Schubert's Sexuality: A Prescription for Analysis? Author(s): Kofi Agawu Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 17, No. 1, Schubert: Music, Sexuality, Culture (Summer, 1993), pp. 79-82 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746782 . Accessed: 30/08/2011 22:58 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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Commentary
Schubert's Sexuality: A Prescription for Analysis? KOFI AGAWU
What can Schubert's sexuality have to do with the analysis of his music? Four years ago, Maynard Solomon told a compelling story about a leading Austro-Germanic composer, one whose works are unlikely to be excluded from the narrowest definitions of the canon of European music since 1700: he was probably homosexual.' Since then, Solomon's tentative argument has hardened into "fact" in the popular musicological imagination, not because additional evidence has become available, but because, in a field starved of headlines and scandal, such a revelation promised a much needed change of critical perspective. Eavesdropping on conversations taking place elsewhere in the academy, we now find the promise of doing 19th-Century Music XVII/1 (Summer 1993). @ by The Regents of the University of California. 1Maynard Solomon, "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini," this journal 12 (1989), 193-206.
respectable biographical criticism and of factoring sexual politics into musical analysis not only possible but positively enticing. We are encouraged to "read" musical works in the ostensibly more sophisticated ways in which our colleagues read poems, novels, plays, and films. It is somewhat ironic, given recent and recurrent attacks on so-called positivistic musicology, that both Solomon's arguments and Rita Steblin's rebuttal of them depend foundationally on "facts."2 Steblin maintains that claims about Schubert's sexual orientation ought to be advanced against the backdrop of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Viennese practices, that the relevant documents should be read through the lenses of contemporaneous understanding, and that we ought to translate them correctly. Solomon would agree, but con2Rita Steblin, "The Peacock's Tale: Schubert's Sexuality Reconsidered," this issue, 5-33.
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structs the facts differently. While some may wish to reach for the putative ideological motivation behind this debate-do we want Schubert to be gay?-others will continue to insist that, even if post-structuralist critical theory undermines our confidence in precisely locating the gap between facts and interpretations, the "facts" ought to be accurate and that proof should not be denied. It will not go unnoticed that there is hardly mention of a single work of Schubert in this debate. It would be understandable, therefore, if some readers concluded that Schubert's sexuality has absolutely nothing to do with his music. Others will, however, see Schubert's supposed homosexuality as providing opportunities for analysis. Rather than hastily dismissing the possible connection between music and sexuality, these more optimistic readers will await the emergence of a body of critical writings that will show how understanding Schubert's sexual orientation enhances a proper historical understanding of his music. If the debate is not to degenerate into ideology-mongering, then, in the best scholarly tradition, we need to define our terms as precisely as we can. The issues are complex, of course, but they might be framed semiologically in terms of a poietic-neutral-esthesic or composerwork-listener paradigm.3 Notionally sufficient to distribute the reality of actors in this debate, this paradigm allows us to interrogate the relevance of sexuality to each of the three complementary levels and modes of understanding. The challenge for those who wish to argue for a distinctively homosexual creative process is to demonstrate the connection between the dynamics of sexuality and what we know of Schubert's way of composing. Is there a definitive homosexual approach to composing string quartets and symphonies? Did Schubert take advantage of this mode of artistic expression, or did he remain constrained by the conventional, presumably heterosexual, channels? If the claim is that, given the hostile environ-
3The tripartition is Jean Molino's, but it has been most fully elaborated in the work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez; see esp. his Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music, trans. Carolyn Abbate (Princeton, 1990), pp. 3-37.
