An Interview with Elizabeth Wood

Carlos Palombini – [email protected]
  Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Interviewer’s note

Philip Brett died of cancer on 16 October 2002. The previous year, the GLSG¹ Newsletter had printed “Lesbian and Gay Music”, the uncensored original of the article he and Elizabeth Wood co-authored²for the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, where it appeared as “Gay and Lesbian Music”³, with various cuts. In December 2002, the Electronic Musicological Review republished the unexcised manuscript in a bilingual version that benefited from detailed discussion with the authors and commentaries by various scholars⁴. In August the following year, I gave a paper on the article at the XIV Congress of the Brazilian Association for Research and Graduate Studies in Music⁵. The interview that follows was conducted in mid May 2003 to verify ideas ventured in the paper. It gave rise to a review-article that came out in Echo later on, with excerpts from the interview⁶.

An insider’s take on the history of queer musicology written by one of its pioneers under the impact of a beloved colleague’s death, Wood’s statement on co-authorship is a touching tribute to Brett’s memory. Yet, she warns:

This interview took place ten years ago, and the views expressed there reflect that. One of the limitations of our early work on lesbian and gay music was there in the title. The field and its categories were expanded, and rightly so, to include bisexual, transsexual, transgendered, and queer⁷.

Wood explains: “Philip and I were old enough to have lived through the invisibility and oppression of Gay and Lesbian people and believed in keeping visible in our work and writing the historical and political specificity of these categories”⁸.

In 2006 Routledge added the unexpurgated text of “Lesbian and Gay Music”, with a new Preface by Wood and Bibliography updated by Emily Wilbourne, to the revised edition of Queering the Pitch⁹. Conversely, Grove Music Online chose to maintain “Gay and Lesbian Music” under the shape it appeared in print. Under the title “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Music”, Nadine Hubbs edited and updated “Gay and Lesbian Music” for Grove Music Online, probably in 2010¹⁰, so that Brett and Wood’s text could keep evolving, even if beyond their wishes.

Liz speaks

Carlos: — It strikes me that there seems to be so much collaborative work going on in the field of “lesbian and gay” or “queer” musicology, something we don’t often see in the humanities in general. You are a writer, and writing has been described as a solitary act. How did the collaboration with Philip develop? Who wrote what in “Lesbian and Gay Music”?

Liz: — Your question has three parts to it.

First: Is there so much collaborative work? There may be an increase in coedited volumes of single-authored essays, but not, I think, in co-authorship. That’s my impression. I haven’t made a systematic search, have you? I’d credit feminism in the 1980s with trying to make scholarship collective and production collaborative. In feminist literary criticism, for instance, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (The Madwoman in the Attic¹¹, and their No Man’s Land series¹²) team-taught, edited and wrote together, apparently seamlessly. In the early days of academic performance art, Gilbert/Gubar even did a “live” duo act before the Modern Language Association.

Queering the Pitch¹³ and the collaborative conference/book series, Unnatural Acts¹⁴, choreographed and codirected by a trio of consummate performance artists/scholars/friends, Sue-Ellen Case, Susan Foster and Philip Brett, have been models for the kind of collaborative work we’ve seen recently in gay and lesbian musicology that features ensembles in production, but soloists on the page. In musicology of the 1980s, moving serenely to its own drummer, new feminist work like Women Making Music¹⁵, a collection of single-authored essays coedited by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, could be stalled for years in editorial and review processes in an academic music press. Was that a form of resistance to the new? a reflection of the pace of musical scholarship? I don’t know. With Queering the Pitch, we decided to bypass potential obstacles and go straight to a trade press with a strong gay and lesbian list, so that the work could appear sooner, and still with an edge, rather than later — dried out by then and pressed flat by the kind of editorial laundering our Grove piece¹⁶ would receive.

Which leads to your second point: how did our collaboration develop?

