Dissidents and eccentrics? Lateral thinkers in the history of Asian music and dance (studies)

International Workshop

May 11, 2012, 11.30 a.m.– 4:30 p.m.

Department of Musicology,
Kurze Geismarstr. 1 (“Accouchierhäuschen”), R. 101
Göttingen


Limited seating only. You’re welcome to attend, but please reserve your spot by sending an email to Eva-Maria van Straaten at Eva-maria.van-straatenATphil.uni-goettingen.de


Workshop participants

• Prof. Dr. Birgit Abels, Musicological Department of the Georg-August University Göttingen (GER)
• Dr. Christian Storch, Musicological Department of the Georg-August University Göttingen (GER)
• Dr. Wim van der Meer, Institute for Musicology of the University of Amsterdam (NL)
• Dr. Anne van Oostrum, Institute for Musicology of the University of Amsterdam (NL)
• Eva-Maria van Straaten M.A., Musicological Department of the Georg-August University Göttingen (GER)

Topic of the Workshop

I have also transcribed [...] a Chinese melody taken from Father du Halde, a Persian melody taken from Sir Chardin, and two songs of the savages of America taken from Father Mersenne. One will find in all of these pieces a conformity of modulation with our music, which might arouse admiration in some for the goodness and universality of our laws, and in others might render suspect the intelligence or the accuracy of those who have transmitted these airs to us.
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1768)

Since roughly the late 1980s, there has been an increasing interest in the historical dimension of the study of the world’s diverse musics. This interest is reflected in a number of milestone publications¹ and, more recently, in the founding of the Study Group on Historical Sources at the International Council of Traditional music (ICTM) and the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Historical Ethnomusicology at the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) in 2005. The key themes brought to the fore via these publications and research networks revolve around the development of musical styles, contexts, and the impact modernity has had on musics around the world.

However, one aspect that is largely missing from this type of research, which centers on the analysis of the history of the world’s musics, is the analysis of the history of the study of the world’s musics. This is largely due to the commonly accepted contention that the academic reflection of the performing arts around the world began with its institutionalization— i.e., with Adler’s seminal 1885 article which considers “comparative musicology” to be one of the three main branches of the academic discipline of musicology. But research on the world’s musics has a much longer and much more globally spread history than (ethno)musicologists commonly acknowledge when they equate the study of the world’s music with the university-based, European-derived academic discipline they engage in. In this workshop, we therefore not only, but also look at the pre-institutionalized and non-institutionalized study of the world’s musics, and we do so with a special twist.

Discourse about colonized peoples has a highly ethnocentric history, clouded by proclamations of the superiority of the dominating culture in the arts, particularly in music. This is evident from various travelogues and other documents, and useful research into the nature and contexts of this type of source has been done.² What has not been considered to any noteworthy extent, however, are the counter-currents to this rising colonial discourse, whose traces naturally are fewer than those of colonial discourse. For there were notable exceptions among the observers and writers who came to share their impressions and ideas about music they encountered — individuals whose ideas about Other music would not easily fit in the dominant discursive structures. Some of these individuals were sober observers who simply took a liking to Other musics; others extolled “national” or “folk” music to critique developments in European “art” music. Rousseau and John Brown are prominent examples of the latter from the 18th century. Later, too, comparative musicologists and ethnomusicologists tended to regard Other musics as 'interesting' and often considered the musical context more important than the music itself. Eccentrics like Alain Daniélou opposed this ethnomusicological attitude, and therefore played a special role in the history of the discipline.

In this workshop, we explore the thinking of historical figures whose reasoning about the performing arts they came to know elsewhere — and, as the case may be, the cultures and people they encountered en route — made them thinkers against the grain of their time. We investigate their motives, but also the meanings and implications of contributions of these enfants terribles to the discourse of their time, whether this discourse unfolded in institutionalized spaces like North Atlantic academia or through a series of individual writings.


Programme



• 11.30 - 12.00 Birgit Abels, Encountering vulnerability: Captain Henry Wilson’s 1783 shipwreck in the Western Pacific
• 12.00 - 12.30 Wim van der Meer, Elwin and Daniélou: Rebels with a cause
• 12.30 - 14.00 Lunch Break
• 14.00 - 14.30 Anne van Oostrum, Songs of Arabia: the musical heritage of the Dutch Arabist Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936)
• 14.30 - 15.00 Christian Storch, Composer, Traveller, Writer: Pietro Della Valle’s Viaggi (1650-1663) and Musical Life in Early Seventeenth Century Goa
• 15.00 - 15.30 Eva-Maria van Straaten, Negotiating ‘Abyssinia’ music(ologic)ally: An Analysis of the Writings of Scottish Calvinist Traveller James Bruce
• 15.30 - 15.50 Coffee Break
• 15.50 - 16.30 Round Table Discussion


