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 .
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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.

79

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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.

80

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

19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC

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

82

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.