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Homophony Kickoff!

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Special guests, composer Nico Muhly and music critics Alex Ross and Ann Powers join WNYC Overnight Music host Nadia Sirota for the kickoff to Evening Music's Homophonic Festival. Early in the show, Nico Muhly explores coded homosexuality in music, and later on in the evening, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross and LA Times pop music critic Ann Powers discuss homosexuality in classical and pop music. Nadia features a broad, multi-century selection of music by gay and lesbian composers, including Jennifer Higdon, Franz Schubert, Pauline Oliveros, Aaron Copland and many more.

Also Featured Tonight:

Nico Muhly / A Hudson Cycle
John Corigliano / Symphony No. 1: Apologue
Benjamin Britten / Canticles: Abraham and Isaac
Lou Harrison / Concerto in Slendro
Leonard Bernstein / Mass: Secret Songs

Music Playlists

View WNYC's music playlists dating back to 2001 (full playlists are generally posted the day after broadcast). For playlist inquiries, please contact Listener Services via email or at 646-829-4000.

The first hour of Evening Music is available for streaming soon after 8pm.

Comments [2]

miriam

I just turned on the radio, and when I heard the word "homophony" I thought you were using it as a musicological term meaning "same sound." There is such a term; here's how Britannica defines it:

"musical texture based primarily on chords, in contrast to polyphony, which results from combinations of relatively independent melodies."

Was that the kind of music you played tonight?

Jun. 25 2009 11:04 PM
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Joel Sachs from New York

The judgment about Henry Cowell offered by some of America's top psychiatrists and phsyiahctric students of homosexuality in the course of the well-known morals charge is that his behavior with men in the 1920s and earlier 1930s was not the result of homosexuality but of very badly social immaturity resulting from his mother's hostility to sexuality. They felt that his natural state was heterosexual. His wife told me that she thought he was to a small extent bi-sexual but that he never again was involved with men. Yet the myths persist. Nicholas Slonimsky said to me (while Mrs. Cowell was still alive), "Sidney Cowell lies about becoming pregnant with Henry. "We know [leer] that he couldn't do that." In fact, she did become pregnant, became extremely ill, and lost the baby because of incompatible Rh factor. [Documentation exists.] She told me with obvious honesty that Henry wanted five children. If Slonimsky, who knew the Cowells well, believed that, one can see the problem of correcting mythology.
In any event, what is the point? Cowell was a composer. That is the only thing that counts. If we are going to lump together composers on the grounds of sexuality, why not on the grounds of height, or disabilities, or eye color. Just listen to the music, please.

Jun. 25 2009 09:14 PM
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