Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain

by Zon, Bennett

• ISBN13: 9781580462594
• ISBN10: 1580462596
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-01
• Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc

Summary

Bennett Zon's Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain is the first book to situate non-Western music within the intellectual culture of nineteenth-century Britain. It covers many crucial issues -- race, orientalism, otherness, evolution -- and explores the influence of important anthropological theories on the perception of non-Western music. The book also considers a wide range of other writings of the period, from psychology and travel literature to musicology and theories of musical transcription, and it reflects on the historically problematic term "ethnomusicology." Representing Non-Western Music discusses such theories as noble simplicity, monogenism and polygenism, the comparative method, degenerationism, and developmentalism. Zon looks at the effect of evolutionism on the musical press, general music histories, and histories of national music. He also treats the work of Charles Samuel Myers, the first Britain to record non-Western music in the field, and explores how A. H. Fox Strangways used contemporary translation theory as an analogy for transcription in The Music of Hindostan (1914) to show that individuality can be retained by embracing foreign elements rather than adapting them to Western musical style. Bennett Zon is Reader in Music and Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University UK and author of Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology (Ashgate, 2000).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction: Humanizing the Musical Savage: Orientalism and Racism in the History of British Ethnomusicology	p. 1
Early Anthropological Influences
Cultural Anthropology from the Late Eighteenth Century to the 1850s	p. 17
The Interplay of Anthropology and Music: Nineteenth-Century Travel Literature	p. 25
Music in the Literature of Anthropology from the 1780s to the 1860s	p. 48
Musicology in Transition to Evolution
Cultural Anthropology after Darwin	p. 71
From Travel Literature to Academic Writing: Anthropology in the Musical Press from the 1830s to the 1930s	p. 78
Non-Western Music in General Music Histories: Progression toward Evolution	p. 95
Histories of National Music (1): Henry Chorley and the Anthropological Background	p. 114
Histories of National Music (2): Carl Engel and the Influence of Tylor	p. 129
Overcoming Spencer: Late-Century Theories of the Origin of Music	p. 145
Individualism and the Influence of Evolution: Charles Samuel Myers and the Role of Psychology
Charles Samuel Myers and the General Movement toward Individualism	p. 159
From Individualism to Individual Differences	p. 177
The Psychological Writings and the Place of Evolution and Individual Differences	p. 196
Myers's Ethnomusicological Writings	p. 218
Retaining Cultural Identity: A. H. Fox Strangways and the Problems of Transcription
Transcription and the Problems of Translating Musical Culture	p. 249
A. H. Fox Strangways and Attitudes Toward Song Translation	p. 261
Fox Strangways and The Music of Hindostan	p. 277
Epilogue: The "Ethnomusicology" in Long Nineteenth-Century Representations of Non-Western Music	p. 291
Works Cited	p. 303
Index	p. 333
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