Musicology From - The - Erotic - To - The - Demonic PDF

from the
erotic demonic
to the
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from the
eroticdemonic
to the

on critical
musicology
derek b. scott
Oxford New York

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Scott, Derek B.
From the erotic to the demonic : on critical musicology / Derek B. Scott.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN ---X; --- (pbk.)
. MusicPhilosophy and aesthetics. . Style, Musical.
. Musical criticism. I. Title.
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Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
cknowledgments
i wish to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Board (UK) for granting me a research leave award in that enabled me to complete this book.
Earlier versions of some of the material presented here were published originally as follows:Sexuality and Musical Style from Monteverdi to Mae West,
in S. Miller, ed., The Last Post: Music after Modernism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, ), ; The Sexual Politics of Victorian Musical Aesthetics, Journal of the Royal Musical Association , no. (),
; Incongruity and Predictability in British Dance-Band Music of the
s and s, Musical Quarterly , no. (), ; The Jazz Age,
chapter of the Blackwell History of Music in Britain, vol. , ed. S. Banfield
(Oxford: Blackwell, ), ; Bruckner and the Dialectic of Darkness
and Light, Bruckner Journal , no. (), , no. , , no. , ,
no. (), ; Orientalism and Musical Style, short version in Critical Musicology Journal () (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/Info/CMJ/cmj.
html), full-length version in Musical Quarterly , no. (), .
ontents
Introduction
part one
Sexuality, gender, and musical style
Erotic Representation from Monteverdi

to Mae West
The Sexual Politics of Victorian Musical Aesthetics
part two
3
4
part three
Ideology and the popular

The Native American in Popular Music
Incongruity and Predictability in British Dance Band
Music of the s and s
The sacred and the profane
Lux in Tenebris: Bruckner and the Dialectic of Darkness

and Light
Diabolus in Musica: Liszt and the Demonic
part four
7
8
Ideology and cultural otherness

Orientalism and Musical Style
The Impact of African-American Music Making on the
European Classical Tradition in the s
Notes
Index
from the
erotic demonic
to the
introduction
for over ten years now, I have found myself confronted again and
again with questions of ideology and musical style in my musicological research. I can say at the outset, then, that my broad intention in this book is
to present a review of where my quest for answers has taken me and to outline my current epistemological position. Several of the chapters are revised
and updated versions of essays that originally appeared elsewhere, essays in
which I have been concerned, especially, to develop a critique of musical
styles as discursive codes. My critical perspective, therefore, has not surprisingly been shaped by semiotics and poststructuralist theory. The concept of
ideology I put forward is much broader than, for example, that of political
propaganda or Marxist false consciousness. Perhaps my approach is best
epitomized by V. N. Volosinovs neat remark: Wherever a sign is present,
ideology is present, too.1 For me, ideology exists in all forms of representation and the sound images of pieces of music are as ripe for ideological inquiry as any other cultural artifact. The blunt acceptance of either the humanist notion of an inner expressive essence in music or the antihumanist
position epitomized by Stravinskys declaration that any apparent expression is simply an additional attribute thrust upon the musics essential
being2 seems to me to yield a cruder framework for the interpretation of
musical meaning than the rich cultural theorizing that has developed over
the past twenty years.
Before moving on, it is important to consider why cultural theory was
to have an increasing impact upon musicology in the last two decades of the
twentieth century3 and to account for the paradigmatic shift that occurred
in musicological thought. I would argue that it came about for three major
reasons. First, the idea that a mass audience did no more than passively consume the products of a culture industry had become discredited, making it
from the erotic to the demonic
necessary for musicologists to contest the binary divide between classical

and popular, since both may be perceived as intimately related to the same
social formation. Second, postmodernism had arrived, ousting notions of
universalism, internationalism, and art for arts sake and replacing them
with concerns for the values of specific cultures and their differences. The
neglect of the social significance of music had become more apparent, especially the way changing social factors alter our response to existing works4
and cultural context often determines the legitimacy of styles of playing and
singing. Not least, the impact of technology had been insufficiently considered. Thus, what became necessary was a concern with social and cultural
processes, informed by arguments that musical practices, values, and meanings related to particular historical, political, and cultural contexts. Third,
the musical genealogical tree had needed surgery too often: lines that connected composers and charted musical developments and influences had
been redrawn too many times and music had occasionally been conjured up
from nowhere (for example, New Orleans jazz). The related issue of the evolution of musical style was now questioned: if atonality was presented as an
inevitable stylistic evolution, then clearly Duke Ellington was a musical dinosaur. Causal narration in musical historiography had been found problematic,5 and the teleological assumptions of historical narrative (for instance, the inevitability of atonality) now needed to be avoided. Other
factors that bear upon the current situation were the rise of authentic performances that made old music seem new (and arguably a replacement for
the new) and crossovers between classical and popular idioms by increasing
numbers of performers and composers.
The rise in the s of feminist musicology, critical musicology, and
gay and lesbian musicology prompts the question: Are we living in an age of
alternative musicologies, or are we witnessing the disintegration of musicology as a discipline? Is the unitary concept of a discipline part of a now
discredited paradigm for musicological thought? The fences around disciplines are certainly in a bad state of repair these days, as Saul Bellow recognized by declaring that a series he edits, Critical Voices in Art, Theory and
Culture, acknowledges the deterritorialized nature of our present intellectual environment.6 In embracing postdisciplinarity, therefore, musicology
joins a growing intellectual movement. This alternative view is one in which
musicology is no longer perceived as an autonomous field of academic inquiry but as, to employ Julia Kristevas terminology, a field of transpositions of various signifying systems.7 Critical musicology has revealed what
it means to regard musicology as an intertextual field and why this, rather
than the notion of a discipline, offers a more productive epistemological
framework for research.8 It may often entail a necessity to examine a broad
range of discourses in order to explain music, its contexts, and the way it
functions within them. For example, questions of music and sexuality cannot be considered in isolation from political, biological, psychological, psy-
introduction
choanalytical, and aesthetic discourses. There may be no intention or need,

however, to document each area comprehensively.
A Critical Musicology Forum was established in the United Kingdom in
to discuss the character and purpose of critical musicology and whether
its purpose was to extend or challenge other forms of musicological inquiry.
The term was chosen to indicate a concern with critique, including the critique of musicology itself. The growth in numbers attending meetings over
the next two years led to a major conference in Salford, Greater Manchester,
in , which, by attracting some seventy delegates who represented thirty
different universities in Europe and North America, demonstrated the relevance and topicality of the new theorizing. The group came to consist of
not only those working in more recent fields, such as film music, music
semiotics, and constructions of gender and sexuality in music, but also researchers in ethnomusicology and the psychology of music who had long
felt themselves to be out of the musicological mainstream.
Critical Musicologists in the United Kingdom were united in agreement
that one of the biggest problems that faced musicology was the collapse of
the binary divide between pop and classical. It was the importance accorded
to this perception that set them apart from the New Musicologists of the
United States, who tended (with few exceptions) to concentrate on canonic
works. The disintegration of high and low as aesthetic values had, of course,
been theorized for some time by anthropologists, poststructuralists, and
sociologists of culture. Yet what was urgently needed was a new theoretical
model capable of embracing the values and meanings of all musical practices and musical texts. A model ready to engage with, rather than marginalize, issues of class, generation, gender, and ethnicity in music and to address matters such as production, reception, and subject position, while
questioning notions of genius, canons, universality, aesthetic autonomy, and
textual immanence. Different cultures need to be studied in terms of their
own specific cultural values, so that a cultural arbitrary is not misrecognized
as an objective truth, though musicologists also have to recognize the necessity of extending the terms of such study beyond explicit cultural selfevaluation itself. Above all, we need to be ready to respond to the multiplicity of musics contemporary functions and meanings (for example, the
drama/art/music/film/video/digital software fusions variously described as
time-based arts and multimedia arts). This may be achieved by adopting the
epistemological position and methodology outlined earlier (one that requires intertextual study). Again, I stress that this contrasts with a narrow
discipline-based study of music as performance art or as composition (typically represented by the printed score).
As an illustration of my method of engaging critically with music practice and music historiography, I have listed here ten questions that I consider
to be important in helping to tease out the ideological dimension in judgments about music. It should be noted that I have used terms here that are
by no means innocent expression, aesthetics, intention, etc. yet I

have made no attempt to problematize them. That I leave to the reader. It is
not my wish to become overly prescriptive (or even proscriptive). Depending on the music under discussion, however, I should point out that some of
the questions here might link together to produce similar answers, while
others may not be at all relevant.
. Why does it sound the way it does? Does the way it sounds indicate that
it is intended as, for example, music for a salon, a concert hall, or a
park? Has this affected it in terms of form and instrumentation, or has
the composer been guided only by imagination in choice of timbre?
. What does it mean or express? Accounting for meaning is the concern
of semantics and hermeneutics. It is important to look for conventions, upon which all meanings eventually rely. Intended and perceived meanings should be distinguished where these are known to
differ. Why is the tune of Land of Hope and Glory considered
nationalistic? Is it solely because of association with the words? Why
is Born in the USA often seen as nationalistic despite Springsteens
critical words?
. What is its instrumentation, and does this affect its status? Certain ensembles carry greater status. For example, a string quartet would be
regarded in some circles as more refined and elevated than a saxophone quartet no matter what music each played.
. Under what circumstances was it produced? Is there, for example, evidence that historical, social, or psychological factors have influenced
its musical character? Does it matter knowing that Mahler turns his
faltering heartbeat into a rhythmic idea in the first movement of his
Ninth Symphony? What are the revolutionary connotations of brass
in Beethovens music? Do representations of the East in nineteenthcentury Western music link with colonialist ideas and ambitions?
. To whom is it addressed? What is the implied audience for this music
(its subject position)? How can you tell? Why did Haydn make folksong arrangements for piano and voice rather than guitar and voice?
Whom do Nanci Griffith, Shirley Bassey, and Kiri Te Kanawa think
they are singing to?
. In what environment is it experienced, and does this affect its status?
Music has more status in a concert hall than in a public house or
saloon; because of this, the status of jazz was negatively affected for
many years. Almost automatically, a concert hall accords the status of
art to any music played there. The extreme case is when there is no
music actually played: does Cages exist as a work of art under
anything other than concert hall conditions?
. How is the music disseminated, and how does this affect its status? Certain publishers carry high status. Publication in a popular periodical
would carry less artistic status than separate publication. Music type
introduction
and music lithography did not carry the elevated status of engraving.
How far does all this become a question of economics rather than
artistic value?
. What have past and present critics said and what have past and present
audiences done? Sometimes current critics contradict past critics (for
example, regarding the artistic merit of Berliozs Les Troyens). Sometimes audiences respond with enthusiasm to music condemned by
certain critics (for example, the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber). Is
there evidence of a critic working to a particular agendafor example, a dislike of a particular musical style or a contempt for music
that suggests entertainment rather than art?
. Has this musical style, or this particular piece of music, been used to
illustrate an artistic movement? Is it seen as an example of Romanticism, Impressionism, or whatever? Is it regarded as an example of an
artistic coup? Are canons being created? Or is it seen in terms of social
function (for example, dance music) or social history (for example,
labor songs)?
. Who is marketing it and why? Usually the answer to the why is for
money, but not always. Sometimes, for example, it may be a concern
for a national heritage; at other times, it may be for political or religious reasons. When money is not a prime object, less consideration
has to be given to who may or may not like the music in question.
This may affect its status positively if, for instance, the music is linked
to an affluent and dominant social group (such as the English court of
Charles II) or negatively if, say, it is linked to those involved in a failed
political struggle (such as the Levellers).
Defining ideolo g y
It is now time to explain in more detail my usage of the term ideology. I
employ it in the broad sense it began to acquire in the s. Roland Barthes
in his earliest work used the term mythology for what he and others would
later describe as ideology.9 Just about every major French cultural theorist
of the past thirty years uses ideology in the same way, and a very large
number of North American theorists do so, too. Moreover, cultural thinkers
not associated with poststructuralism or deconstruction have also widened
its meaning. For example, it has been more than a decade now since the English literary theorist Terry Eagleton published a book titled The Ideology of
the Aesthetic.10
Let me make reference to Rose Rosengard Subotniks insightful book
Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music (). In this
work, she defines ideology not narrowly, as a specific and explicitly political doctrine, but broadly, as a network of assumptions and values shaped
by experience and culture.11 She also asserts that ideological values con-
tribute inevitably and fundamentally to the structural definition of human

utterance, even musical utterance, as well as to the understanding and judgment of utterance, even aesthetic judgment.12 My own working definition
of ideology would be as follows: the study of how meanings are constructed
within signifying practices and how that impacts upon our understanding of
the world we live in.13 I am particularly interested in how truths are constructed and the role played by historical and cultural determinants of
human consciousness. In this book, my major preoccupation is examining
the ideology encoded in a diversity of Western musical styles. At the risk of
oversimplifying, I am trying to explain how metaphysical ideas are communicated through music. This is not to make the absurd claim that in this
book I am attempting to exhaust all there is to say about metaphysical philosophy and music. Indeed, what I am offering here is a collection of essays
that should be regarded more as speculative experiments than as explications of fully worked out theoretical positions. Furthermore, my focus is on
musical representation, and some metaphysical concepts (for example, that
of justice) do not lend themselves readily to sound images.
If the preceding issues are understood as my central concerns, then the
various chapters that make up this book can be seen as taking off in different directions like roots from the stem of a rhizome. The chapters share a
kinship in that each attempts to decode the communication of meaning in
musical style structures, but they do not link together in the shape of a linear, let alone teleological, narrative. My contention, then, is that the coherence of my work is to be found in its focus on ideology and musical style.
Music and representat ion

