Queer Ear

Through provisional, idiosyncratic, and non-normative listening practices, Queer Ear: Remaking Music Theory counters music theory's continuing tendencies towards rationality, unity, unilinearity, teleology, and logical certainty. In this volume, editor Gavin S.K. Lee brings together a diverse group of music theorists who issue queer challenges to both music theory and musicology and show that queerness is integral to music-theoretical practice. These investigations of the "queer ear" and queer soundings, while drawing upon a broad range of approaches, are united by the repurposing of "hard" music-theoretical apparatuses, as well as "soft" apparatuses like narratology and cultural theory, for queer ends. Such repurposings contribute to the search for general principles--or a theory--of queering that counters mainstream music theory's proclivities, instead encouraging everyone to experiment with queer ways of listening. Through the lenses of queer temporality, queer narratology, and queer music analysis, the essays examine a wide variety of artists and composers, including Sun Ra, Cowell, Czernowin, Henze, Schubert, and Schumann; theories ranging from Schenker to queer shame, disability studies, and posthumanism; and authors such as Edward Cone and Edward Prime-Stevenson. Together, they rethink the field's major tenets, examine hidden histories, and view listening practices from the perspective of non-normative subjectivities. Ultimately, Queer Ear works to queer the field of music theory while paying heed to the ways in which music theory intersects with diverse, embodied LGBTQ lives.

Gavin S.K. Lee is Assistant Professor of Music at Soochow University. His research on queer music studies and global musical modernisms, particularly in Asian geographies, has appeared in Music Theory Spectrum, Music Analysis, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, and Current Musicology. He is the author of the forthcoming Estrangement from Ethnicity: Music and Sinophone Alienation and editor of Rethinking Difference in Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Music. In recent years, Lee has presented guest lectures on three continents at universities in the US, Australia, and Taiwan.

Introduction: Queer Ear Gavin S.k. Lee 1 Queer and Critical Race Theory, Figuring Out Music Theory Gavin S.K. Lee, Philip Ewell, and Robert Hatten Queer Music Analysis 2 Music Analysis; Queer Academy James Currie 3 Queering Schubert's "Der Atlas": Reflections on Positionality and Close Reading David Bretherton 4 The Expression of Queerness in Hans Werner Henze's Music Federica Marsico 5 Multiplicities, Truth, Ethics: a queering analysis of Chaya Czernowin's Anea Crystal Judith Lochhead Queer Temporality 6 Sun Ra's Fletcher Henderson Chris Stover 7 The Chronographic Fallacy of Unilinear Music Theory, Or, Un(Re)productive Temporality in Dichterliebe Gavin S.K. Lee 8 Queering Musical Chrononormativity: Percussion Works of the West Coast Group Bill Solomon Queer Narratology 9 Queer Sexuality and Musical Narrative Fred Everett Maus 10 "Legendary In-Reading": Musical Meaning, Analysis, and Biography in Edward Prime-Stevenson's Music Criticism and Sexology Kristin Franseen 11 Animating Musical Agency Vivian Luong Index