ORCHESTRAL MANEUVERS David Del Tredici has been known for shaking up the classical-music scene

Photograph: Paula Court

Twice in his distinguished career, American composer David Del Tredici has caused a stir in the normally sedate world of classical music. In the 1970s, he rejected the then-prevalent mode of dissonant complexity, turning instead to melody and harmony in a series of huge, flamboyant pieces based on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Del Tredici’s second challenge to orthodoxy came in 1996, when a sexuality workshop led him to create works that openly celebrate homosexuality, such as Gay Life and My Favorite Penis Poems. Strong, busy and happily married to a corporate lawyer, Del Tredici celebrates his 70th birthday this week with a concert event.

What was it that sparked your decision to turn against the mainstream in the 1970s?

Like many seemingly shocking decisions, it was a process. I was perfectly happy in atonality. It’s hard to realize now that atonality was thrilling: It was the bad thing, the thing that was not Copland or Americana. I set James Joyce, and it seemed to fit—he was a troubled, modern, lapsed Catholic, like myself. I didn’t make a decision to “go tonal,” but I got interested in Lewis Carroll, and the texts I chose to set ultimately demanded tonality.

The impact of that music was fairly dramatic.

I went from being a respected composer to a loved and reviled composer! [Laughs] It was an exciting time.

Was widespread success a contributing factor to your struggle with alcoholism?

Totally, because before that I had no connection to drinking or anything like that. As I got more successful, it probably was the stress; also, I didn’t think I deserved it—it was an accident, it was something I couldn’t handle. As I increasingly got put on a pedestal, to feel human-sized I used to get drunk.

How did participating in Body Electric workshops in 1996 help you turn things around?

In a way, alcoholism opened me up to a whole world of interior life I didn’t know I had. I learned all about therapy, and also about being gay: I was always out to my friends, but I wasn’t out in the press or anything like that. Body Electric was a kind of recovery that appealed to me, especially the whole aspect of sexuality and being open.

There have been LGBT composers in classical music from the beginning, but it’s always been a “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation.

That’s so true, and that’s what I’m trying to counter now. It was the times. In my younger days, I was close with a number of famous gay composers: Aaron Copland, Barber, Menotti, Bernstein. I don’t remember thinking, I wish they’d come out. So there were no role models; it was a shameful thing to be a composer who was gay. I’ve gone a little to the other extreme; I think I’ve actually burned bridges by being as out as I am. To be interested in leather, to be interested in drag—those are like forbidden parts of being gay.

Has it had repercussions in terms of people not commissioning you anymore?

Well, you never know what you didn’t get. I wrote a piece called Wondrous the Merge, which has a celebratory text, and it was going to be done at the Great Lakes Music Festival outside Chicago. And it was cancelled once they actually got the texts. It wasn’t pornographic; it just spoke of the love of two men.

Turning that around, what signs have given you hope for genuine acceptance?

Well, thank God there’s such a thing known as the younger generation! There’s a wonderful young group called the Tobinski–Algera Concerts that wants to do Gay Life. They like it, they’re gay, it’s not even an issue. Of course, they’re very small; once you get into the higher-profile organizations, the more scary it gets. But I’m excited now by setting texts which have no tradition for being set. No one has set explicitly gay poetry. How do you do it? What’s the tone you’re supposed to set? I like that.

David Del Tredici’s 70th Birthday Celebration is Sat 17.