Exoticism and the Formation of Western Music À Travers La Mer

Exoticism and the Formation of Western Music À Travers La Mer Synopsis

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 a travers la merin the mystical lands across the Mediterranean, codified in historical and musical narratives.

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