Ralph P. Locke

Doing the Impossible: On the Musically Exotic

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 musics 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.

Beyond the exotic: How ‘Eastern’ is Aida ?

Various commentators on Aida express disappointment that the music for the opera’s main characters is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work’s ceremonial scenes and ballets. Others argue that exotic style is mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Much of this commentary draws on the same limited selection of data and observations: the exotic style of those few numbers, the opera’s plot, and the circumstances of the work’s commissioning (by the Khedive of Egypt). The present study aims to broaden the discussion. Most unusually, it dwells on various aspects of words and music that are not in themselves ‘markers’ of exoticism or Orientalism but that nonetheless here manifestly announce traits of this or that character (or group) and thereby communicate indelible impressions of what Egyptians and Ethiopians supposedly ‘are like’ (or were like in an earlier era). For example, the music of the priests is mostly not, as commentators regularly claim, marked by imitative counterpoint; rather, it engages in several distinct archaicising tendencies, some of which characterise the priestly caste (and hence the Egyptian government) as rigid and menacing. In addition, this study calls on such varied evidence (rarely if ever examined in this regard) as costume designs, directions in the disposizione scenica for the opera’s first Italian production, relevant remarks by Verdi and early commentators ( including two Egyptians writing in 1901 and a late interview with Verdi about European imperialism), some early sound recordings, and Western fears/knowledge of the Wahhabist strain of Islam then expanding across the Middle East. While such a multifaceted exploration certainly cannot be definitive, it can point to new possibilities for exploration. As opera lovers know, Verdi’s Aida invokes an imagined ancient Egypt in its ballet numbers, incantations by priests and priestesses, and in the atmospheric opening of Act III (set by the banks of the Nile at night). At the first performances (Cairo, 1871), Filippo Filippi reported ‘an ‘‘Oh!’’ of admiration’ and a ‘cry of astonishment from the audience’ at these various scenes of local and historical colour: And the music was not the least part of it, what with its hieratic colour and with the Oriental hues of the dances, whose rhythmic motives are still heard today here [in Egypt] in the traditional manner, hummed by the natives.1 Almost every commentator on the opera has followed Filippi’s lead in linking specific musical traits with the Egyptian elements of the plot, and it is just as easy to identify ‘Ethiopia’ with descending minor-mode tunes (or oscillating majorminor mode tunes), especially when they are introduced or doubled on the oboe.2 Ideas in this paper were first presented at the meeting of the International Musicological Society in Leuven, Belgium (August 2002). I have received insightful suggestions or timely aid from Jonathan Bellman, Philip Carli, Martin Chusid, Alice Contarini, Thomas Donnan, Gabriele Dotto, Roger Freitas, Andreas Giger, Helen Greenwald, Rob Haskins, Karen Henson, Steven Huebner, Francesco Izzo, James Parakilas, Michael Pisani, Andrew Porter, Jurgen Thym, Michael Walter and two anonymous reviewers. 1 Filippo Filippi, reviews in La perseveranza, dated 14 and 13 January 1872 (respectively ), in Knud Arne Jurgensen, The Verdi Ballets (Parma, 1995), 304, 303. 2 See Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols., rev. edn (New York, 1992), III: 203, 206, 209, 211, 236; Fabrizio Della Seta, ‘ ‘‘O cieli azzurri’’: Exoticism and Dramatic Discourse in Aida’, this journal, 3 (1991), 49–62. But does the opera as a whole express or reflect attitudes (admiring, idealised, deploring, anxious . . . ) towards Egyptians or Ethiopians, whether ancient or modern? Can these attitudes be understood as sustained throughout the opera, rather than confined to those few, scene-setting moments, with their odd scales and other devices for indicating Otherness? This question prompts another that at first sounds quite distinct: how does Aida portray the advantages, challenges, morality and price of imperial Egypt’s rule over Ethiopia? The two questions are related by the fact that to establish and maintain an empire often entails a systematic Othering of a whole distant (or sometimes neighbouring) people, turning them into a category of not-Us, and thereby into objects to be dehumanised, possessed and used for Our own purposes, when not simply raped and mass-murdered on the spot. Julian Budden has linked the two considerations, though in a wording that proves problematic. He notes regretfully that, for audiences and critics in recent decades, Aida has ‘turned . . . just a little sour’ because of its acceptance of Egypt’s oppressive authority, and he asserts that the work is, quite to the contrary, marked by a ‘complete absence of racialist and fascist overtones’. By recasting imperialism as fascism and denying its presence here, Budden seems concerned to neutralise political critique of the work. But the chosen word backfires: Aida can hardly be called ‘fascist’ in any meaningful sense (except perhaps for its specific uses under Mussolini ) – that is, unless one defines fascism broadly enough to include imperial rule as it has been practised over millennia. Furthermore, by raising and immediately dismissing both issues – ethnic stereotyping and abusive state power – Budden gives the impression that those who denigrate the opera grasp at straws, so that only a ‘complete absence’ of criticism of the two national groups or of Egypt’s war machine could allay their suspicions. But since Aida’s place in Western culture and in critical discourse is secure, thanks in large part to Budden and other devoted Verdians, we should be free to explore the work’s messages without fearing that we will be heard as devaluing the opera, nor as suggesting that it should be censured or, even worse, censored.3 I shall propose that, far from a simple reflection of late nineteenth-century colonialist prejudices, Aida is a stirring disavowal of imperial pursuits and the stereotyping of cultural Others (even while it re-engages certain of those same deeply rooted stereotypes). Much of the commentary on Aida’s ‘orientalism’ has drawn on the same limited selection of data and observations: the plot, the exotic style of specific numbers and the circumstances of the work’s commission (by the Khedive of Egypt).4 The 3 On the ethical questions raised by musical works, see my ‘Musicology and/as Social Concern: Imagining the Relevant Musicologist’, in Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford, 1999), 499–530, here 499. 4 A bare-bones bibliography might include ( in addition to Budden and Della Seta, cited above) Massimo Mila, ‘A Difficult Opera’, and Mercedes Viale-Ferrero, ‘Scenery and Costumes for Aida: Cairo (1871) Milan (1872)’, in Aida in Cairo: The Birth of an Opera by a Famous Italian Composer, ed. Mario Codignola and Riccardo de Sanctis ( [Rome], [1982] ), 13–19 and 139–44; Claudio Casini, Verdi (Milan, 1981), 301–7; Jurgen Maehder, ‘Die musikalische Realisation altagyptischen Lokalkolorits’, in programme book for the Bayerische Staatsoper production, ed. Klaus Schulz (Munich, 1979), 54–66; Herbert Lindenberger, footnote continued on next page 106 Ralph P. Locke

