Bottoming for Wagner: Listening, Analysis and (Gay-Male) Subjectivity

There exists, under various names and guises since the late nineteenth century, a common subject position constructed among Western gay men that engages power, agency, embodiment, sexual experience and marginalized identity in a way that sheds light on the essence of Wagner’s musical idiom and its lasting force in Western culture. Through analysis and close reading of instrumental passages from the end of the opening prelude to Lohengrin and the prelude to Act II of Die Walküre, this article constructs a non-essentialist gay-male subjectivity to explain the emotional force that Wagner’s use of tonality, harmony, theme, form and timbre achieve from this particular viewpoint. More specifically, the article traces the various teleologies of Wagner’s compositional practice and the ways in which these musical teleologies reinforce the explicit textual and dramatic centralities of sex and power in Wagner’s work, themselves dependent on these same centralities in contemporary culture.