平特五不中

Congratulations to听Kristin Franseen, a current doctoral candidate in musicology, who was awarded $10,000 in the听International Grant Writing Competition听for her grant application 鈥淕hosts in the Archive: The Queer Knowledge and Public Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson.鈥� Kristin also won second place in the听Dean鈥檚 Essay Prize for her essay 鈥淥nward to the end of the Nineteenth Century: Edward Prime-Stevenson鈥檚 Nostalgic Musical Time Travel.鈥�听

On the experience, Kristin wrote in a recent email exchange, 鈥淭he听two prizes听will allow me to travel to present at conferences in the UK and US this summer, as well as save some money to focus on completing my dissertation and preparing for the defense. I also hope to edit my entry for the Dean鈥檚 Essay Prize as an article for submission to a scholarly journal.鈥�

Kristin Franseen is a PhD candidate in musicology at 平特五不中. Her dissertation, supervised by Lloyd Whitesell, is entitled 鈥淕hosts in the Archives: The Queer Knowledge and Public Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson.鈥� She has published articles in听Keyboard Perspectives听and听Musique et p茅dagogie, and has presented at numerous regional and international conferences, including听meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Forum of the International Association for Word and Music Studies, and the Society for American Music. Kristin has a BA in music (double bass) and women's studies from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and a听MA in music history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.听Her other research interests include the rise and early marketing of the metronome and听the influence of French Enlightenment philosophy on Antonio Salieri鈥檚 operas.

Abstracts:

Ghosts in the Archives: The Queer Knowledge and Public Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson

Over the past thirty years, gender and sexuality have become important critical lenses within music research; however,鈥痗onventional wisdom holds that鈥痶hese approaches largely date to the so-called 鈥渘ew musicology鈥� of the 1990s. My dissertation traces earlier听knowledge around music, gender, and sexuality through the critical, historical,听and literary works of philosopher听Vernon Lee鈥� (pseud. Violet Paget, 1856-1935), biographer听Rosa Newmarch 鈥�(1857-1940), and鈥痬usic critic/amateur sexologist听Edward Prime-Stevenson鈥�(1858-1942).鈥疊y reevaluating these three individuals as musicologists, I call for a broader understanding of what 鈥渕usicology鈥� means and what kinds of work can be considered relevant to the history of the field. Given recent developments about the鈥痙efinition of research and the ethics of academic life,听I鈥痑lso make a case for examining how these scholars鈥� lives influenced their choice of subject matter and vice versa.听

鈥淥nward to the End of the Nineteenth Century鈥�: Edward Prime-Stevenson鈥檚 Nostalgic Musical Time Travel

In the fourth chapter of my dissertation, I theorize the role of nostalgia and memory in Edward Prime-Stevenson鈥檚 music criticism and amateur sexology. While Prime-Stevenson had a successful career as a music critic in New York City during the 1880s and 1890s, he left the United States around the turn of the century to pursue sexological research in Italy and Switzerland. During his time in Europe, he wrote and self-published an early gay novel,听Imre: A Memorandum听(1906), and one of the first histories of homosexuality in English,听The Intersexes听(1908/1909), under the pseudonym 鈥淴avier Mayne.鈥� Music appears as a theme in both of these works, and听The Inter sexes in particular presents Prime-Stevenson鈥檚 approach to finding queer musical meaning in symphonic music and Wagnerian opera. Decades later, Prime-Stevenson revised his earlier newspaper writings in an effort to preserve his journalism in a more permanent format in听Long-Haired Iopas and听A Repertory of One-Hundred Symphonic Programmes听(1932/1933). 听

All of these books were distributed by Prime-Stevenson in extremely limited editions, and both the texts and his surviving notes suggest a deep musical and personal longing for the 1890s. They feature dedications to Prime-Stevenson鈥檚 friend and ex-lover Harry Harkness Flagler, and focus largely on repertoire that he and Flagler experienced as concertgoers in the early 1890s in New York City. The composers and works Prime-Stevenson identifies as central to the 鈥淯ranian鈥� [homosexual] musical experience also appear in his mainstream music criticism. In听Long-Haired Iopas, sexuality and the erotic appear as a primary force that can never quite be unpacked in a satisfactory manner. Prime-Stevenson alleges that recent psychological interest in sexology accounts for the widespread success of Wagner鈥檚听Parsifal, describes the diversity in the ways he claims men and women respond to and perform music, and toys with issues of forbidden love and male friendship in his biographical musings on bachelors in music history. Ultimately, however, these seemingly disparate approaches to musical-sexual knowledge all link back to his personal views on music appreciation. Prime-Stevenson鈥檚 layers of secrecy and frequent obfuscation can make it difficult to piece together his research process, although some of his claims are corroborated in writings by others, including Ethel Smyth, Edward Carpenter, Rosa Newmarch, and Magnus Hirschfeld.听听More than anything, however, Prime-Stevenson attempted to construct queer music histories where none had previously existed, citing unverifiable gossip and turning to personal experience when the surviving historical record did not live up to his lofty aims. His last book, a collection of 鈥減laylists鈥� of phonograph recordings, continues this canon-building project, and can thus be read as a kind of nostalgic communion with other listeners across time and space.

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Photo by Claire McLeish