Review

Reviewed Work(s): Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation and
Appropriation in Music by Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh
Review by: Gerry Farrell
Source: Music & Letters , Nov., 2001, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Nov., 2001), pp. 680-682
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/3526306

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 Highpoints
Highpointsofofthese
theseyears
yearsin(in(
clude
cludeimportant
importantWestern
Western Music
Musicandand
its Others:
its Others:
Difference,
Difference,
Represen-
Rep
concerts and commissions. Fin( ee herself
herselfjump-
jump-tation
tationand
andAppropriation
Appropriationin Music.
in Music.
Ed. by Ed.
Georgina
by Geo
started her career once again inearly
the
the early1970s
1970s Born
Born&&David
DavidHesmondhalgh.
Hesmondhalgh. pp. xipp.
+ 360.
xi + 36
by producing a concert of herwno,
wn compositions
compositions(University
(University
of of
California
California
Press,
Press,
Berkeley
Berkeley
& Los
for New York in April 1973, aftei
rr which
which a highlyAngeles, 2000, $60/$24.95. ISBN 0-520-
a highly
favourable review from an influ ential New rork 22083-8/-22084-6.)
Times critic reinvigorated hei r career. Von
Gunden cites works that she emiered
pr
emiered on
onthis
thisThe
Thecover
cover
of of
this
this
bookbook
shows
shows
an image
an image
fromfrom
the the
occasion as among Fine's best, including
includingTwo
Twojazz
jazz
pianist
pianist
Herbie
Herbie
Hancock's
Hancock's
19731973
albumalbum
Head-Head-
Neruda Poems for solo voice, and
a virtuoso
virtuosowork,
work,hunters.
hunters.
It depicts
It depicts
a piano
a piano
player
player
with with
a curiously
a curiously
Percussion
Percussionfor
the Concerto for Piano, Strings, and forOne
Onemutant
mutanthead
head
apparently
apparently
mademade
fromfrom
some some
kind of
kind of
Performer. sound equipment-a sound-level gauge for a
Fine's week-long guest reside ncy in January mouth, control dials for eyes, all tapering off to
1983 with the San Francisco Sym iphony made for horn-like protuberances on the top of the head.
another high point in her career; the commission The image is both compelling and disturbing,
that led to Drama for Orchestra (1 982). This work almost witch-doctor-like, suggesting dark, hidden
has not been recorded, Von Gi unden describes or forbidden areas of musical experience: very
how 'orchestrations ranging from solo lines, doub- consciously 'other'. It serves perfectly its purpose
lings, and fused ensemble chords 3 create a clarity of underlining the title and subject matter of this
that makes Drama successful. It][Iwas so well collection of essays, because this is certainly a book
received that the San Francisco Symphony sub- in which many heads are hunted (intellectually, of
mitted it for the 1983 Pulitzer Priz<
e. Drama was the course) and where a few are conceptually lopped
runner-up' (p. 117). This is another of Fine's scores off altogether.
that deserves attention. The essays in this collection are consistently rich
Fine benefited from the grov ving interest in in ideas and often provocative in formulation,
women's history and second-wav Fe feminism that although much of the ground covered will be
marked the 1970s in the United ' States. She often familiar to anyone interested in oriental or exotic
stated how looking backwards mac le her realize the influences on Western music. Interestingly, the
vital contributions of Ruth Crn awford both as idea for the book derived from a 1990 conference
model and as teacher to her ov wvn growth as a at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA),
young artist. 'I myself have foun d since the '60s London with the slightly curious title 'The Debt
that the woman's movement has I been a liberating to Other Musics'. Although such an enterprise can
influence for me personally', she )ld
tc the composer legitimately be viewed as a necessary and overdue
Elizabeth Vercoe in 1992 (p. 99). . Fine turned to recalibration of historical/musical perspectives, the
women's history in her choralYork v Meeting for term 'debt' is potentially loaded. It gives an
Equal Rights (1976) and to female writers for texts unfortunate impression that some sort of intellec-
and inspiration: Virginia Woolf F and Gertrude tual or cultural debt-payment scheme may be in
Stein became characters in the es Kplicitly feminist operation-a process of giving back something to
chamber opera for five singersnd a nine instru- those from whom it was appropriated in the first
ments, Women in the Garden (1977) ). Autobiograph- place, although through the channels of contem-
ical allusions as well play a rolee in her second porary Western musical scholarship. However, one
multimedia chamber opera, TheiemoirsA of Uliana thing the book makes abundantly clear is that the
Rooney (1994). processes of representation and appropriation in
Fine died unexpectedly in 2000 I, the victim of a music are multi-faceted and highly complex. The
road accident. Although suffering f
from Parkinson's essays here amount to much more than a simple
Disease, she had only stopped omposing
c( a few rebalancing of perspectives as they relentlessly
years earlier. She maintained the zest for life that interrogate many of the assumptions made about
those who knew her cherished. Du ring a telephone ways in which the music of the Other is encoun-
conversation in 1997, she said tome, 'My inner tered or exploited by Western musicians and
vitality is undaunted'. Perhaps ful
ture generations theorists.
of musicians will be able to experience the 'inner On the back panel of the book, away from
vitality' of her music as her legacy
is explored with images of otherness, we find a number of testimo-
greater analytic sophistication and
historical depth. nials for the importance and innovative tone of this
Von Gunden has opened the d/
oor into Vivian work. Susan McClary, for example, notes that the
Fine's musical world. entrance of cultural studies into musicology leads
JUDITH TICK to a possible new focus exemplifed in books such

