Excerpt from the cover of the 1905 first edition of Claude Debussy’s La Mer published by A. Durand & Fil, based on Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760–1849) Kanagawa oki nami ura (Under the Wave off Kanagawa) from the series Fugaku sanjūrokkei (Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830–32).
Musical Orientalia Catalog
edited by Renata Skupin
The number of musical works inspired by countless ‘journeys to the East’ or ‘encounters with the Orient’ by Western composers is so enormous that it seems almost impossible to compile a complete list. Musical ‘orientalia’ can be assumed to represent, incorporate, accommodate, assimilate or appropriate what composers consider to be ‘oriental’ – originating from, connected with or related to the Orient.
For selecting works to be included in the Musical Orientalia Catalog (MOC), I propose applying the intentio auctoris criterion, requiring evidence of the composer’s intentional ‘orientalisation’ of the music. Such evidence can take various forms: above all the name or title given to the work; oriental elements in the words of a vocal or vocal-instrumental work; the composer’s comments in the score or a concert programme.
The Orient, as a source of creative inspiration, is a given composer’s take on what s/he considers to be oriental and wishes to incorporate into her/his musical work. It seems impossible to formulate a substantial definition of the Orient as such, as it depends on individual sensibilities, perspectives and intentions. Hence, I regard this Orient as a symbol that refers to a certain meaning or many different meanings, and not to objective reality. In fact, in every musical work, we are dealing with an individual creative imaginarium of the oriental Other. Moreover, the Orient as a monolithic object exists only as an element of a dichotomous thought construct, assuming a perception of the world as a whole divided into two parts: West and East, Occident and Orient. About such an Orient, we know for sure only that it is different from the Occident, and its otherness is the opposite of the West.
Although the Orient has been associated since ancient times with the geographical criterion, the very concept and scope of the geographical Orient are historically changeable. From the contemporary perspective, its traditional and unchanging location is the Islamic Middle East (e.g. North Africa, Turkey, Arabia, Persia) and the Far East (East and South Asia, e.g. India, Indochina, China, Japan). Any Orient recognized as a monolith is also commonly considered to be geographically oriented to the East, regardless of whether it is related to the real East or remains an entirely imaginary and topographically unlocated East or an exotic, fairy-tale Orient. Even though the geographical criterion does not exhaust the possibilities of the artistic creation of the Oriental in music, it remains the first-choice criterion for selecting musical orientalia. Yet that process requires the verification and in-depth analysis of the creative stimuli behind a composer’s work.
The ‘oriental’ in music, i.e. various ‘Orients’ creatively captured by composers in their works, can be both musical and extra-musical elements or aspects included in the music by means of compositional technique, using the tools of musical poetics.
The Musical Orientalia Catalog will remain open both for new works that are still being written and also for works from the past, from the late Renaissance onwards, which for various reasons are still not identified or widely known. As well as constituting a database for music analysis (individual case studies), it may also provide background material for theoretical approaches to orientalism as a transcultural phenomenon in Western music.
More information about the assumptions and goals of the MOC, classification methods and data retrieval options are available in the publications repository.
Cite this Item:
Skupin Renata (ed.), Musical Orientalia Catalog, http://www.musicorientalia.org,
DOI: 10.5906/moc
The number of musical works inspired by countless ‘journeys to the East’ or ‘encounters with the Orient’ by Western composers is so enormous that it seems almost impossible to compile a complete list. Musical ‘orientalia’ can be assumed to represent, incorporate, accommodate, assimilate or appropriate what composers consider to be ‘oriental’ – originating from, connected with or related to the Orient.
For selecting works to be included in the Musical Orientalia Catalog (MOC), I propose applying the intentio auctoris criterion, requiring evidence of the composer’s intentional ‘orientalisation’ of the music. Such evidence can take various forms: above all the name or title given to the work; oriental elements in the words of a vocal or vocal-instrumental work; the composer’s comments in the score or a concert programme.
The Orient, as a source of creative inspiration, is a given composer’s take on what s/he considers to be oriental and wishes to incorporate into her/his musical work. It seems impossible to formulate a substantial definition of the Orient as such, as it depends on individual sensibilities, perspectives and intentions. Hence, I regard this Orient as a symbol that refers to a certain meaning or many different meanings, and not to objective reality. In fact, in every musical work, we are dealing with an individual creative imaginarium of the oriental Other. Moreover, the Orient as a monolithic object exists only as an element of a dichotomous thought construct, assuming a perception of the world as a whole divided into two parts: West and East, Occident and Orient. About such an Orient, we know for sure only that it is different from the Occident, and its otherness is the opposite of the West.
Although the Orient has been associated since ancient times with the geographical criterion, the very concept and scope of the geographical Orient are historically changeable. From the contemporary perspective, its traditional and unchanging location is the Islamic Middle East (e.g. North Africa, Turkey, Arabia, Persia) and the Far East (East and South Asia, e.g. India, Indochina, China, Japan). Any Orient recognized as a monolith is also commonly considered to be geographically oriented to the East, regardless of whether it is related to the real East or remains an entirely imaginary and topographically unlocated East or an exotic, fairy-tale Orient. Even though the geographical criterion does not exhaust the possibilities of the artistic creation of the Oriental in music, it remains the first-choice criterion for selecting musical orientalia. Yet that process requires the verification and in-depth analysis of the creative stimuli behind a composer’s work.
The ‘oriental’ in music, i.e. various ‘Orients’ creatively captured by composers in their works, can be both musical and extra-musical elements or aspects included in the music by means of compositional technique, using the tools of musical poetics.
The Musical Orientalia Catalog will remain open both for new works that are still being written and also for works from the past, from the late Renaissance onwards, which for various reasons are still not identified or widely known. As well as constituting a database for music analysis (individual case studies), it may also provide background material for theoretical approaches to orientalism as a transcultural phenomenon in Western music.
More information about the assumptions and goals of the MOC, classification methods and data retrieval options are available in the publications repository.
Cite this Item:
Skupin Renata (ed.), Musical Orientalia Catalog, http://www.musicorientalia.org,
DOI: 10.5906/moc
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