Includes bibliographical references (pages 394-444) and index.
Contents:
Part I. Introduction : a rich and complex heritage. Images and principles ; Exotic in style? : paradigms and interpretations -- Part II. The West and its others. The early cultural background ; Encounters -- Part III. Songs and dance-types. Popular songs ; Dances and instrumental styles from (or "from") elsewhere -- Part IV. Exotic portrayals on stage, in concert, in church. Courtly ballets ; Distinctive developments in Venice and other Italian cities and courts ; Oratorio and other religious genres ; Early opera and partly sung stage works ; French and Italian serious opera, especially Lully and Handel ; Eighteenth-century comic operas and short danced works -- Obsession with the Middle East : from the Parisian fairs to Mozart.
Summary:
During the years 1500-1800, European performing arts reveled in a kaleidoscope of Otherness: Middle-Eastern harem women, fortune-telling Spanish 'Gypsies', Incan priests, Barbary pirates, moresca dancers, and more. In this prequel to his 2009 book Musical Exoticism, Ralph P. Locke explores how exotic locales and their inhabitants were characterized in musical genres ranging from instrumental pieces and popular songs to oratorios, ballets, and operas. Locke's study offers new insights into much-loved masterworks by composers such as Cavalli, Lully, Purcell, Rameau, Handel, Vivaldi, Gluck, and Mozart. In these works, evocations of ethnic and cultural Otherness often mingle attraction with envy or fear, and some pieces were understood at the time as commenting on conditions in Europe itself. Locke's accessible study, which includes numerous musical examples and rare illustrations, will be of interest to anyone who is intrigued by the relationship between music and cultural history and by the challenges of cross-cultural (mis)understanding [Publisher description]
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.