Philip and I began to work together back in 1988, when he was looking for participants for a panel on gay and lesbian issues and didn’t know of any “out” lesbian musicologists. By then, Philip had lived in the U.S. a long time and was an established Byrd scholar and editor who had published path-breaking gay work on Britten in the mid 1970s¹⁷. I think he was about to teach his first course on homosexuality and music at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a tenured professor. For two or three years, he had hosted a cocktail party at annual American Musicological Society meetings for gay and lesbian members, most of whom professionally were in the closet. This panel was to make the first openly gay and lesbian presentation at an AMS meeting. I was “out” but an outsider to musicology by choice and circumstance: a feminist and a musicology PhD with an interdisciplinary background, living in New York City since the late 1970s, but without a job in musicology. I didn’t attend AMS meetings and wasn’t a conventional musicologist; I simply thought of myself as a writer about music and music historian. My work, among a small band of feminist musicologists and composers, was about the hidden, lost or forgotten histories of women in music and music in women’s lives. My work within a community and my background in Australian cultural history were excellent training for the kind of collaborative work I came to do with Philip.

I’d experimented with ways of translating ideas about music for women’s studies majors, and about gender and sexuality for music majors, in courses I taught in lesbian literature, feminist theory, and women, music and gender at various New York colleges. That was also a useful experience when it came to translating gay and lesbian ideas for musicologists and vice versa. Before I met Philip, for instance, I was trying out a piece I’d written, “Lesbian Fugue”¹⁸, on graduate students in English at Columbia and CUNY, and at an early Gay and Lesbian Conference at Harvard, in a session with Wayne Koestenbaum, who was working on his spectacular, breakthrough study, The Queen’s Throat¹⁹. I read an interview with Philip by a friend of mine, Lawrence Mass, for the magazine Christopher Street²⁰, where Philip talked about what it meant as a gay musicologist to work on a closeted gay composer, Benjamin Britten. So I sent Philip a copy of my essay and he sent me his “Britten’s Dream”²¹, both of which were intended for Ruth Solie’s Musicology and Difference. Philip asked me to join his panel. That’s how we met.

We made a lot of side-by-side appearances together over the next twelve years, reading papers or introducing and responding to one another’s work. We sometimes held hands under the table, our knees knocking, voices trembling, like Hansel and Gretel, as we stared down the carnivorous beast. You may laugh, but it could be a terrifying experience, depending on the setting and the audience. We were joined almost immediately by so many very much younger and braver colleagues that we coined a sweet hillbilly joke about being the Mom and Pop of lesbian and gay musicology.

After the “Composers and Sexuality” session and first meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Study Group (GLSG) at Oakland in 1990, we decided over a cup of tea to gather this new and exciting work and put out an edition. We hooked up with Gary Thomas, who’d been talking about doing a book on gay men in music. I was designated point-manager for Queering the Pitch (I found the title in Ethel Smyth’s memoirs) because our Routledge editor, Bill Germano, was in New York City. Reaching consensus was surprisingly easy from the start, from choosing the pieces each wanted to edit to team-writing the preface. It was fun, too. At proof-reading time, we spotted a typo in our sentence: “The risk, the threat that ‘queering’ represents…” “Threat” had morphed into “treat”. We kept the treat, of course!

I say “surprisingly easy” because from what I’d known of collaborative projects by women musicologists, these love affairs can end badly. The next step would be writing together.

On to: Who wrote what in “Lesbian and Gay Music”?

Soon after we were each commissioned by Grove, we met in Riverside at another joint appearance and I stayed on for an extra day with Philip and his partner, George Haggerty. We sat in the garden all afternoon talking about how we’d do it, making lists of what we wanted to include. I returned to New York and made a first rough outline. Philip worked that up, and we began to swap and fit by phone and email more bits and pieces for the puzzle. I made a third draft, and so on, an accumulative process until we needed another face-to-face discussion. I’d left AMS activities to write fulltime by then, so Philip came by plane and ferry to stay at my retreat on the north fork of eastern Long Island. We talked things through on long walks along the beach and over a bottle or two of Australian red wine. The truly collaborative nature of our bi-coastal work can be seen in the five drafts, two sets of edited galleys and bulging correspondence in my files, not to mention a marathon eight-hour phone call to finalize our editorial decisions.

