Fascinations of Tori Amos's Sexualized Virtuosity in Performancei

Pianosexual: Fascinations of Tori Amos's sexualized virtuosity in performance i

Bethany J. Smith College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, USA popdiva77_at_gmail.com

In: M. M. Marin, M. Knoche, & R. Parncutt (Eds.) Proceedings of the First International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus08) Graz, Austria, 14-15 November 2008, http://www.uni-graz.at/muwi3www/SysMus08/

Background. Best known for straddling the piano bench and singing lyrics such as “I crucify myself everyday,” there is much more to American singer-songwriter Tori Amos than meets the ear. Trained as a classical pianist, she performs within a hybrid genre that fuses her classical piano training and popular alternative rock. Amos’s style of performance functions aesthetically as a type of performative self-created authenticity that aims to subvert women’s traditional roles at the keyboard to emphasize female sexuality. Her music greatly impacted society in the 1990s due to her emotionally intense lyrics that reflect her social commentary on issues such as feminism, religion, rape, and sexuality, while boasting a cult-like fan base similar to many of the virtuosos of the nineteenth century.

Aims. Drawing upon an interdisciplinary methodology including gender studies, cultural studies, aesthetics, philosophy, and the reception of Amos within the popular press, I aim to highlight not only Amos’s physical virtuosity, but to demonstrate the ways in which her pianism and vocal style have subverted the role of the female singer- songwriter in popular culture. Often criticized for her manner of playing, I position Amos as a pianosexual performer who uses the piano as an extension of her body and physically manipulates her Bösendorfer as a form of social commentary and musical activism, creating and performing her songs with a libidinal fervor.

Main Contribution. Amos’s pianistic virtuosity and technical facility alongside her sexualized physicality in performance separate her from most women singer-songwriters who play the piano. She performs with a sexualized athleticism akin to the virtuosic “fascinations” literary theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht describes in In Praise of Athletic Beauty.ii Judith Butler’s theories of performativity in Gender Trouble provide a model for analyzing the gender construction within Amos’s performances.iii Additionally, I consult Richard Leppert’s The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body and his essay “Cultural Contradiction, Idolatry, and the Piano Virtuoso: Franz List” in James Parakilas’s Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life With the Piano to consider Amos as a current analog of the nineteenth-century tradition.iv

Implications. Through the survey of piano virtuosity from the nineteenth century, particularly that of women, Amos’s sexualized performance style is noteworthy in regards to gender, aesthetics, and cultural critique. As Amos performs her gender and her instrument in new and exciting ways within a popular genre of American music, it allows musicologists to redefine the concept of virtuosity and ways to map this virtuosity onto music not easily categorized within a single genre. Additionally, I hope this research provides new ways for examining the relationships of performing the body within music.

Best known for straddling the piano bench at the keyboard. v Her music greatly impacted and singing lyrics such as “I crucify myself society in the 1990s due to her emotionally everyday,” there is much more to American intense lyrics that reflect her social singer-songwriter Tori Amos than meets the commentary on issues such as feminism, ear. Trained as a classical pianist, she religion, rape, and sexuality. Her unique style performs within a hybrid art-pop genre that of performance creates an apropos fuses her classical piano training with popular atmosphere for singing about these topics alternative rock. Her pianistic virtuosity and and she boasts a cult-like fan base, similar to technical facility alongside her sexualized many of the virtuosos of the nineteenth physicality in performance separate her from century. most women singer-songwriters who play the Drawing upon an interdisciplinary piano. Amos’s style of performance functions methodology including gender studies, aesthetically as a type of performative self- cultural studies, aesthetics, philosophy, and created authenticity that aims to subvert the reception of Amos within the popular women’s traditional performance conventions