Readers familiar with Peter Kivys stimulating book Sound and Semblance:
Reflections on Musical Representation () will want to know how my ideas
about representation relate to his. There is no room for a detailed comparison here, but I will list half a dozen ways in which we differ:
. I insist upon the role of the conventional in all musical meaning; he is
unwilling to go this far.
. My understanding of musical representation is informed by semiotic
theory (attempting to account for perceived meanings), whereas his
thinking is guided by classical logic (attempting to validate meanings).
. Intention is a necessary condition for representation for him, but I
make room for unconscious and even accidental representation
(for example, I would maintain that representations of the East are
not always consciously constructed and often unintentionally reveal
Western attitudes; see my chapter ).
. I am concerned with the socially constituted values of musical styles;
Kivy says little about style.
introduction
. He is not shy of making an appeal at the level of common sense or

to anyone of musical taste,14 whereas for me common sense and
taste are not ideology-free zones and often embody ideology at its
most powerful.
. Kivy is prone to an unproblematized use of adjectives, being prepared
to speak of a sunny cadence or languid, drooping chromaticism or
to describe music as having a somber, chilly character without explaining why it sounds that way.15 He thus implies that such moods
are not represented, that they exist in the music as an inner essence.
For me, not only are atmospheric moods and emotions represented,
but also the manner in which they are represented differs according
to particular musical style codes (see, for example, my chapter ).
A similarity I do share with Kivy, however, is that of following an argument where it leads without making an attempt to ensure its completeness.16
I have also tried to emulate his admirable clarity and to keep the argument
as free from unnecessary jargon as possible. Finally, for me, reception overrides intention. Certain associations can become attached to music. Kivy insists that a person is musically misguided who hears rustling leaves in Bachs
C-minor Prelude (from The Well-Tempered Clavier, book );17 yet what if
this music was used to accompany a prolonged shot of rustling leaves during the opening credits of a popular television series? Could anyone of musical taste who watched that series detach the music successfully from the
image next time he or she heard it, just as, in the words of an old gag, a real
musician was someone who could listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger?18 Surely not: music does not reside in some
isolated domain of its own; no cultural artifacts do. That is the lesson of intertextuality. It is also a lesson we learn, not from the dyadic relations of Saussurean semiology but from the triadic relations theorized by Ferdinand de
Saussures contemporary Charles Peirce. In Peirces semiotics, a sign stands
for something for someone: Peirces interpretant mediates between a sign and
its relation to another thing. As Eero Tarasti puts it, One could say that, in
music, signs in relation to their interpretants concern those sign processes
that take place in the mind of the listener, whereby he or she interprets the
musical experience.19 A common error is to insist upon the arbitrary nature
of the musical sign while failing to recognize the equally arbitrary nature of
the linguistic sign. To remain with the Bach example, there is certainly nothing actually leafy in any part of that C-minor prelude, but there is nothing
actually leafy in the word leaf. In saying this, my intention is not to argue
that music is a language but, rather, to claim that music and language are
both signifying practices and both make use of arbitrary signifiers. Language philosopher Donald Davidson has detailed the problems encountered
by those who have tried to build a theory of communication based on
meanings; he concludes, it seems clear that the semantic features of words
cannot be explained directly on the basis of non-linguistic phenomena.20
In recent years, topical analysis has appealed to many musicians whose

