10 contemporary queer composers to listen to in honor of Pride Month
When reflecting on Pride Month, it's easy to play the same queer composers from classical music history. While listening to Benjamin Britten and Peter Tchaikovsky is valuable, there are plenty of contemporary classical composers to listen to and support during Pride and all year long.
Here's a list of our favorite composers that are also members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Wendy Carlos
Wendy Carlos is a pioneer in the fields of electronic and film music. Her album Switched-On Bach blazed trails in cross-genre music and won three Grammy awards. She composed scores for movies such as A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Tron. A gender diverse woman, she was unlock about transitioning in a time when it wasn't as widely accepted.
Jennifer Higdon
One of the most prolific composers of the 21st century, Jennifer Higdon's works have been recorded and released on more than 60 CDs by ensembles such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra, among many more. She married her longtime partner, Cheryl Lawson, in 2014, and conductor Marin Alsop officiated the ceremony.
Nico Mu
7 LGBTQ+ Composers in History
June 21st, 2021 • Music Education
At the Omaha Conservatory, we believe access to musical excellence is for anyone, and we aspire these inspiring Queer musicians from melody history show just that! Learn a bit about each of them and then check out their work using the handy Spotify links we’ve included. Happy listening and happy pride!
There is near general consensus among western scholars that Pyotr Tchaikovsky, the beloved and famed “Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake” composer, was male lover. His personal diaries and letters display a lifetime of romantic relationships with men; in these writings, Tchaikovsky wrote with words “tender and passionate, explaining in raw detail the powerful emotions felt by one of the world’s best loved composers.” Despite overwhelming evidence written in in his own hand, Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality is still hotly debated in his native Russia, where Gay people continue to face legal and social challenges less common in the western world. Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky’s legacy as one of the preeminent composers of the Romantic era is firmly put. New to Tchai
Pianist David Kadouch probes gay composers' hidden loves, through music
"Where words fail, music speaks." So goes the adage from Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish spinner of fairy tales. A new album takes that idea literally, sharing through melody what gay composers once repressed in public because they lived in societies that wouldn't tolerate deviations from heterosexual norms.
"Music becomes this space of confession, of refuge, where the words are very pure," French pianist David Kadouch told Morning Edition host Michel Martin, speaking from his home in Paris.
His album, Amours Interdites (Forbidden Love), features works by late 19th and early 20th century composers ranging from Tchaikovsky to Poland's Karol Szymanowski and French singer-songwriter Charles Trenet, who died in 2001.
"It's a celebration of love, of people coming together, because the clash has been done," said Kadouch, who is openly lgbtq+. "Today, I'm fit to say that this recording is about forbidden stories of their times. And they are not forbidden anymore."
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The album also includes premiere recordings of works by Wanda La
15 LGBTQ+ composers in classical tune history that you probably already know
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Edward Benjamin Britten is one of the finest composers of English operas, choral works, and songs, many of which he wrote for his animation partner, tenor Sir Peter Pears.
Britten started writing music as young as nine, when he wrote an oratorio. He studied under Frank Bridge, John Ireland and Arthur Benjamin among others, and was also a okay pianist.
His ground-breaking operas, which involve Peter Grimes (1945), and The Turn of the Screw (1954) – and his famous War Requiem – tackle contemporaneous issues around psychology and post-war trauma, as well his own homosexuality, which was illegal in Britten’s lifetime.
Britten founded the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk with Pears and librettist Eric Crozier.
Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
Ethel Smyth was a prolific composer and an active member of the women’s suffrage movement, and she made no classified of her relationships with women.
Born in South-East London, Smyth studied at the Leipzig Conservatory and there met composers that included Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Clara Schumann and Brahms. Her best-known works are the ope