84 press, I aim to highlight not only Amos’s is not my main intention. I would like to physical virtuosity, but to demonstrate the situate Amos in her own category as an ways in which her pianism and vocal style alternative-rock virtuoso. Richard Leppert have subverted the role of the female singer- asserts, songwriter in popular culture. She performs The virtuoso was a troublesome paradox: with a sexualized athleticism akin to literary he was the literal embodiment of extreme theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s virtuosic individuality, but one that can risk the “fascinations” he describes in In Praise of exceeding demands of bourgeois decorum, Athletic Beauty . Gumbrecht defines reserve, and respectability . . . For some— fascinations as something the eye is those carried away—the sublime was “attracted to, indeed paralyzed by, [and] the experienced vicariously; others were appeal of something perceived.” vi Often convinced they were simply being taken to the cleaners. Either way, the virtuoso’s criticized for her manner of playing, I position performance at once realized art while Amos as a pianosexual performer who uses staging personal identity as spectacle. viii the piano as an extension of her body and physically manipulates her Bösendorfer as a Amos’s background as a child prodigy and a form of social commentary and musical lounge pianist/singer contribute to her unique activism, creating and performing her songs performance style and the personal identity with a libidinal fervor. Leppert claims as the hallmark of a virtuoso. Her use of improvisatory piano breaks added in live performance reinforces the cultivation Background of the superhuman pianist, especially within a

Born Myra Ellen Amos in 1963, she taught non-conservatory atmosphere. Additionally, herself piano by ear and began composing her wide vocal range, use of register shifts songs by age three. At five years old, she and dynamics contribute to her virtuosity, not secured a full scholarship to the Peabody only as a pianist but also as a vocalist. Preparatory Division, the youngest student to ever be accepted. During her time at Pianistic Virtuosity and Technique Peabody, she wanted to play her own music, but the faculty did not want that, so they Many virtuoso instrumentalists claim a denied her scholarship renewal in 1971. particular physicality within their performance Accompanied by her pastor father, she began as their trademark of showmanship. For to play Baltimore gay bars at age thirteen. example, Thalberg created the three-handed She also performed extensively in musical technique of pianism, while Liszt became theatre, singing roles in high school and known for essentially mauling the keyboard. community theatre. In 1983, Amos recorded Liberace offers a more recent display of her demo “Baltimore,” which received local showmanship, complete with candelabras, airplay and then moved to Los Angeles, ruffles, and rhinestones and playing popular where she joined a hair band called Y Kant tunes such as “Chopsticks” and Broadway Tori Read before embarking upon a solo show tunes in a Lisztian manner, full of career. As Amos crafted her new, acoustic embellishment and sparkle. While Amos does solo songs, she performed using a distinctive not elaborate her own works to this degree, style of physical pianism and vocality that she created a specialized physical style of contribute to her status as an alternative performance in which she straddles the virtuoso. corner of the piano bench not only to face her audience but to have a wider range of motion Gumbrecht defines performance as “any kind in her piano playing. There is another of body movement seen from a perspective of practical reason for this as she often needs to vii presence.” Defining the virtuoso proves switch positions between a piano and a problematic, particularly in the world of harpsichord, Fender, or Rhodes (or a popular music. Many similarities can be made combination of the two), and to have between Amos, Franz Lizst, and Sigmund Thalberg in terms of virtuosity; however, that

85 access to the boom microphone on the other emotion that it’s convincing no matter what instrument to amplify her voice. Bonnie she’s murmuring about. But to those outside Gordon describes her performance style: the cult, Ms. Amos seems to be following up

