Beethoven's symphonies add two other dimensions to the history of style: assaultive pelvic pounding ... and sexual violence. The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling, murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.
[Ed.: McClary comments that the works of Gustave Mahler and Richard Strauss are likewise "filled with themes of male masturbation."]
