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Author: Hans-Jürgen Döpp

Translation: Niels Clegg

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ISBN: 978-1-78310-702-5

Hans-Jürgen Döpp

Music & Eros

Contents

Introduction: Music & Eros

Interlude 1 – Alan Arkin

Interlude 2 – Ernest Borneman

Darwin’s Rutting Apes

Dances of Primitive Tribes

The Eastern Belly Dance

Interlude 3 – In Case that’s the Way it is...

Interlude 4 – Voluptuous

Indian Bayaderes

Prostitution and Dance in the Ancient World

Chinese Flower–Girls

Songs of the Devil

Dionysus’ Flute

Courtly Love and Lustful Instincts Troubadours and Court Singers in the Middle Ages

Interlude 5 – Goethe

Don Juan and Music

Beethoven’s “An die ferne Geliebte”‚ (“To My Distant Love”)

Interlude 6 – Nancy Friday

Interlude 7 – Harry Mathews

Wagner’s Perfumed Eroticism

Music and Early Experiences

Interlude 8 – Harry Mathews

Interlude 9 – Jorgi Jatromanolakis

A Near Inability to Experience Pleasure

The Magic of Playing Together

Interlude 10 – Jorgi Jatromanolakis

The Instrument as a Partner

The Round Dance

“This Dancing Vice” by Anita Berber

Interlude 11 – Jean-Michel Jarre on Sex

Interlude 12 – Erich Kästner

¡El Tango me ha tocado!

Rock, Pop and Sex

Electronic Vibrations

Finale

Interlude 13 – E. Th. A. Hoffman

Coda: In Praise of Silence

Index

Notes

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,
The Turkish Bath, 1862.

Introduction: Music & Eros

For Doris

Cunning Odysseus had to protect his shipmates from the alluring song of the Sirens by plugging up their ears with wax. However, Odysseus himself did not want to forego the beauty and voices of these dangerous creatures. As a precaution, he had himself bound to the ship’s mast so as not to fall victim to the dangerous singing.

How can something as simple as sound transform into a powerful love spell? How is it possible through singing alone to inspire sensuality? Why does music play such a major role in love? We want to ascertain the origin of the strong erotic effect of song, dance and music. What explains the magic of musical sounds and rhythms?

Arnold Schönberg once spoke of the “instinctive life of sounds”. What is the relationship between this and the instinctive life of man?

Ovid’s Metamorphoses[1] describes the origin and meaning of music. Already in its mythological origin, music and Eros are intertwined; the sound of the pan flute is intended to reach the lost lover. Ernst Bloch, whose description we cite because of his beautiful style of writing, calls this myth one of the most beautiful fairy tales of antiquity.[2]

“Engaged in a chase with nymphs, Pan stalked one of them, the wood nymph Syrinx. She flees from him and when her flight is hindered by a river, she pleads with the waves, her “liquidas sorores”, to transform her. When Pan grabs her, his hands grab hold of nothing but reeds. While he is lamenting his lost love, a breath of wind and the reeds create sounds whose melody touches the god. Pan breaks the reeds, some long and some shorter pipes, connects the carefully gradated ones with wax and plays the first few notes like the breath of wind had, but instead with living breath and as a song of lamentation. This is how the pan flute was created. The music comforts Pan as he is not able to unite with the nymph who has vanished but not vanished and lives on in his hands in form of the sounds of a flute.”

At the origin of music stands a longing for the unattainable. During flute play, the absent becomes present; the instrument, Syrinx and the nymph become one. The nymph has vanished but Pan holds her in his hands in form of Syrinx.

The first few chapters sketch the close connection between music and lust by referring to the example of artistic “prostitution” showcased in different cultures. The sensual-physical relationship is emphasised in particular through dance and its rhythms.

That music exercises enormous power shows when one tries to regulate it and to limit its influence.

We attempt to sketch the roots of music that reach into a world different from ours by referencing philosophers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.

Compositional creation as a way to transform unfulfilled love into happiness is a theme we explore by taking a look at Beethoven and Hugo Wolf.

Literary examples (Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Arthur Schnitzler) show us the at times fatal power of music.

Playing music with others is just one way of finding happiness. The relationship between the musician and the instrument itself can also blossom into a loving one.

The physical element always remains the basis of eroticism. However, this element has increasingly been replaced in favour of a “spiritual” element through a process of sublimation that has gone hand in hand with cultural development. In the final chapters, which focus on music and dance in the present, an impression is created that suggests a return of the physical element, which is celebrated as “sexual liberation”.