She straddles the piano chair and twists her her most self-indulgent impulses, using body to face the audience. By sitting at the musical skill to shore up ever-increasing piano with her legs wide open to direct not pretensions. . . . Some private thoughts need only her voice, but her genitals at the work before going public.” xiii Pareles continues audience, she violates the protocols of basic his dislike for Amos’s cryptic lyricism in a girliness that demands closed legs. At the 1998 review and calls her the “Sybil of same time, this arresting style works against songwriting.” One extremely interesting point the classical tradition in which she received Pareles mentions is the paradoxical nature of her first training—a tradition that her Amos’s fan base and the growing presence of experiments with the piano styles and xiv harpsichord playing suggest she has not the fans on the internet. Reviewers typically abandoned. ix chastise Amos, not only for her overtly sexualized performances, but also for her Beginning with her American Doll Posse tour self-indulgence through enigmatic and in 2007, Amos began to perform with what elliptical lyrics and the ways in which they she calls the “spread-eagle technique,” where position controversial topics such as she straddles the bench fully facing the sexuality, religion, and abuse. The choice of audience so that each hand can access either Amos’s musical and lyrical topoi serves her a piano or keyboard that she may play performance style in the engagement and x simultaneously. performativity of her physical body.

Physicality and sexuality in performance An example of this type of her sexualized performance can be seen in the live version of Prior to the spread-eagle pose, Amos’s bench “Cornflake Girl” from her 1996 concert tour straddling fell under scrutiny in the popular promoting the album Boys for Pele .xv In this press. Greg Rule’s 1992 Keyboard Magazine performance she incorporates her standard interview depicts Amos’s performance as straddling of the piano bench and an onstage masturbation, “Alone, centerstage, introductory interpretive dance during the she slings a mane of red hair and she writhes guitar riff. During the song, Amos fully masterfully toward a double-encore climax. . . engages with her instrument and it becomes . Just one woman, one piano, and a solitary an extension of herself as she gyrates on the shaft of the white light. This is music at its bench, kicks the air, swivels her hips, and stripped-down , unpretentious best (emphasis smacks the air with her hand between the xi mine).” Similarly, Karen Schomer’s 1993 rests in the music. She becomes most New York Times review uses gendered animated during the keyboard break at 3:40 discourse to describe Amos’s singing as through the end and actually stands up and sexual intercourse, “Every intake of breath as plays for large sections of the song. This an audible hiss, and she quivered and tensed visual example of Amos’s performance offers as though she were on the brink of some an opportunity to investigate Gumbrecht’s sexual implosion. Suddenly she broke: ‘ee- athletic fascinations and the ways they yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!’ She screamed again and overlap with virtuosity in musical again, then as the song ended she buckled performance. and groaned with exhaustion. . . . Her songs had rhythms and dynamics as impetuous as Gumbrecht’s Athletic “Fascinations” mood shifts: long pauses as she sucked on one single word, whispers spiraling into Gumbrecht poses seven athletic fascinations squeals.” xii Jon Pareles’s 1996 New York that center on issues surrounding the body, Times review of Amos evokes nineteenth suffering, grace, tools, forms, plays, and century gendered criticism of the adolescent timing. To explore these issues, Amos’s female pianist. He also discusses the role performance of “Caught a Lite Sneeze” from emotionalism plays for her fans: “For her the 1997 RAINN Benefit Concert offers a way fans, Ms. Amos’s voice carries so much to consider her piano (and vocal) sexual performance style as it relates to these seven

86 aesthetics. xvi I interpret Amos’s physical gender subversively by emphasizing her engagement with her pianist body and vocal sexuality (and her status as a sexual victim of mechanism under Gumbrecht’s category of rape), which artistically empowers her and body as a performative enactment of gender positions her on an equal playing field with subversion and empowerment. The concept men so she may be taken seriously as a rock of suffering occurs in the use of her bodily artist. xix and vocal contortions and her ability to Amos’s “suffering” occurs in the display of sustain herself physically and vocally on various bodily, pianistic, and vocal extremely lengthy concert tours. In Amos’s contortions. On sustained notes, she often performance, the aesthetics of grace navigate engages in facial contortions, which highlight between mechanical and expressive the physical or emotional association with the elements, while her tools (keyboards, lyrics being sung. For example, at three electronic amplification, et cetera ) enhance minutes into the clip on the lyrics, “girl zone,” her talents. Through the manipulation of Amos “bites” the word with an aggressive forms, Amos consistently subverts audience glottal in the throat accompanied by sharp expectations. Her “plays” offer a balance of jaw motion. She also exhibits bodily precision and expressivity and her use of contortion by navigating both the piano and timing creates a captivating “in the zone” harpsichord and interestingly transforms her experience for viewers who can lose body and the piano into her own percussion themselves in virtuosic engagement with her section at 5:22 in the clip. Her role as a vocal music. This combination of Amos’s body, virtuoso is also of importance in the technique, talent, and expression create an consideration of vocal wear and tear as she aesthetic delight for the senses. embarks on international tours, performing in Gumbrecht’s assessment of the body is of different cities six nights a week for nine extreme importance in mapping his months without a vacation, often playing two fascinations onto Amos’s live performances. and a half hour concerts without intermission. In The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, Additionally, in “Caught a Lite Sneeze,” and the History of the Body , Richard Leppert suffering becomes intertwined with this issue claims, as the viewer questions how long she can