toleration of musical semiotics does not extend beyond the self-referential
or, in other words, beyond music qua music (Eero Tarasti is a notable exception). There may be token remarks about the socially constituted character of topoi, but social content is quickly dissolved into form for the analysis to proceed. Kofi Agawu has recently provided a topical analysis of the
British national anthem that ignores the topic of the galliard, though this
dance rhythm is one of the anthems striking features.21 It is a telling omission, since this is a sign with a referent outside of the music itself a sign
that requires us to consider social meaning. In the book before you, my
commitment is to social semiotics, not to semiotics as a means of demonstrating musical-theoretical positions divorced from social meaning. In pursuing this critical aim, I willingly acknowledge my indebtedness to the work
of Richard Leppert, Susan McClary, and Lawrence Kramer. The reader will
no doubt find that my concerns differ here and there from those of the preceding authors, that I make different emphases, and that I have taken up either more extreme or less extreme theoretical positions. For example, I
would distance myself from some (though not all) of Kramers arguments
that are based on Freudian theory. As might be imagined, given some of the
statements I have made earlier, it is the ahistoricism of Freudian psychoanalysis that I resist most strongly (thus, I am obviously more drawn to the
work of Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari).
An overv iew
To conclude this introduction, I will allude briefly to the chapters that follow and try to underline what is new or distinct about some of the positions
I am adopting. Each successive chapter considers the workings of a particular relationship between ideology and musical style. My intention is to illustrate my current understanding of how musical styles construct ideas of
class, sexuality, and ethnic identity. In doing so, I am concerned to demonstrate how such constructions relate to particular stylistic codes in particular historical contexts. This, of course, necessitates a consideration of the
subject position offered by the music in question and of the way truths inscribed within contemporaneous discourses (political, aesthetic, medical,
biological, etc.) impact upon the music. The book is divided into four parts
that present the chapters in related pairs.
Part I concerns sexuality, gender, and musical style, and my first chapter, Erotic Representation from Monteverdi to Mae West, explores the mutability of constructions of the erotic in various styles of music from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. My argument, here, is that music does not
act as a simple channel through which ideology is mediated and can therefore be renegotiated. For example, it is not a straightforward matter to negotiate different expressions of sexuality in music; a representation of sexu-
introduction
ality in music must relate to the pregiven code of the particular musical style
within which it is articulated. As Gino Stefani has pointed out, style codes
are not only rooted in social practices but also a blend of technical features,
a way of forming objects or events.22 If that were not the case, then two of
the pieces discussed in this chapter, David Roses The Stripper and Richard
Strausss Dance of the Seven Veils, would surely resemble each other a little
more than they do.
The past ten years have witnessed a wide-ranging debate about the feminine and masculine in music, particularly as it relates to social issues such
as public and private performance and to compositional matters such as
gendered themes or gendered conflict in sonata form movements. Chapter
, The Sexual Politics of Victorian Musical Aesthetics, moves from considering how metaphors of masculinity and femininity solidified into biological truths to teasing out the ideological dimension of the supposedly disinterested and universally applicable aesthetic theories of the beautiful,
ornamental, and sublime in music. I would add that, like Susan McClary,
it is not my intention or wish to see any composers music reduced solely to
issues of sexuality.23 However, I do wish to challenge the idea of absolute
music or pure music whenever and wherever it appears. An important reason for choosing Bruckner as a case study in chapter is because his symphonies have usually been interpreted as pure musichowever murky the
ideological reception of them has been at times (the extreme being reached
with the appropriation of Bruckner as German nationalist by the Nazis).
Part II explores the workings of ideology in relation to popular music
and, in so doing, underlines the resistance of postmodern theory to the
metaphysical spell of a universal aesthetic. In chapter , The Native American in Popular Music, I examine representations of the American Indian in
popular styles of Western music from the eighteenth century to the present.
Having tackled issues of gender and sexuality and the relationship between
them and musical style, I now consider ethnicity for the first time. Here my
intention is to show how cultural difference is represented when little is
known or understood about the culture of those being represented and to
consider how shifting perceptions of the Native American can be related to
changes in attitude to the civilized and the natural world. The emphasis on
the popular sharpens the argument, because this kind of representation needs
to be widely understood and easily assimilated in order for it to be popular.
The ideology embedded in the way the American Indian is represented tells
us, predictably, about the attitudes of the person who stands outside Native
American culture.
My concern in chapter , Incongruity and Predictability in British
Dance Band Music of the s and s, is the ideology of high and
low art and how this impacts upon both musical style and reception. Defenses of the popular that relate its value to its historical context often provoke the question: How is it to be valued once its historic moment has
passed? The purpose of this chapter is to show how a popular musicology
might tackle the problem of discussing music once loved but now regarded
by many as valueless. To this end, it explores qualitative issues in British
dance band music. A critique of musical style needs to take account of incongruity between styles. In chapter , I argued that modes of representation
needed to be related to different styles; here I argue that the same goes for
qualitative values. For instance, what is admired as good singing in one style
may not be so perceived in another. Part II is the popular counterpart to part
IV. The Self versus Other binarism introduced in chapter is revisited in a
more complex manner in chapter , which largely concerns the representation of different cultures in concert music and opera. British dance bands
and their music can be seen, in some measure, as a response, in the popular
arena, to the impact of African-American music making, the impact of
which on European composers working in the classical tradition is explored
in chapter .
Part III presents two case studies to explore the ideology embedded in
representations of two concepts that are themselves conjoined in a binary
opposition, the sacred and profane. In chapter , Lux in Tenebris: Bruckner
and the Dialectic of Darkness and Light, the construction of the sacred in
music is discussed by way of a study of a particular composer. Bruckner is
chosen because he is widely seen as a pure musician, impervious to ideological assault. It becomes clear, however, that he often makes musical
choices with reference to Christian religious discourse and thus for ideological rather than structural reasons. This chapter examines the usefulness of
a darkness and light trope for understanding the compositional process in
his music. It affords an opportunity to import ideas from Gilles Deleuze and
Flix Guattari, as well as to apply Jacques Derridas antidialectical arguments
through use of the deconstructive strategies that were referred to so cursorily at the end of chapter .
One purpose of chapter is to present a typology of the demonic in the
music of Liszt, but I am also seeking to answer a number of related questions: What impact did his representations of the demonic have on his stylistic development as a composer? Do demonic elements appear even where
Liszt has not chosen to indicate their presence by title? Do we find them in
nondemonic programmatic works, like Mazeppa and even in a work like
the Sonata in B minor, for which Liszt offers no program? In the eighteenth
century, the demonic topos is found, most famously, in the music of Mozart.
In the music of Liszt, demonic topoi abound and a typology of the demonic
becomes necessary. Moreover, I argue that building on the work of others
(Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Berlioz), Liszt plays an important part in establishing particular demonic genres, such as the danse macabre, the demonic scherzo, the demonic ride, and the more abstract study
like Unstern (a dark counterpart to the mditation religieuse genre). In so
doing, he was to bequeath a fertile legacy to the likes of Saint-Sans, Dvork,
Mussorgsky, Balakirev, and others less known. I contend that the primary
demonic technique for Liszt is that of negation: negation of the beautiful,
introduction
the noble, the graceful, and so forth. The secondary technique is parody,
though qualities are often negated and parodied (or mocked) at the same
time. There is a sense that the demonic is not just evil but gleefully evil. I discuss Liszts strategies in the context of ideas of the demonic in the work of
Goethe and Kierkegaard.
The fourth and final part of the book tackles the issue of ideology and
cultural otherness. In chapter , Orientalism and Musical Style, I discuss
constructions of the East in Western music and the development of Orientalist styles independently of the objective conditions of non-Western musical practices. This chapter explores a variety of questions that concern the
impact of Orientalist ideology on Western music. Is there any consistency to
be found in the way non-Western cultures have been represented? Is it often
only the exotic, or the cultural Other, that is signified rather than a particular ethnic musical practice? Are there reductive sets of musical conventions
that signify something vaguely Asian, Spanish, or Chinese/Japanese and little
else? When did these styles become recognizable? Once established, did they
perpetuate themselves as musical discursive codes in which a musical text of
the East replaced the actual East? Is there a change in representations of nonWestern cultures that can be related to the growth of Western nationalism
and imperialism?
Chapter , The Impact of African-American Music Making on the European Classical Tradition in the s, offers another exploration of cultural otherness in music. Black Africans, before the time of Columbus and
knowledge of the New World were thought of as the third race and often
depicted as such in art (for example, in paintings of the three Magi). Of
course, that in itself would not prevent the black African from being Orientalizedwitness what happened in the case of the Spanish Moors. However, the lack of identification of the black African with an Orientalist style
is explained by the association of black people with African-American
music making. This had become familiar, from the midnineteenth century
on, as folk art such as spirituals and plantation songs, as well as being misrecognized in much of the repertoire of blackface minstrel troupes. In the
early decades of the twentieth century, the African becomes represented in
and by jazz. In the late s the Cotton Clubs jungle exoticism can be interpreted as one more variety of Orientalism. To a certain extent, much of
the Caribbean and South America became Orientalized in this manner
(the bossa nova, Tiki music, and so forth). Moreover, from the s on,
debates about authentic blues, gospel, and soul have often had lurking in
the background the idea of a black Other.
This final chapter is concerned with the early impact of ragtime, blues,
and jazz on music of the European classical tradition and concentrates on
the same period as chapter . Consideration is given to the social and ethnic
connotations of references to African-American styles in these pieces. The
broader European social contextmodernity, the alienated creative artist,
and cosmopolitanismis also found to be important. The chapter dis-
cusses the relation of jazz to modernism and confronts the question: How
far are African-American elements seized upon by composers as mere tricks
of the trade to give a new lease on life to a tradition in crisis? It goes on to
explore the use of jazz-influenced styles as satiric weapons and, finally, discusses the misconceptions of African-American music making that were
widespread among European composers of this period.
It will be obvious from this overview of my chapters that the kinds of
broad arguments I am making rely for their persuasiveness on a considerable amount of supporting evidence. They do not permit me to concentrate
on a small number of examples, since I would immediately be open to the
charge of either having relied on too tiny a control group or having cunningly selected those few examples that reinforce my exaggerated claims. On
top of this, I am aware how easily a detailed analysis (or close reading) tends
to become fixated on musical structure rather than on historicizing musical
discourse.24 For this reason, the close reading has become problematic for
poststructuralists, and it is compounded by the challenge poststructuralism
poses to the very idea of deep structure. To the reader who bemoans the
plethora of examples, I will simply say that where I have felt that they merely
lend additional weight to rather than deepen my argument I have consigned
them to the notes. There they may be savored or ignored at will.
part one
sexuality, gender,
and musical style
1
erotic representation from
monteverdi to mae west
this chapter examines some of the conventions involved in representing the erotic in music and reveals the ideological character of these
conventions. The disparity and mutability uncovered by a comparison of
representations of sexual desire in three differing musical styles (Baroque
opera, the Victorian drawing-room ballad, and Tin Pan Alley in the s
and s) show that a genealogy of sexuality in music needs to address disjunctions rather than developments, historical contingencies rather than
evolutionary questions.
Representations of sexuality in music are not restricted to eroticism; it
would be possible to devote an essay to a discussion of how musical representations of masculine and feminine laughter differ or to a comparison of
masculine and feminine grief. However, I have chosen eroticismif that is
not too strong a word to describe my Victorian examplesbecause it offers
such clear examples of how gender difference is constructed in music. What
we find, here, are disjunctions in representation rather than any kind of universals or constants that can be traced through the changes brought about
by an autonomous evolution or progress of a Western musical language.
There is certainly no progress to be discovered in the way eroticism has been
depicted in music: representations of eroticism in contemporary music are
not more real now than they were in the seventeenth century. The fact that
the latter can seem cool or alien to us today points to the way sexuality has
been constructed in relation to particular stylistic codes in particular historical contexts and is therefore cultural rather than natural.
It may be accepted already that everyday notions of sexuality are socially constructed rather than a reflection of the natural world. Indeed, we
may follow Julia Kristeva in regarding the categories of masculine and feminine as metaphysical; but, in the light of the foregoing remarks, it does not
sexuality, gender, and musical style
follow from this acceptance that music acts as a simple channel through
which ideologies of gender are mediated and may be renegotiated. In other
words, sexual ideology cannot be straightforwardly renegotiated in music, because a representation of sexuality in music has to relate to the pregiven code of
the particular musical style within which it is articulated.
Certain popular musical styles, however, have sometimes been treated
as if they had arisen from attempts to negotiate differing expressions of sexuality in music. In their early, pioneering study Rock and Sexuality of
,1 Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie have a tendency to see the bifurcation of rock into what they call cock rock and soft rock in this way. John
Shepherd, too, argues that notions of gender and sexuality can be renegotiated by popular musicians, adding: Negotiation is the key concept in
understanding how the politically personal is articulated from within the internal process of music.2 Roland Barthess essay The Grain of the Voice,3
a frequent departure point for considerations of the radical possibilities of
timbre (though Barthess grain is not synonymous with timbre), encourages Shepherd to theorize about the potentialities of female timbres within
a male musical hegemony. Leaving aside that the biological terms male
and female are often used when the cultural terms masculine and feminine would be more appropriate, the contention is problematic in that timbre is considered to be an arena for hegemonic negotiation in popular
music, while vocal timbre is apparently regarded as a fixed, ideologically encoded parameter in classical music. This does not bear scrutiny: not only
have classical timbres changed remarkably even in the past hundred years
(compare a recording of Dame Clara Butt with one of a contralto of even
fifty years later), but also particular timbres have, by way of contrast, been
long-established features of certain popular styles (for example, the high,
lonesome tenor of Appalachian music, still to be heard in contemporary
bluegrass).
With this in mind, it is clear that a much-discussed song like Tammy
Wynettes Stand by Your Man (Wynette-Sherill) cannot be fully understood solely in terms of its being an expression in music (negotiated or otherwise) of the ideology of supportive and submissive femininity but must also
be considered in relation to the stylistic expectations and constraints of
s Nashville country music. Think of how different Billie Holiday sounds
(arguably more submissive than Tammy) when standing by her man in
songs like Dont Explain (Holiday-Herzog). What should be recognized,
however, is that one singer is not offering a more real submission than the
other but a different musical discourse of submission. In the words of Jenny
Taylor and Dave Laing, the issue is the radically different codes and conventions of representation involved in different genres.4
Given that representations of sexuality are constructed within particular musical styles and that musical styles are signifying practices, it is evident, as deconstructionists have shown, that what is being signified is up for
grabs (something the lesbian appropriation of country music5 in the s
erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west
demonstrated). You may feel convinced that something is a reflection of reality if, in Althusserian terms, its ideological character interpellates you as a
subject (that is, calls out to you in a manner that makes whatever it is appear
obvious to you),6 but history has a way of slowly revealing the ideological
character of representations. Readers of an appropriate age may like to
weigh up how campy Mick Jagger appears today in film shot in the s
and how wild and sexy he seemed at the time. My intention here, however,
is to consider how differing musical idioms represent eroticismfrom Poppeas O mio ben, o mio cor, o mio tesoro to Mae Wests more economical
Oh, oh, oh. Along the way, we have three things to ponder:
. How does a composer represent sexuality?
. How does a performer convey sexuality?
. How does a listener interpret sexuality (for example, interpret a performance as erotic or interpret a composition as erotic)?
Taking the case of eroticism and music, we can see how the possibilities and
complexities of this relationship increase as we move from one to another of
the preceding questions.
There are two possibilities to bear in mind in relation to : either the
composer has encoded eroticism or not (as musical text). There are three
possibilities to consider in relation to : the performer may convey eroticism
by decoding the eroticism in the composition, or the performer may add
eroticism, encoding it, for example, in a particular vocal timbre, or there is
no eroticism represented by the performer. When we turn to , there are four
possibilities: the listener may decode eroticism in the composition but may
find the performer nonerotic, or may find the performance erotic but the
composition not, or may find both erotic (decoding at two levels), or interprets eroticism where no such representation was intended (perhaps because of expectation). In the instance of the listener who finds the performers voice erotic but the composition not, then, taking up Barthess
terminology, the jouissance of the nonsignifying genosong may be said to
have obliterated the communicative structure of the phenosong; in other
words, the signified is ignored in favor of the sensually produced meaning
Barthes calls signifiance. The terms genotext and phenotext were coined
by Kristeva7 but applied adroitly to music by Barthes as genosong and
phenosong.8 The member of the audience who finds the performer physically erotic, while finding neither the composition nor the performers
voice erotic, may still be displaying a cultural response, but this response can
be eliminated on the grounds that it has nothing to do with the subject of
musical style under discussion here.
The performer, it must be emphasized, is a complex communicative
channel. Susan Cusick has demonstrated how the ideas of Josephine Butler,
that in our everyday life we engage in performances of sex and gender, may
be applied to the performance of music.9 Cusick explains, for example, that
even if the intention is to sing a piece in a manner suited to its historic con-
text, this is still likely to be in a dialogic relationship with a performance of

the singers gendered body as it exists in the here and now.10 It is not just a
contrast between past and present that brings the performers body to the
fore; it can be in the way a performer subverts a musical style. Sheila Whiteley, also indebted to Butler, has described k. d. langs performance of country, in part stylized and in part subverted through self-dramatization, as presenting a problematic sexuality which suggested an identity that was
gendered and only ambiguously sexed.11 A final word on performance is
that the visual element should not be underrated. Richard Leppert has
shown conclusively that musics effects and its meanings are produced both
aurally and visually in The Sight of Sound (), a study that examines the
work of artists who paint the visual only.12
Sexual discourse in the baro que er a

The present study of representations of eroticism begins in the seventeenth
century. This was a time, according to Michel Foucault, when the transformation of sexuality into discourse that began in the previous century was
completed:
First the Reformation, then tridentine Catholicism, mark an important mutation and a schism in what might be called the traditional
technology of the flesh.A division whose depth should not be underestimated; but this did not rule out a certain parallelism in the Catholic and Protestant methods of examination of conscience and pastoral
direction: procedures for analysing concupiscence and transforming it into discourse were established in both instances.13
Although the sixteenth century was not lacking in ability to represent affective states, as the Netherlands motet shows,14 it was in seventeenth-century
music that a stile rappresentativo was consciously established. This development in representational techniques has been described by Susan McClary
as a tangle of gender, rhetoric and power.15 Unlike Jacques Attali, who
identifies the period of representation in music history as beginning in the
eighteenth century with the rise of the musical commodity as spectacle,16
McClary proposes that it was ushered in with great fanfare with the invention of opera, monody, and sonata in the first decade of the seventeenth
century.17
In Baroque opera, the problem that faces todays audience may be a
lack of recognition of a representation of eroticism by the composer. Such
has been the case, for example, where the composers style is thought to be
petrified: for instance, the only aesthetic titillation the eminent musicologist Carl Dahlhaus was willing to concede might be found in Monteverdis
music was related exclusively to its remoteness in history.18 This problem
may be solved by an editor, an arranger, or a performer. For example, in the
s, when it was considered dramatically unacceptable for a woman to

sing the castrato role of Nero in Lincoronazione di Poppea (), it was the
practice for the part to be sung one octave lower by a man. That was done,
in spite of its impact on the sound of the music (sometimes inverting dissonances, for example), in order to conform to audience expectations of male
operatic sexuality. Worries about Poppeas music not being found sexy
enough were solved by tarting up the instrumentation and ensuring Poppeas personal wardrobe (or the lack of it) absorbed the masculine gaze. Producers of this opera found themselves in a very different position from that
of those working with Wagnerian music drama, where it was accepted that
eroticism would be recognized in the music, if not in the performer.
We will now consider the Nero and Poppea duet Pur ti miro as a representation in music of the mutual arousal thought necessary for sexual reproduction in the seventeenth century. The idea that both men and women
needed to ejaculate seed lies behind the following advice given by the surgeon Ambroise Par:
When the husband commeth into his wives chamber hee must entertaine her with all kinde of dalliance, wanton behaviour, and allurements to venery: but if he perceive her to be slow, and more cold,
he must cherish, embrace, and tickle her, and shall not abruptly, the
nerves being suddenly distended, breake into the field of nature, but
rather shall creepe in by little and little intermixing more wanton
kisses with wanton words and speeches, handling her secret parts
and dugs, that she may take fire and bee enflamed to venery, for so at
length the wombe will strive and waxe fervent with a desire of casting forth its owne seed, and receiving the mans seed to bee mixed together therewith.19
Since this duet is now thought not to be by Monteverdi, though it was

once readily accepted as such, it serves all the better to illustrate musical conventions (which are in themselves ideological constructs), since there is less
likelihood of our being sidetracked into questions of individual artistic genius. Moreover, as Margaret Murata has argued, there was something of
an oral character to Western seventeenth-century music, evidenced by its
common pool of musical materials.20 Susan McClary has discussed how the
seventeenth-century concern for mutual arousal may be perceived in music,
and here we certainly have an example of her two equal voices rubbing up
against each other,pressing into dissonances that achingly resolve only into
yet other knots, reaching satiety only at conclusions (see Ex. .).21
The rapid exchanges of the middle section of the duet form a neat example, too, of the stimulating friction to heat that Stephen Greenblatt has
suggested lies behind the erotic repartee in Shakespearean comedy.22 We are
more used to hearing the original pitch of Neros part now, thanks to the familiarity of high male voices in early music performances (and the high
falsetto in pop music), but can we recapture the significance of that male

example 1.1. Duet: Nero and Poppea
pitch for a seventeenth-century audience? Was it intended to sound unnatural, in the sense of befitting a god or someone more than ordinarily
human?
The next example to consider is Cleopatras aria V adoro pupille, from
Handels opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto of . It contains short phrases suggestive of breathlessness as in the Nero and Poppea duet, but note Cleopatras rhetorical skill: she is able to extend a phrase unexpectedly and to wind
Caesar into her musical embrace (see Ex. .). At every point where we anticipate closure, the line continues; it is as if she is clinging on to Caesar and
allowing him no opportunity to escape. She takes the lead in their relationship, while to Caesar her bold courtship [is] taken as passive yearning.23Rising sequences are also used in this aria to suggest erotic stimulus,
as in the duet. The instrumentation is unusual: it includes a harp, which may
be regarded as a substitute for the lyre, the instrument of the erotic muse,
Erato. Poppea has the rhetorical skills of the courtesan, Cleopatra the rhetorical skill of the sovereign. In Monteverdis Orfeo (), Euridice has
none, the sign of an innocent young woman, as McClary has argued and
demonstrated.24
Scientia sexualis and the nineteenth century