Paris: Centre of Intellectual Ferment

The history of modern France — and of the modern world — begins, in many ways, with the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. This uprising of the people of Paris against the monarchical state initiated a series of experiments in government that followed one another with startling rapidity over several decades. Outside France, too, the challenging of the Bourbons1 long supremacy sent waves of fear through the ruling elites, at the same time giving inspiration and encouragement to people of humbler class suffering under conservative dynasties, from Spain and Italy to Germany, Poland and Russia, everywhere redefining the terms of political and cultural debate.

Aida and Nine Readings of Empire

What influence did contemporary attitudes towards empire and towards ‘Other’ peoples exert on musical works, especially when those peoples were perceived as being of a different race? The answer surely varies with the genre and also with the complexity of the given work. The late Edward Said – the most prominent and controversial figure in cultural critique of this sort – put it well: a work that is ‘rich in ... aesthetic intellectual complexity’ must not be treated as if it were a crudely ‘jingoistic ditty’ – or, for the present context, a racist one. Said’s specific example of a complex literary work, in that passage from his important book Culture and Imperialism, is Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, with its occasional, resonant references to a sugar plantation in the Caribbean and thus also to the British slave trade.1 The problem becomes even more intense in music (of equivalent aesthetic complexity). Instrumental works are particularly difficult to interrogate on any ‘extra-musical’ basis, for an obvious and much-discussed reason: the relative inability of music, without verbal or visual anchors, to denotate and to narrate.2 This is not to say that the workings of empire and attitudes towards ‘race’ leave no impress on purely instrumental works. But such an impress is normally found

Beyond the exotic: How is Aida ?