The body is a sight, in essence a sight of sustain the held note on “zone” at 5:55 as sights. It is also a site, a physical presence she is moving around between keyboards and that is biologically empowered to see at the adjusting microphones. same time it is being seen. The body is a In his book, Gumbrecht explains Heinrich von terrain, a land, as it were, both familiar and foreign; as such it can be mapped. The Kleist’s understanding of grace from his 1810 geography of the body has both topography essay “Über das Marionettentheatre” as and interiority, surface and depth, and all its “belonging to the realm of the mechanical levels are meaningful. The body, arts” and including a proper, effortless simultaneously site, sight, and possessing technique and execution that affect elements sight, is an object of tactile sensation and an of mechanical yet expressive piano aural phenomenon. . . . The body is a sight technique. xx The mechanical fugal and a sound . . . the body is sighted and accompaniment in “Caught a Lite Sneeze” hears; the body sees and makes audible. xvii embodies this issue of proper technique and Amos’s style of performing links athleticism execution. If Amos were to perform and spectator-object voyeuristic fetish, which completely within the style of classical is evidenced by Amos’s sexualized piano pianism, much of her expressive freedom technique (straddling the bench) and the (particularly that of the body and her amount of physical energy used to engage performativity) would be removed. And while with her instrument and produce enough the repetitive Baroque-style accompaniment diaphragmatic support to sing well. displays Amos’s technical mastery as a Gumbrecht’s use of Judith Butler’s theory of classically-trained pianist, much of her grace, performativity and the concept of gender or Gumbrecht’s conception of grace, stems construction as body transformation is at from the possibility of “channeling” or work within this clip. xviii Amos performs her “possession” during performance, which she

