"Wild sex music" in Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier"?

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. :wink:

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 :slight_smile: (we were so original with our user names…)

Hey, Elendil’s Heir shouldn’t like music with percussion and low brass: that was the Evil Second Theme of Morgoth :mad: