don’t know that there’s such a thing as coincidences. Some things are clearly meant to occur and so too weird to wonder much about. The “Great Creator”TM did not equip our brains – not mine at least – to read the parallel dimension shit, only to recognize it.
Regarding gay people, personally, I believe we should thank them, not only for making life vastly more interesting (I can say unequivocally I would not want to live in a world without Little Richard or Julius Eastman – or Montgomery Clift or Tennessee Williams, for that matter) but for doing their part to keep the population in check, if to an insignificant degree.
I don’t know why I’d waited so long to listen to Julius Eastman, to return to the point. One of my four listeners, Bela Koe-Krompecher, sent me a tip months ago… For nothing more, probably, than the way Eastman was hyped last year, a quarter century after his death. (Wary of hype.) For that matter, I don’t know why I finally started listening last weekend. But what resulted, immediately, is what I love about classical music above all other types of music I’ve listened to in a long listening life (I listened, fairly closely, to everything good I heard in any genre of music throughout my life): the ability to go places I didn’t know existed musically.
I love getting blind-sided by music. Sometimes over-the-top critical gushing, the sort that sounds like record company promo copy, is justified. Holy f*ck is Eastman’s music a rush – effusive and full throttle, vibrant and organic-sounding. I encourage anyone with twenty minutes to kill watch the Youtube video of his Joan of Arc piece, accompanying scenes from Theodor Dreyer’s silent Passion of Joan of Arc. Here’s Part 2:
As I listened, repeatedly, to “Evil Nigger” it occurred to me Julius Eastman – as a black, gay, intellectual warrior-type from a less-than-privileged background – represents in his multifacets everything that’s good about America. What’s GOOD about America? you wonder. Not much. About all I can see is its diversity. It can produce a Julius Eastman. I’m not beaming to the Enterprise reshaped as a Benetton ad; I’m stating one of those naked facts that are sometimes too obvious to see. For all its failings, the United States represents an attempt at creating a culture where different kinds of people interact constantly, at least in terms of culture and entertainment. Whatever else it is (and it is some cold, deadly things), the United States is an attempt – even if only motivated by necessity, chance and geographical issues – to create a mixed society.
There is, aside from its natural beauty, nothing else particulary good or particularly interesting about America. Everything good comes from cross-pollenization. We need politicians who will speak UP for what is good about America – that experiment in diversity thing – without sounding like a Hallmark card written by a junior at Princeton pursuing political science to a person he considers beneath him…
So yeah, this music helps me. The world is a complicated place, the range of possibilities vast.
Mixtape 2, on the USSR (way too vast a heading) will be done in a week or two. I have lots more Mixtapes planned, like one on contemporary women. The next Orchestral Maneuvers radio show (also on Mixcloud or at ashevillefm.org) show will be worth listening to, with more Julius Eastman and some stuff by women active today that has been commandeering my brainwaves. Fairly complete track info – titles, artists, labels, etc. – will be at the Mixcloud link for this one, and it’ll be time-stamped so you’ll know what’s playing.
I apologize for the places where I forgot the asterisk. Can’t denude ’em all!
Concentration Camp 