We’d agreed from the start that Philip would preside over gay particulars, I over lesbian lore, but we roamed over the whole in tandem in terms of fundamentals: in concept, structure, subject divisions, and historical and theoretical contexts. In sound and sense, I think the piece meshes together fairly well.

Where neither of us had expertise, such as in popular music and disco, we consulted scholars who did. Several friends and colleagues as well as our respective partners read through and commented on the manuscript as it took shape but, deaf to our pleas, Grove cut the final paragraph in which we named and thanked them.

Philip carried by far the heaviest load toward the end, in creating the (huge) bibliography and in negotiations with Grove, in part because he had the institutional facilities and resources. We had fits of furious venting over the phone at Grove’s editorial directives. Philip was a very gentle, diplomatic man who hated confrontation of any kind, but I’d never heard him be so angry.

Philip came east again with the galleys. We laid out the columns on my dining table and took turns to read aloud while the other mended the text. We’ve written about Grove’s cuts and changes, and about our original intentions as coauthors, in the GLSG Newsletter volume 11, issue 1 (Spring 2001)²², in which the unexpurgated text of “Lesbian and Gay Music” appears²³, with an introductory comment by the Newsletter’s co-editors Ivan Raykoff and Gillian Rodger²⁴. Philip responded to our dismissive or derisive critics in the BBC Music Magazine (February 2002)²⁵, a terrific piece, with campy color graphics and his own special flair for “charm with a bite”.

Carlos: — Are you aware of critical and journalistic responses to “Lesbian and Gay Music” by different people in different places?

Liz: — Other than those first reviews, no, I’m not.

Carlos: — For all the controversy surrounding “Lesbian and Gay Music”, it seems to me that you and Philip stay within the boundaries of the reference work: vast bibliographic panel, solid theoretical and historical contextualizations, sobriety of the prose, which leaves out a host of picturesque stories, but out of which provocative statements emerge every now and then; for instance, about Tipton (“her impeccable improvisations, gift for mimicry, same-sex marriages and adopted sons may have had more to do with making it in a male-dominated music and its venues than in a dildo and tuxedo”), or Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saëns (“a couple of middle-aged queens, one in drag, camping it up on the main stage of the Moscow Conservatory?”). To what do you attribute that controversy?

Liz: — We wrote within Grove’s boundaries, as you put it, because it was important to us to insure that this piece would not be rejected. Both of us have written for Grove in the past. We knew the ropes. This commission was not only the first of its kind but possibly the only opportunity the two of us would get to write a review essay (and that’s what we meant it to be) and have it appear in Grove, where it can be expected, firstly, to have a long life and, secondly, to be read beyond our own immediate circle of gay and lesbian musicologists. The way we presented it was less a compromise with a standard reference work than a commitment to colleagues and our field of inquiry and its future. The next generation will add to it in future editions.

I hope our sober prose, as you say, is not entirely dull. It seemed to us, as we wrote it, quite daring! I admit we were tickled when Grove let through (or missed) my saucy Billy Tipton line, and livid when they hacked off Philip’s campy tale of Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saëns on point. (See? We did have lines of our own, too.) We did major reconstructive work on that gorgeous finale, but it was never the same, alas.

To what do I attribute controversy over this piece of writing? Gay and lesbian work, no matter what field it is in or what tone or style it wears, will be controversial, I expect. Being outspokenly out and public, a political as well as an authorial act, will have its censors and critics, no matter what’s actually said or done. Does that answer the question?

