Isn’t That Life, in a Way
Trying to Accommodate Dissonance?” Reflections on Lesbianism and the Life and Music of Ann Southam
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6047966 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tamara Bernstein (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 43-53 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Circuit Musiques contemporaines (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1183-1693 • E-ISSN: 1488-9692 |
| Publisher | Consortium Erudit (PUBLISHER • CA) |
| DOI | 10.7202/1076404ar |
| OpenAlex | W3162573729 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Canadian composer Ann Southam (1937–2010) was a proud, outspoken, and generous feminist who found affinities between feminism and the minimalist musical language she developed in the late 1970s. At the same time, Southam was a very private person; it was only towards the end of her life that she began to speak on record about being gay. Music writer Tamara Bernstein, a friend of the composer, weighs the merits of focussing on this side of Southam’s life: the willingness with which Southam spoke in her final interviews about the difficulty of coming of age as a lesbian in the 1950s, and the fact that material related to this from her final interview has not been published until now; the importance of remembering how recently lgbtq rights were fully enshrined in Canadian law. Finally, alongside a caveat about the dangers of reductivism, and reminders that Southam found musical inspiration in other sources (e.g., nature), the author suggests ways in which Southam’s struggles with a sexual identity considered “dissonant” may have found their way into her music
Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive dissonance · Consonance and dissonance · Lesbian · Literature · Musical · Sociology · Gender Studies · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology · Sound Studies and Aurality
| Highly cited | No |
|---|