Sexually Eccentric Music

[Mandryka]

Apart from the usual fiddling with form and style, the dominant trend in twentieth-century music was a sort of cheerful dismantling of everything wholesome. Composers became rather keen on highlighting the more painful corners of human existence. Fear, despair, illness and various sexual eccentricities were all enthusiastically represented, as if writing something beautiful had become terribly unfashionable.

If, however, one preferred healthy music - calm, clear and still on speaking terms with the classical tradition - one might have turned to Sibelius, Messiaen, Richard Strauss, Arvo Pärt, Vaughan Williams, Nielsen, Górecki. They had not yet decided that beauty was a crime.

Oh, now you can't leave that there - examples, please, examples!  (Perhaps we need a new thread: Sexually Eccentric Music.)  I must say that the first one that occurred to me was the incest and necrophilia in the opera by that healthy fellow Richard Strauss.

Robert Ashley - Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon (1972)

[Todd]

[T. D.]

Julius Eastman comes to mind.

Rzewski's De Profundis might not be sufficiently explicit, but it's an excellent piece:

IMO it doesn't take a psychoanalyst to detect tortured sexual subtexts in various Britten operas. Death in Venice being one of the more obvious.

[Symphonic Addict]

What about this? Too explicit?

[Mandryka]

[prémont]

I'm way behind. I had no idea sex could be expressed specifically through music.

[JBS]

An obvious one is the soprano's orgasm in Carmina Burana.

[Mandryka]

An obvious one is the soprano's orgasm in Carmina Burana.

And the musical orgasm Bernstein creates in the overture to Rosenkavelier.

[AnotherSpin]

I'm way behind. I had no idea sex could be expressed specifically through music.

That's because you'd rather listen to Bach than Jimi Hendrix.

[Todd]

And the musical orgasm Bernstein creates in the overture to Rosenkavelier.

Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie is rather obviously sexual in nature in parts, at least if the composer is to be believed.  Act II of Tristan is blindingly/deafeningly sexual, unless the lovers were just singing each other's name to find each other in the dark.  Jazz and Rock 'n' Roll both have more than a handful of pieces that are overtly sexual.  It's hard to say that the message and music of Whole Lotta Love is about deep philosophical contemplations.  Some ancient Troubadours loaded up their tunes with obvious sexual elements.  Sex permeates big ol' swathes of western music.  I thought that rather obvious.

[pjme]

An obvious one is the soprano's orgasm in Carmina Burana.

Then there is Orffs Trionfo di Aphrodite and the newly married couple crooning away in ...ecstasy..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ9slW7MZdA&list=PLNyiNsG4q8mAb78YEfKuawl80R5l99JGL&index=13

Bartoks Judith however has the best ecstatic , most wonderful "exclamation"  - the opening of the
Fifth door in  "A kékszakállú herceg vára"

https://youtu.be/w7zqNgta_cw?si=gLSGaF11jRHQWicg

[JBS]

That's because you'd rather listen to Bach than Jimi Hendrix.

The bass/soprano duets in BWV 140.

[Daverz]

The sex scene in Lady Macbeth of Mtensk is a good example of sex represented in music.  Though that's just ordinary rutting rather than anything eccentric.

Some of the Bach cantatas strike me as too obsessed with blood, death and sin to be described as "wholesome".

[Mandryka]

Text of Hadewsjch (De Materie)

Then He came from the altar, showing Himself in the shape of a child, such as He looked in the first three years of His life. He turned to me and out of the ciborium He took His body with His right hand, and with His left hand he took a goblet that seemed to come from the altar, but I do not know that for certain. Then He came to me, now in the clothes and in the form of the man He was the day when He first gave us His body, enchanting and beautiful, with a ravishing face, and with the humble attitude of someone who already belongs to another. Then He gave Himself to me in the form of the Sacrament, and afterwards He gave me to drink from the goblet: it seemed and tasted as usual. Then He came very close to me, took me in His arms, and pressed me to His chest. All my limbs felt His, to their total satisfaction, as my heart and my humaness longed. I felt truly satisfied and saturated. Also, I had just the power to bear this for a while, but soon, I lost sight of this handsome man, and I saw Him fading and melting away, until I could no longer feel Him next to me, or perceive Him within myself. At that very moment I felt that we were one together, without any difference. All this was real, tastable and tangible — like one really sees and feels the Sacrament, or the way lovers, taking pleasure in seeing and hearing each other, can get lost. After this I stayed one with my Love, melting with Him, until nothing was left of me. I was beside myself, in exaltation, and in my mind I was raised up to a place where many different Hours were shown to me.

[bioluminescentsquid]

The bass/soprano duets in BWV 140.

An unlikely one, but certain recordings So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen from the Matthew Passion feel very sensual, with the two voices so intertwined.

I think this also applies to a lot of Renaissance mass settings (particularly ones before Josquin) where thin textures are common. Björn Schmelzer often emphasizes the sensual and subversive aspects of polyphony and points out how some sources describe polyphony (and the musicians performing it) in sexualized terms. Oh, and I can't forget Josquin the undead

[Roasted Swan]

The storm in Walton's Troilus and Cressida is intended to portray a night of passion.....

[KevinP]

Hindemith's Sancta Susanna.

[Florestan]

Some of the Bach cantatas strike me as too obsessed with blood, death and sin to be described as "wholesome".

That was actually Lutheranism's problem, not Bach's specifically.

[AnotherSpin]

Just to be clear, because my original wording sparked this discussion: I did not mean sexuality in general — there's nothing objectionable about healthy sexuality.

What I was actually referring to are different forms of perversion.

[Mandryka]

What I was actually referring to are different forms of perversion.

Like in Oedipus Rex.

I don't know what to say about the first act, Olympia, from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. We know that people really do fall in love with chatbots. Seems odd, until you're lured in.