The avant garde and its 'others' : Orientalism in contemporary art music

Abstract

The economic and social convergence of the world in recent decades has encouraged cross-cultural exchange to a degree unprecedented in human history. Such interaction has contributed immensely to the stylistic pluralism of contemporary art music, and the proliferation of musical styles has in turn led to a heightened awareness of the dichotomy between 'Self' -and- 'Other', provoking much discussion on the issues of 'Westernisation', 'Modernisation', 'Universalism', 'Exoticism' and 'Orientalism'. Stimulated by Edward Said's penetrating critique, Orientalism (1978), scholarly interest in cross-cultural interaction has increasingly focused on the need to understand cultural activities in the larger context of institutional, political and socio-economic conditions.

This thesis seeks to devise modes of articulating cross-cultural interaction in contemporary art music. It attempts to develop a critical framework for interpreting the influence of and allusions to Oriental elements in contemporary art music - a framework that emphasises not so much the subversion of ethnocentric narratives, but rather their transformation into more inclusive ones.

This is achieved through study of four contemporary composers of art music of varied cultural and ethnic backgrounds: Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Peter Sculthorpe and Toru Takemitsu. I locate them within broad social and cultural perspectives, and try to identify and compare their differing approaches to and constructions of the musical 'Other'. I argue that, out of these composers, it is Takemitsu whose work best demonstrates the possibility of a productive interaction of musical cultures. Constructed out of multiple overlapping identities, Takemitsu's art, as I see it, creates an image of a new form of world interdependence.

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