Conference Agenda

The renaming of Karlsruhe’s Theaterplatz to Hermann-Levi-Platz in 2016 represents a period of renewed interest and appreciation for the nineteenth-century Jewish conductor Hermann Levi (1839-1900). Nonetheless, scholarship on Levi is dominated by the discourse about his Jewishness and his support of Wagner (Gay, Dreyfus, Steil). Meanwhile in the Brahms literature, Levi’s prior relationship with the composer has received less attention than those of Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, and Elisabeth von Herzogenberg. However, this relationship, which Karl Geiringer called “one of the most significant relationships of his [Brahms’s] artistic life,” deserves attention on its own merits—without the retrospective coloring of Levi’s later devotion to Wagner.

This paper reexamines Levi’s relationship with Brahms in the 1860s and offers a queer reading of the first song of Brahms’s Op. 32 (“Wie rafft ich mich auf in der Nacht”), the text penned by gay poet August von Platen (1796–1835). Levi, a theater conductor and amateur composer, premiered and promoted Brahms’s works, helped the composer with musical-dramatic texted works, and encouraged him to write an opera. In particular, Levi’s emotional investment in the relationship, preserved in letters to Brahms and friends, demands further analysis. Although Laurence Dreyfus has coyly noted “more than a passing moment of erotic attraction,” we lack a serious investigation of this relationship considering recent developments in queer musicology, especially in terms of positionality. While Brahms’s perspective remains ambiguous, I argue that Levi struggled with romantic attraction to him and strove for a sense of intersubjectivity with the composer. As he wrote to Clara Schumann, “I’ve lived so much in his [Brahms’s] thought and feeling that he’s become a part of me.” A close contextual and analytical reading of Op. 32/1 reveals that it held personal resonance for Levi with his feelings of inadequacy and struggles with identity. This study provides a more nuanced consideration of both Levi and queer subjectivity in the nineteenth century; it demonstrates how difference within Brahms’s circle may have led to a multiplicity of musical receptions, engagements, and interpretations.

A needle scratches the grooves of an intergalactic record, Clones of Dr. Funkenstein (1976). A deep voice intones a cosmic origin story: Funk, the most treasured knowledge in the universe, was hidden away until the Chosen One, Dr. Funkenstein, could awaken it. The monumental organ of the album's “Prelude” evokes black gospel textures, yet just moments later, “Gamin’ On Ya” subverts expectations with a sparse, metallic texture and pentatonic simplicity. Why does the arrival of Funk’s messiah—who carries the promise of Black liberation—sound so alien? What does this sonic alienness reveal about the intersections of Blackness, queerness, and the sacred?

This paper explores the sonic and visual construction of Black alienness, queerness, and the sacred in Clones of Dr. Funkenstein. Drawing on Elliot Powell’s (2020) analysis of Afro-Asian sonic exchange, I argue that orientalist gestures in “Gamin’ On Ya” function as more than a simple exoticizing trope; they instead signify a strategic play with Otherness, aligning Funk with an aesthetic of fluid identity and hybridity. Likewise, applying Diana Taylor’s (2003) theorization of the colonial encounter as performative paradigm, I consider how Funkenstein’s alienness is staged, not as an imposed condition, but as a self-fashioned mythos that subverts dominant narratives of power. Specifically, the abrupt shift from ecclesiastic grandeur to playful, orientalist funk in “Gamin’ On Ya” sonically encodes Funkenstein’s alienness. I argue that this sudden shift dramatizes Funkenstein’s position as both culturally deviant and messianic, reflecting broader tensions in Afrofuturist world-building around alienness, Blackness, and queerness.

Beyond sound, Clones of Dr. Funkenstein extends this interplay of sacredness and abjection through its album art and narrative. The cover features Dr. Funkenstein in a red sequined outfit, hips thrust forward, overseeing the birth of “Clone Funk” in a high-tech laboratory. Through sound, image, and myth, Clones of Dr. Funkenstein queers the messianic figure, positioning Funk as an expansive, ever-replicating force—one that thrives through mutation, hybridity, and play. Rather than resolving tensions between the sacred and the strange, the album revels in their coexistence, advancing Funk as a model for radical fluidity—where transformation, contradiction, and hybridity are the foundations of Black utopian aesthetics.

The “bury your gays” trope originally described expendable queer characters relative to their straight protagonist counterparts. Despite queer characters now adopting more protagonistic roles in modern media, however, the trope’s sociocultural impact has embedded itself in both creators and audiences of queer media alike (Cover & Milne, 2023). Video games that utilize the horror genre's tropes frequently immerse players in tragic stories, particularly through harsh timbres (Sweeney, 2016). When such stories involve queer characters, players familiar with “bury your gays” may intertextually connect sounds typical of the horror genre to the trope’s possible invocation, enhancing the potential fear response (Perron, 2005a).

This paper analyzes three queer games that employ horrific sonic qualia and portray queer relationships whose success is uncertain, firmly placing players in an environment in which tragedy is probable. For instance, SIGNALIS (2022) combines classic timbral horror markers such as glitch with sinister environments, inviting an embodied sense of dread for the protagonists’ relationship. In Gone Home (2013) and The Last of Us: Left Behind (2014), silence, the creaky sounds of abandoned areas, and ironically perturbing tonality mimic the uncertainty of the relationship through the intensification of the ludic environment’s unpredictability.

Using a perceiver-first model, this paper argues that these horrific musical elements are filtered through the lived experiences of both queer players and those knowledgeable about the trope (Collins, 2008), tapping into an embodied sense of “failure” both ludically and socioculturally (Halberstam, 2011). Queer media is a useful case study because of the “bury your gays” trope’s inherently melancholic origins, even if it has been invoked by queer creators as a means of cathartic self-expression (Hulan 2017). This paper also relies on music’s role in cultivating individualized experiences within larger cultural and generic frameworks, substantiating the claim that semantic generic elements help bolster syntactic ones (Altman, 1984) .This study, as such, interrogates the perpetuation of queer tragedy amidst the ostensible progressivism of protagonistic queer characters.