The second and especially productive moment in the proliferation of sexual discourse is located by Foucault in the nineteenth century, with the advent of medical technologies of sex.25 The nineteenth century witnessed the
development of a completely new technology of sex:
Through pedagogy, medicine, and economics, it made sex not only a
secular concern but a concern of the state as well; to be more exact,
sex became a matter that required the social body as a whole, and virtually all of its individuals, to place themselves under surveillance.26
Wont You Tell Me Why, Robin? by Claribel () (Ex. .) is as close

as we get to a seduction song from female to male in a Victorian drawing-

example 1.2. Handel, Vadoro pupille (Cleopatra)
room ballad, the content being full of delicately phrased hints, pleas, and accusations: I thought youd see me home, Robin and I thought youd surely
come, Robin If but to dance with me. Moreover, Robin no longer does his
chivalric duty at the wicket gate, even though its very hard to open. The
use of a diminished seventh chord exchanging with the tonic (a nonfunctional coloristic effect) is a seductive harmonic resource drawn upon by
Venus in Wagners Tannhuser,27 and it is still around to provide a romantic
frisson in Cole Porters True Love.
There are short phrases again; here they do not suggest breathlessness
but rather decorous restraint, a sign, perhaps, that the singer has placed herself under surveillance. The 68 rhythm is a pastoral convention inherited
from the eighteenth century that suits the rural setting, but the song is for
an urban market, so there is an element of fantasy present. As advised earlier, however, we need to take performance into consideration. This ballad
offers itself as a possible vehicle for drawing-room flirtation behind a mask
of Arcadian otherness, just as at Vauxhall the songs of nymphs and shepherds subtly underlined from a respectful distance the use of the pleasure
gardens for courtship. The question we have to leave in abeyance, though it
is one that Lawrence Kramer has attempted to answer, is how far male samesex desire in the nineteenth century might have encouraged an identification with the position of the female singing to the beloved male.28
The choice of the name Robin is an odd one for a love song destined for
performance in the respectable middle-class home. Robin had long been a
name with sexual connotations, and these were sometimes explicitly phallic, as in Poor Robin, published in The Man of Wars Garland of .29 The
first verse is as follows:
One night as I came from the play
I met a fair maid by the way
She had rosy cheeks and a dimpled chin
And a hole to put poor Robin in.
Colin and Susan, published as A Famous New Smutty Song in an erotic

songbook of the s, shows that the association between the name Robin
and the phallus continued into the nineteenth century.30 So why did the
possible scatalogical connotations of Claribels song and its possible use for
flirting cause no Victorian eyebrows to be raised? The answer is that her
song can also be interpreted as being about two children, which makes the
raising of objections embarrassing.

example 1.3. Claribel, Wont You Tell Me Why, Robin?
It is obvious from the style of Only by Virginia Gabriel () that a

man is admiring a woman, even though the words of the first verse make no
reference to either sex (however, angel in the last line, which would have
automatically had feminine connotations for most Victorian listeners, begins to give the game away). Here a woman composer is adopting a thrust-
ing style to represent male ardor (see Ex. .). A vigorous rhythm on alternating tonics and dominants would have associations with such things as
timpani parts in martial music; it would connote power and boldness, activity rather than passivity, in other words masculinity rather than femininity. Yet was it appropriate for a Victorian woman composer to write this kind
of music?
As more and more women took to composition, nineteenth-century
criticism moved away from the metaphorical use of masculine and feminine in describing music and, instead, began to use these terms as an aesthetic confirmation of sexual difference. It is surely significant that this development in aesthetics coincides with the emergence of a scientia sexualis.31
From the figurative use of these terms, a practice that in characterizing some
music by men as feminine offered the possibility of masculine music by
women,the language of Romantic music criticism, as Judith Tick remarks,
degenerated into a language of sexual aesthetics, in which the potentialities of the individual female composer were defined through the application
of sexual stereotypes.32 It came to be interpreted as a failing for a woman
to seek to write masculine music, and, in the words of a sympathetic nineteenth-century male critic, she received much advice to cultivate art from
the feminine stand-point.33 The sexual politics involved in this aesthetic
theorizing form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it to say, here, that the
feminine in music was charming, sweet, delicate, and sensitive and that
women songwriters were expected to produce work that was pretty, charming, and either simple or, if not, decorative rather than complex or learned.
Womens composition was to be of a character that could be labeled or
thought of in ways distinct from male composition. The drawing-room ballad came to be thought an ideal outlet for female compositional creativity in
the s because even its performance associations were feminine. A writer
in Macmillans Magazine at the beginning of that decade explains:
The preference for the English ballad is easily accounted for: the melody is not uncommonly very pretty, the words are understood, and
every repetition of it in any form recalls the touching voice and the
pretty face of the singer from whom we first heard it.34
The reception of Virginia Gabriels Only, however, would have been

problematic. It is composed by a woman, but its gendered musical style is
masculine: it characterizes the male in love, not the female in love. It would
have been seen not as an example of a woman successfully challenging a
male composer on his own ground (as we may be tempted to view it today)
but as an example of a striking reproduction of masculine art, as one critic
described Alice Smiths The Passions in .35 A similar argument could not
be used in the case of men, since they were deemed able to be original. The
ability to reproduce only, rather than originate, was held to be a peculiarity
of the female mind. If a womans temperament was at the same time generally esteemed as naturally artistic, the Reverend Hugh Haweis advises us in

example 1.4. Virginia Gabriel, Only
his Music and Morals, those words are to be understood not in a creative, but
in a receptive sense.36 Sexual aesthetics were part of separate spheres ideology: John Ruskin, for example, had proclaimed in in his lecture Of
Queens Gardens that a womans intellect was not for invention or creation,
but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision.37 It is important to rec-
ognize that there was nothing conspiratorial in such statements; once formulated, these ideas were understood as truths always and already present.
The musical style that represents a jilted male or a male pleading with
the female object of his desire is similarly gendered. Come into the Garden,
Maud (Tennyson-Balfe, ) pleads with a beloved, like Wont You Tell Me
Why, Robin? There is a well-known anecdote about how the risqu music
hall artist Marie Lloyd made this song sound indecent when she sang it during a court case to prove that filthy thoughts were in the mind. A remarkable deconstructive strategy and, if it did not actually happen, there is still a
lesson to be learned. It is difficult today to understand how easy it would
have been for a woman to make this song sound indecent, something that
would have been accomplished effortlessly then. The crucial point is that its
musical style conforms to a Victorian representation of virile masculine sexuality. That passionate conclusion is utterly unseemly for the ideal, submissive perfect lady of the times. And yet the song amuses now, especially the
conclusion, thus providing another example of disjunction in representational codes and the all-important specificity of the sociocultural contexts
within which their meanings are construed. So much, then, for an expression of real eroticism.
Psychoanalysis and the t wentieth century

Finally, we turn to the early twentieth century, which, for Foucault, was
marked by a deployment of sexuality spread through the entire social
body, the birth of the theory of repression,38 and the emergence of psychoanalysis in response.39 Lawrence Kramer has used Freudian theory to offer
new insight into representations of desire in nineteenth-century music40 and
Robert Fink has applied the theory of repression to a study of Brahms,41 but
here we will look at music contemporaneous with the widespread acceptance of psychoanalytic theory. Three female stereotypes dominate American erotic songs of the s and s: one is the predator (shell get her
man), a second is the innocent (shes available to men, but doesnt know
what shes doing), and a third is the prim and proper. The last is more difficult to describe: she may be a schoolteacher, or a secretary in tweeds wearing severe glasses that, once removed, cause the astonished male to gulp out,
But . . . youre beautiful! Her potentially seething passion is kept in check
by her sense of duty or her strict moral code; hence, uniforms are popular,
particularly of a military or religious kind. However, we are given to understand that her concern for ethics, duty, morals, and so forth is nothing but a
symptom of her repressed desire. She is a woman whose sexual feelings
need to be awakened by a strong man who will reassure her and calm her
fear of letting those passionate repressed feelings rip. Needless to say, this
is popular cultures take on what is needed to combat repression, not that of
Freudian psychoanalytic practice.
These three are not the only possible erotic stereotypes of female sexuality, of course, but they were the ones favored in the United States at this
time. By way of contrast, in Germany there was the indolent stereotype,
best known from the languid sensuality of Marlene Dietrich, and in England
there was the saucy local girl stereotype in the tradition of Marie Lloyd.
A stereotype is a representation that is repeated as if it were natural, or
a known constant. It is an imitation that Barthes maintains is no longer
sensed as an imitation.42 The danger of a stereotype, therefore, is that it may
come to be misrecognized as truth: Nietzsche has observed that truth is
only the solidification of old metaphors. So in this regard the stereotype is
the present path of truth, the palpable feature which shifts the invented ornament to the canonical, constraining form of the signified.43 We have, indeed, already seen how metaphors of masculinity and femininity solidified
into truth in the nineteenth century.
In I Like a Guy What Takes His Time (Rainger), recorded in New York
early in , Mae West fits firmly in the dominatrix or predatory category.44
She was, incidentally, cast as a lion tamer in the film Im No Angel later that
same year. Prominence is given in the recording to Wests erotic moaning,
though other erotic devices of the time, for example, the Sophie Tucker or
Bessie Smith growl or the heavy breathing of Ethel Waters (as in her recording of the Fain-Norman song You Brought a New Kind of Love to
Me), play no part. In this context, Wests Brooklyn accent and nasal delivery would have carried suggestions of low life and loose morality. Moreover,
a change to double time, which elsewhere would have been simply a characteristic jazz technique, operates in this song as a humorous reference to the
amateur lover who does not take his time.
In Come Up and See Me Sometime (Swanstrom-Alter), recorded in
New York in , Cliff Edwardss voice sounds campy, and intentionally so,
for there is no other way a man can handle this kind of Mae West material
(West did not record this song, but it is clearly indebted to her performances
in style, title, and content). Marybeth Hamilton suggests that Wests style
would have resonated with a s gay sensibility and observes that exaggerated speech and mannerisms had already begun to be labeled camp in
the s and that West had learned both the word and the concept from
her friends in New Yorks gay underground.45 The dominant culture did
not permit a real man to indulge in techniques associated with the supposed seductive skills of women. Cliff Edwards, in fact, is faced with the
same problem (how to exhibit eroticism as a man) that Susan McClary sees
as hampering the eponymous character in Monteverdis Orfeo.46
In Is There Anything Wrong in That? (Magidson-Cleary), recorded in
New York in , Helen Kane plays the innocent abroad or dumb blonde
stereotype. The trumpet on this recording, played with a wa-wa mute, is intended to be both sexy and comic, just like Kanes voice, which it resembles.
We cannot be sure which is imitating whichan ambiguity of considerable
importance to the development of an instrumental erotic code in dance

