CONSUMMATION

Chapter:

CHAPTER 1 Reaching (for) Limits

Source:

MUSIC IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Author(s):

Richard Taruskin

What little there is of “axis music” in Salome is found, of course, in the last scene. “Of course,” because the music for this scene, in which the title character gets her man—or at any rate the desired part of him—and gets to consummate her “unnatural love” and reap “perverse pleasure” to the full, will have to reach its own maximum in musical perversity, which is to say in illicit but pleasurable connections. It all reaches a head in the last half-dozen pages of the score, Salome’s perverted Liebestod.

Citation (MLA):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 Reaching (for) Limits." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 16 Jun. 2025. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-001013.xml>.

Citation (APA):

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 1 Reaching (for) Limits. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Early Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 16 Jun. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-001013.xml

Citation (Chicago):

Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 1 Reaching (for) Limits." In Music in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 16 Jun. 2025, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-001013.xml