A simple search for eroticism in romantic music has led to the discovery that music is also an echo of bodily functions: the echo of one’s own heart, one’s breath and one’s own desire.

Trying to express the relationship between eroticism and music with the help of words can only ever be described as an attempt at understanding their connection. The one who tries to catch an iridescent soap bubble with his hands will make it burst and instead will have a slight residue sticking to his fingers. The same thing can happen with our topic; we spin a web of language and all that remains are a few puddles of words on a piece of paper in which the secrets of their changing relationship can no longer be discerned. The exploration of our topic is therefore already limited by a methodological boundary due to the incompatibility of the two languages of music and speech.

So we let the iridescent bubble float unobstructed. What we are attempting, is to observe it in different lights and from varying perspectives.

Music, not unlike eroticism, is a medium of transition into another world. This is reminiscent of a question posed by Jean-Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825)): “Oh musical art, are you the evening breeze of this life? Or are you its morning air?”

With respect to the pictures we have chosen; our topic is difficult, even impossible to illustrate. A picture that features an ecstatic facial expression could just as easily illustrate the topic as a harmonious Dutch landscape painting or a drawing with abstract and free-floating lines. Even the most abstract work of art maintains a connection with the powers of Eros, and each picture could be expressed in a composition of sounds. Subsequently we picked superficial pictures whose subject matters show an immediate connection between Eros and music. Because many of the pictures we have chosen have never been displayed, this method seems justifiable. However, those who view music as something holy will see it desecrated in these pictures. Others, on the other hand, may see in them a laughing genius. As much as we do not wish to distinguish between serious and entertaining forms of music in this essay, we also do not want to draw distinctions between sophisticated art and trivial art. The instinctual sexual drive is subject to all works of art. Everything else is merely a question of the degree of sublimation.

Anonymous, Pan teaching Daphnis to play
the Flute, 4th century B.C. Naples.

Correggio (Antonio Allegri), Leda and the Swan, 1532.

Interlude 1 – Alan Arkin

Cassie loves Beethoven

“Is there something that worries you?” David asked.

“Yes, there is something,” Cassie replied thoughtfully. “The music I just heard it has – it broke my heart. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“I’m sorry the music excited you,” David said calmly. “We had hoped it would make you happy.”

“By God,” said Cassie, “It did make me happy. Happier than I thought I would ever be. It carried me off to places I didn’t even know existed. But this last piece... it has made me delirious with joy... it has aroused a yearning in me for things and places that perhaps don’t even exist in this world.”

“We are extremely sorry that the music has stirred your feelings like that.” David said in awe.

“Yes, it has really stirred me to the core,” Cassie said, “but through dreaming of something tremendously beautiful and magnificent. Perhaps it’s not so bad to become overwhelmed like that. I can feel my heart being torn open but maybe it is the only way to create room for more beautiful things.”

(Cassie, a speaking cow, has been irradiated with music to produce more milk. She heard Beethoven’s 6th symphony, the so-called Pastorale, on the radio.)

“Did Beethoven compose this symphony all by himself?” Cassie slowly shakes her large head... “How does he know all this?” she asked awestruck. “How can he feel all this? And if so, how can he make us feel exactly the same way? How can he make us think of fields and of green grass, of hills and trees and rivers, of thunder and lightning when we hear his music? He doesn’t just imitate the sounds; thunder has its particular sound, as does a murmuring river, and his music reminds me of all this, yet, it doesn’t sound exactly the same. Do you understand what I mean?”

(Cassie, the cow, ran away.)

“She went mad,” explained Myles. “Yesterday she was still a nice and content cow. What on earth happened to her?!”

“Beethoven,” David said gently and looked out the window. “Beethoven happened to her.”

Extract from an early work by Alan Arkin, Cassie loves Beethoven, New York, 2000 – Reinbek, 2002.

Interlude 2 – Ernest Borneman

Sex in the Vernacular

The close association of sexuality and music is expressed in the vernacular by a large number of synonyms that refer to sex organs and sexual activities. The sexologist Ernest Bornemann (1915-1995) collected such terms in his book Sex in the Vernacular. This is a selection:

Sex organ: fingerboard, keyboard, keys, manual, plucked string instrument, tongue instrument.