band music of this period.
In Pu-leeze! Mister Hemingway (Drake-Kent-Silver), recorded in London in , Ann Suter portrays the prim and proper but pliable stereotype,
the woman who needs to be conquered by the male. There are elements of
sadomasochism present: the record concludes with a resounding slap as she
fights off the libidinous Mr. Hemingway (while throughout the song we
hear clear signs of her excitement at his presence).
Mae West and others who played the predatory stereotype appropriated
the smears, bent notes, and growling plunger-mute effects of the Cotton
Club in Harlem. There Duke Ellington, aided by trumpeter Bubber Miley
and trombonist Joe Tricky Sam Nanton, satisfied the expectations of their
white patrons by serving up such effects as jungle music (Ellingtons orchestra sometimes recorded under the name The Jungle Band). Hence, associations of the wild and the primitive pass over to the singer who utilizes
these devices. Then, becoming associated with representations of wild, predatory female sexuality, these effects (which are now heard as female cries,
purrs, moans, groans, and breathless gasps) can return as a highly charged yet
nonvocal musical eroticism. In a well-known later piece, David Roses The
Stripper of , eroticism is enhanced by quasi-vocal slides on trombone
and a wailing tremolando on a blue seventh followed by jungle drums.47
It is instructive to compare it with another musical discursive code,
Richard Strausss Salome (), which Ernst Krause claims established the
modern musical formula for the portrayal of ecstatic sensual desire and
brought it to perfection.48 The eroticism of the Dance of the Seven Veils
is encoded in the sensual richness (timbral and textual) of a huge orchestra,
the quasi-Oriental embellishment of melody (intimations of exotic sensuality), and the devices of crescendo and quickening pace (suggestive of growing excitement). However, it is no coincidence that, despite the anachronism, the Viennese waltz with its connotations of fin-de-sicle decadence
lies just below the surface of the Strauss (see Ex. .) as the fox-trot lies below
that of the Rose.
example 1.5. Richard Strauss, Salomes Tanz
There is no sense, of course, in which one is really sexier than the other;
each encodes eroticism in a different way and for a different function. It
would be just as ludicrous to imagine Strausss Dance of the Seven Veils in
a seedy strip club as to imagine Roses The Stripper incorporated into Salome. There is no perfect musical portrayal of ecstatic sensual desire independent of sociocultural context. Strauss is drawn to the waltz as the sexiest
of music, a reputation it continued to hold in Vienna for some years after the
production of Salome.49
Roses piece sounds like camp eroticism now and seems to confirm the
idea that a new erotic era began the following year. As Philip Larkin put it
memorably in his poem Annus Mirabilis:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles first LP.50
Is this partly why Mae West sounds campy nowbecause the timbres used
in her vocal delivery and the instrumental accompaniment have become
part of a historical museum of clichs? It is perhaps difficult for some to accept that sexy music is not sexy in itself but only in relation to its cultural
and historical context, but the examples in this chapter indicate that this is
so. It is surely significant that Larkin mentions the Beatles in the poem cited
earlier. New ways of encoding eroticism in music were developed in the rock
style of the s, and this code differs markedly from what came before:
consider, for example, the recording of Wild Thing (Chip Taylor) by the
Troggs in . The rock critic Lester Bangs described this song as the
supreme manifestation of Rock and Roll as Global Worldmind Orgasm.
Admittedly, he has his tongue a little in his cheek, but not when he asks us
to accept this song as just a simple expression of something.51 As is obvious by now, I am arguing that we can never accept anything as a simple expression.
In the early s, West did represent a sexuality that many felt reflected
a real, if threatening, female sexuality. Indeed, she was arrested and charged
in with staging an obscene and morally corrupting production. At issue
was her play SEX,52 in which she played a prostitute so convincingly that,
in Hamiltons words, most critics could not see it as a performance.53 The
New York Daily Mirror accused her of using her performance as a means of
giving herself sexual pleasure: She undresses before the public, and appears to enjoy doing so.54 Even when West began to mediate her sexuality
through a historical setting (to avoid charges of literally transporting New
Yorks sexual underworld to the Broadway stage), her representation of latenineteenth-century low life was thought authentic. Consideration, of
course, needs to be given to the question of how far West began to introduce
self-parody into her performances of the s. These performances were
certainly ambiguous, allowing her ironic detachment to be read as parody.

Hamilton, however, claims that in the early s West understood her irony
as simply a suggestive inflection, a means of hinting that more was going on
than lay on the surface, suggesting some private joke that she seemed to be
savoring but never revealed.55 The Legion of Decency, campaigning for
movie reform in , failed to recognize irony, parody, or comedy of any
kind in Wests performances and considered her a moral threat to young
women. It was after , to appease the Production Code Administration,
that West was obliged to provide an unambiguous mediation of her sexuality, one that would be perceived as nonthreatening because recognized as
unreal. As we noted earlier, however, Cliff Edwards in imitating her only ever
had the option, as a man, of sounding unreal. It seems that representations
of male and female sexuality can occupy the same territory only when one
or the other of them is the camp version. Furthermore, camp is not something that is produced only when a man behaves like a woman; a woman
may turn a representation of femininity into camp. This is what began to
happen in the gay and lesbian appropriation of country in the later s,
and it was so successful because, as Martha Mockus observes, the strict
gender definition presented in country music provides excellent material
for queer drag and butch-femme role-playing among lesbians and gay
men.56 In trying to make sense of all this, it is helpful to draw upon Lacanian psychoanalytical theory. Relevant here, for example, is Ellie RaglandSullivans carefully worded elucidation of Jacques Lacans phallic signifier:
Feminine sexualitynot necessarily correlated with genderis a
masquerade not only because s/he can disguise her desire, can fake it,
can cover her body with cosmetics and jewels and make of it a phallus, but also because her masquerade hides a factthat masculine
sexuality is a tenuous matter. Things do not work so easily between
man and woman, or between any sexual partners for that matter. If
only this point were understood, Lacans phallic signifier would not
be read imaginarilyi.e., essentializedas a privileging of the masculine. It would be seen, rather, as a dividing effect created by learning difference as gender difference.57
When Mick Jagger was thought to reflect an unbridled male sexuality,

there were no female imitators of his unambiguous, up-front Lets Spend
the Night Together style.58 By the late s, when those old Rolling Stones
records were beginning to take on camp airs, Annie Lennox was able to appropriate the style in a song such as I Need a Man (Lennox-Stewart, ).
The difference between this and the case of Mae West and Cliff Edwards is
that performances by the last two were contemporaneous, whereas Lennox
was quoting a style of representation that had become historic. It is the historic character of her quotation that makes it an example of the playing with
signs that is a feature of postmodernism. The dominatrix as well as the
innocent stereotypes of Hollywood femininity discussed earlier are delib-
erately quoted in songs by Madonna, which is partly what makes her a postmodern artist. The other typical feature of the postmodern (which Lennox
and Madonna both seem aware of) is that it is double-coded: on the one
hand, the quotation serves to inscribe, but on the other hand, the sense of
parody or self-consciousness about the quotation serves to subvert. Linda
Hutcheon has explained the latter as follows:
Parody in postmodern art is more than just a sign of the attention
artists pay to each others work and to the art of the past. It may indeed be complicitous with the values it inscribes as well as subverts,
but the subversion is still there.59
I would argue, however, that authorial intention is not essential for postmodern subversion to work; the subversion can take place in reception and
interpretationno postmodernist would accept a servile position toward
a text (that is, being confined to struggling toward an understanding of the
artists intentions). A single example must suffice by way of illustration,
since this is not the place to suddenly launch into a fresh debate about the
self-present subject, poststructuralist arguments that concern the incompleteness of all texts, or the concept of diffrance that Jacques Derrida has
used to designate the production of differing /deferring.60 When Kate
Bush quotes the innocent girlish voice in her song Wuthering Heights, our
reception may be colored by a knowledge of the novel, where the little girls
plea to be let in at the window is met with misogynistic violence. Such a response does not rely upon Bushs intended meaning, whatever that may
have been.
2
the sexual politics of victorian
musical aesthetics
a sexual div ision of musical composition emerged in nineteenthcentury Britain: during that period, metaphors of masculinity and femininity solidified into truths about musical style. Contemporary social theory,
domestic sphere ideology, the new scientia sexualis, and aesthetics of the
sublime and the beautiful ensured that certain musical styles were considered unsuitable or even unnatural for women composers. Female creativity
was also denied or inhibited by educational and socioeconomic pressures
born of ideological assumptions. In consequence, many women found
themselves marginalized as composers, restricted to acceptable genres
such as the drawing-room ballad. Men, too, were affected by the sexual politics of the age, because the supposed revelation of biological truths in music
meant that the presence of feminine qualities in their compositions could
lead to invidious comparison with the less elevated output of women.
Questions about the nature of music, its purpose, and whether it had a
predominantly masculine or feminine character occupied the thoughts of
many Victorians. Darwin was convinced that music had developed from the
need to attract a mate and, noting that most creatures become more vocal
during the breeding season, observed: Women are generally thought to
possess sweeter voices than men, and as far as this serves as any guide we
may infer that they first acquired musical powers in order to attract the
other sex.1 However, most Victorian theories of music can be related to the
tendency since the Enlightenment to identify men with reason and women
with nature.2 The use of a gendered vocabulary that consisted of words such
as mastered and grasped to describe human understanding illustrates
that tendency.
The emotional world was womans;3 hence, so was the moral world that
was associated with feelings and susceptibilities: Let men enjoy in peace
and triumph the intellectual kingdom which is theirs, advised Sarah Lewis
in Womans Mission. The moral world is ours.4 This not to claim that all
aspects of music belonged to the emotional realm and were therefore identified with woman. In fact, mans less emotional nature gave him superiority in certain musical areas: Because of the fact that the emotional nature in
man is less active than in woman, wrote T. L. Krebs in , he is superior
to her in his ability to penetrate the mysteries of musical theory.5 In this
connection, it is interesting to note Susan McClarys argument that the
daunting structuralist graphs used to distance and objectify the passionate
music of nineteenth-century opera may be seen as an example, in our own
times, of the fear that to admit that music moves one affectively means that
one may not be a proper masculine subject.6
The idea that difficult thoughts were mans sphere received support
from nineteenth-century psychiatrists. Around midcentury, explanations
were being sought for the large number of women among the institutionalized insane. These efforts led to what Elaine Showalter has called the feminization of insanity.7 Building upon a biological explanation that womens
brains functioned differently from mens because intimately connected
with the uterine system,8 Henry Maudsley argued, in Sex in Mind and in
Education (), that intellectual training in adolescence could damage
both a womans brain and her reproductive system. He supported his argument by reference to Dr Edward Clarke of Boston, Massachusetts, who had
supposedly discovered that a young womans energy was needed to establish
the periodical tides of her organization (her menstrual cycle) and her
body could not endure a simultaneous draining of mental energy.9 This is
reminiscent of Schopenhauers idea concerning the difficulty he supposed
people to have walking and talking at the same time: For as soon as their
brain has to link a few ideas together, it no longer has as much force left over
as is required to keep the legs in motion through the motor nerves.10 Psychiatrist Daniel Hack Tuke thought he had detected cases of prostration of
the brain in girls who had overtaxed themselves in studying for exams.11
Despite the counterarguments of women such as Elizabeth Garrett and
Emily Davies,12 these ideas were to result in the received wisdom summed
up in Samuel Smiless words: Women have not the physical health to stand
heavy work, still less heavy brain-work, which is more exhausting than
muscle-work.13 All the same, hard evidence of the unsuitability of the theoretical side of music for the female brain was difficult to come by. In fact,
sometimes the opposite was found; a writer in the Monthly Musical Record
in remarks on the number of women in classes at the Royal College of
Music, the Royal Academy of Music, and the London Academy, adding:
As far as I am informed, they do not lag behind the young men. I
have known some young women, and know of many more, who were
quicker and surer in the study of harmony and counterpoint than
most men. If it be objected that there are few women composers, I
the sexual politics of victorian musical aesthetics
reply that that is true chiefly because there has been little encouragement held out to women composers hitherto.14
Women composers lacked the encouragement of both concert opportunity and academic recognition. Indeed, back in Elizabeth Stirling15
had passed the compositional exercise for the Mus.Bac. at the University of
Oxford but was refused the degree; Oxford first conferred degrees in music
on women in , and that was six years before Cambridge saw fit to do so.
Women as musicians
For women, musical performance was regarded as an accomplishment not
an art requiring mental effort. In the late eighteenth century, Thomas Gisbourne had explained the end and use of all such attainments in The Purposes of Ornamental Education (): they are occupations which may prevent the languor and snares of idleness, render home attractive, refresh the
wearied faculties, and contribute to preserve the mind in a state of placid
cheerfulness; in addition, they enable the woman to communicate a kindred pleasure, with all its beneficial effects, to her family and friends.16 It
will be noted that idleness, perceived as a threat to a womans virtue, is mentioned as the first benefit, closely followed by an emphasis on domestic duty.
John Stuart Mill, in The Subjection of Women (), attacked the notion of
music as an accomplishment, making the point that women in the educated classes are almost universally taught more or less of some branch or
other of the fine arts, but not that they may gain their living or their social
consequence by it.17 It is important to stress the lack of social consequence
to be gained from musical skill, since this accounts for the low standard of
amateur performance complained about by many Victorian critics:
Clever young ladies have been told, My dear, you dont want to play
or sing like professionals; you only require to know enough to amuse
your own domestic circle.18
The female singer alone had a tradition to relate to (documented by