Various commentators on Aida express disappointment that the music for the opera’s main characters is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work’s ceremonial scenes and ballets. Others argue that exotic style is mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Much of this commentary draws on the same limited selection of data and observations: the exotic style of those few numbers, the opera’s plot, and the circumstances of the work’s commissioning (by the Khedive of Egypt). The present study aims to broaden the discussion. Most unusually, it dwells on various aspects of words and music that are not in themselves ‘markers’ of exoticism or Orientalism but that nonetheless here manifestly announce traits of this or that character (or group) and thereby communicate indelible impressions of what Egyptians and Ethiopians supposedly ‘are like’ (or were like in an earlier era). For example, the music of the priests is mostly not, as commentators regularly claim, marked by imitative counterpoint; rather, it engages in several distinct archaicising tendencies, some of which characterise the priestly caste (and hence the Egyptian government) as rigid and menacing. In addition, this study calls on such varied evidence (rarely if ever examined in this regard) as costume designs, directions in the disposizione scenica for the opera’s first Italian production, relevant remarks by Verdi and early commentators ( including two Egyptians writing in 1901 and a late interview with Verdi about European imperialism), some early sound recordings, and Western fears/knowledge of the Wahhabist strain of Islam then expanding across the Middle East. While such a multifaceted exploration certainly cannot be definitive, it can point to new possibilities for exploration. As opera lovers know, Verdi’s Aida invokes an imagined ancient Egypt in its ballet numbers, incantations by priests and priestesses, and in the atmospheric opening of Act III (set by the banks of the Nile at night). At the first performances (Cairo, 1871), Filippo Filippi reported ‘an ‘‘Oh!’’ of admiration’ and a ‘cry of astonishment from the audience’ at these various scenes of local and historical colour: And the music was not the least part of it, what with its hieratic colour and with the Oriental hues of the dances, whose rhythmic motives are still heard today here [in Egypt] in the traditional manner, hummed by the natives.1 Almost every commentator on the opera has followed Filippi’s lead in linking specific musical traits with the Egyptian elements of the plot, and it is just as easy to identify ‘Ethiopia’ with descending minor-mode tunes (or oscillating majorminor mode tunes), especially when they are introduced or doubled on the oboe.2 Ideas in this paper were first presented at the meeting of the International Musicological Society in Leuven, Belgium (August 2002). I have received insightful suggestions or timely aid from Jonathan Bellman, Philip Carli, Martin Chusid, Alice Contarini, Thomas Donnan, Gabriele Dotto, Roger Freitas, Andreas Giger, Helen Greenwald, Rob Haskins, Karen Henson, Steven Huebner, Francesco Izzo, James Parakilas, Michael Pisani, Andrew Porter, Jurgen Thym, Michael Walter and two anonymous reviewers. 1 Filippo Filippi, reviews in La perseveranza, dated 14 and 13 January 1872 (respectively ), in Knud Arne Jurgensen, The Verdi Ballets (Parma, 1995), 304, 303. 2 See Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols., rev. edn (New York, 1992), III: 203, 206, 209, 211, 236; Fabrizio Della Seta, ‘ ‘‘O cieli azzurri’’: Exoticism and Dramatic Discourse in Aida’, this journal, 3 (1991), 49–62. But does the opera as a whole express or reflect attitudes (admiring, idealised, deploring, anxious . . . ) towards Egyptians or Ethiopians, whether ancient or modern? Can these attitudes be understood as sustained throughout the opera, rather than confined to those few, scene-setting moments, with their odd scales and other devices for indicating Otherness? This question prompts another that at first sounds quite distinct: how does Aida portray the advantages, challenges, morality and price of imperial Egypt’s rule over Ethiopia? The two questions are related by the fact that to establish and maintain an empire often entails a systematic Othering of a whole distant (or sometimes neighbouring) people, turning them into a category of not-Us, and thereby into objects to be dehumanised, possessed and used for Our own purposes, when not simply raped and mass-murdered on the spot. Julian Budden has linked the two considerations, though in a wording that proves problematic. He notes regretfully that, for audiences and critics in recent decades, Aida has ‘turned . . . just a little sour’ because of its acceptance of Egypt’s oppressive authority, and he asserts that the work is, quite to the contrary, marked by a ‘complete absence of racialist and fascist overtones’. By recasting imperialism as fascism and denying its presence here, Budden seems concerned to neutralise political critique of the work. But the chosen word backfires: Aida can hardly be called ‘fascist’ in any meaningful sense (except perhaps for its specific uses under Mussolini ) – that is, unless one defines fascism broadly enough to include imperial rule as it has been practised over millennia. Furthermore, by raising and immediately dismissing both issues – ethnic stereotyping and abusive state power – Budden gives the impression that those who denigrate the opera grasp at straws, so that only a ‘complete absence’ of criticism of the two national groups or of Egypt’s war machine could allay their suspicions. But since Aida’s place in Western culture and in critical discourse is secure, thanks in large part to Budden and other devoted Verdians, we should be free to explore the work’s messages without fearing that we will be heard as devaluing the opera, nor as suggesting that it should be censured or, even worse, censored.3 I shall propose that, far from a simple reflection of late nineteenth-century colonialist prejudices, Aida is a stirring disavowal of imperial pursuits and the stereotyping of cultural Others (even while it re-engages certain of those same deeply rooted stereotypes). Much of the commentary on Aida’s ‘orientalism’ has drawn on the same limited selection of data and observations: the plot, the exotic style of specific numbers and the circumstances of the work’s commission (by the Khedive of Egypt).4 The 3 On the ethical questions raised by musical works, see my ‘Musicology and/as Social Concern: Imagining the Relevant Musicologist’, in Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford, 1999), 499–530, here 499. 4 A bare-bones bibliography might include ( in addition to Budden and Della Seta, cited above) Massimo Mila, ‘A Difficult Opera’, and Mercedes Viale-Ferrero, ‘Scenery and Costumes for Aida: Cairo (1871) Milan (1872)’, in Aida in Cairo: The Birth of an Opera by a Famous Italian Composer, ed. Mario Codignola and Riccardo de Sanctis ( [Rome], [1982] ), 13–19 and 139–44; Claudio Casini, Verdi (Milan, 1981), 301–7; Jurgen Maehder, ‘Die musikalische Realisation altagyptischen Lokalkolorits’, in programme book for the Bayerische Staatsoper production, ed. Klaus Schulz (Munich, 1979), 54–66; Herbert Lindenberger, footnote continued on next page 106 Ralph P. Locke

