The Exotic In Western Music

Exoticism has flourished in western music since the seventeenth century. A blend of familiar and unfamiliar gestures, this vibrant musical language takes the listener beyond the ordinary by evoking foreign cultures and forbidden desires. In this pioneering collection, distinguished musicologists explore the ways in which western composers have used exotic themes for dramatic and striking effect. Interweaving historical, musical, and cultural perspectives, the contributors examine the compositional use of exotic styles and traditions in the works of artists as diverse as Mozart and George Harrison. The volume sheds new light on a significant yet largely neglected art form, and it makes a valuable contribution to music history and cultural studies.

Traditional musicological narratives have systematically positioned the exotic as a fleeting, ornamental veneer to Western art musics fundamental illusion of self-sufficiency. Musicologist Beatrice Dalov turns this axiom of representation and hegemony on its head, demonstrating instead that the Orient (loosely synonymous with the Other, the exotic, the alien, and the East) has not simply influenced the Occident, but indeed dictated its musical history. Exoticism and the Formation of Western Music offers kaleidoscopic case studies that exhibit critical junctures between the East and the West: the introduction of the organ to Western Christianity from its secular Eastern origins; the Holy Crusades impact in eliciting fascination with the faraway; the exploitation of the exotic in Baroque dance suites; Mozarts subtle and overt depictions of Turkey in his operas and instrumental music; Judaisms alienation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art music; Franz Liszts obsession with (and eventual visit to) the Ottoman Empire; and the transfiguration of the Soviet Empire into the emblem of the East in the twentieth century. In discussing what are merely isolated instances in a larger arc of dynamic contact and cross-fertilization, Dalov illuminates the dramatic intersections of the Occident and Orient and sets out the argument that, albeit once sharing a common point of origin, the former has constructed its identity around the latter. Writ large, this project examines the broader dichotomy of East and West artificially imposed in the modern era. Why has Western music history consciously circumvented discussions of its Eastern influences? Why is the East musically taboo once it exists outside the controlled bounds of Western representation? Western history is a narrative of grappling with, reconciling, negotiating, and controlling that which lies beyond the known world. But what happens when the unknown determines the Wests identity? Dalov posits that the answer rests á travers la merin the mystical lands across the Mediterranean, codified in historical and musical narratives.

Ralph P. Locke provides fresh insights into Western culture's increasing awareness of ethnic Otherness during the years 1500-1800.

DIVStudy of how systems of power and domination have shaped representations of otherness in music./div

A Japanese geisha, a Middle Eastern caravan, a Hungarian-'Gypsy' fiddler, Carmen flinging a rose at Don José - portrayals of people and places that are considered somehow 'exotic' have been ubiquitous from 1700 to today, whether in opera, Broadway musicals, instrumental music, film scores, or in jazz and popular song. Often these portrayals are highly stereotypical but also powerful, indelible and touching - or troubling. Musical Exoticism surveys the vast and varied repertoire of Western musical works that evoke exotic locales. It relates trends in musical exoticism to other trends in music, such as programme music and avant-garde experimentation, as well as to broader historical developments such as nationalism and empire. Ralph P. Locke outlines major trends in exotic depiction from the Baroque era onward, and illustrates these trends through close study of numerous exotic works, including operas by Handel and Rameau, Mozart's 'Rondo alla turca', 'Madame Butterfly' and 'West Side Story'.

Most classical musicians, whether in orchestral or ensemble situations, will have to face a piece by composers such as Ligeti, Messiaen, Varèse or Xenakis, while improvisers face music influenced by Dave Holland, Steve Coleman, Aka Moon, Weather Report, Irakere or elements from the Balkans, India, Africa or Cuba. Rafael Reina argues that today’s music demands a new approach to rhythmical training, a training that will provide musicians with the necessary tools to face, with accuracy, more varied and complex rhythmical concepts, while keeping the emotional content. Reina uses the architecture of the South Indian Karnatic rhythmical system to enhance and radically change the teaching of rhythmical solfege at a higher education level and demonstrates how this learning can influence the creation and interpretation of complex contemporary classical and jazz music. The book is designed for classical and jazz performers as well as creators, be they composers or improvisers, and is a clear and complete guide that will enable future solfege teachers and students to use these techniques and their methodology to greatly improve their rhythmical skills. An accompanying website of audio examples helps to explain each technique. For examples of composed and improvised pieces by students who have studied this book, as well as concerts by highly acclaimed karnatic musicians, please copy this link to your browser: http://www.contemporary-music-through-non-western-techniques.com/pages/1587-video-recordings

"[Western Music and Its Others] will be taken as an important book signalling a new turn within the field. It takes the best features of traditional, rigorous scholarship and brings these to bear upon contemporary, more speculative questions. The level of theoretical sophistication is high. The studies within it are polemical and timely and of lasting scholarly value."--Will Straw, co-editor of Theory Rules: Art as Theory/ Theory and Art "The great value of this collection lies in the wealth of questions that it raises--questions that together crystallize the recent concerns of musicology with force and clarity. But it also lies in the authors' resistance to the easy 'postmodernist' answers that threaten to turn new musicology prematurely grey. The editors' comprehensive, intellectually adventurous introduction exemplifies the sort of eager yet properly skeptical receptivity to scholarly innovation that fosters lasting disciplinary reform. It alone is worth the price of the book." --Richard Taruskin, author of Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through " Mavra" "When cultural-studies methods first appeared in musicology 15 years ago, they triggered a storm of polemics that sometimes overshadowed the important issues being raised. As the canon wars recede, however, scholars are finding it possible to focus on the concerns that led them to cultural criticism in the first place: the study of music and its political meanings. Western Music and Its Others brings together leading musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and specialists in film and popular music to explore the ways European and North American musicians have drawn on or identified themselves in tension with the musical practices of Others. In a series of essays ranging from examination of the Orientalist tropes of early 20th-century Modernists to the tangled claims for ownership in today's World Music, the authors in this collection greatly advance both our knowledge of specific case studies and our intellectual awareness of the complexity and urgency of these problems. A timely intervention that should help push music studies to the next level." --Susan McClary, author of Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (2000) "This collection provides a sophisticated model for using theory to interrogate music and music to interrogate theory. The essays both take up and challenge the dominance of notions of representation in cultural theory as they explore the relevance of the concepts of hybridity and otherness for contemporary art music. Sophisticated theory, erudite scholarship and a very real appreciation for the specificities of music make this a powerful and important addition to our understanding of both culture and music." --Lawrence Grossberg, author of Dancing in Spite of Myself

To what extent can music be employed to shape one culture's understanding of another? In the American imagination, Japan has represented the "most alien" nation for over 150 years. This perceived difference has inspired fantasies--of both desire and repulsion--through which Japanese culture has profoundly impacted the arts and industry of the U.S. While the influence of Japan on American and European painting, architecture, design, theater, and literature has been celebrated in numerous books and exhibitions, the role of music has been virtually ignored until now. W. Anthony Sheppard's Extreme Exoticism offers a detailed documentation and wide-ranging investigation of music's role in shaping American perceptions of the Japanese, the influence of Japanese music on American composers, and the place of Japanese Americans in American musical life. Presenting numerous American encounters with and representations of Japanese music and Japan, this book reveals how music functions in exotic representation across a variety of genres and media, and how Japanese music has at various times served as a sign of modernist experimentation, a sounding board for defining American music, and a tool for reshaping conceptions of race and gender. From the Tin Pan Alley songs of the Russo-Japanese war period to Weezer's Pinkerton album, music has continued to inscribe Japan as the land of extreme exoticism.