Trans Sonorities in Grey Grant's “Drones for the In-Between Times”

Abstract

Composer intent has generally been downplayed by contemporary music analysts, often being regarded as an example of an intentional fallacy at best and misleading at worst. This analysis of Grey Grant's choral work posits that such a dismissal not only ignores the potential for an enhanced expressive context afforded by composers' own assessments, but it also contributes to the silencing of already marginalized voices, such as in the case of transgender composers. The author proposes a methodology that incorporates the voices of living composers while circumventing concerns about confirmation bias by building on the framework of music theory, queer musicology, and queer theory. The article demonstrates this theoretical framework using an interview of a transgender composer to supplement an analysis of their contemporary choral piece. By analyzing the work with the added context of the composer's statements about their own music, the author paints a more complete picture of the work, one that reinvests music analysis with the trans voice behind the composition.