There’s more. Philip, remember, was British by birth and education, and I an Australian. Did our being in a sense immigrants and foreigners give the two of us an advantage in North America, not just for our funny accents and different expressions but in other deviant ways? Put it another way: if talking about lesbian and gay issues to an American audience was scary, in my homeland it was devastating when fellow Australians, old mates of mine in musicology, have walked out in the middle, white with rage. Philip was a nervous wreck before some of his appearances in England. I can see him still, back in 1991, shaking with fright next to me, the two of us giving papers on our usual “front” guys, Britten and Smyth, on the last day, the final panel, of the first conference ever held in London on music and gender. I think the fright was more about addressing one’s mentors and colleagues on home turf than about uttering the unspeakable. In North American venues, in Canada or The Netherlands, speaking out loud didn’t pack the same punch to the gut.

Grove’s editors seemed keen to distance themselves and English musicology from our piece, as if gay and lesbian musicology were an aberration of impurely North American origin and concern. Philip took their unkinder cuts to heart in part because they came from Britishers. Grove, like Queen Victoria, is a British-made institution. I wonder if a tiny, retro part of the former King’s College choirboy and his ex-colonial chum secretly longed for her blessing. That’s a queer thought.

Carlos: — According to Sadie’s interview with Church in The Independent²⁶, one of Grove’s contentions was citation of homosexual composers as such. Do you do any “outings” in “Lesbian and Gay Music”?

Liz: — We did no outings that were not already on public record, which is not to say we were against outing as a political act. Philip actually grew the list for the BBC article.

Carlos: — In one e-mail message of 26 June 2001²⁷, Philip says that one of the reasons both of you insisted on changing the title of “Gay and Lesbian Music” to “Lesbian and Gay Music” was perhaps just to irritate Grove. Have you and Philip made an intentional effort to cause maximum embarrassment to the “authorities” concerned? In other words, does “Lesbian and Gay Music” have anything to do with zap?

Liz: — We asked to have the title stand as “Lesbian and Gay Music” and cross-referenced under “Gay and…” They refused. I don’t think they understood the distinction. We didn’t mind embarrassing anyone. Lesbian and gay musicology has everything to do with “in your face” and zap, as you say; it’s not just foreplay but the main act. The double title made a political point and drove home our concern for gender balance. Where better to make it than under the dowager covers of a desperately apolitical Grove?

I want us to remember how acutely sensitive and respectful Philip was toward women in person and gender in practice, how it embarrassed him when male colleagues, straight and gay, were not. Given the chance, he’d always substitute a feminine pronoun for third-person masculine and come up with a lesbian instead of a gay example to illustrate a point. None of the eulogies and obituaries written to honor him made notice of this singular aspect: that all of his collaborative gay and lesbian work was done with lesbian feminists. He took great delight and pride in that.

My point is that Philip became a feminist gay man. By educating himself about women and gender, he liberated himself from the closeted, misogynist, exclusive and privileged Cambridge milieu in which he was trained. That was a remarkable achievement. His self-education was influenced especially by Sue-Ellen Case’s theoretical work on theatre and butch/femme lesbian performance, Susan McClary’s breakthrough work on gender and sexuality in music, Feminine Endings²⁸, which galvanized the “new” musicology and gay and lesbian music studies, and by his partner, George Haggerty’s, studies of gay sensibility in 18th century English literature.

Carlos: — Another thing that strikes me in “Lesbian and Gay Music” is how, at two different points at the end of the text, you use two similar markers — “the approach so far in this discussion”, at the beginning of “Divas and Discos” (the penultimate section), and “the discussion so far”, at the beginning of “Anthropology and History” (the final section) — to introduce changes of approach, first from composers and performers of music to their audiences, and then beyond “the 20th century, […] Europe, North America and their outposts”, where, you argue, “gay, lesbian, bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual” musics might not exist. In this manner, in addition to presenting a broad panel of lesbian and gay music, you and Philip also illustrate, didactically, what the new musicology stands for.