87 demonstrates quite frequently in this video sports. These new and often spontaneous through her actively engaged facial changes including additional lyrics, movement expressions. or dance, phrase extension, or additions of long improvisatory material add to her In her performances, Amos uses the piano balance of precision and expressivity. This clip (and all variety of the keyboards she plays) includes several instances of added material; as bodily extension or what Gumbrecht calls however, the second half of the video “tools,” similar to his description of cars and particularly demonstrate the ways in which horses in the realm of sports. xxi Also the extension of musical phrases heightens important in Amos’s performances are the the organicism in contrast to the recorded use of technology and her acknowledgement version of Boys for Pele .xxiii This element of of microphone amplification of her voice and self-created authenticity further positions the piano. This extends her talents beyond Amos as a virtuoso to her fans. The idea of the human limits of capability, especially in witnessing an “authentic” performance that regards to volume control. Technology also will include several embellishments of her enables Amos to enhance her natural talent standard hits, as well as new physical through various synthesizer, looping, “tricks,” appeals to the fans and creates a instrumentation, and pedal options on the draw for the many fans that see the same keyboard and different microphone effects concert tour in several cities. including echo and reverberation. Amos’s tendency to get “in the zone” during Through Gumbrecht’s forms Amos subverts performances perhaps explains a good deal of audience expectations, especially in her use her popularity among fans. Her ability to of the harpsichord, piano, and herself as “lose herself” while playing and singing is percussion instruments in “Caught a Lite similar to Gumbrecht’s view of the zone Sneeze.” Additionally, her performance within sports, “Athletes [or musical virtuosos technique and body position on the piano, in this case] know that, at decisive moments body movements during piano articulation, in competition, the flux of time seems to be and moments of interpretive dance all serve suspended—or at least enormously dilated. to subvert what people expect to see in a This is the meaning of (interestingly enough) rock concert, and perhaps that of audience the spatial metaphor ‘being in the zone’ that members who had not previously seen Amos some athletes use for a specific time-related live. She also takes risks with her fan base dimension of experience.” xxiv Amos’s facial during her live performances, often changing expressions, as seen in the video clip, the arrangement and structure of songs, illustrate her physical and mental focus of the adding new instrumentation, lyrics, dance zone. Additionally, Gumbrecht’s breaks, introductions and codas, and most considerations of timing focus on the attack, often, long improvisatory sections with or which in Amos’s case manifests through her without added vocals. This disables fans from manner of aggressive pianism, use of hand- singing along until they are absolutely sure of percussion, vocal attacks and glottal stops, what they are hearing, thus focusing all the and physical movements such as pelvic attention back on the performer as virtuoso thrusts. and keeping her in control. Total control over the form reinforces Amos’s role in self- Performativity and Sexualized Virtuosity created authenticity she has as a singer- songwriter as a form of Kenneth Hamilton’s Amos’s sexualized physical movements serve concept of fidelity. xxii No matter how she a dual function. Critics and fans viewed changes the musical elements that make up virtuosos such as Paganini and Liszt as her performance, she is not only the warriors and heroes to foreground their performer of these actions, but the author, masculinity and sexual prowess. xxv Similarly, and thus retains the fidelity of the text. Amos’s fans, like those of Paganini, Liszt, and Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, describe her I would like to extend this concept of Amos’s performance style as both sexual and violent. self-created authenticity in performance in Interestingly, when critics describe Amos’s relation to Gumbrecht’s idea of “plays” in playing, they often use overly sexualized

88 discourse to place her within a male sphere While boasting many loyal fans, Amos also and frequently describe her “domination” over bears a similarity to virtuosic figures such as the piano. While Amos is not the first woman Paganini and Liszt and contemporary piano in music history to subvert women’s roles rockers such as Billy Joel and Elton John due within classical or popular music, she is one to her aggressive or masculinized of the first to be so very celebrated for it. performance techniques. While she has been Gordon describes Amos’s role in this trend, described as dominating the piano, the style “She participated in what might be called the and poetic sensitivity of her lyrics often verge women’s rock revolution of the early 1990s, upon hyper-femininity. In this sense, Amos rising to prominence within a cohort of performs both her masculinity and femininity women whose in-your-face style turned in performance. In her performativity of both female sexuality into something masculine and feminine, Amos is able to confrontational, challenging normative subvert traditional gender roles at the piano. conception and portrayals of female sexuality Due to her deviant virtuosity, she escaped and identity.” xxvi The categorization of Amos from the domestic and subordinate codes in the popular press as a powerful or established in the 1700s and performs the masculinized woman does little to capture her body into her pianosexual virtuosity. musical talent; however, it does highlight Butler’s ideas surrounding performativity and Acknowledgments . I would like to thank Dr. performing one’s own gender. In the Jonathan Kregor for offering a seminar on journalistic construction of Amos, she virtuosity and for his insight on the initial performs masculinity during her concerts. stages of this paper. While some of her performances may be aggressive, this is not to say that a great deal Appendix of her music is what critics often construe as “clit-rock” or hyperfeminine. Leppert Amos’s Physical Performance Style describes the “musical gaze” in tandem with the consumption of music as “supercharged with sexuality, producing an ‘interest’ simultaneously encoded with pleasure and anxiety.” xxvii Amos is both musical sight and sound in her sexualized performances, both factors of which are highly marketed to her audiences.