Penis: recorder, bugle, coda, one-handed flute, English horn, bassoon, flute, fluegel horn, violin bow, hollow flute, clarinet, night horn, oboe d’amour, whistle, trombone, reed pipe, bag pipe, shawm, crescent, pocket fiddle, trumpet…

Child’s penis: Pan pipe, piccolo flute.

Coitus: evening song, evening concert, duet, duo, fugue, chamber music, songs without words, serenade, notturno, salon music, lullaby, trill, (duet)…

Copulate: to fiddle, to play the flute, to play the violin, to play the harp, to whistle…

Woman copulating in a standing position: cello

Man copulating in a standing position: cellist

Masturbator: fiddler, violinist, harpist, pianist, musician, Zupfgeigenhansel

To masturbate: strum, play the lyre, play the organ, play

Vagina: accordion, balalaika, barrel organ, bell, concertina, glockenspiel, guitar, harp, kettle drum, mandolin, music box, piano, slit drum, squeeze-box, Wurlitzer.

Extract from Ernest Borneman, Sex im Volksmund, Reinbek, 1971.

Heinrich Lossow, The Sirens, 1890.

Darwin’s Rutting Apes

At the beginning there was Darwin. In Origin of Man (1875) he wrote: “We must assume that the rhythms and cadences of oratorical speech are attributable to previously developed musical abilities. Along these lines we can comprehend why music, dance, song and poetry are such ancient arts.” We can go even further and assume that musical sounds form a foundation for the development of speech. Darwin refers to this principle in The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Darwin points out that birdsong mainly serves to attract a mate and that it expresses the sexual drive and enchants the female. At the beginning of his development, man is supposed to have used his voice for the same purpose. Not as a form of speech, because speech was a late product of human development, but as a way to attract a female or vice versa a male through musical tones, which is a characteristic found in many primitive animals.

The origins of music are nature’s sounds: the sounds of joy, as well as the sounds of pain that emanate from humans and animals alike in times of rut and sexual enticement. During rut, animals (frogs, bucks, horses, lions and many others) scream and birds sing and tempt in extraordinary ways. The repetition of mating calls in timely intervals leads to rhythm and song. The rhythmic repetition of the same sounds exhibits something highly suggestive and fascinating and thereby serves sexual attraction. Ivan Bloch in The Sexual Life of Our Time (1906) describes this phenomenon as the origin of the profound erotic effect of song and music.

Social biologist Elster is of the opinion that “Birdsong is an elegant precursor to human music – in apes still exemplified as an unmelodious scream of the swollen larynx – that showcases a biological predisposition to music. Coloratura of the human voice is often merely a copy of the songs in the world of birds.”[3]

Darwin’s classical research demonstrates the close relationship that exists between the voice and sex life. The male voice in particular, has a sexually arousing effect on the female but the reverse can be observed as well where a female voice has the same effect on a male. Darwin assumes that the earliest relatives of humankind enticed each other with musical sounds and rhythms before they had the ability to express their love in articulated language.

In enlightened times, it is no longer the gods who speak through the medium of music: the disposition to music is biological in nature. When man creates music, it is a refined version of natural phenomena. Music’s connection to sexuality can be hidden but not completely removed. Did Schopenhauer himself not already view music as “the direct replica of volition”? The innermost part of eroticism and music is elucidated in the volition to love. Making use of the well-known intoxicative power of music is timeless, and proves that euphoria in particular has a profound effect on erotic and sexual themes. Through this process, sexuality, religion and music can intermingle and musical ecstasy can create a bridge between sexual and religious ecstasy.

Whether speech developed from song, or song from speech, is of particular contention. Philosopher and social scientist Georg Simmel (1858-1918) was convinced that song developed from speech. He hypothesises that song first developed through emotionally charged speech. Emotions, he contends, have shaped the rhythmic and modulating elements of speech.[4] It is in fact the rhythmic beating of the excited heart that influences musical expression. By emphasising humankind’s unique mastery of speech that sets us apart from the animal kingdom, Simmel seems to diverge from Darwin’s theory of evolution: song is not a creation of nature, but elevated speech, which distinguishes humankind from apes.

All the same, rhythm is a special element from which the unique effects of music transfer to physical-spiritual functions:

“Rhythm has concrete dimensions that may adequately be compared to the rhythm of the heartbeat. The tempo of the regular heartbeat is ‘moderate’ (moderato). Due to its increased speed, a more rapid tempo like allegro giusto, scherzando or presto has an invigorating and provocative effect. An accelerando (stringendo) tempo that lasts for many beats can have a strong astringent effect. This is done without help of the Melos, meaning that the effect is accomplished while the melody stays relatively homogenous, or by a simple repetition of the same sequence of notes played in increasing tempo.”