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ment of early nineteenth-century Vienna, Schubert could not have come out, and that this resulted in a bottling up of emotional tension, which in turn affected his creativity in an unusual way, then we need to see the relevant demonstration. While they are at it, proponents of this view might also suggest how such tension differs in kind from that which derives from other forms of repression, religious, social, political, and economic. The linking of homosexuality to a particular creative faculty says little if it does not ultimately show a uniquely gay way of writing rondo, variation, or sonata forms. If, however, such proof is not forthcoming, then we might concede that knowledge of the sort that Solomon bringssuppressing for now Steblin's refutation-may possibly inspire or intrigue some individuals, but is of little or no relevance to an understanding of the creative process. At the immanent or neutral level of analysis, the level marked by an explicit parsing of the score, Schubert's sexuality can play no part in the strict sense. It is, of course, possible to argue that our mechanisms for thinking through Schubert's music-the taxonomic modes that enable harmonic, melodic, rhythmic, and formal differentiations-enshrine a normative heterosexual orientation. In that case we need either to define explicitly the alternative homosexual paradigm or put the notion of paradigm under erasure. If, however, we understand such taxonomies as emanating from an uninflected human desire to know, then it is difficult to see how one can make a case for a "homosexual reading" of Schubert's scores. It is on the level of reception that Schubert's sexuality may play the most significant role. The continuing influence of identity politics on humanistic scholarship has empowered some individual listeners to enter uninhibitedly into a strong (sexual) identification-be it real or imagined-with composers, thereby enhancing their enjoyment of the music. In this hitherto private realm, there can be no judicial intervention. Any representations I choose to construct for the purpose of listening to Schubert's music are ipso facto valid whether or not they are historically or systematically grounded. If I choose to think of peacocks while listening to the Unfinished Symphony, of Schubert's di-
minutive stature (he was less than five feet tall) while listening to Winterreise, or of his bout with syphilis while listening to the late string quartets, I am fully entitled to do so. These images, which are not always easy to defend against charges of crude reductionism, predictability, and lack of consequence, are available from a still larger pool, and it is up to the individual to choose or will whichever seems appropriate. In granting that knowledge of Schubert's sexuality may affect the ways in which some of us hear his music, and in granting that the choice of a particular filter may be a personal decision, we threaten to undermine the authority of interpretive communities that would claim that without a knowledge of the conventions of sonata form one cannot properly appreciate the design of, for example, the first movement of the A-Major Piano Sonata, D. 959, with its remarkable loosening of form, its rich motivic content, and its startlingly original modulations. It is, of course, possible to argue that nothing stands outside politics, so that knowledge of sonata form is just as "political" as knowledge of Schubert's sexual orientation. In this mode of politicization, there is little basis for discussion, only assertion. But within the tradition of a constructed listening, a tradition that pays close attention to the history of and to individual musical composition unbridled politicization composerly routines, need not swallow up all our concerns. We can, in fact, talk about more and less productive ways of musical listening. One danger of the politicization of listening is to impel a kind of crude associationism belisteners and tween pairs of categories-male male composers, female listeners and female composers, homosexual listeners and homosexual composers, and so on. This one-to-one correspondence is, of course, not necessarily preferred by those in a position to prefer it. For example, while (the possibility of) Schubert's homosexuality elicits celebration from some homosexuals, others remain indifferent to it. Still others recognize today's sexual freedom as an important enabling factor in thinking about the music of the past, which is not the same thing as insisting that Schubert's Vienna be made to yield secrets in the way that today's
