Just went to see the Cleveland Orchestra’s performance. Technically well done, but dear God was it looooong. Four hours with two intermissions.
The program notes include this passage:
There’s wild sex music in Der Rosenkavalier, in the prelude to Act One, which in music shows us exactly what Octavian [a 17-year-old male aristocrat] and the Marschallin [a married older woman] were doing, just before the curtain goes up and we find them cuddling in bed. “It’s very clear in the music, what they did,” says [conductor Franz] Welser-Most, “right down to anatomical details.” Which I’m not going to analyze here, because Welser-Most is right to add that all of us “have fantasy enough.” We all can listen, and imagine for ourselves.
With my tin ear, I didn’t hear anything like this, and Google has failed me, alas. What the hell is he talking about?
I believe it’s where there’s a chromatic line that keeps going up and crescendoing (which I assume represents the build-up towards climax), and shortly after that the horns play repeated glisses upward: “whoop, whoop, whoop…” I heard that they supposedly repeat at the same rhythmic interval as a certain event that happens during sex.
The Whoopy/Tchaikovsky like horn lick near the beginning of the prelude could be interpreted as mad bangings…maybe…
You are so lucky to get to see Cleveland play this… :mad:
Oh! on actually reading the thread i see that low brass has the same idea (we were so original with our user names…)
(we were so original with our user names…)