Klarinet Archive - Posting 000023.txt from 2008/02

From: "Daniel Leeson" <dnleeson@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Strauss' use of orgasms
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:28:38 -0500

There is the opera with a title similar to "Lady Macbeth of Mzenk" in which,
in the San Francisco production, the two main characters simulate sex in a
bed in full view of the audience. Maybe in wasn't simulated. And some
clothes were worn. I couldn't tell because I was in the balcony.

Mozart's use of clarinets was invariably romantic, and not sexual. He used
them frequently in pairs and in support of a female character. The Noturni
for 2 women and 1 man accompanied by combinations of clarinets and basset
horns (which I played with Forrest in Las Vegas a couple of years ago), are
very much romantic.

But I don't know of a single case of Mozart using clarinets in a sexual
sense. Even in Don Giovanni, they stay out of the sex business.

But also in San Francisco during the 1991 commemoration of Mozart's death, a
soprano sang the Magic Flute's first Queen of the Night aria, topless, and
upside down on a trapeze.

It was breathtakeing and I lost my place in the music, so occupried was I.

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Alexander Brash [mailto:brash@-----.edu]
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 1:27 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] Strauss' use of orgasms

This thread might have some real potential.

I know there was a scandal with Nijinsky's original portrayal of the Faun
in the Debussy - he apparently mimed masturbation and climax onstage (not
spamming here, it even shows up in the wiki article on him).

Other musical or artistic portrayals of coitus? I think Mozart often used
clarinets to indicate the hanky-panky was about to start, but I'm sure Dan
knows more details :)

Alex

On Fri, February 1, 2008 12:29 pm, Daniel Leeson wrote:
> 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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