Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Title Details

366 Pages

0 x 0 cm

19 b/w, 17 line illus.

Series: Eastman Studies in Music

Series Vol. Number: 48

Imprint: University of Rochester Press

Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain

by Bennett Zon

  • Description
  • Contents
Explores the influence of anthropological theories, travel literature, psychology, and other intellectual trends on the perception of non-Western music and elucidates the roots of today's field of ethnomusicology.

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, DurhamUniversity UK and author of Music and Metaphor in Nineteenth-Century British Musicology (Ashgate, 2000).
Cultural Anthropology from the Late Eighteenth Century to the 1850s
The Interplay of Anthropology and Music: Nineteenth Century to the 1850s
Music in the Literature of Anthropology from the 1780s to the 1860s
Cultural Anthropology After Darwin
From Travel Literature to Academic Writing: Anthropology in the Musical Press from the 1830s to the 1930s
Non-Western Music in General Music Histories: Progression Toward Evolution
Histories of National Music (1): Henry Chorley and the Anthropological Background
Histories of National Music (2): Carl Engel and the Influence of Tylor
Overcoming Spencer: Late-Century Theories of the Origin of Music
Charles Samuel Myers and the General Movement Toward Individualism
From Individualism to Individual Differences
The Psychological Writings and the Place of Evolution and Individual Differences
Myer's Ethomusicological Writings
Transcription and the Problems of Translating Musical Culture
A.H. Fox Strangways and Attitudes Toward Song Translation
Fox Strangways and The Music of Hindostan

Ebook (EPDF)

9781580466943

November 2007

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Title Details

366 Pages

0 x 0 cm

19 b/w, 17 line illus.

Series: Eastman Studies in Music

Series Vol. Number: 48

Imprint: University of Rochester Press