Ellen Clayton in Queens of Song, ), one that came about, perhaps, because she aroused the erotic interest of men.19 The female composer appeared to be nowhere, an absence Mill explained as follows: Women are
taught music, but not for the purpose of composing, only of executing it:
and accordingly it is only as composers, that men, in music, are superior to
women.20
The piano, which from the s became the preeminent womans instrument, ousting the guitar and harp, was an object to be looked at as well
as played and heard and had connotations that need to be considered:
Richard Leppert has called it the visual-sonoric simulacrum of both family, wife and mother.21 In the early nineteenth century, before the upright
cottage piano began to corner the market, some square pianos were designed so that they could also be used as sewing tables. Leppert notes that in
postbellum America sewing machines and pianos were often bought from
the same retailer. It was a state of affairs that must have persisted for some
time, since the British Library catalog lists a periodical published in Philadelphia in titled The Musical and Sewing Machine Courier.
None of this was calculated to have women taken seriously as pianists,
yet some, notably Clara Schumann ( ) and Arabella Goddard (
), did achieve warm recognition. A critic in the Musical Gazette ( April
) writes enthusiastically of the latters performance of Beethovens Piano
Sonata in E, op. , mentioning the boldness needed to attack such difficult music by the mighty Beethoven and, continuing to use a masculine
vocabulary, claims: Only those who have seen this sonata or have attempted
to play it can thoroughly appreciate the triumph achieved by an artist who
conquers it.22 However, Goddards performances took place not in a public
concert room but during soires at her own residence, Welbeck Street,
Cavendish Square, London, from which address she sold tickets at half a
guinea each. Marcia Citron has stressed the importance of the salon for
women, but as professionalism increased, there was an attendant decline in
the salon music making, and professionalism, as Citron has shown, created
a whole range of problems for women.23
In public concerts, women pianists were addressees of the masculine
gaze; Susan Godard performing at the Hanover Square Rooms three months
later elicited the following review from the same periodical:
The extreme youth, pretty countenance, and small and sylph-like
form of the fair performer, should not be omitted in the list of her
good parts. True, one who sits aloft in the critical chair, has nothing
to do with such sublunary matters, but if folks will raise their lorgnettes at such little gear, we must needs report the truth, and so there
is an end of the matter.24
Arabella Goddard, too, went public in , and it was not long before the
tone of the reviews changed. A critic at a matine concert she gave with three
male musicians (who included violinist Joseph Joachim) writes:
Looking on her sylph-like form, and her handsome and intelligent
face (with the marks of early youth still upon it) hyper-criticism itself, while she goes through her arduous task with a confidence at
once modest and firm, might willingly be silent on what she has not
done, in reflecting on what she has.25
Needless to say, the three men were not subjected to any such commentary.
This sort of leering interest is not confined to the concert hall but even extends to lady organists: a correspondent to the Musical Gazette in remarks of Madame Vonholf, the recently appointed organist of Marylebone
Rectory Church: This fair minister of religion is very young and (Heaven
forgive us) very pretty.26
Women began to take to string instruments (which, like wind instruments, were long thought unfeminine) later in the century, influenced by a
handful of female violin virtuosi such as Wilhelmine Nruda ( ),
and some were even learning wind instruments. However, they tended to
end up in the novelty of the all-women orchestra or womens quartet (the
most famous of the latter was Emily Shinners quartet, ), just as the
women who took up wind and brass to play jazz in the s found themselves in outfits such as Ivy Bensons All-Girls Band. A critic in the Musical
Times in , after advancing some progressive thoughts on the matter,
soon lapses into a familiar pattern of reception for the Orchestra of Ladies
that performed at the Newbury Musical Festival (Berkshire) in October of
that year:
Twenty years ago the idea of an Orchestra of Ladies would have
been received with derision; but we have now begun to acknowledge
the absurdity of limiting the utterance of so beautiful a language
as music to the male sex. Presuming, however, that they intend to
challenge a public verdict upon their performance, it is a question
whether, with a band of such powerful attraction, we can hope to secure perfectly independent critics.27
Not every member of this orchestra was a woman, but the majority were
(twenty out of twenty-five), though the leader was male (Mr. T. S. Liddle).
Womens orchestras had grown in size a decade laterthe eighty ladies or
so who play in Mr. Moberlys string band are mentioned in the Monthly
Musical Record in 28 and they were also a familiar part of musical life
in the United States, where it was commented in : We have numerous
orchestras in which women occupy prominent positions, and even some
composed entirely of women.29 Yet the same writer reflects: Twenty years
ago it was an odd sight, and one that rarely failed to elicit visible and audible
comment, not always charitable, when a girl or young woman carried a violin case through the streets of a city.30 This, too, accords with the British experience, as expressed by a critic in who, while observing that few feminine violinists have as yet made great mark, stated:
Nobody is astonished now to see a lady playing the violin. There is
the organ also. At one time it was considered unlady-like to play it.
But there must surely be less to remark upon in a lady playing the
organ than in turning the levers of a tricycle, as we may see them
doing constantly in the streets.31
The reference to to a tricycle here anticipates the anticycling propaganda of

the s, when the attraction cycling held for women caused anguish in the
music trades, since it was taking them away from their pianos.32
Music and femininit y

Worries about the effeminacy of music were already present in the eighteenth century, as Richard Leppert has shown.33 The nineteenth century was
no different. Charles Hall remarked that when he came to London in the
late s if he asked any gentleman belonging to society, Do you play any
instrument? it was considered an insult.34 Hall was later (in ) to be
outraged by John Ruskins musical taste, when the latter confessed to having
enjoyed his performance of Sigismond Thalbergs variations on Home,
Sweet Home better than his performances of Beethoven.35 Realizing Hall
had taken offense, Ruskin wrote to him stating: It is quite true that I dont
understand Beethoven, and I fear I never shall have time to learn to do
so.36 The inference to be drawn from these words coming from such an indefatigable aesthete is that there were more important matters to occupy his
study hours.37 In contrast, it was no shame for a woman to be moved by
Home, Sweet Home: Queen Victoria listening to Adelina Patti sing this
song in the Red Drawing Room of Windsor Castle noted in her journal that
the performance was touching beyond measure, and quite brought tears to
ones eyes.38
Further fears about the effeminacy of music come unwittingly to light
when the Reverend Stephen Hawtrey, mathematical assistant master at Eton,
was examined by the Public Schools Commission on July . He was
asked questions about his largely unsuccessful attempts to encourage the
study of music at his school (where it was not an official subject). The minutes of evidence record the following exchange:
. . . . do the boys take the same view of it that you do, and think
it manly to learn music?I think that many boys would be very glad
to learn.
. And there would be no laughing at them by the rest of the
boys?Not the least.39
William Johnson, another assistant master at Eton, had conveyed a

rather different impression, five days before, about the enthusiasm of the
boys for music:
. Do you think there are many boys who care (as volunteers)
about learning music in the school?No, there are not many who
learn it.40
A little later, H. Halford Vaughan, of the commission, wanted to know (minute ) if Johnson considered it desirable that more boys should study
music bearing in mind the class of boys who receive their education at
Eton, and their position in society.41 Given the importance of a classical education at Eton, Vaughan may have had in mind Aristotles opinion that
learning music must not be allowed to have any adverse effect on later activities and that it was necessary to consider to what extent boys, who are
being educated to discharge the highest functions in the state, ought to take
part in music.42 In fact, improvements in musical provision at public
schools were a long time coming, though matters began to get a little better
in the s, particularly at Uppingham, Sherbourne, and Harrow. The situation at Harrow in midcentury was summed up in the comment: A Harrow
boy who went in for the study of music in those days would have been
looked upon as a veritable milksop.43
The issue of class, raised by Vaughan, is an interesting one, since music
was thought beneficial (refining and humanizing) to males of the lower orders. The brass band springs immediately to mind, but working-class boys
were also trained for military careers as bandsmen and bandmasters. Many
of the bandsmen who trained at the Military School of Music at Kneller
Hall, Twickenham (founded in , after the Crimean War, and taken over
by the War Office in ), were drawn, at the age of , from the Chelsea
Hospital, the Royal Hibernian Military School (Dublin), and the Metropolitan Poor Law schools.44 However, worries about the effeminacy of music
persisted throughout the century both in Britain and the United States,
where, Krebs pointed out, many young men, and old ones too, who live in
a more or less circumscribed sphere, seem to be afraid that they might jeopardize their manly dignity were they to study thoroughly the art of music.45
The male fear of being feminized by music is often, as Lawrence Kramer
has commented in the case of a later composer, Charles Ives, a dread of
being feminized in relation, not to women, but to other men.46 It thus encourages the development of a misogynistic outlook and demeanor in order
to rebut charges of effeminacy or emasculation. There is, in fact, a painting
titled Music by Frederick Leighton (c. )47 that depicts a male figure
whose groin-hugging tights might be used to give new meaning to Derridas
concept of the presence of an absence. Yet the terms masculine and feminine were first used as metaphors in musical criticism, not as biological
truths. It is clear that this is the case in Schumanns well-known remarks
about Schubert:
To one who has some degree of education and feeling Beethoven and
Schubert may be recognized and distinguished, from the very first.
Schubert is a more feminine character compared to the other; far
more loquacious, softer, broader; compared to Beethoven he is a
child, sporting happily among the giants.48
Whatever the gender ideology here, it is evident that Schumann is speaking

metaphoricallynote that he also uses a childhood metaphorand this is
made clear when he modifies his pronouncements:
To be sure, he brings in his powerful passages, and works in masses;
and still he is more feminine than masculine, for he pleads and persuades where the man commands. But all this merely in comparison
with Beethoven; compared to others, he is masculine.49
In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, such metaphors

were solidifying into biological truths as they became enmeshed with psychological and physiological theories about womens minds and bodies. The
following thoughts, by Frederick Niecks (later to become Reid Professor of
Music at the University of Edinburgh), appeared in the Monthly Musical
Record in :
Women are not without energy and aspiration; what they lack, if history teaches us aright, is sustained strength and wide-reaching comprehensive thought. . . . Now what Schubert is wanting in is just this
sustained strength and comprehensive thought.50
However, Niecks concludes, Schubert has enough of the man to distinguish

him from the woman, because sex can never be quite disguised.
Although a gay and lesbian musical criticism has only recently emerged,51
some tentative observations may be made that relate Schuberts music to his
sexual orientation.52 If a reading of his music as feminine is accepted too
readily as evidence of his homosexuality, it not only sidesteps the thorny
issue of the historical specificity of Schuberts experience but also can lead
to the error of equating homosexuality with femininity. A reminder that gay
identities in the last century involved a variety of negotiations with codes of
masculinity (butchness) and femininity should correct this misconception: one need only consider the parodic appropriations labeled camp.53
The gender ideology that essentialized masculinity and femininity and
found its way into sonata form analysis (masculine first subject, feminine
second subject) has to be historicized. Today, when we recognize masculinities and femininities as culturally constructed pluralities, we could perhaps
interpret sonata form conflict, particularly of the nineteenth-century variety, in terms of a dominant masculine code and a sexual otherness. This remains problematic, since feminine connotations of certain musical material
undoubtedly existed; yet a gay composer might feel inclined to identify with
such material in its struggle against another kind of material that was assured of dominance, especially when a self-association with the latter necessitated an identification with hegemonic normalcy. A reading along these
lines would be possible, for example, in the first movement of Schuberts
Unfinished Symphony, where the feminine second subject initially resists absorption by the tonic in the recapitulation, rejecting the norms of
tonic minor and tonic major; moreover, as Susan McClary has observed, this
is the tune with which we are encouraged to identify.54 The opinion of the
critic in the Monthly Musical Record, quoted earlier, that sex can never be
quite disguised, accords with contemporary psychological theory, as expressed in Henry Maudsleys statement: There is sex in mind as distinctly
as there is sex in body.55 This idea convinces Niecks that woman has work
to do in art, as well as in life, which can only be done by her,56 although the
absence of a woman composer to place alongside a writer like George Eliot
is then simply offered to the reader as a puzzling fact.
Women and comp osition