If we acknowledge that rhythm is the biological reason for the effect of musical themes, “then we also have an explanation why Gregorian song, which was a form of church music in the Middle Ages until the musical creations of Händel and Bach came about, was so utterly non-erotic and even anti-erotic, pious, passionless and lacking animalistic instinct.”

Rhythm is the biological manifestation of music. But even the tonal colour of melody is supposedly of a biological nature: “The closer it comes to the ‘sweet’ sounds of nature and sexual life, the stronger the relationship between music, eroticism and sexuality becomes!”

However, music can also be abused to create inappropriate opportunities. According to Elster, strict artistic self-restraint is the solution. “A lack of a strong means of defence brought about by a lack of musical education and upbringing, will make someone fall victim more easily to the sensual and intoxicating effect of sentimental music.” This kind of music, which is found in the rhythm of dance and the sweetness of the Viennese waltz, is also indispensable to red light districts, brothels and other premises of prostitution. Both sexuality and music have been refined and enriched by civilised human beings. As is the case in the animal kingdom, men use music to sexually excite women and make them comply with their sexual advances. “The female, sexually receptive to sentimental and euphoric music, will follow the male subconsciously and, persuaded by music, engage more easily in the first sexual act of marriage.”

Hendrick Ter Brugghen, The Duet, 1628.

François Boucher,
Menade playing the Flute, 1735-1738.

Vsevolod Salischev, Siren, 1995.

Vsevolod Salischev, Siren (detail), 1995.

Men and women are expressed in natural categories. The principle of genetics fits this way of thinking: Elster speaks of the inheritance of musical talent. “The sexuality of women is like rich soil, in which the musical seed of man will, almost as a matter of course, produce fruit.” This makes the woman the protective guardian of male musical talent. However, the male must not give himself over completely to music, since it has been observed that the virile power necessary to fulfil his sexual desires is not adequate when highly exciting music is played.

“He who lends himself to the euphoria of music to such a degree that his sense of pleasure also devotes itself completely to the productive or reproductive power, does not have much left for sexual tumescence. The work of art has already frittered-away, exhausted itself on the violin or the piano, and has drained the creator.”

Such artists were also often not suitable for marriage. In opposition to the artist stands the scientist, who exemplifies the displacement of the “naturalistic”. The price, however, that the scientist must pay for his cultural achievements is a “loss of happiness”, as Darwin came to realise in his old age. At one point in his autobiography, Darwin speaks of his experiences with art and music. He writes that poetry and music gave him much pleasure and joy until the age of thirty but that this joy he received was displaced by his scientific work. In his old age, he says, he had almost lost the love for art and music completely, something which he describes as a mournful “loss of elevated aesthetic sensation”. He describes in his findings that the respective parts of his brain had atrophied, and added:

“If I could live my life again, I would make it a rule to read poetry and listen to music on a weekly basis. This exercise could possibly have saved the now atrophied parts of my brain. The loss of this sensation of artistic taste results in a loss of happiness and could possibly have negative consequences for one’s intellect and, even more likely, one’s moral character because this loss weakens our emotional nature.”

Could Darwin’s theory of evolution also be the guide to finding lost happiness?

Pablo Picasso,
Faun with Cymbals, 1957. Ceramic.

Dances of Primitive Tribes

The movements before and during sexual intercourse were the origin of erotic dances. Lyricist and publicist Ludwig Jacobowski (1868-1900)[5] explains how primitive sexual life was accompanied by the drive for movement, through which the powerful expression of sexual desire could operate unrestrictedly and spontaneously. Jacobowski also describes how these primitive sexual impulses of movement were repressed throughout the history of cultural development, and how this can be exemplified by looking at the history of erotic dance, which, in its modern form (Contre, Francaise, Quadrille), merely demonstrates the “refined, dissimilar and eccentric modification and variation of the search for, and the distancing to, a sexual act”.

Music and uninhibited speech in erotic songs can be viewed as a way of releasing sexual impulses through movement. This movement pervades all primitive forms of sexual attraction. A combination of music, uninhibited speech and bodily movement is employed at sexual celebrations and orgies during which an intoxicating ecstasy is meant to be achieved.

