Jon W. Finson

When the body of Steven Powers, author of a modest (by Florida standards) Ponzi scheme, turns up on "The Drive" in the gay village of Warren Beach, the police face a dilemma. Did the old fraudster simply drop dead crossing the street after some late-night kink with a hustler in a back alley? Or did an enraged "investor" place the corpse on dramatically public display? Detective Frank Salino reluctantly accepts the task of determining the cause of death. Aided by his Lesbian partner, Detective Carmen Rodriguez, and young CSI John Lytle, Salino puzzles fruitlessly over the conflicting scenarios leading to Powers' last end-until Frank's former boyfriend, Bureau Agent Mark Barrington, finally provides some crucial evidence.

Often bawdy, always lyric, and sometimes romantic, A Chosen Landscape relates the tale of a young gay professor among the pleasures, temptations, and hypocrisies of life at a university in the Bible Belt. He journeys through the rich sexual country of this wickedly involuted world, usually titillated but often unsatisfied by his carnal escapades. Whether he can discover his chosen landscape in the duplicitous society of a smug Southern academic town remains to be seen."Here follows a gay wanderer's song cycle about his earlier years. In this genre a young man leaves home for the wider world in search of his fortune and some amorous exploits (perhaps even a mate). . . . Such lyrical fables conclude in one of two ways: with a chanson about arrival in a chosen landscape or about the wayfarer's last end. Enjoy the voyage as far as it goes. I did."

Arguably no other nineteenth-century German composer was as literate or as finely attuned to setting verse as Robert Schumann. Jon W. Finson challenges long-standing assumptions about Schumann's Lieder, engaging traditionally held interpretations. He argues against the belief that the "Year of Song" simply reflects Schumann's personal life. Finson also devotes attention to the form and metric structure of German poetry that is almost entirely new to the discussion of Schumann's songs.Arranged in part thematically, rather than merely by strict compositional chronology, this book speaks to the heart of Schumann's music. Finson's sustained attention to performance, such as questions of whether two singers might divide performance of cycles or whether miscellanies form coherent entities, allows the reader to engage Schumann's songs in novel ways.Finson brings original research and the most recent scholarship to the musically literate public and the expert alike. This represents the definitive work on Schumann's songs and the standard reference for any Schumann enthusiast.