Doing the Impossible: On the Musically Exotic

Abstract

Music is a problematic medium in which to carry out representations or evocations of exotic lands and cultures. The present article explores the limits of applying to music the kinds of observations that are generally made about literary representations of the exotic (as in a statement by Stendhal) or about exoticist paintings (such as Le bain turc, by Ingres). It also reflects on the function of early museums devoted to natural history and foreign cultures Despite music's inaptness for representing objects (such as a Japanese teacup), musical exoticism exists, proliferates in concert life, and is constantly being carried out in new works and in new performances and productions of older ones. This paradox is resolved—the impossible becomes possible—through two different means: 1) the music echoes or imitates certain (real or imagined) aspects of the music of the exotic culture; or 2) the music allies itself with words, visual images, stage action, and other extra-musical features. The resulting works more often than not have a tenuous relationship to the distant locale that is purportedly being portrayed. But the works can be immensely revelatory about the passions, yearnings, and anxieties of the culture that produced and, originally, received them—and of the music-loving communities that revive and receive the works today.

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