Abstracts

Encountering vulnerability: Captain Henry Wilson’s 1783 shipwreck in the Western Pacific
Birgit Abels
Department of Musicology
Georg August University Göttingen
Kurze-Geismar-Strasse 1
37073 Göttingen
Germany

Travelogues from 18th-century voyages into the Pacific, full of heroic deeds, erotic adventures, and exotic tales, circulated widely in their time. A powerful image emerging from this literature is that of the ‘barbarous’ yet fascinating Pacific Islander, whose music tended to be disdained and was, if anything, of interest only regarding the (im)possible relationship between European Ancients and ‘primitive’ music.

Wilson’s diaries of his shipwreck in the Western Pacific contain valuable early descriptions of music. The first encounter between the stranded crew, in dire need of help, and the daunted Islanders, who had not had prolonged exposure to ‘the white man’ before but knew well about the menace of firearms, was marked by a central force on both sides: fear. The common ground on which the two parties met was that of the animal vulnerabilis. This very vulnerability was to serve as the vehicle for the ensuing mutual exploration of the Other’s culture, including, quite prominently, music. The little-studied source bespeaks an encounter that was anything but grist to the mills of the then fashionable savage/civilized dichotomy. Wilson may vacillate between expounding the Islanders’ grace and, reluctant to render value judgments, charting incommensurable difference, but ultimately he neither feeds the image of the barbarian islander nor does he propel the romanticizing image of the Noble Savage. In-between lines undermining the presumed donnée of European predominance, I argue, Wilson’s representation of Islander music and musical difference tipped the scales of European representations of the ‘savage’ South Pacific.


Elwin and Daniélou: Rebels with a cause
Wim van der Meer
Institute for Musicology
University of Amsterdam
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16
1012 CP Amsterdam
the Netherlands

Verrier Elwin (1902–1964) and Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) had a lot in common. Both had a strong christian background but converted to hinduism; both were self-styled, multi-disciplinary scholars; both championed the cause of Indian independence; and both held respectful positions in post-independence India. Their conversion to Hinduism was part of an overall belief in the superiority of Indian culture, but was also specifically related to certain issues in Western culture. Both felt their unorthodox lifestyles and sexual preferences were accepted in India whilst European culture, before the flower-power era, was still very repressive. Both have been strongly criticized for ‘going native’ and letting their judgments be clouded by it, twisting data to fit in with their world view. Daniélou spun an illusionary web of complexity around Indian music to ‘prove’ it was far more advanced than European music. Elwin romanticized tribal life in order to make Rousseau’s utopia come true. As a result, they were considered sloppy scholars, who did not abide by the rules of meticulous academia.

Perhaps, in a post-modern world, we should look at them differently. Although we may find fault with certain inaccuracies in their work, their immersion in another culture enabled them to critique the culture in which they grew up. Questioning the unique and exalted position of Western art music, as Daniélou did, has rarely been done—and, I will argue, it should be. Similarly, Elwin has exposed fundamental problems with Western culture by becoming a ‘savage’.


Songs of Arabia: the musical heritage of the Dutch Arabist Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936)
Anne van Oostrum
Institute for Musicology
University of Amsterdam
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16
1012 CP Amsterdam
the Netherlands

The Dutch Arabist Snouck Hurgronje collected important musicological material during his travels abroad. By using ‘modern’ devices, such as a camera and a phonograph, he was far ahead of his time. In service of the Dutch government, he travelled via the Arab world to the Netherlands East Indies, present-day Indonesia, where he had accepted the post of advisor to the colonial government. Later he became professor of Arabic at the University of Leiden, but he never found time to describe his unique treasure.

Apart from taking photographs and collecting various artefacts, such as musical instruments, Snouck Hurgronje made about three hundred recordings on wax cylinders with a phonograph in the region of the Hejaz, a province of present-day Saudi Arabia. The music collection consists of children’s songs, wedding songs performed by women, songs of workmen, and poetry set to music by professional musicians.

First, this paper will focus on this last genre, for it represents an interesting compilation of styles. This musical treasure will be placed in both its poetical and musical tradition, illustrated by audio-visual material. Second, Snouck Hurgronje’s ideas on Arabic music and musicians will be discussed. Many remarks that he made on the music he encountered express his attitude towards the art and its skilled performers, including his respect.