The question Why has there been no female Beethoven? was returned to
often. A correspondent to the Monthly Musical Record in writes, under the
non-gender-specific pseudonym Artiste, on the subject of the want of creative power in women and is clearly influenced by the notion that womens
brains cannot cope with too much concentrated and disciplined thought:
A woman endowed with a lively, excitable imagination, rarely possesses the enormous perseverance and energy necessary for a composer . . . It is an established maxim that a woman can never be a
great composer, and I do not mean to dispute its truth; certainly no
female Beethoven has appeared as yet, nor do I think that such will
ever be the case; setting aside everything else, no woman has the
physical strength without which such a genius could not exist.57
Having put together these by now familiar thoughts that mark the interrelatedness of mental and physical energy, the correspondent concluded by
advising the woman composer to aspire humbly but earnestly, conjecturing that, in so doing, she might work out a path of distinction for herself.
This path was to be gender-specific, so that
in music, as in literature and painting, a mans work might be easily
distinguished from that of a woman, but withal each should possess
merits to be gratefully recognised, and mutual profit be gathered
therefrom.58
Also in , an American writer, Fanny Raymond Ritter, considers the

subject of women and composition and argues that a feminine side of music
already exists:
It would be unnatural to think that the beautiful lullabies and cradlesongs, of which hundreds exist, in different languages, were composed by martial barons, rough serving-men, and rougher peasants,
and not by their wives and daughters. . . . We can scarcely doubt but
that many of those simple, touching, heart-breaking melodies and
poems that have descended to us, were created by women.59
A version of this article60 was skittishly reviewed by Niecks, whose views on

Schubert have already been referred to. The preceding sentiments elicited
the following response:
This is very probable, and yet how strange again that in the songliterature one meets with no touching and heart-breaking melodies
composed by womenat least not heart-breaking in the sense of the
authoress. Surely no one will wonder at my denying these epithets to
the melodies of the female composers who have made themselves a
name as song-writers!61
The joke here is intended to be doubly wounding: first, because touching

and heart-breaking melodies were acceptably feminine and, therefore, what
many women composers aspired to; and second, because women had so far
only managed to acquire any reputation as composers by writing the very
music Niecks ridicules.
The idea that if female creativity existed at all, it existed in a separate
feminine sphere had become commonplace in the next decade.62 Stephen S.
Stratton remarked to the Musical Association in ,Women have received
much advice to cultivate art from the feminine stand-point.63 The ideology
of separate creative spheres could, however, be used to undermine the
achievement of a woman composer, since it made possible the accusation
that she was not being true to her nature and, instead, was merely imitating
what men have created. Stratton cites a reviewer whose description of Alice
Mary Smiths The Passions as a striking reproduction of masculine art64 we
have already encountered in chapter . A speaker in the discussion that followed the presentation of Strattons paper remarks scornfully of the composition classes at academies or colleges where young ladies are taught to
do only what men have done.65 But where could women receive training in
the feminine side of composition? Moreover, we have seen that what constituted masculinity and femininity in music originated in metaphors; and so,
when women composers were being told to express their femininity in
music, they were really being asked to offer evidence that these metaphorical and therefore ideological representations of femininity were, in fact,
biological truths. Hence, once the presence of feminine qualities in music
was accepted as evidence of a feminine nature, it must inevitably have affected the reception of male composers. Eustace J. Breakspear, for example,
laments the neglect in the mid-s of Chopin, a composer he praises for
ethereal beauty, fascinating charm, and music that attains the acme of
the graceful and the refined in expression.66 This is certainly a description
to evoke the feminine. Indeed, Jeffrey Kallberg came across the following
statement while researching nineteenth-century critical associations of femininity with the nocturne: The poetic side of men of genius is feminine, and
in Chopin the feminine note was overemphasizedat times it was almost
hystericalparticularly in these nocturnes.67 The full impact of this description relies on the knowledge that hysteria, along with neurasthenia
(nervous exhaustion) and anorexia, was an illness particularly associated
with women in the later nineteenth century.68 Nevertheless, if Carlyle could
consider heroism possible for the poet, while maintaining poetry was musical thought and that all passionate language does of itself become musical,69 then surely there was a place for the hero as composer. Richard
Leppert suggests that
the pronounced masculinity evident in the aggressiveness, assertiveness and insistence in so much nineteenth-century instrumental musicfrom piano sonatas to symphoniesin part consti-
tutes an impassioned outburst by male artists entreating not only for

the centrality of their artistic exercise as protest over their own marginalization but also as the sonoric denial of the cultural effeminization which accompanies them as artists.70
The sublime and the beautiful

Nineteenth-century aesthetics tended to bifurcate into theories of the sublime (which was typified by qualities such as the awesome, solemn, pathetic,
colossal, lofty, and majestic) and the beautiful (typified by qualities of the
graceful, charming, delicate, playful, and pretty). The thesis I want to advance is that the ideology of the sublime and the beautiful worked to exclude
women from particular compositional choices (unless they were to be untrue to their nature) and also effectively fenced off the category of greatness in music as a male domain. To posit an ideology of the aesthetic is not
new: Terry Eagleton has produced a searching critique of the ideology of
aesthetic theory from a Marxist perspective,71 relating it to a ruling classs
need to confront, explain, and defuse the class conflict that arises from the
capitalist mode of production; there is less emphasis in his work, however,
on how aesthetics, as a discourse of the body, encodes ideologies of gender
and sexuality. That it does so is not surprising, given the original concern of
aesthetics with perception by the senses (aisqhsi~).
j
On the Sublime (Peri uyou~),
J
by the first-century Greek writer Longinus, was rediscovered in the seventeenth century. Longinus was concerned
with the power of rhetoric to express grand ideas that create an intense,
emotional response. For a more general philosophical inquiry, it is instructive to turn to Edmund Burkes thoughts on the sublime and beautiful, written in , when aesthetic theory was in its infancy:
Sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small: beauty should be smooth and polished; the great,
rugged and negligent; beauty should shun the right line yet deviate
from it insensibly; the great in many cases loves the right line; and
when it deviates it often makes a strong deviation: beauty should not
be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy: beauty should be
light and delicate; the great ought to be solid and even massive.72
Though the beautiful and sublime may be found united, they are distinct
qualities. Burke illustrates this with an analogy: Black and white may
soften, may blend; but they are not therefore the same.73 However, by replacing sublime and beautiful not with black and white but with masculine
and feminine we can see how the two pairs of binary oppositions are related
and, accordingly, how in a gendered discourse such as this the sublime is
ruled out as an aesthetic category for women. It then becomes significant to
note how readily the sublime becomes the great; admittedly that word is
first chosen to communicate vastness, but it is soon being used of line, light,
and mood. So, even at this date, it is obvious that the sublime is not going to
be an option for women, although the beautiful clearly has possibilities.
When Niecks was discussing Schubert and femininity, he went on to
outline features known to be characteristic of the literary works of female
writers that may readily be discovered in Schuberts compositions. Some of
the features Niecks picks out are
fine sensitiveness, delicacy of feeling, ready sympathy, acute observationespecially of little things that are nearest and dearestoccasional outbursts of power, short glimpses of far-reaching vision, and,
along with this, a languid dreaming74
There are some obvious parallels here with Burkes concept of the beautiful:
delicacy of feeling accords with Burkes statement beauty should be light
and delicate, and the acute observationespecially of little things that are
nearest and dearest would fit in well with Burkes idea that, compared to
the sublime, beautiful objects are small and beauty should not be obscure.
William Crotch, professor of music at Oxford from and, later, principal of the Royal Academy of Music, suggested a tripartite division of music
into the sublime, the beautiful, and the ornamental, though he pointed out
that these qualities could and did mix.75 From some of the devices he cites
as means of achieving the sublime in music it is evident that women were
going to face obstacles of gender ideology as well as a lack of compositional
training should they try to emulate these devices. Here is part of his description of sublimity in music: a great compass of notes employed in a full
orchestra . . . the deep science of the organ fugue . . . a passage performed by
many voices or instruments in unisons or octaves, and one in full and florid
counterpoint.76
Where beauty is concerned, however, the way seems clearer. This is how
Crotch describes the beautiful in music:
The melody is vocal and flowing, the measure symmetrical, the harmony simple and intelligible, and the style of the whole soft, delicate,
and sweet.77
The ornamental, on its own, seems ruled out; it is typified by eccentric

and difficult melody, rapid, broken and varied rhythm, wild and unexpected
modulation.78 Nevertheless, when the ornamental is combined with the
beautiful, which Crotch states it frequently is, he sees it (quoting Uvedale
Price) as the coquetry of nature that makes beauty more amusing, more
varied, more playful and gives as an example of this union the flowing and
elegant melody with playful and ingenious accompaniment.79 The use of
the term coquetry with its connotations of trifling, and especially of a
woman trifling with a man, would appear to show that this combination of
qualities was already being considered feminine in character, and we can
perhaps take Crotchs remark that it forms the leading characteristic of
modern music as the wry observation of an academic composer on the

music of his rivals. There is no question but that an issue of artistic status is
involved in these divisions, and this is evident when Crotch ponders: If
with Burke we separate the sublime and beautiful into two styles, which
shall we prefer? Surely the sublime, as requiring most mind in the person
gratified and in the author of the gratification.80
Consider, too, these words from later in the century: Beethoven, in
most that he composed, rises higher than either Mozart or Haydn. His ideas
are larger, the thought is deeper, the outlines are grander, and the mind with
which they are imbued is loftier.81 Thus are women excluded from achieving greatness in music.
Now we may move to consider the typicalities and particularities of
feminine as distinct from masculine musical style. In order to set male
and female on as equal a terrain as possible, the genre of the drawing-room
ballad has been chosen since, after , it offered a more equal opportunity
to composers of either sex than any other genre. It allowed women composers to avoid some of the constraints created by the rise, during , of
an integrated, international musical canon that William Weber identifies as
establishing a much stronger authority in aesthetic and critical terms.82
Marcia Citron has summed up the constraints of the canon as negative
stereotypes for women and creativity . . . , problematic notions of professionalism and of what public and private mean . . . , and the widely held assumption that music and the experiencing of music are gender-neutral.83
Surveying the output of the most successful women ballad composers,84 we find a propensity for diatonic melody and concords and a clear
preference for major keys85 interesting, in the light of Crotchs remark that
a minor key of itself confers an expression of seriousness and dignity, and
is frequently on that account adopted by second-rate composers.86 Since
women were perceived to be, if anything, second-rate composers, then perhaps one reason for the avoidance of minor keys by women was that they
wished to avoid being accused of affecting unfeminine seriousness and dignity. However, women composers of this time do not generally use vigorous
rhythms or fast tempi, which suggests that they would not like to err on the
side of lacking any seriousness or dignity by using parameters whose connotations might invite the descriptions strong-minded (pejorative when
used of women) and giddy. It would, of course, be unfeminine to be loud,
yet loudness is mentioned by Burke as a factor in the sublime.87 And since
he also mentions the shouting of multitudes,88 we may take it that thickness of texture is a factor as well.
Let us look at five womens ballads, which cover a range of musical styles
and literary content that were acceptably feminine. Childrens Voices by
Claribel (Charlotte Alington Barnard)89 is an example of the hymn like ballad, though the harmonic rhythm is slow, with chords changing once or
twice a bar. It consists of a regularly phrased -bar tune for a soloist, the last
bars then being repeated for a chorus in four-part harmony. It would seem
to fit perfectly Crotchs description of the beautiful in music quoted earlier.