Beyond the exotic: How

Various commentators on Aida express disappointment that the music for the opera’s main characters is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work’s ceremonial scenes and ballets. Others argue that exotic style is mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Much of this commentary draws on the same limited selection of data and observations: the exotic style of those few numbers, the opera’s plot, and the circumstances of the work’s commissioning (by the Khedive of Egypt). The present study aims to broaden the discussion. Most unusually, it dwells on various aspects of words and music that are not in themselves ‘markers’ of exoticism or Orientalism but that nonetheless here manifestly announce traits of this or that character (or group) and thereby communicate indelible impressions of what Egyptians and Ethiopians supposedly ‘are like’ (or were like in an earlier era). For example, the music of the priests is mostly not, as commentators regularly claim, marked by imitative counterpoint; rather, it engages in several distinct archaicising tendencies, some of which characterise the priestly caste (and hence the Egyptian government) as rigid and menacing. In addition, this study calls on such varied evidence (rarely if ever examined in this regard) as costume designs, directions in the disposizione scenica for the opera’s first Italian production, relevant remarks by Verdi and early commentators ( including two Egyptians writing in 1901 and a late interview with Verdi about European imperialism), some early sound recordings, and Western fears/knowledge of the Wahhabist strain of Islam then expanding across the Middle East. While such a multifaceted exploration certainly cannot be definitive, it can point to new possibilities for exploration. As opera lovers know, Verdi’s Aida invokes an imagined ancient Egypt in its ballet numbers, incantations by priests and priestesses, and in the atmospheric opening of Act III (set by the banks of the Nile at night). At the first performances (Cairo, 1871), Filippo Filippi reported ‘an ‘‘Oh!’’ of admiration’ and a ‘cry of astonishment from the audience’ at these various scenes of local and historical colour: And the music was not the least part of it, what with its hieratic colour and with the Oriental hues of the dances, whose rhythmic motives are still heard today here [in Egypt] in the traditional manner, hummed by the natives.1 Almost every commentator on the opera has followed Filippi’s lead in linking specific musical traits with the Egyptian elements of the plot, and it is just as easy to identify ‘Ethiopia’ with descending minor-mode tunes (or oscillating majorminor mode tunes), especially when they are introduced or doubled on the oboe.2 Ideas in this paper were first presented at the meeting of the International Musicological Society in Leuven, Belgium (August 2002). I have received insightful suggestions or timely aid from Jonathan Bellman, Philip Carli, Martin Chusid, Alice Contarini, Thomas Donnan, Gabriele Dotto, Roger Freitas, Andreas Giger, Helen Greenwald, Rob Haskins, Karen Henson, Steven Huebner, Francesco Izzo, James Parakilas, Michael Pisani, Andrew Porter, Jurgen Thym, Michael Walter and two anonymous reviewers. 1 Filippo Filippi, reviews in La perseveranza, dated 14 and 13 January 1872 (respectively ), in Knud Arne Jurgensen, The Verdi Ballets (Parma, 1995), 304, 303. 2 See Julian Budden, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols., rev. edn (New York, 1992), III: 203, 206, 209, 211, 236; Fabrizio Della Seta, ‘ ‘‘O cieli azzurri’’: Exoticism and Dramatic Discourse in Aida’, this journal, 3 (1991), 49–62. But does the opera as a whole express or reflect attitudes (admiring, idealised, deploring, anxious . . . ) towards Egyptians or Ethiopians, whether ancient or modern? Can these attitudes be understood as sustained throughout the opera, rather than confined to those few, scene-setting moments, with their odd scales and other devices for indicating Otherness? This question prompts another that at first sounds quite distinct: how does Aida portray the advantages, challenges, morality and price of imperial Egypt’s rule over Ethiopia? The two questions are related by the fact that to establish and maintain an empire often entails a systematic Othering of a whole distant (or sometimes neighbouring) people, turning them into a category of not-Us, and thereby into objects to be dehumanised, possessed and used for Our own purposes, when not simply raped and mass-murdered on the spot. Julian Budden has linked the two considerations, though in a wording that proves problematic. He notes regretfully that, for audiences and critics in recent decades, Aida has ‘turned . . . just a little sour’ because of its acceptance of Egypt’s oppressive authority, and he asserts that the work is, quite to the contrary, marked by a ‘complete absence of racialist and fascist overtones’. By recasting imperialism as fascism and denying its presence here, Budden seems concerned to neutralise political critique of the work. But the chosen word backfires: Aida can hardly be called ‘fascist’ in any meaningful sense (except perhaps for its specific uses under Mussolini ) – that is, unless one defines fascism broadly enough to include imperial rule as it has been practised over millennia. Furthermore, by raising and immediately dismissing both issues – ethnic stereotyping and abusive state power – Budden gives the impression that those who denigrate the opera grasp at straws, so that only a ‘complete absence’ of criticism of the two national groups or of Egypt’s war machine could allay their suspicions. But since Aida’s place in Western culture and in critical discourse is secure, thanks in large part to Budden and other devoted Verdians, we should be free to explore the work’s messages without fearing that we will be heard as devaluing the opera, nor as suggesting that it should be censured or, even worse, censored.3 I shall propose that, far from a simple reflection of late nineteenth-century colonialist prejudices, Aida is a stirring disavowal of imperial pursuits and the stereotyping of cultural Others (even while it re-engages certain of those same deeply rooted stereotypes). Much of the commentary on Aida’s ‘orientalism’ has drawn on the same limited selection of data and observations: the plot, the exotic style of specific numbers and the circumstances of the work’s commission (by the Khedive of Egypt).4 The 3 On the ethical questions raised by musical works, see my ‘Musicology and/as Social Concern: Imagining the Relevant Musicologist’, in Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (Oxford, 1999), 499–530, here 499. 4 A bare-bones bibliography might include ( in addition to Budden and Della Seta, cited above) Massimo Mila, ‘A Difficult Opera’, and Mercedes Viale-Ferrero, ‘Scenery and Costumes for Aida: Cairo (1871) Milan (1872)’, in Aida in Cairo: The Birth of an Opera by a Famous Italian Composer, ed. Mario Codignola and Riccardo de Sanctis ( [Rome], [1982] ), 13–19 and 139–44; Claudio Casini, Verdi (Milan, 1981), 301–7; Jurgen Maehder, ‘Die musikalische Realisation altagyptischen Lokalkolorits’, in programme book for the Bayerische Staatsoper production, ed. Klaus Schulz (Munich, 1979), 54–66; Herbert Lindenberger, footnote continued on next page 106 Ralph P. Locke