Fandom Figure 1. Typical performance pose, straddling piano Amos enjoys cult-like fandom similar to many bench [Image from http://hereinmyhead.com] virtuosos of the nineteenth century. In Piano Roles , Leppert notes, “Audience fascination with virtuoso performers at concerts at solo recitals in the nineteenth century closely paralleled with, even exceeded, that which accorded popular music performers today. Niccolò Paganini on the violin and Franz Liszt on the piano set the standard: praised and damned, worshipped and ridiculed, both claimed a public attention that bordered on fetishism.” xxviii Like Amos, “Liszt was heard— Liszt—as he himself clearly recognized—was also very much ‘looked at.’ . . . Performances Figure 2. “Spread-eagle” performance pose, centered were sometimes described as being watched, between two keyboards not simply heard.” xxix [Image from http://resonatormag.com]

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Amos, T. (1996). Boys for Pele . Atlantic Records Parakilas, J. (1999). Piano Roles: Three Hundred 82862-2. CD Recording. Years of Life With the Piano . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ______. (2006). Tori Amos Video Collection: Fade to Red. Rhino Entertainment. DVD. Pareles, J. (1998). “Disclosing Intimacies, Enjoying

______. (1996). MTV Unplugged . Brooklyn the Shock Value.” New York Times 23 April 1998. Section E1. Academy of Music. VHS Recording.

Amos, T., and A. Powers. (1995). Tori Amos: Piece ______. (1996). “Sharing Private Thoughts with a By Piece . New York: Broadway. Crowd of Intimates.” New York Times 15 May 1996. Section C11. Burns, L. and M. Lafrance. (2002). Disruptive Divas: Feminism, Identity, and Popular Powers, A. (1996). “Poet with a Piano, and Music . New York: Routledge. Bravado.” New York Times 14 January 1996. Section H27. Gordon, B. (2004). “Tori Amos’ Inner Voices.” In Women’s Voices across Musical Worlds , ed. Schoemer, K. (1992). “When Emotionalism Slips J. A. Bernstein, 187–207. Boston: into Hysteria.” New York Times 23 April 1992. Section C16. Northeastern University Press.

Greig, C. (1997). “Female Identity and the Woman Vance, C. S. (Ed). (1989). Pleasure and Danger: Songwriter.” In Sexing the Groove: Exploring Female Sexuality. London: Pandora. Popular Music and Gender , ed. S. Whiteley, 168–77. New Whiteley, S. (2000). Women and Popular Music: York: Routledge. Sexuality, Identity, and Subjectivity. New

Gumbrecht, H. U. (2006). In Praise of Athletic York: Routledge. Beauty. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hamilton, K. (2008). After the Golden Age: YouTube Links: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance. Oxford: Oxford University “Tori Amos—Cornflake Girl.” Press. [http://youtube.com/watch?v=iAvqXWu8dYk]. (Accessed 20 April 2008). Kawabata, M. (2007). “Virtuosity, the Violin, the Devil . . . What Made Paganini ‘Demonic’?” “Tori Amos Live Caught a Lite Sneeze.” Current Musicology 83: 85–108. [http://youtube.com/watch?v=o1oAcF3WY6g]. (Accessed Kramer, L. (2007). Why Classical Music Still 20 April 2008). Matters. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. “Tori on Graham Norton.” [http://youtube.com/wacth?v=kfcPIG8eFVk]. Kruse, H. (1993). “Subcultural Identity in (Accessed on 20 April Alternative Music Culture.” Popular Music 2008). 12, no. 1: 33–41.

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Representation, and the History of the ii Body . Berkeley, CA: University of California Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, In Praise of Athletic Beauty (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).

