GMG Classical Music Forum

The Music Room => General Classical Music Discussion => Topic started by: springrite on October 14, 2012, 07:32:40 AM

Title: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: springrite on October 14, 2012, 07:32:40 AM
I know there are lots of them, some more obvious than others.

The first that came to mind for me was the big sneeze in Harry Janos. Then, there is that.. uh... "what the hell was that?" in the Haydn Symphony #93. If you go by the Szell recording with Cleveland, it's clearly a fart.

Others?
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: Opus106 on October 14, 2012, 07:38:34 AM
Symphonie Fantastique -- based on processes within the body or a part thereof induced by an external agent.

Oh, and there's that whole thread on orgasmic music.
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: Gurn Blanston on October 14, 2012, 07:52:41 AM
Quote from: springrite on October 14, 2012, 07:32:40 AM
I know there are lots of them, some more obvious than others.

The first that came to mind for me was the big sneeze in Harry Janos. Then, there is that.. uh... "what the hell was that?" in the Haydn Symphony #93. If you go by the Szell recording with Cleveland, it's clearly a fart.

Others?

No doubt. Haydn living up to his rep; a bassoon fart right where there could have been something solemn. That's why I love Haydn. :)

8)
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: springrite on October 14, 2012, 08:00:57 AM
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on October 14, 2012, 07:52:41 AM
No doubt. Haydn living up to his rep; a bassoon fart right where there could have been something solemn. That's why I love Haydn. :)

8)

I remember hearing a timid recording of the Haydn 93 and the announcer said someone about that "burp". I commented to my GF in the car: "Talk about coming out of the wrong end!"
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: Kontrapunctus on October 14, 2012, 09:10:19 AM
There are some rather lurid trombone slides in a sex scene in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: springrite on October 14, 2012, 09:42:46 AM
Quote from: sanantonio on October 14, 2012, 09:24:10 AM
As is my custom I prefer the original instruments and live performances.

You as performer, I'd assume?  :D
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: springrite on October 14, 2012, 10:16:42 AM
Quote from: sanantonio on October 14, 2012, 10:11:32 AM
My wife considers me somewhat of a virtuoso.  But it is not her kind of music.

;)

Married to a critic!  :o
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: Mirror Image on October 14, 2012, 07:04:14 PM
Quote from: James on October 14, 2012, 08:25:38 AM
One the tone scenes in Stockhausen's Montag aus LICHT is the actual loud sound of the flushing of a toilet. It comes after a moment in the opera when a mass of people shout Heil! (short for Heil Hitler!). Quite hiliarous on first listening. And there are countless examples of him ulitizing a whole range of humorous honks, flatulent notes, sounds and effects (mainly from brass/wind players) in his compositions. Not to mention sputtering, gurgling, rushing, smacking, clicking, kissing, breathing, whistling etc. There always was a real true jester in Stockie's spirit.

Yeah, that sounds like something Stockhausen would put into a score. ::) The only problem is he should be flushing this composition along with all the other junk he composed during his lifetime down the toliet along with it, but he's going to need a toliet with one of those high-powered flushes like you find in department store restrooms and restaurants.
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: springrite on October 14, 2012, 07:06:58 PM
Quote from: Mirror Image on October 14, 2012, 07:04:14 PM
Yeah, that sounds like something Stockhausen would put into a score. ::) The only problem is he should be flushing this composition along with all the other junk he composed during his lifetime down the toliet along with it, but he's going to need a toliet with one of those high-powered flushes like you find in department store restrooms and restaurants.

You mean, in the words of Ross Perrol: "That huge sucking sound..."?
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: Mirror Image on October 14, 2012, 07:10:01 PM
Quote from: springrite on October 14, 2012, 07:06:58 PM
You mean, in the words of Ross Perrol: "That huge sucking sound..."?

Yes...WWWHHHOOOSSSHHHH!!!!!
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: listener on October 15, 2012, 12:15:31 AM
There are some quite borborygmic sounds in Penderecki's The Devils of Loudon and an eructation (by the whale) in Tavener's The Whale
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: Mirror Image on October 15, 2012, 07:54:43 AM
If I'm not mistaken there's a bassoon fart like noise at the end of last movement of Nielsen's 6th.
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: snyprrr on October 15, 2012, 08:49:19 AM
At one point in Holliger's incredible String Quartet (1973), maybe it's the viola, produces a throaty squawk/quack that really does sound like an animal's cry. I can't imagine his wind quintet h to be any less a cacophony.

At one point in Xenakis's Eridanos, the string section as a whole does some very high pitched sawing that sounds like breathing. Then there are the 'whoot' whistles that he used in Terretekhtorh and Persephassa.

I'm sure I've heard that high whistling sound you get when a paper thin booger gets stuck in your nose at just the right angle! ;)

I'm having some tympani rumbles right now! :o
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: listener on October 15, 2012, 08:47:35 PM
SCHULHOFF's Sonata Erotica for solo soprano is rather like a monodrama arrangement of Nichols-and-May's John and Marsha routine.
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: springrite on October 15, 2012, 09:16:17 PM
Mentions of Sonata Erotica suddenly reminds me of Takemitsu's Vocalism.
Title: Re: Bodily Functions, Musically Spoken
Post by: listener on November 06, 2012, 11:36:09 PM
Nicolas Slonimsky's Music Since 1900 on Penderecki's Die Teufel von Loudon....
..."to a libretto drawn from Aldous Huxley's novella dealing with the implosion of of the furor uterinus among 16th century Ursuline nuns in the southern French town of Loudon, whose latent sexuality was aroused to a feverish pitch by the virile presence of a macrophallic and multifutuent neighbor cleric whom they accused of invading their bodily orfices in the immund shape of a homuncular incubus, leading to a searching inquest by the Holy Inquisition and ultimately to his execution for communion with the devil on 18 August 1634, set to music with a maximal number of stylistic resources, from copulative heterophony of dissonant counterpoint in a plasma of pantechnical parameters to eschatological scatology in naturalistic onomatopoeia illustrated, e.g., by the sonic simulation of the expulsion of flatulent demons from the gastro-intestinal tract of the prioress in an icositetraphonic series of brobdingnagian borborygmuses."