Music, Horses, and Exotic Others: Early-Modern Processions, Tournaments, and Pageants

In Europe, during the Early Modern Period (ca. 1500-1800), lands and peoples that were located far away were often perceived, by inhabitants of a European land, as somehow exotic: that is, as different from “Here” and “Us.” Rarely mentioned in discussions of “music and the exotic” are certain important and highly formalized events that were put on by major European courts, that mainly occurred out of doors, and that often made use of horses: namely processions (often pageant-like), jousts, tournaments, and equestrian ballets. Several French and Italian courts represented the exotic Other in distinctive ways at such events. A notable series of events took place in 1565 during the politically fraught visit of the young French king Charles IX and his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, to Bayonne. Detailed accounts of the Bayonne séjour reveal instances in which foreigners were portrayed, including Turks, “Moors,” American “savages,” an Amazon warrior (from an unknown distant land), and legendary sorceresses from Syria and Cathay, and also rural French villagers (arguably a “foreign” group, from the viewpoint of Paris-based aristocrats and their Spanish guests). These portrayals reflected struggles among the major European powers over religion, territory, and overseas empire and struggles between Europe and the Ottoman Empire over control of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.

Nineteenth-Century Music: Quantity, Quality, Qualities

Research on music and musical life in nineteenth-century Europe and North America has been increasing at a smart pace over the past few decades, revealing an admirable variety and welcome sense of fresh initiative. But many of these efforts – especially ones dealing with pieces that are rarely if ever performed today – have proceeded in relative isolation or have not been granted the attention that they deserve. And many important topics – including whole forgotten repertoires – remain to be explored.