The sexual stereotyping of musical instruments in Italian, German, and English society from the beginning of the Renaissance period to the end of the nineteenth century is the object of this essay. Through evidence gleaned from iconography and a variety of written documents, the author demonstrates how the gender association of musical instruments virtually eliminated female participation from important musical activities, ensuring the male domination of the art and preventing women from becoming prominent composers.
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 support@jstor.org.. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to 19th-Century Music.In his 1989 article "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini," Maynard Solomon states that "the young men of the Schubert circle loved each other" and that "it is reasonably probable that their primary sexual orientation was a homosexual one." Schubert himself was "in the grip of a hunger for youth and an insatiable sexual appetite."' Solomon's assertions have seemingly been accepted as fact by much of the scholarly community. Peter Ostwald writes: "Schubert was probably exclusively homosexual.He was actually 'the central figure in a coterie of homosexual and bisexual Viennese artists,' as Maynard Solomon has recently discovered, and may have contracted syphilis from a male prostitute."2 Susan Youens, in her 1991 book on Winterreise, characterizes Solomon's speculations as "certainly credible," and Peter Gilke cites without question extensive passages from Solomon's article in his German-language monograph on Schubert.3 The accuracy of Solomon's argument, however, has never been examined critically. In addition, new documents have surfaced that shed more light on this fundamental biographical issue. This article seeks to reopen the topic of Schubert's sexuality by investigating Solomon's interpretation of the documents and sources he cites.Schubert was, to use the anthropologist Clifford Geertz's term, "a cultural artifact," governed by the particular society in which he lived.4 In order to understand his personality we need to interpret the cultural context of his era. According to Otto Biba, "Franz Schubert has perhaps suffered more than any other composer at the hands of biographers unable to distinguish between yesterday and today."' If 19th-Century Music XVII/1 (Summer 1993). O by The Regents of the University of California.This article is dedicated to Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach, whose 1983 book Beethoven und seine "Unsterbliche Geliebte" Josephine Brunswick was a revelation to me. I also wish to thank Dexter Edge and Ernst Hilmar for many helpful suggestions. Notes for this article begin on p. 28. 5 This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 16:00:51 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 19TH CENTURY MUSICSchubert's personality appears remote and elusive to us, it is because of our "lack of familiarity with the imaginative universe within which [his] acts are signs."6 My intention here is to come closer to the truth, admittedly unknowable in its entirety, by interpreting more of the historical context of Schubert's time. SCHUBERT'S DIARY AND THE MARRIAGE- CONSENT LAW OF 1815A key point in Solomon's argument is h...
In 1987 the author discovered a pencil-drawing portrait of Beethoven signed "J. Hochenecker" and dated "1819" in an antique shop in Vienna. Scientific analysis of the paper by experts at the Albertina confirms the authenticity of the 1819 date, and the artist Josef Hochenecker (1794-1876) is identified as a sculptor in Anton Redl's address book of 1820. Circumstantial evidence suggests that this was the portrait drawing of Beethoven's face ordered by Nikolaus Zmeskal in the letter "Ich kann weder für das Gluck" which MacArdle and Misch date "fall of 1819." This 1819 portrait, and not Stephan Decker's 1824 chalk drawing, served as the model for Josef Kriehuber's black-tie lithograph of 1832. An anonymous article in the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of 1835, probably written by Tobias Haslinger, argues that the Kriehuber lithograph, and hence the 1819 original, is the best likeness of the composer. This portrait, with its visionary, serene expression, is far removed from the canonic depiction of Beethoven as a glowering, lion-maned titan, and corresponds rather with the deaf, withdrawn genius of the esoteric late works.
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