Victor Borge asked the audience for requests, and someone yelled "Bach!"
Borge replied, "Johann Sebastian? Or Offen?"
But I assume you mean George rather than Ira.
George Gershwin had an intense ten-year affair with Kay (nee Katherine)
Swift, a composer with the distinction of being the first woman to score a
(successful) Broadway musical, "Fine and Dandy" (1930). When she met
Gershwin (like Foss, she was married with kids), she was Julliard-trained
(before it was named Julliard) and a somewhat snooty classical-only
worshipper. Gershwin pursuaded her to explore popular music. Besides the
jazz standard "Fine and Dandy" she wrote the classic torch ballad, "Can't
We Be Friends?" (I have Bing Crosby crooning it.)
Her first husband, the banker Jimmy Warburg, wrote her pop lyrics,
apparently to compete with Gershwin in the tug of war for her affections.
A much richer biography, and plenty more interesting stuff (including
photos of a Very Attractive Flapper), is at the website of the Kay Swift
Trust:
http://www.kayswift.com/bio.html
Meanwhile, I'm a little surprised that several of today's posts imply that
the human libido only comes from the factory in two strictly separate
varieties, Straight or Gay. There's a third possibility about some of the
musicians we're mentioning.
And, in my experience, a fourth possibility. Maybe a fifth. We take it for
granted that great composers go all over the emotional landscape, from holy
to vulgar, from joy and rapture to grief and melancholia. Is it likely that
the romantic and sexual identity of such people would be comfortably
trapped in just one of two rigid categories?
Bob / Massachusetts USA
> [Original Message]
> From: Houpt, Fred <fred.houpt@rbc.com>
> To: paul wiener <pwiener@ms.cc.sunysb.edu>; yuzu <yukaz36@hotmail.com>;
<f_minor@email.rutgers.edu>
> Date: 8/27/2007 10:16:19 AM
> Subject: RE: [F_minor] Re: Cornelia Foss reveals all!!!
>
> Beethoven had lovers, that much is pretty much accepted. And he most
likely used the ladies of the night as well. Copeland and Rorem were gay?
See how little I know......
>
> And, lest we forget, Leonard Bernstein was bi. Wasn't Gershwin gay?
>
> Fred
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: paul wiener [mailto:pwiener@ms.cc.sunysb.edu]
> Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 10:10 AM
> To: Houpt, Fred; yuzu; f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
> Subject: RE: [F_minor] Re: Cornelia Foss reveals all!!!
>
> Opposite sex ? Copeland? Ned Rorem?
>
> Beethoven? (do prostitutes count?)
>
> At 09:20 AM 8/27/2007, Houpt, Fred wrote:
> >Hi all. I have no problem with imagining Glenn having a love life,
> >even a sexually open one. What I do have a problem imagining, is him
> >letting a lover touch, grasp or squeeze his hands. Laugh as you will
> >at my innuendo, but that is the one thing I cannot see him allowing.
> >Platonic love? Nah, Glenn seemed way too passionate and in the arms of
> >a women I can just see him acting in a much more relaxed
> >way....physically. But, we do not really know any of this for sure.
> >
> >It makes me think out loud on the topic of having sexual relations.
> >Let's take a vote amongst ourselves. Which famous composer never had
> >relations with the opposite sex?
> >
> >Brahms? Nah, too many prostitutes all around his early days.
> >Schubert? Ditto.
> >Vivaldi? Don't know anything about his life really.
> >
> >Anyone else have any ideas?
> >
> >Cheers,
> >
> >Fred Houpt
> >Toronto
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