Liz: — Not a question, as you say, but the point is well made about changes in approach and subject within a more or less continuous narrative and about “new musicology” and what it stands for. We tried to be inclusive. We consulted with other workers in the field. And because the field of inquiry is relatively new, a work in progress, we did mean the essay to suggest ideas and topics for further research and discussion.

Carlos: — How does “Lesbian and Gay Music” relate to affirmative action policies?

Liz: — Affirmative action, currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, is being eroded in public education in the U.S.²⁹, but the gay and lesbian movement has never been included in it. Gay and lesbian music study is related to affirmative action not in terms of policy but in the way it follows a model in African-American studies and women’s studies that asserts visibility and diversity.

Over the last several years, in North America, there have been policy changes that affect gay and lesbian lives: hate crimes legislation, civil rights issues, harassment issues, child custody and adoption issues, domestic partner and health benefits at state and institutional levels. There is also a greatly increased social and cultural awareness, especially in the media. Policy and legislation are only a part of social change.

Carlos: — How solidly established — if at all — is the area of “Lesbian and Gay” or “Queer” Studies in U.S. academia?

Liz: — Programs in lesbian and gay studies are taken seriously by academics and are very important in the student curriculum. In a conservative climate they can, of course, be disbanded. Not long ago, a conference at one of the State University of New York campuses had a lot of adverse attention for its gay and lesbian content. Gay and lesbian studies are always at risk for funding and institutional support when people in the wider community are up in arms. The concern is always from outside, from boards of trustees and big donors. If I may speak again of my own experience: when I taught lesbian courses at two NYC colleges from the mid 1980s to mid 1990s, gay and lesbian studies was not at all institutionally secure. At the first college, the very word “lesbian” was kept invisible, even in the course title, by students themselves who were afraid to be associated with lesbians or to come out to parents and room-mates. At the second, after I completed my four-year contract as a guest professor in gay and lesbian studies, my students and I, with the support of a couple of faculty members, fought to keep that position there — successfully, it turned out; it is permanent now, with the possibility of tenure.

Carlos: — In one e-mail message of 26 June 2001³⁰ Philip states that use of the word “queer” is on the wane, as is “queer theory”. Why?

Liz: — Theory itself is on the wane. You don’t hear as much about queer theory or a queer movement now, perhaps because identity politics is on the wane. In the mid 1980s and early ’90s, “queer” was very popular. In a word, it was about (re)claiming an identity. It reflected a certain moment, for young people especially, and was very much in vogue when I was teaching gay and lesbian studies, when gays and lesbians fought to keep those categories visible and not have them subsumed under trendy queer theory. Perhaps all that identity anxiety is not as important to young people now? There are other issues some might think more important?

Carlos: — Now that a Portuguese translation and an English edition of “Lesbian and Gay Music” are ready and online³¹ I question one point: that, as Philip and yourself state in the introduction, there was a conscious effort by both of you to keep the balance between music written or performed by women and music written or performed by men, whereas the editor has picked out sound examples almost exclusively for music created and performed by men. Is there anything you would like to change in “Lesbian and Gay Music” if you were to write it again?

Liz: — Shorter sentences! But I wouldn’t change a word. I’d expand it, actually. I’d seek responses from other countries and cultures and have contributing specialists for new or revised sections under their own by-lines. I’d have illustrations, like the marvelous ones you found and put online. Here’s just one example of work we didn’t include which I’d want to add, a New York Times piece about openly gay rappers Caushun, Rainbow Flava, Man Parish, and at least 40 more worldwide — including a transvestite, Katey Red, and “a short white lesbian named Cyryus (pronounced Serious)” — in a hip-hop mainstream that’s “as closed to gay rappers as the major leagues were to black men before Robinson”³². Sooner or later, Grove will get Cyryus.

Thank you for your questions, Carlos, and for all that you’re doing to make “Lesbian and Gay Music” more accessible, both online and in translation. It’s been great talking with you.

Carlos: — Thank you for your kindness, Liz.

Notes