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Orientalism
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Orientalism.
In its strict sense, the dialects of musical EXOTICISM within Western art music that evoke the East or the orient; in a
broader sense, the attitude toward those same geo-cultural regions as expressed in certain Western musical works,
regardless of whether a given work evokes the music of the region or not. The orient in the term orientalism is generally
taken to mean either the Islamic Middle East (e.g. North Africa, Turkey, Arabia, Persia), or East and South Asia (the Far
East, e.g. India, Indochina, China, Japan), or all of these together. (Other uses of the term orientalism are discussed at
the end of this article.) The strict definition and broad definition of orientalism, mentioned at the beginning of this
paragraph, correlate with two paradigms one primarily style-focused, the other more comprehensive for studying any
exotic musical work; see EXOTICISM.

Musical orientalism occurred from time to time in the late Renaissance. A widely performed dance called the Moresca was
associated, correctly or incorrectly, with the Moors of North Africa and was often performed with dark skin makeup and
with jingles around ones legs. French ballets de cour and Venetian intermedi sometimes included dances for costumed
representatives of Asia (Christout, 1987; De La Gorce, 1997; Alm, 1996).

Musical orientalism began to flourish extensively in 17th- and 18th-century opera. Many operas were set in such places as
Turkey, Persia, India and China, most often in ancient days or even in some vaguely timeless or legendary time-frame. At
times these works echoed, directly or indirectly, Europes imperial exploits (e.g. Britains increasing control of India and
North America) and missionary efforts; and/or cultural features that were reported (accurately or not) in travelers reports
and in tales from the Thousand and One Nights (see Coelho, 1997; Harris, 2006; Locke, Alien Adventures, 2009; and
Locke, Musical Exoticism, 2009, pp. 87110). The best-known exotic opera from before 1800 Mozarts Die Entfhrung
aus dem Serail (1782) is set in recent times and specifically reflects the centuries-long struggles between the Ottoman
Empire and European countries (in this case Spain) over control of the Mediterranean. Die Entfhrung and other works of
the late eighteenth century make occasional use of a startling style derived from or imagined as deriving from the
musical traditions of the Ottomans Janissary troops (see TURCA, ALLA and Locke, Musical Exoticism, 2009, Fig. 6.1, pp.
11426).

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East became a prime target for
the colonization efforts of the Western powers and, accordingly, a much-favoured locale in which to set operas and other
musical works. Various standard Middle Eastern musical gestures were first established in the popular Le dsert of the
French composer Flicien David, who had lived in Egypt for two years, and were then exploited by other composers, such
as Bizet (Les pcheurs de perles), Verdi (Aida), Massenet (Thas) and Richard Strauss (Salome). This heavily imaginary
Middle East was also a favoured setting for ballets (La source, with music by Delibes and Minkus) and modern-dance
works (e.g. by Ruth St Denis). Many successful works were also set in East Asia, notably Puccinis Madama Butterfly and
Turandot. In recent decades, popular music in Western countries has evoked East Asia and East Asians especially
women of the region for a variety of expressive purposes, some of them arguably denigrating (see Hisama, 1993, and
Scott-Maxwell, 1997).

The frequent decision to place oriental opera and (in the Baroque era) dramatic oratorios in an ancient time-frame, or
else in a quasi-timeless, legendary one, heightened the sense of escapism and also avoided the risk of having an opera
comment in too parochial or potentially uncomfortable a manner on current-day political or imperial realities. Social
ideology was nonetheless strongly conveyed. Operas and dramatic oratorios of Handel, for example, often featured
Byzantine, Persian, Mongol, or Indian rulers who embody stereotypical traits of the Eastern male (e.g. violent temper or
unrestrained womanizing).

Beginning in the nineteenth century, we regularly encounter what might be called the archetypal orientalist opera plot: a
Western male becomes romantically involved with a local female, who is portrayed as sexually inviting and thereby at
once attractive and threatening. (Bizets Carmen played this story out on European soil. (Dark-skinned Gypsies more

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correctly known as Roma were understood to have migrated from vaguely eastern regions such as Egypt or India.) How
such love relationships were worked out in the course of a given opera depended on attitudes at the time towards the
possible mingling or inherent incompatibility of different races (see Parakilas, 19934).

Russians and Poles showed a special fascination with relatively nearby (to them) portions of the greater Middle East, e.g.
Central Asia (Borodins In the Steppes of Central Asia and Prince Igor) or the Arabian peninsula or Persia (Rimsky-
Korsakovs Sheherazade; Szymanowskis Symphony no.3 Pie o nocy, Song of the Night).

Musical works about the Middle Eastern orient often show striking parallels to the portrayals of the region in travel
journals or other literary works describing the region (see Hunter, 1997) or in paintings by orientalist artists (for example
Ingres and Grme; see Locke, 1991) are particularly striking. The stereotyped characters seen in these writings and
paintings, including the (male) tyrant or Muslim fanatic and the seductive alme (dancing woman), find repeated echoes in
musical works for example in Beethovens Die Ruinen von Athen (with its Turkish March and Chorus of Dervishes) and
in Saint-Sanss Samson et Dalila and Strausss Salome (each of which features an extended dance that alternates sultry
languor and violent pounding).

As a more general term within musical and other writing, orientalism can carry a variety of meanings. The noun
orientalist is the traditional label for a scholar of Middle Eastern languages, culture and archeology; but the term
orientalism and the adjective orientalist have frequently been applied (since Said, 1978) to the entire imperialist system
that in the past few centuries has defined, ruled, or spoken for the Middle East. The diverse manifestations of orientalism
are often now understood as including not just scholarly treatises but also Western colonial regulations, journalistic
writings, school textbooks, travel posters, poetry, paintings and operas (see Macfie, 2002, and Irwin, 2006). The term has
also been used to refer to European or European-derived attitudes towards any other culture, not just one located in North
Africa or Asia. Lipsitz, for example, speaks of Paul Simons and David Byrnes orientalist fascination with the musics of
sub-Saharan Africa or of the Caribbean; Kramer (1995) does the same for Ravels evocation of ancient Greece (the very
cradle of Western civilization) in Daphnis et Chlo. In such writings, the term becomes a near-synonym for exoticist,
coloured at times by the implication (or outright accusation) that the resulting musical product is exploitive and
demeaningly Eurocentric or to include North America West-centric (see Bellman, Introduction, in Bellman, 1997;
Head, 2003; and Locke, Musical Exoticism, 2009, pp. 348). For the sake of clarity, the word should probably be used
only with regard to geographical regions long regarded (by Westerners) as being located in the East. It should also not
be used as a dismissive epithet: if a work does (or did at the time) convey ethnocentric attitudes, this is a point worth
making explicitly and in detail.

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Ralph P. Locke

Copyright Oxford University Press 2007 2017.

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