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« on: October 21, 2013, 10:55:53 am » |
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Orientalism in music can be traced quite a ways back—there was all the stuff with Turkish Janissary bands in the 18th century leading to Mozart Rondo alla Turca, the A major Violin Concerto and The Abduction from the Seraglio and reams of less well-known music, but even before that there's arguably a degree of orientalism as well in the appropriation of the Spanish sarabande by Western European composers (Froberger, et al.), Spain being much more "exotic" than France or England and even having non-white people living in it. :o
In terms of the "usual suspects" there's almost everything by Saint-Saëns since he actually lived in Algiers for quite a while (already mentioned), plus Verdi (Aïda), Puccini (Turandot, Madama Butterfly, La fanciulla del West—which, admittedly, gives the "orientalist" treatment to the Wild West, but for Puccini it was definitely pretty exotic), Meyerbeer (L'Africaine), etc, etc. In terms of less usual suspects, how about Richard Strauss's Japanese Festival Music? ;D
There's even a whole sub-category for orientalism based on Balinese gamelan—McPhee's Tabuh-Tabuhan, Britten's Death in Venice, Godowsky's Java Suite and so forth. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of Balinese gamelan that's been strongly influenced by Western music. No gamelan arrangements of Bach cello suites or whatever. Weird huh? :D
It's not particularly "exotic" for a non-Western composer to write music that references their native traditions, so I don't think e.g. Kamran Ince, Villa-Lobos, Adnan Saygun etc really qualify. What is much more exotic is the stuff like early Takemitsu, more French than croque-monsieurs with berets, all on Western instruments—definitely unfamiliar w.r.t. the culture from which he originates. "Occidentalism" if you will. When he writes a piece for shō, shakuhachi and koto... not so much.
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