Queering Musical Chrononormativity

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines works for percussion ensemble from the 1930s and 1940s through the lens of queer temporalities and Asian exoticization and appropriation by queer West Coast composers Henry Cowell, John Cage, and Lou Harrison. The concept of queered chrononormativity leads to an analysis of the ostinato in percussion composition, which is an attempt to achieve static time inspired by a Western understanding of gamelan and other Asian musics. The West Coast composers’ fascination with Asian culture was part of an apparatus of queer desire that sought out alternative socialities free from the pressures of heterodominant society, yet simultaneously erased the presence of Asian bodies. Seeking out uses of queer time in music by queer individuals illuminates one way in which sexuality can be problematically reflected in an orientalist musical practice. An analysis of Cowell’s Ostinato Pianissimo (1934) demonstrates the construction of static musical temporality that reveals a problematic relationality between the composition and its eroticized source materials.