Composer, Traveller, Writer: Pietro Della Valle’s Viaggi (1650-1663) and Musical Life in Early Seventeenth Century Goa
Christian Storch
Department of Musicology
Georg August University Göttingen
Kurze-Geismar-Strasse 1
37073 Göttingen
Germany

Pietro Della Valle’s (1586-1652) famous travel account, Viaggi, of his perennial journey to the Near and Middle East as well as to South Asia has already been the subject of intensive research in different fields of scholarship: from historiography and ethnography to sociology and political history, scholars have tried to analyse and interpret his depictions of places, conflicts, wars, cultures, economies and life in general. However, little research has been done yet on his descriptions of musical activities in the places he visited throughout his journey that took him from Venice to Goa between 1614 and 1626.
Being himself a composer and librettist, his remarks on musical ceremonies, instruments and music groups, both of the indigenous and the colonial societies, deserve a thorough examination. They are much more detailed and precise than in other accounts of that time, be they written by ‚profane’ travellers like the Dutch Jan van Linschoten or by missionaries, such as members of the Society of Jesus.
The presentation will focus on Della Valle’s letters sent from Goa in the years 1623 and 1624, in which he not only describes religious processions and ceremonies of Indian and Portuguese Goans, but also gives detailed information on local musical instruments, the celebration of the canonisation of Francisco Xavier and Ignatius of Loyola by the Jesuits in January 1624, and a Portuguese wedding ceremony.
By analysing Della Valle’s language and his vocabulary I will show that, although his account is of course written from a European perspective of superiority, the Viaggi nonetheless contains aspects of ethnomusicological approaches that give us today a profound source for the history of the study of music in South Asia.


Negotiating ‘Abyssinia’ music(ologic)ally:³ An Analysis of the Writings of Scottish Calvinist Traveller James Bruce
Eva-Maria van Straaten
Department of Musicology
Georg August University Göttingen
Kurze-Geismar-Strasse 1
37073 Göttingen
Germany

Discourses on eighteenth century Abyssinia are an interesting example of the ambiguity of the imagined self-other distinction often referred to in analyses of European travelogues of the 18th century. The Abyssinia of 1500 AD was imagined to be located in-between the ‘Arabian Mohammedans’, the ‘African Pagans’, and ‘Papal Christian Europe’ as well as the utopia for Papal Christianity. In the course of the 16th century when the Portuguese arrived in Abyssinia to help fight off the ‘Mohammedans’, many Portuguese travel writers were disappointed in their encounters with this supposedly utopian space, and as a reaction tried de-utopinize Abyssinia in their writing, re-drawing geographical maps and producing new imaginations of the ‘real Abyssinia’. Others such as Luis de Urreta (1610) unsuccessfully attempted to save the imaginary of the Christian legend. By the time Scottish Calvinist travel writer James Bruce arrived in Abyssinia in 1768, a multiplicity of imaginaries of Abyssinia had come into existence, which resulted in Bruce’s quest to heroically find out ‘the truth’ about Abyssinia.

The result of this quest ‘Travels to discover the source of the Nile, in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773. In 5 volumes’ (1790), published almost twenty years after his return to Scotland, contains many descriptions of the music and musical instruments of both Abyssinia and Egypt. The travelogue was received critically; it was even openly doubted whether Bruce had been to Abyssinia at all, because of the exotic tone so untypical for writings on Abyssinia during that time. Next to analyzing the motives for Bruce to write about Abyssinia in a discourse he must have known would make his writings unpopular, this paper explores the way in which the descriptions of the instruments and music of both Abyssinia and Egypt redraw imaginary maps and produce an imaginary Abyssinia. Furthermore, the paper argues that the self – other distinction that is often suggested to exist between the travellers and the people and places they travelled, cannot be understood in such simple terms. Rather, the case study of Bruce’s travelogues shows a multiplicity of selves as well as others was (and is) constantly (re)produced and negotiated through, amongst others, musicological discourses.


Footnotes

¹ Among the earlier of these publications are Philip V. Bohlman, “The European Discovery of Music in the Islamic World and the ‘Non-Western’ in 19th-Century Music History”, Journal of Musicology, 5 (1987), 147–63; Joep Bor, The Rise of Ethnomusicology. Sources on Indian music c. 1780-1890, in: Yearbook for Traditional Music 20 (1988), pp. 51-73; Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman (eds.), Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music (Chicago, 1991); Stephen Blum, Philip V. Bohlman, and Daniel M. Neuman (eds.), Ethnomusicology and Modern Music History (Urbana and Chicago, 1993).
² For two examples among many, see Christian Kaden, “Die New welt, der landschaften und Insulen". Reiseberichte als historische Quellen der Musikethnologie?”, in: D. Stockmann und A. Erler (eds.), Historische Volksmusikforschung (Ed.). Göttingen 1994, pp. 253-260; Charles Irving, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila, Oxford 2010.
³ This title is derived from the title of the conference ‘Negotiating the “West” Music(ologic)ally’ held at Utrecht University, 11-12 April 2011.