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O’Brien, L. (1996). “Pianosexual.” Diva , Feb./Mar. CA: University of California Press, 1993) and “Cultural 1996. Contradiction, Idolatry, and the Piano Virtuoso: Franz Liszt,” in Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with [http://www.stuff.to/include.php?include=t

90 the Piano , ed. James Parakilas (New Haven, CT: Yale (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 187– University Press, 1999), 252–81. 207. v While Amos was not the first to break the proper “girl- xx Gumbrecht, 167–68. at-the-piano” conventions, as they were not preserved xxi Ibid., 175. from the nineteenth century, she was one of the first xxii Kenneth Hamilton, After the Golden Age: Romantic artists to be extremely vocal about breaking away from Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford: Oxford these classical practices of the conservatory and to University Press, 2008). establish herself as an artist with an unconventional xxiii manner of performance. Tori Amos, Boys for Pele , Atlantic Records 82862-2, vi 1996, CD Recording. Gumbrecht, 151. xxiv vii Gumbrecht, 196. Ibid., 86. xxv viii Leppert, “Cultural Contradiction,” 278–79. Leppert, “Cultural Contradiction,” 255. xxvi ix Gordon, 189. Bonnie Gordon, “Tori Amos’ Inner Voices,” in Women’s xxvii Leppert, The Sight of Sound , 64. Voices across Musical Worlds , ed. Jane A. Bernstein (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 190. xxviii Leppert, “Cultural Contradiction,” 252. Maiko x Amos demonstrates this technique on the 10 May 2007 Kawabata expands on Paganini’s sexual and episode of the BBC talk show The Graham Norton Show heroic/demonic associations in Maiko Kawabata, and has the host Graham Norton comically model her “Virtuosity, the Violin, the Devil . . . What Made Paganini ‘Demonic?,’” Current Musicology 83 (2007): 85–108. physical manner of playing. “Tori on Graham Norton,” [http://youtube.com/watch?v=kfcPIG8eFVk], (accessed xxix Leppert, 255. on 20 April 2008). Please see Appendix I for photographs demonstrating Amos’s various physical piano techniques. xi Greg Rule, “Tori! Tori! Tori!,” Keyboard Magazine , September 1992, [http://toriamos.com], (accessed on 20 October 2005), 1. xii Karen Schomer, “When Emotionalism Slips into Hysteria,” New York Times 23 April 1992, Section C16. xiii Jon Pareles, “Sharing Private Thoughts with a Crowd of Intimates,” New York Times 15 May 1996, Section C11. xiv Ibid, “Disclosing Intimacies, Enjoying the Shock Value,” New York Times 23 April 1998, Section E1. xv Video available via YouTube, “Tori Amos—Cornflake Girl,” [http:/youtube.com/watch?v= iAvqXWu8dYk], (accessed 20 April 2008). xvi RAINN (The Rape and Incest National Network) is a non-profit organization founded by Amos in 1994. The 23 January 1997 benefit concert took place at Madison Square Garden in New York and later aired on the Lifetime cable network. “Caught a Lite Sneeze” from this concert is available via YouTube, “Tori Amos Live— Caught a Lite Sneeze,” [http://youtube.com/watch?v=o1oAcF3WY6g], (accessed on 20 April 2008). xvii Leppert, Introduction to The Sight of Sound , xix. xviii Butler. xix Charlotte Grieg provides insight into Amos’s musical responses to her own experience with rape and how this affects identity politics. Applying theories of sexuality and the body into her essay would provide an interesting way of contextualizing her sexual manner of performance as an act of resistance. Charlotte Grieg, “Female Identity and the Woman Songwriter,” in Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender , ed. Shiela Whiteley, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 168–77. Bonnie Gordon achieves a more nuanced interpretation of two of Amos’s works dealing with sexual abuse and using her voice as a subversive agent; however, there is little mention of her sexualized performance and the extreme relevance of it. Bonnie Gordon, “Tori Amos’ Inner Voices,” in Women’s Voices across Musical Worlds , ed. Jane A. Bernstein

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