I think Moore makes his point fairly clear, that Poulenc used camp quite extensively in his works. His argument is well-thought out, could probably be more concise, but accurately depicts his point. What I had hoped he would comment on, and what I didn’t really didn’t feel expressed, is why this article was necessary for the future of Poulencian studies. At first this seems like an incredibly stupid question, sure if we’re talking about Poulenc we’ll want to know about who he was. Moore argues that Poulenc’s music is very informed by his sexuality, which he provides ample evidence for. What I would really like to know is why this is important for the rest of our research on Poulenc in general. I don’t take “because we need to know everything about Poulenc” as a suitable answer for this. I see no deeper argument by Moore for why Poulenc’s sexuality is of importance to us other than it influenced his music to be different than it might have been otherwise. How does this play, and I saw some of this, into the greater atmosphere of 20’s Paris? I would personally argue that Moore created a support in a greater argument, a necessary one at that, but not entirely it’s own argument. So, I guess what I’m saying in regard to the prompt is that Moore’s argument is incomplete, that this is a proof for a further step that is not taken.
Dorf talks about a different subject entirely. Her argument is that Satie contributed to the essence of musical Lesbianism through his work Socrate. He argues that Socrate exhibits signs of Sapphism because it was written as an expression of Lesbianism for Princesse de Polignac. Unfortunately, I don’t think his argument is very well supported. Much of his argument is purely anecdotal and while it was a pleasant read, didn’t really add to his argument. At least, he should have connected his anecdotal evidence to the text and writing. He cited no specific reference points in the piece/text and chose to include vague references to the piece instead.