680

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as this one, especially as '.. . the canon wars recede
logical approach. They are, rather, a collection of
. . .' Perhaps old canon wars are receding (or widely differing contributions linked by the ov
maybe there is just a temporary cease-fire), but arching theme of Western music and its others.
new ones may well be taking shape around con- Criticisms of the blanket term 'Western' have been
cepts of world music, orientalism and portrayals oftoo well rehearsed elsewhere to repeat here, but
the Other in contemporary musical scholarship. In the possible meanings that emerge from this collec-
the long theoretical shadow cast by Edward Said, tion for what constitutes 'other' prove to be multi-
among others, dangers may lie in wait for Western farious and fascinating. Richard Middleton looks
musical scholars when they seek to purge them- at Western music and 'its low Other' chiefly
selves of the previous glaring limitations of main- through analyses of The Magic Flute and Porgy and
stream musicology or ethnomusicology by Bess; Jann Pasler examines the influence of Indian
embracing the language of cultural studies. They music on the work of Delage and Roussel; Julie
now encounter another perplexing field of dis-Brown interrogates the racial undertones of
course with a specialized and often somewhat Bartok's attitudes to Gypsy music; Peter Franklin
opaque terminology, in which it may seem thatdiscusses the contradictions at the heart of mod-
ernism in music; John Corbett views the Other
critical discussions of representations of the Other
continual spawn other representations of the Otherthrough the work of Cage to the 1960s minimalists;
in an ever-deepening ideological hall of mirrors. Philip V. Bohlman discusses Jewish music in
On the whole the authors in this book manage Europe;
to Martin Stokes considers the influences,
navigate their way safely through this potential from East and West, that contribute towards
labyrinth of cultural reference points. Turkish Arabesk; Claudia Gorbman analyses
representations of American Indians in Western
The long and detailed introduction to the collec-
tion by the editors is prefaced by a number offilm scores; Steven Feld follows the tortuous,
insightful and provocative quotations about non- complex web of appropriation and representation
Western music by Western composers and of Pygmy music on the World Beat scene; David
scholars. One particularly striking statement Hesmondhalgh examines the Other in contempor-
comes from Pierre Boulez: 'The music of Asia ary electronic dance music; and finally Simon
and India is to be admired because it has reached Frith tackles the discourse of World Music.
These essays all stand alone as detailed exam-
a state of perfection, and it is this stage of perfec-
tion that interests me. But otherwise the music is inations of the interfaces between specific musical
dead' (p. 1).This is such an elegant utterance ofcultures, and many, such as Feld's brilliant dis-
simultaneous musical insight and prejudice thatcussion
it of Pygmy music on the world music scene,
can almost be admired simply on its own terms. fizz with the obvious excitement of making per-
However, it also trenchantly underlines the prob-ceptive and compelling links across disciplinary
lems of analysis facing musicologists working boundaries. Perspectives from history, cultural
within the intellectual framework of cultural and studies, ethnomusicology, musicology, popular
postcolonial studies, when confronted with their music studies, politics and sociology jostle, collide,
musical other: respect must be assumed, but realcoalesce and ricochet off each other. There is little
knowledge or understanding may be lacking. So, room here for viewing music simply as an objective
perhaps not surprisingly, the essays in this booksonic 'text'. Even in Pasler's essay, which is per-
come from the position of Western theorists look-haps the most musically analytical, the work of
ing outwards (sometimes inwards) towards the Delage and Roussel is contextualized in a much
Other, using the latter as a reflecting surface for a wider discussion about how the French intellectual
number of critical enquiries. As a counter-balance, elite viewed the Orient in the late nineteenth and
several so called 'internal' Others appear-this is early twentieth centuries; or as Brown asserts
where a sense of alienation and difference is about Bart6k, whose work has generated a whole
located from within a culture, even within literature
a mu- looking purely at the 'notes': 'To talk
sical style, rather than stemming from a about Hungarian modernist composer Bela Bart6k
remote,
exotic object to be feared, desired or analysed.
is almost inevitably to talk about ethnicity and
race'
Some of the most compelling writing in this (p. 119). Such inevitabilities are surely
collec-
tion addresses the internal Other, notablyrecent in Western musicological discourse, but
Peter
Franklin's fascinating essay on Stravinskywithand
the incursion of cultural studies they are
Schoenberg in exile. likely to become de rigueur.
The intellectual problems inherent in such
The essays are not structured in any thematic
way (apart from the introduction, to which multi-dimensional
I return approaches to music are
explored in depth in Born and Hesmondhalgh's
below), nor do they share any particular methodo-

681

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'Introduction: On Difference, Representation, and such as postcolonialism or postmodernism are
Appropriation in Music', which in its scope and explored and contextualized with admirable
detail is almost like a book on its own. They clarity. The introduction underlines the intellec-
structure their meticulous discussion under a tual difficulties inherent in cross-cultural studies of
number of sub-headings: 'Postcolonial Analysismusic and at the same time emphasizes that mul-
and Music Studies'; 'Musical Modernism, Post- tiple perspectives are necessary for any rigorous
discourse on Western music and its Others to
modernism and Others'; 'Othering, Hybridity,
and Fusion in Transnational Popular Musics'; emerge.
'Music and Representation/Articulation of Socio- Although this is not the first book to address
cultural Identities'; 'Techniques of the Musical these issues in music, Western Music and its Others is
Imaginary'. still, in many respects, ground-breaking. It makes
As well as providing a theoretical framework for thought-provoking and sometimes uncomfortable
the essays that follow, Born and Hesmondhalgh's reading, and is surely destined to become a central
introduction is an excellent overview of current
text for musicologists, ethnomusicologists and cul-
tural theorists.
thought in cultural studies, musicology and ethno-
musicology. Often ill-defined theoretical concepts GERRY FARRELL

682

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