ABSTRACT
Stan Hawkins has made an indelible mark on the area of popular music studies, especially with his work concerning genders and sexualities. By contrast, many of those who specialise in classical music prefer to claim its ineffability, its having transcended the body and related issues. In this chapter, I seek to demonstrate that classical music has often trafficked in sexual imagery, much of it quite distinct from the hetero-normative models we might expect. Scholars like Hawkins began to show us how popular music shapes our bodies, sexualities, and identities. And if we take the concert repertory out of the closet, we find it rife with erotic images. We also may learn that human beings have always turned to music to grapple with genders and sexualities. Far from denigrating these repertories, such a project promises to reveal the power of operas, ballets, and Lieder to articulate a wide range of subjectivities.
