Klarinet Archive - Posting 000011.txt from 2008/02

From: "Daniel Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Strauss' use of orgasms
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:29:41 -0500

In speaking about Salome, I mentioned that Strauss presented music to
describe Salome's orgasm. This apprentaly is her first because she is a real
necrophiliac, unable to achieve sexual satisfaction except in the present of
a dead body or even a fragment of a body. And she would have had little
previous opportunity or experience with that kind of thing. (By the way,
necrophila is illegal almost everywhere. It is pretty icky stuff.)

But that opera was not the last time that Strauss would use orchestral music
to simulate an orgasm.

Just before the curtain rises on Rosenkavalier's first act, the orchestral
music infers that the couple (the 17-year old Octavian and the 36 year old
Marshallin) are having sex. And suddenly, in case you are from a small
midwestern town and don't know much about this kind of thing, Stauss give
the orchestra's 4 horns some three or four giant whoops, that simply have no
place in the orchestral music's material. But now that you know what they
are, pay attention to the music the next time you hear or play
Rosenkavalier.

Dan Leeson
dnleeson@-----.net
SKYPE: dnleeson

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