The Hos and the Mundaris, two ancient tribes,[6] are “examples of sexual selection in their crudest form. During their annual festivities they organise Dionysian dances that combine lewd and wicked speeches with wild orgies”. Such public festivals that included wild round dances and great sexual liberties occurred in Malaysian lands and Formosa. The Australian “Korroboree”, the Hawaiian “Hula-Hula”, the Tahitian “Timoradi” dances and the indecent Micronesian (Yap) Girl Dance were also in part linked with orgies that gave free reign to unbridled and primitive sexual desires.

Samuel Gason said of the dance of the Australian Dieyerie tribe: “Only men and women participate in this dance. They are wonderfully able to stay in rhythm to the clatter of boomerangs and the clapping of the hands of a few females. This dance is followed by promiscuous sexual intercourse during which no displays of jealousy are permitted.” Of an autumn festival, Gason says: “The dance is preceded by week-long preparations. Fights and squabbles are prohibited, and during the festival itself sexual promiscuity is the norm.” Obscene dances and wild movements that served as preparation to coitus were also practised by the Watschandi in Australia, the inhabitants of the Kuango region in West Africa, the Pari and the girls of the Pebas tribe in South Americ.

The anonymous author of L’amour aux Colonies,[7] a French military physician, describes a highly erotic dance of the Wolof tribe located near the Senegal River. The Anamalis fobil, also known as the Danse du canard amoureux (“Dance of the amorous mallard”) is a dance where the male dancer mimics the sexual movements of the animal and the female dancer lifts her robes and moves her lower body back and forth in a most lascivious way, accompanied by obscene song. These dances were performed coram publico in public view and in the streets.

The slow rhythmic dance, the Pilu-Pilu dance of New Caledonia, was danced by both men and women and mimicked all coital movements. The same dance was performed on the islands of the New Hebrides, accompanied by the beating of the Tam Tam drums and wild jumps and screams of women. The Upa-Upa dance, performed at night by decoratively dressed girls of the Tahiti and Pomotu tribes by clapping their hands and singing in chorus lasciviously, until they were overcome with ecstasy, was of even greater exuberance and boisterousness. The festival ended with sexual promiscuity. The most uninhibited debauchery took place in Northern India in form of the Karama dance that involved downright Saturnalia.

According to Ivan Bloch, the replacement of “primitive” sexual independence with varying forms of marriage, has led to prostitution – the cultural remnant of uninhibited romance – having adopted romance’s artistic and ecstatic elements. In many cultures, the terms “female dancer” and “female singer” are synonymous with “prostitute”.

Subsequently, on the Yap Islands in Micronesia, each gender dances separately. Only the “Mongols” – the prostitute girls – are allowed to be present at (even the most obscene) male dances. According to ethnologist Joachim Born, such obscene dances are a type of choreographic Ars Amandi that could not be more multifarious and realistic in nature.

“Coital movements in all positions – in the most multifarious variations (sitting, on the knees, standing) – make up the dance. Interjected between different positional elements, a whole row of participants makes masturbatory movements whereby the male dancers intimate symbolic sexual organs of enormous size. Such a dance usually ends with wild calls of ‘meh-meh’. The final spoken word is the Yap expression for sexual intercourse, which apparently is only very rarely used in daily life by Yap’s indigenous population. The girls present, who live in the brothels, do not change facial expression at even the most obscene movements and gestures. Instead, with an air of composure, they smoke their cigarettes or continue to chew on their betel nut. This is proof for how used they are to seeing these dances being performed in front of the town halls.”

Subsequently, these female prostitutes are then designated to perform their own erotic dance, called the Dafell.

“During this performance, the men sit together in a big circle and in their midst sits a girl from a brothel. The singing, which is exclusively erotic in nature, is performed alternatively by the men and the girls and merely accompanied by slight movements of the hips and arms.”

Many ethnological reports of the nineteenth century include an undertone: mourning the loss of physical and sexual freedom in the western world. Oftentimes, erotic desires were projected onto so-called “primitive cultures”. However, during the last few decades of the twentieth century, a de-sublimation process concerning sexual relations took hold. As a result, a contemporary Australian or Senegalese ethnologist would be able to recognise the rites and rituals of his or her own ethnic background in form of the dances performed at the Love Parade.

Greco-Egyptian Faience,
towards the beginning of the Common Era.