DQ for Watkins, 116-29 (grad students: find the pdf for Derek Scott’s “Orientalism and Musical Style” and read the last, summary section pp326 & ff; be prepared to provide insights regarding Scott’s take on “orientalism” as part of our larger discussion of exoticism)
Please be prepared to respond in either seminar meeting or in "Comments" on the course blog. In all venues, you must be prepared to cite specific passages (by page, paragraph, line, and quotation) in support of your responses—and specific works.
This section explores the impact of both the musical and associative sources which European composers found in “exotic” cultures—cultures of “the Other.” Recall our conversation about this in seminar: the ways in which various “othernesses” were mapped-onto topics, musics, and peoples from outside the European classical-music orbit. Be prepared to link and contrast exoticism, 20th-century nationalism, primitivism, and the respective motivations impacting each.
(1) In his opening section, Watkins identifies a long-standing fascination on the part of European composers with various “Eastern” influences. From what combinations of historical and cultural encounters does pre-20th-century exoticism arise, and in what ways do the 20th-century versions of the phenomenon repeat or contrast those earlier versions? What might account for these contrasts? What aspects of 20th-century composers’ experiences transformed the “exotic” resources available to them?
(2) Note on pp116-17 the Saint-Saens prediction that, as a result of these “eastern” encounters,” “harmony and rhythm were bound to change.” Why were they so bound? What types of changes might have been anticipated from these encounters? Crucial question: why might these “eastern resources” have struck European composers, at this particular historical junction, as particularly timely or useful?
(3) There are interconnections in this period between certain musical epicenters, and performing and compositional communities; these can be discovered through a consideration of the biographies and communications between members of these communities. What were those epicenters, and, importantly, how can we discover philosophical and stylistic continuities across wide geographies? How would these interactions shape musical style in the ‘Teens and ‘Twenties?
(4) Similar to (3) above: there is a musical/historical “nexus” in this period between various forms of nationalism, antiquarianism, folklorism, primitivism, and so on. Be prepared to cite specific composers and/or works which display contrasting combinations of these influences. Out of these influences, who wrote how? Why?
(5) What is the significance of
(6) Which “exotic” cultures were borrowed for which pieces by which composers, with which sorts of musical or philosophical motives? Cite pieces, discuss style, seek to relate motives and results.
(7) Read closely the discussion on pp121-23, specifically investigating the influences (both musical and, more importantly, in the realm of ideas) of various cultures upon specific works of Debussy. What did Debussy specifically find in specific cultures? Paralleling (2) above, what aspects of these cultural musics might have struck Debussy as particularly timely or useful?
(8) Read the section on Ravel’s Scheherazade (123-27) and be prepared to articulate a thesis which links Wagnerian romanticism, eastern exoticism, and Ravel’s own prior influences. How did Ravel locate common inspirations in these remarkably different resources? Specific adjectival description is apt and called-for here. [Grad students: this is the place to provide insights from your reading of the “Orientalism” article.]
(9) p127, 2nd full paragraph (“While the heyday of Exoticism…”) is a very concise and articulate summary of a very complex shift of historical perspectives—and in my opinion it is almost too concise: so many factors come together in Watkins’s model that we need to unpack them. Be prepared to lead the class in a discussion, accomplishing that, and unpacking this paragraph.
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The thesis of the section in Watkins pp. 159-167 entitled “Schoenberg and Der Blaue Reiter” is that Schoenberg reflected many of Kandinsky’s ideas in his composition Die Gluckliche Hand (p. 159, last line). Inherent in Schoenberg’s compositional “reflection” was his agreement or identification with certain of the ideas that Kandinsky held that were most notably expressed in his treatise-of-sorts, Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Watkins gives further evidence of Schoenberg’s ties with Kandinsky’s group, Der Blaue Reiter, by citing the inclusion in the publication by the same name of Schoenberg’s composition Herzgewachse Op. 20 on Maeterlinck’s “Foliage of the Heart” (p. 160, line 2, and p. 163, last paragraph, through 164, middle of the page), which was “specially commissioned for the almanac” (p. 163, last paragraph, lines 2-3); an article by Schoenberg entitled “The Relationship to the Text” (p. 160, lines 4-5); Berg’s “Warm die Lufte” (p. 160, lines 3-4); and Webern’s “Ihr tratet zue dem Herde” (p. 160, lines 4-5).
