The German Roots of Russian Orientalism: Hafiz’s Poetry in Early-20th-Century Russian Song

The Russian arts were as fascinated by exotic languages, cultures, and locales as their Western European counterparts, and at first glance, Russian settings of the poetry of Hafiz appears to form part of the broader field of musical exoticism in general, and Russian orientalism in particular. This chapter begins by examining the relationship between empire and music, before setting out a rather different account of Russian musical orientalism, one marked by a complex transnational flow of literary and musical influences, as well as practices of translation, imitation, cultural appropriation, and cross-border artistic exchange. Whilst forming part of a broader tendency to imagine visions of a supposed ‘orient’ that had little to do with any documented anthropological, ethnographic, philological, or linguistic reality, Russian settings of Hafiz’s poetry are ultimately the result of the import of elements of German romanticism. Here, writers, translators, and commentators co-opted a range of ‘exotic’ literatures in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the dominance of French classicism and fashion an autonomous form of German nationalism, key elements of which were then incorporated into mid-nineteenth-century Russian culture (as in the case of Afanasy Fet’s translations of Georg Daumer’s well-known ‘versions’ of Hafiz). Accordingly, Hafiz figures not so much as the object of orientalist representation (although there is certainly a strong element of that to the songs discussed here), but as an exemplary figure within a complex network of literary mediation.

Introduction

The introduction lays out both the key variables of the entire book and the overlapping themes that stem from them—the nationalization of the theological in Hebrew culture, secularism, Zionist biblocentrism, the Zionist commitment to Westernness, Arab Jews and the socioethnic hierarchy of Zionism, Zionist historiography, and the gradual resurfacing of Jewish diasporic cultures. In lieu of the constructs that have conditioned the study of Israeli art and culture, the book opts for synchronous narratives that unfold in ways that are constantly unsystematic, nondifferential, and afflicted with various degrees of governmentality. This assemblage moves beyond musical exoticism or identitarian paradigms that often promote territorial nationalism uncritically.

Representing the Authentic from Japanese American Perspectives

This chapter explores the career of Japanese American composer and arranger Tak Shindo (1922–2002). Shindo grew up nisei in Los Angeles. Japanese American musical life is discussed with a focus on the community’s 1933 production of Sakura composed by Claude Lapham in the Hollywood Bowl. Interned at Manzanar during World War II, Shindo began musical studies through the camp’s programs. Although devoted to Latin jazz, he repeatedly served during the Cold War as a Japanese musical advisor for such Hollywood composers as Franz Waxman and Max Steiner (Sayonara, Cry for happy, and A majority of one). Several of his 1950s and 60s albums—combining elements of Japanese music with the big band style—were successful in the exotica genre. Shindo’s self-Orientalism is compared with the musical exoticism of Martin Denny. A brief discussion of subsequent Japanese American jazz follows. The chapter concludes with a profile of the composer Paul Chihara.

Ralph Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (2009)

A review of Ralph Locke, Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), ISBN 978-0-5213-4955-0.

„Ricomincio a respirare l’aria di quei paesi“. Zu einem ‚russischen‘ Naturalismus und seiner ästhetischen Entgrenzung in Opern von Umberto Giordano und Franco Alfano (1898–1904)

The unexpected success of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (1890) gave the starting signal for a turn of Italian opera to naturalism. The problematic integration of naturalistic plots into the melodramma was approached in part by means of musical exoticism. The recently started reception of Lev Tolstoy’s and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novels could serve as basis for a re-evaluation of Russian subjects in fin de siècle Italian opera.Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Western image of Russia had been stamped by the contrast of tsarist glamour and the penal camps of Siberia. Umberto Giordano’s Fedora displays this dichotomy from a Parisian point of view. For Siberia, Luigi Illica contributed a libretto based on Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead, in the composition of which Giordano sought to amalgamate the notions of naturalism, Russian exoticism and tragic love. With Risurrezione, Franco Alfano expanded in this direction by creating a powerful Russian atmosphere. His formal solution for the opera’s finale uses a juxtaposition of disparate material which evolves as a hallmark of musical realism.