Musings on Handel, Style, and Ideology

I recently returned to Gary C. Thomas’s classic essay ‘Was George Frederic Handel Gay?’ in the context of preparing to conduct an LGBT+ choir in the Hallelujah Chorus. For those who haven’t read it, the answer to the title’s question is: it is significantly more likely that he was gay than that he was straight. There’s a nice summary the reasons for that conclusion, including reference to research done by others since the original publication here.

Thomas writes not just about Handel’s homosocial social circle and activities, but also about how those have been discursively closeted off from his role as celebrated composer. Both in his own lifetime and since, there has been a general attempt to ‘normalise’ him as a properly manly (heterosexual) man, based largely on assertion, along with some invented evidence of ostensible female love interest.

LABBS Convention 2024

Amersham A Cappella and SpecsAppeal: the afterglows were also excellentAmersham A Cappella and SpecsAppeal: the afterglows were also excellent

The last weekend in October typically takes me to the annual convention of the Ladies Association of British Barbershop Singers. This year we were back in Bournemouth, which once again seemed to hang on to the tail end of summer for us.

Looking back on my reflections from last year, I see I was full of thoughts about how hearing fresh music keeps your listeners fresh throughout a long contest day – and also about some strategies to help make that happen. I was having similar thoughts this year, particularly in the quartet contests. Of course now we have the mixed quartet contest alongside the upper voices one, both semifinal and final rounds are significantly longer than they used to be, giving more opportunity for repeated songs to show up.

Further abcd Discoveries

In my previous post about the insights emerging from the Association of British Choral Directors Discovery Day on female composers, I promised to develop a wider point that emerges from a number of themes, but only after I’d discussed some more detailed thoughts shared by Louise Stewart of Multitude of Voyces.

If you’ve not come across this charity before, you should investigate their work, especially if you have any involvement in Christian liturgical music. They’re most famous for publishing collections of music by women for church use – some historical, some newly commissioned - although this is just the headline output of their more general charitable objects, which are about amplifying the voices of those who have been marginalised.

More Discoveries with abcd

The abcd Discovery Day on choral music by women earlier this month provided not only the chance to explore a cornucopia of repertoire, but also generated some interesting insights into the processes by which music gets created and into the repertoire – or not.

The tale of the London Oriana Choir’s Five15 Project, as told by Tara Mack, provided some of these insights. Tara started out by giving a description of the project, which included a programme of sustained commissioning of new music along with programming of existing music by women, and a variety of workshops, over a 5-year period. One thing that struck me about this project was its depth and breadth. It’s hard to get unfamiliar names into the regular performing repertoire because they are, well, unfamiliar, and thus less easy to remember than the big names we hear all the time. Both singers and audiences have a much greater chance of remembering whose music they have experienced if they get repeated exposure.

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