Week 6 - Music, Gender and Anxiety: Salome to Spears Flashcards
What happened to Gender at the turn of 20 C Europe
There were new political demands for white woman at the turn of the century in Europe and between 1890 and 1910, there were more demands for rights
Women’s pavilion at the 1900’s World’s Fair and they made demands
When did white women in Austria and Germany get the right to vote
1918
When did White and Black women get the right to vote in Canada
1922
When did white and black women get the right to vote in the USA
White women: 1920
Black Women: 1965
When did Signmund Freud write “The Interpretation of Dreams”
1900
What were the ideas outlined by Freud in “The Interpretation of Dreams”
Sexuality and he had an idea that sex could be “polymorphusley perverse”
Sex isn’t linked to procreation, sex isn’t for sex’s sake
humans can find erotic pleasure in many parts of the body
How did Freud’s book make people feel about women
Made a lot of people anxious about woman and what Freud’s research meant
What is the Femme Fatale
She is the seductive, murderess, woman who became popular from mid-19th Century to the turn of the 20th century = anxiety
What are the three early representations of the Feme Fatale
- Woman as Vampire - Edward Munch: “Vampire” 1895
- Woman as Serpents - Klint “Fishblood” and “Water Serpents”
- Women are at home in the water, no boundaries between earth and sea - Woman as Salome
What was the original story of Salome
Herodias asks for John’s head and Salome dances and gives it to her mother.
What happens to Salome in late 19th Century art
She becomes dangerous:
- Munch creates a painting called “Salome” with Munch’s head in the image
- Klint creates “Judeth I” and “Judeth II” where she is losing it with pleasure
- Beardsley creates “The Climax”
Who wrote the play “Salome” (1891)
Oscar Wilde
Who decided to write a opera about Salome
Richard Strauss in 1905
How is Salome depicted in the opera
In the opera she is even more sick and excessive… who asked to kiss the head of a person? Even her mother is surprised by her evil request
She is the femme fatale per excellence
Three ways Salome is depicted as excessive in the opera
- Chromatic Scale: scale in half steps with all of the keys on the keyboard C - C# - D - D#
- Low Glissando (low slides) sinister
- Instrumentation: the oboe, often the stereotype of the middle east, ornamented, slightly dangerous