San Francisco does. And, on the heterosexual side, there are those who will support, contradict, or remain indifferent to the question of Schubert's putative homosexuality. We would do well to be mindful of this broad range of listeners, even while, for political or ideological reasons, we declare our allegiances to one group or another. With the facts still somewhat fragile, it is not clear whether Schubert's music is the appropriate site for investigating the significance for music analysis of a composer's sexuality. In any case, we need to confront a central analytical issue: namely, what sorts of traces are left on Schubert's works by his sexual orientation? The idea that musical works are documents or texts is continuing to influence thinking about music, especially music since the eighteenth century. Not that there is anything new about this: the encoding of an extramusical impulse in a musical work is at least as old as medieval Europe, and it is a vulgar distortion of musical history that confines this interplay to the nineteenth century. The problem is not whether something extramusical preceded or provided the conditions of possibility for the actual composition. It is the simpler and, at the same time, more difficult question of significance: having determined this motivation, how is such knowledge to be incorporated into the act of interpretation? One reason why notions of musical autonomy and transcendence have not yet been successfully resisted is that the only inscriptions that have been unearthed (in Schubert's works, among others) are particular musical archetypes in a variety of rhythmic dispositions. Ever alert to extramusical references, the case for a documentary reading of Schubert's instrumental music can find little consolation in the indisputable fact that musical composition is recomposition, and that Schubert's way of composing is simply inconceivable outside a specific pedagogical tradition. Those who have trouble accepting this version of the history of musical composition will forever be on the lookout for hints of extramusicality with which to decode Schubert's works even though all the requisite evidence is there in the scores. If we abandon, accordingly, the expectation that Schubert's music will reflect its societal 81
KOFI AGAWU Schubert's Sexuality
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origins in a specific rather than in a generalized way, then we must abandon the corollary expectation that Schubert's sexuality will (always) find iconic representation in his music. Claims about Schubert's choice of unconventional modulatory schemes, or about his formal loosening, or about his preference for repetition and variation over genuine development: these and other claims are far too fragile to provide proof that he composed as a homosexual. For such demonstrations to have force they need to is not to say be based on a clear-which of nature of homosexual the simple-definition a set rules for and on of creativity making the transition from this presumably diffuse state to the state of "musicking." Otherwise such claims can seem forced, even laughable. Yet the challenge to define a homosexual essence has so far not been met, any more than feminist scholars have succeeded in advancing an essentially feminine sensibility. Some might argue that such foundational premises, far from constituting a necessary point of departure, are a nuisance, to be resisted or bracketed or dispensed with completely. But if we cannot agree on what we are talking about by making our assumptions explicit, if in other words there is no longer a scholarly protocol, then how are we going to advance in our communal effort to understand art works? Those of us who still believe that an understanding of Schubert's music cannot be framed foundationally in a vaguely defined cultural space, but that such space must include the sort of musical knowledge that comes from composition and performance, will continue to resist efforts to hijack music for other causes, especially causes that cannot distinguish between one symphony and another, one movement and another, or one part of a movement and another. As much as we may find intriguing Edward T. Cone's linking of a "promissory
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note" in the Moment musical, op. 94, no. 6, to Schubert's syphilitic condition, we cannot yet proceed to a reasonable level of generalization until we have produced several more such readings.4 Nor do we need to give Carl Dahlhaus's insistence on a distinctive and memorable retrospective current in Schubert an extramusical designation for it to retain its interpretive significance.5 It would be fashionable to see in this debate and in the renewed awareness of the role of sexuality in music a way forward. In interrogating the broad claim that Schubert's sexuality is relevant to our understanding of his music, I am by no means suggesting that it is irrelevant. On the contrary, I see a sound knowledge of sexuality as possibly providing opportunities for analysis and criticism. The real work therefore lies ahead. Whatever form it takes, one hopes that it will include extended analyses of Schubert's music informed by either of two competing and partially contradictory premises: first, that Schubert's music is foundationally homosexual and that this condition is evident everywhere, and second that, although Schubert might have been a homosexual man, he did not always compose as one. If, however, in the next decade or so, the matter of Schubert's homosexuality has not progressed beyond the programmatic and symbolic, then we will be fully justified not only in contesting its validity but also in reading an opportunistic and perhaps mischievous intent on the part of its advocates. As always, the proof of the pudding lies in %Vm the analysis. 4Edward T. Cone, "Schubert's Promissory Note: An Exercise in Musical Hermeneutics," this journal 5 (1982), 23341. SCarl Dahlhaus, "Die Sonatenform bei Schubert: Der erste Satz des G-dur-Quartetts D. 887," Musica 32 (1978), 12530.
