• Classical Works Addressing AIDS
• Music Theater Works Addressing AIDS
• Popular Works Addressing AIDS

The effects of AIDS on American music can be seen not just in the foreshortened careers of musicians but also in the creative output of an era. These listings document the efforts of more than 300 composers to consciously integrate the topic of AIDS into musical compositions. Like other art works of the AIDS era, this music incites and consoles, educates and awakens.

The number of works found in different genres speaks to the diversity of sources and approaches:

Classical:     Instrumental pieces     Songs for solo voice     Choral pieces		32 78 (51 from The AIDS Quilt Songbook) 85 (51 for men's chorus)
Popular Song: (Includes rock, rap, disco, country, folk, cabaret, etc.)		185
Music Theatre:     Musicals     Operas		26 7

Although AIDS surely affected an entire generation's experience of music, we tried to be strict in the creation of these lists. We included a work only if a composer or publisher indicated that the piece somehow was about AIDS, or if an original song appeared in the clear context of AIDS, such as Bruce Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia."

We did not include works that simply had a dedication to someone who died of AIDS, pieces suggested as appropriate for AIDS memorials or events, or songs about the gay experience that did not at least allude to AIDS. After the list of popular songs, we do include a few recorded collections with original material, but we exclude AIDS fundraising discs and recordings of preexisting works that were performed in the context of AIDS, such as the Red+Hot series.

Through our research into the music of composers who have died of AIDS, we came across a number of pieces whose connection to AIDS was implied and merited inclusion in these listings. For example, Ronald Roxbury's last completed work was a setting of Walt Whitman's "Goodbye My Fancy."

In all, the listings include music by 22 composers who died of AIDS and another eight who are public about living with HIV/AIDS.

Like Roxbury, a number of other composers set the poetry of Whitman. There are nine settings of poetry by the late Paul Monette, who died of AIDS in 1995.

A number of other artists who died from AIDS can also be found in these listings because of their collaborations with composers or because their words were set to music. These include: poet Melvin Dixon (set by David Krakauer in The AIDS Quilt Songbook); painter and writer David Wojnarowicz (whose voice can be heard in a 1989 collaboration with Ben Neill); and writer and performer Assotto Saint (in a collaboration with his companion Jan Holmgren).

The listings also include 12 different works entitled "Requiem," though most do not use the traditional Latin text. In addition to The AIDS Quilt Songbook, an on-going series of songs that was conceived by the late baritone William Parker, there are six other pieces whose titles refer to the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

In the pop music listings, there are seven songs with the name "AIDS" and two named "SIDA" (Spanish for AIDS). The most widely recorded piece is "Love Don't Need a Reason," by Peter Allen, Michael Callen and Marsha Malamet, which has been recorded by at least 19 different artists or choirs.

As with the composer entries in this catalog, we hope that these lists will both inspire new performances and broadcasts and constitute a resource for the examination and study of what can be considered a musical genre that crosses over stylistic barriers. These works—and others that have no doubt been overlooked—are vivid testimony to the social awareness of American composers.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This list began in the early 1990s and was conceived as a counterpart to exhibits by visual artists whose work addressed the contemporary crisis of AIDS. It was soon taken up and added to by Eero Richmond, then of the American Music Center. In 2001, when I began researching deceased composers for The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, this list seemed like a natural extension of that work. It has grown enormously in the ensuing two and a half years.

Many composers, choristers, publishers and scholars generously passed on information for inclusion. Special thanks to Keith Ward for updates on The AIDS Quilt Songbook, Rebecca Olthafer for additions to the theatre list, JD Doyle for assistance on gay recordings and for his valuable website Queer Music Heritage, the publishing house of Yelton Rhodes Music for their thorough indexing of their large catalog of music for gay and lesbian choruses, Richard Dworkin for numerous contributions, and Dan Martin and his team who did the bulk of work on the popular music listings.