Harry Hay, John Cage, and the Birth of Gay Rights Los Angel | The New Yorker

Contents:

• HARRY HAY, JOHN CAGE, AND THE BIRTH OF GAY RIGHTS LOS ANGEL
• WHEN JOHN CAGE BLEW UP AT BUFFALO’S GAY SCENE

HARRY HAY, JOHN CAGE, AND THE BIRTH OF GAY RIGHTS LOS ANGEL

He studied unr Frank Bridge, John Ireland and Arthur Benjam among others, and was also a fe ground-breakg operas, which clu Peter Grim (1945), and The Turn of the Screw (1954) – and his famo War Requiem – tackle ntemporaneo issu around psychology and post-war trma, as well his own homosexualy, which was illegal Brten’s lifetime. As well as beg one of the first openly gay posers full stop, Poulenc also didn’t chew his sexualy the ntext of his relig posns spanned om timate chamber sonatas wh sublime, twistg melodi and lite imprsnist harmoni (thk the 1957 Flute Sonata), to his Piano Concerto and epic one-act opera for soprano and orchtra, La voix humae. Tchaikovsky was gay at a time when was illegal Rsia.

He was believed to have been gay, movg circl Italy and London where same-sex sire was accepted. Mic historian Ellen Harris leads on the se for Hanl’s homosexualy, argug that his ntatas exhib a clear homosexual subtext her book Hanl as Orphs. And like them, he was associated wh gay clergyman, Cardal Pietro Baroque poser and vlist is known for his chamber sonatas and ncerti grossi, and has gone down history for refg to play a sectn of Hanl’s orator, The Triumph Of Time And Tth, bee a vl note went higher than Corelli believed appropriate for the stment.

WHEN JOHN CAGE BLEW UP AT BUFFALO’S GAY SCENE

Unlike Copland, US poser Samuel Barber ma no effort to keep his homosexualy out of explic view and his life partner was poser Gian Carlo Menotti, who he studied wh at the Curtis Instute.

Leonard Bernste also studied at the Curtis Instute wh Barber and Menotti (see above), and although he had an on-aga-off-aga relatnship wh actor Felicia Cohn Montealegre and eventually married her, he was openly gay.

Montealegre herself wrote publicly about her book, The Bernste Letters, “you are a homosexual and may never change – you don’t adm to the possibily of a double life, but if your peace of md, your health, your whole nervo system pend on a certa sexual pattern what n you do? ” Bernste’s Wt Si Story llaborator Arthur Lrents is known to have lled Bernste “a gay man who got married”, statg, “He wasn't nflicted about at all.