According to the Arnold Schoenberg Center, Kandinsky was the one who first contacted Schoenberg--much to my surprise, since I had developed a notion that it was Schoenberg who pursued a relationship with Kandinsky. Kandinsky wrote Schoenberg on 18 January 1911, having heard his music, and sent a portfolio of woodcuts and photographs of his pictures to Schoenberg. Schoenberg replied on 24 January 1911 in a lengthy letter and offered, with humility, to send Kandinsky reproductions of his (Schoenberg’s) paintings. I did not know that Schoenberg painted before he met Kandinsky! These letters constitute a touching tentative exchange of ideas and reminded me nostalgically of letters that I exchanged with composers in the 1980s; it lent such a feeling of humanity to these figures from music- and art-history textbooks, and I thought about how these letters were exchanged only forty-one years before I was born. Schoenberg, in his reply, was particularly forthcoming, and addressed “expressing oneself” and “form-making,” ideas about which Kandinsky wrote in Concerning the Spiritual in Art.
I would have to do more research to find out precisely what month in 1911 that the artistic movement Der Blaue Reiter was started, that is, in relationship to the 18 January 1911 letter from Kandinsky to Schoenberg, but how could it have been precedent to 18 January? I do know that it was a 1911 offshoot of the Neue Kunstler Vereinigung, which was founded in 1909 in Munich. Kandinsky did not publish his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art until 1912! This creates all sorts of interesting postulations concerning the exchange of ideas between Schoenberg and Kandinsky that might have occurred before the publication, since their exchange of ideas began in January 1911; however, here I am again in the dark, since it would take much more research into the research that has been done here. Still, this is a new idea to me, this possible mutual exchange of ideas, because for some unknown reason I thought that the influence was one-way, Kandinsky to Schoenberg. I just do not have time right now to search out the research that must have been done here.
Now, concerning the influence of Kandinsky on Schoenberg’s Die Gluckliche Hand, I did find Concerning the Spiritual in Art in a couple of translations on the Internet. I had read about it so much and for so many years, and still had not read the text itself. I finally read it tonight, although I am not sure that the two versions were the best translations, etc. Now, Watkins writes that Die Gluckliche Hand was composed between 1910-1913, which means that it was begun before Concerning the Spiritual in Art was begun! Schoenberg, of course, follows Kandinsky’s ideas on colors equating moods that Kandinsky’s ideas on synesthesia.
Watkins writes about a “continuing fascination for the Symbolist notion of correspondences” (p. 159, 6th line from the bottom of the page). As best as I can determine, the Symbolist notion of correspondence has to do with what Watkins calls “intrasensory correspondences” (p. 157, after subtitle, line 1). While the term has something to do with synesthesia, it seems to mean much more than that. However, in the simplest terms, it can be described in terms of color and associations. According to the section in Concerning the Spiritual in Art called “The Language of Form and Color,” especially in the Figures, colors were associated with geometric forms and feelings etc. Watkins writes about how Schoenberg adopts this viewpoint and translates it in the colors called for in the script for Die Gluckliche Hand (p. 162, “dim red light” etc.). For Kandinsky, geometric forms are associated with colors, as well, “sharp outlines” such as triangles being associated with yellow, for example.
I have not yet figured out Kandinsky’s outlook on Wagner, about which Watkins writes (p. 158, 1st full paragraph, line 9). I read what Watkins writes, but it seems amorphous—perhaps Kandinsky’s views were amorphous, and that is the reason, or perhaps it is my lack of understanding. I read the part of Concerning the Spiritual in Art that is the “Spiritual Revolution,” which links Wagner’s use of leitmotifs to the idea that “the word which has two meanings, the first direct, the second indirect, is the pure material of poetry and literature, the materials . . . through which they speck to the spirit.”
Kandinsky wrote, in the section entitled “The Psychological Working of Colour,” that form was the outward expression of inner meaning. “External form is linked to the art forms of today [by way of similarities with past ideologies] and has no future,” and “internal form contains the seed of the future itself.” These statements conform to much of twentieth-century thought on appropriating past methods, but seems to deny the importance of form except as a true working-out of internal truth and meaning such as the Primitives did. One can cross-reference this idea with much of Picasso’s art, and others who were influenced by the art that they had seen from Africa, for example (Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon).
I have more work to do on these questions, but could not figure out another place to publish what I had written so far.
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