Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses

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Asexual and Aromantic Narratives in Musical Works: Towards an Aspec Canon

Mascitti, Saskia P C ( 2022)

Asexual and aromantic (“aspec”) representation in media has grown over the last decade, yet remains limited in the realm of music and music research. By analysing the works of Euripides’ Hippolytus (428 BC)/Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie (1733), Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company (1970) and Moses Sumney’s Aromanticism (2017), the numerous ways these communities exist in music can be discussed and recognised. The changing adaptations of the Hippolytus story exposes the narrowing of possibilities for asexual life through the erasure of the titular character’s identity. In Company, an aromantic Bobby explores the challenges of individuality under the pressures of amatonormativity and the expectation of marriage. Finally, Aromanticism creates a space of intentional representation, conceptualising lovelessness as a “sonic landscape.” The growing musical awareness of aspec identity shown through these three case studies may inspire hope for an aspec lens in researching music, as well as the creation of new aspec works in the future.