The words, written by Claribel herself, concern children praying, a suitably
feminine subject, since the moral education of the young was a womanly
duty (see Ex. .).
Miss M. Lindsays Sacred Song Queen Marys Prayer makes use of
arioso techniques from oratorio. Miss Lindsay90 was the first woman to
make a success of composing sacred songs of this type, songs that adapted
example 2.1. Claribel, Childrens Voices
the oratorio manner to the requirements of the home circle. Sandwiched

between refrains is a section that relies upon word-painting devices common in oratorio, such as melodic notes and harmonies chosen for their expressive effects. Note the change to tonic minor on the word pain, the
German sixth coupled with a rallentando on the word only, and the conventional representation of a sigh, the falling minor second on the word
feeble (see Ex. .). This was about as serious as a woman composer could
be without being thought disloyal to her femininity.
Dolores (real name Ellen Dickson)91 provides an example of the playful
intricacy of the union of the beautiful with the ornamental in the lyrical
melody and rippling accompaniment of Clear and Cool. Even when, in the
third verse, the words call for loudness, the pitch of the accompaniment ensures that this is not excessive (see Ex. .). The morally uplifting words of the
song, taken from Charles Kingsleys The Water Babies, are addressed throughout to a mother and child and thus entirely becoming for a woman composer.
Caroline Norton92 wrote Juanita in the early s before the interest
in Spanish Peninsular Melodies was exhausted.93 At that time the guitar
was still common in drawing rooms, and it looks as though the song was
written with that instrument in mind: note the spacing of the chords and the
example 2.2. Miss M. Lindsay, Queen Marys Prayer

example 2.3. Dolores, Clear and Cool
unusual downward motion of the arpeggios, which seems designed to allow

the melody to be more easily reinforced from time to time on the guitars
highest string (see Ex. .).
Writing imitation foreign airs allowed a woman composer to act a
roleit was a way of saying, This is not really me. Nevertheless, only a restricted number of roles were available; and when Norton borrowed an Arab
air for one of her songs, she wisely avoided connotations of Oriental sensuality by writing a religious text for it (this same tune was to become a famous belly dance later in the century94). The enormous success of Juanita created its own problems, though, and highlighted an unexpected
handicap that could face a commercially successful woman composer. Nortons husband, from whom she was separated, chose the year of Juanita to
claim his legal entitlement to all the money she was able to earn through her
songs and poems.
The Charming Woman by Caroline Nortons sister Helen Blackwood
(Lady Dufferin)95 is of the humorous variety; such pieces were not intended
to prompt raucous laughter but rather to be listened to with a knowing
smile. The present example adopts the rum-ti-tum 68 meter and repeatednote style of melody of a bucolic patter song in comic opera (see Ex. .).
example 2.4. Caroline Norton, Juanita
#
& # .
&
##
Soft
j j
o'er the

p
? ##
#
& # .
&
##
? ##
Far
foun - tain,
Ling-'ring falls
the
South-ern moon;
j j
j r
.
o'er the
j j
J
j j
.
moun - tain,
Breaks the day
too
soon!

example 2.5. Helen Blackwood, The Charming Woman
The subject matter of a comic song composed by a woman was usually

restricted to the peculiar customs and utterances of the lower orders,
but in this particular example the butt of the humor is the strong-minded
middle-class woman. Here is verse :
She sings like a Bullfinch or Linnet
And she talks like an Arch-bishop too
She can play you a rubber and win it,

If shes got nothing better to do!
She can chatter of Poor-laws and Tithes
And the value of Labour and Land,
Tis a pity when charming women
Talk of things which they dont understand!
Blackwood wrote the words as well as the music, and it may seem remarkable that, as an intelligent woman, probably the recipient of similar barbed
comments herself, she could not resist such ideology. Yet we have to consider
how long it was before a woman was able to find a way of being funny in
public on the subject of women other than at her own expense. Humor in
drawing-room ballads reinforced ideologies of both class and gender.
None of these five ballads transgress codes of femininity. The kinds of
ballads inappropriate and hence unavailable to women composers can be
suggested by a list of titles alone: Sons of the Sea,A Bandits Life Is the Life
for Me, and Yes! Let Me like a Soldier Fall.96 These embrace the masculine
world of imperial adventure, rebellion, and heroism. We must also include
the boisterous sailor ballads such as Nancy Lee.97 So, did women avoid the
masculine ballad? Most of them did, but as we saw in chapter , some very
definitely did not. In the midcentury we find Caroline Norton imitating the
Call for the Cavalry from Franz Kotzwaras piano fantasia The Battle of
Prague in her song The Officers Funeral, and at the end of the century we
have Frances Allitsen adopting the conventions of the fervent patriotic style
in her setting of William Henleys England, My England. We will now look
at two ballads in more detail to see women confidently applying the masculine style:98 Virginia Gabriels99 setting of Jean Ingelows poem When Sparrows Build, and Maud Valrie Whites100 setting of Brownings cavalier song
King Charles.
The reiterations in the accompaniment of When Sparrows Build
have a percussive, thus, by implication, masculine charactercompare To
Anthea (Herrick-Hatton), If Doughty Deeds My Lady Please (GrahamSullivan), and Ich grolle nicht (Schumann-Heine). Gabriels ballad is in
sonata form in the key of G major and contains some daring modulations:
the second subject, for example, begins in the unusual key of E major and
four bars later abruptly modulates to G major followed by C minor, one of
the remotest keys possible from the tonic (see Ex. .). One of the devices
the Kantian musical critic Christian Friedrich Michaelis cited in for
producing astonishment and awe and stimulating sublime ideas was the
sudden veering of the established tonality in an unexpected direction.101 It
would seem that that is very much Gabriels masculine intention in this
song. However, I would contend that the use of sonata form for a song tends
to feminize that form by giving emphasis to the second subject. This happens if verse and refrain form is suggested, with the second subject cast in
the important role of refrain tune (even where the poem does not itself fall

example 2.6. Virginia Gabriel, When Sparrows Build
example 2.6. Continued
into such a pattern). A song in sonata form has a tendency to create this impression, because lyricism is as much an established characteristic of a second subject as it is of a refrain melody. In fact, if Gabriels setting of Ingelows poem is compared with a setting of the same poem by Miss Lindsay,
it will be found that the two appearances of Gabriels second subject (in the
exposition and recapitulation) coincide exactly with words chosen for Lindsays two melodic refrains. Furthermore, in another sonata-form unorthodoxy, it is Gabriels second subject that is triumphantly affirmed at the end.
If, for comparison, we turn to the masculine Beethoven, whom Wagner
praised for raising music far above the realm of the aesthetically beautiful
into the sphere of the sublime,102 and consider the treatment of the second
subject in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony (the symphony Hoffman thought the composers most characteristic work103), we find that there
is no clearer example of a second subject being dominated and finally
crushed by a first subject (even the horn call that announced it is gradually
worn down and reshaped into the first subjects falling thirds).
Maud Valrie Whites King Charles was composed in the late s,
nearly thirty years after Gabriels ballad, and after the new woman of the
s and s had excited much attention and debate.104 Aesthetic theory
had been changing, too, with the growth of British interest in Schopenhauer
encouraged by the Wagner cult. According to Schopenhauer, the artistic intellect needed to be freed from blind obeisance to what he called the Will,
the boundless and unquenchable desire that constitutes lifes ultimate reality. Freed from service to the Will, the composer could write music that was
an objectification of the Will, fit for aesthetic contemplation. However,
Schopenhauers ideas did little for women, since he considered them too
subjective to possess the objectivity or genius necessary to free themselves
from the Will.105 The American critic George Upton complained, in his
book Woman in Music (), that women could not objectify emotion by
transforming it into art.106 In Uptons opinion, Man controls his emotions,
and can give an outward expression of them. In woman they are the dominating element, and so long as they are dominant she absorbs music.107 In
other words, being emotional by nature, she cannot project herself outwardly.108 It leads to a familiar conclusion, that woman will always be the
recipient and interpreter, but there is little hope she will be the creator.109
The ideas of the Austrian music critic Eduard Hanslick were also gaining ground, particularly among anti-Wagnerites. Hanslick opposed the notion that music acted directly upon the feelings, arguing: Beauty in music
appeals primarily to the imagination and only secondarily to the feelings.110
This was the kind of idea that could be used to defeminize music; it allowed music to be moved from the emotional feminine sphere to the intellectual masculine sphere. However, it also meant that womens music had to
be taken more seriously, since Hanslick claimed that all beauty in music appealed primarily to the imagination, a faculty that, according to Kant, harmonized with the cognitive capacity of the intellect or of reason.111 Indeed,
Hanslick restored the description feminine to metaphorical usage, by asserting: Music must . . . be grasped simply as music and can only be understood in its own terms and only enjoyed in its own way.112 In making the
case for musics autonomy Hanslick brought new status to music, so that
later in the century many accepted the truth of Walter Paters famous remark about all art aspiring to the condition of music.
Another important intervention in aesthetic theory was made by Nietzsche, who, having become disenchanted with Wagner, started attacking the
lie of the great style and expressing a preference for music that approaches
lightly, supplely, politely and does not sweat.113 Eventually this kind of
polemic began to destroy the mystique of the sublime. Indeed, it is a moot
point whether White is appropriating the masculine sublime for her song
or parodying it. Certainly the song can be interpreted either way, depending
on the degree of exaggeration or restraint the singer and accompanist adopt
toward the sublime devices found therein. I shall describe some of these,
finding relevant quotations to support my labeling them as sublime. I
place the term in scare quotes to underline that I am using sublime in the
sense of sublimely butch (though I fear that some will accuse me of moving
from the sublime to the ridiculous). These are the features that delineate an
aesthetic domain of potent, monumental masculinity. I am not concerned
here with moments of Kantian epistemological transcendence where these
masculine features have been transformed into a desexualized sublime. We
should remember that it is not without significance that Freud uses the term
sublimation to describe the desexualization of the libido.114
If we look at the introduction, we see that a tempo di marcia is called for.
Taken together with the tonic-dominant oompah bass, the military connotations are immediate. Yet no sooner have we begun to register the tempo
and make the necessary masculine associations than we are held in suspense
with a pause on a dominant seventh in preparation for the first sublime

device. What follows is thrice unexpected: first, because we cannot anticipate its arrival (because of the pause); second, because it is not the tonic
chord that we anticipate after hearing the dominant seventh; and third, because the dynamic level is fortissimo in sudden contrast to the previous
piano (see Ex. .).
Burke, although speaking of sounds, not music, mentions, in connection with the sublime, a sudden beginning or sudden cessation of sound of
any considerable force, and he goes on to observe that a single sound of
some strength, though but of short duration, if repeated after intervals, has
a grand effect.115 Now, while admitting that the chords of bars are not
strictly equivalent to Burkes single sound, the introduction of this song
does seem to offer a striking musical parallel to his comments.
As the singer begins, the accompaniment is low-pitched, loud, and thick
in texture, and the singers melody is reinforced at masculine pitch in the
bass clef. The bass clef was thought of as a uniquely masculine domain, for
whereas men were taught both treble and bass clefs in training colleges,
women were taught only the treble.116 At bar , the dynamic falls to piano,
the pace quickens, and a crescendo begins with the singer being asked to increase dynamic level during sustained notes. This last effect occurs again at
example 2.7. Maud Valrie White, King Charles
the end of the refrain, where the singer has a crescendo over five bars on a
single note. Let us now consider what aesthetic theorists from the British
tradition have to say about effects like these. We may recollect Burkes remarks on the shouting of multitudes, which, it has been previously suggested, might be related to thickness of texture; moreover, here there is reinforcement of the melody, too. Concerning the use of crescendi, we might
consider Alisons recipe for the most sublime of sounds (in his Essays on
the Nature and Principles of Taste published in ), which was a loud,
grave [i.e., low-pitched], lengthened and increasing sound.117 We could also
consider Daniel Webbs opinion that a growth or climax in sounds exalts
and dilates the spirits and is therefore a constant source of the sublime.118
Perhaps, given that it would be very familiar in piano arrangement at
this time, we can once more choose the first movement of Beethovens Fifth
Symphony for a comparison. Here we find a similar use of a pause to ensure
and enhance the unexpected. Note how the second pause in the opening
bars arrives after the note has already been held for the duration of a minim
and, therefore, since this note is held longer than the previous pause note,
the listener is prevented from predicting the beginning of the next bar. We
also find an unexpected change of dynamic in this bar. Furthermore, in this
movement there are many crescendi, some unusually long for the date of its
composition, and there is a general thickness of texture: indeed, the function
of the wind and brass instruments is, for the most part, to thicken the orchestral texture. Of course, no one is going to claim that White is seeking to
recreate the awesome sublime in her song, but she uses techniques that are
strongly coded as masculine and does so within such a short time span that
they take her song into the realm of parody or, to repeat my earlier phrase,
the sublimely butch.
At the end of the nineteenth century there was a return in some critical
quarters to the metaphorical usage of the terms masculine and feminine.
Bernard Shaw, for example, wrote to Ethel Smyth119 to say:
It was your music that cured me for ever of the old delusion that
women could not do mens work in art and other things (it was years
ago, when I knew nothing about you, and heard an overture The
Wreckers or somethingin which you kicked a big orchestra round
the platform). But for you I might not have been able to tackle Saint
Joan, who has floored every previous playwright. Your music is more
masculine than Handel.120
Here we should perhaps advance a caution similar to that given concerning

Schuberts femininity. If a simple correlation is made between Smyths lesbian preferences121 and her masculine music, we fail to account for the variety of negotiations with feminine and masculine codes involved in lesbian
identities. At the same time, just as it was posited that for Schubert a disinclination to identify with normative masculinity might have urged him toward musical devices that had feminine connotations, it could now be sug-
gested that Smyths musical masculinity might well have been prompted by
a disinclination to identify with normative femininity.
That the power relations embedded in nineteenth-century sexual discourse gave rise to gendered discursive codes in music is evidence that music
should not be considered in isolation from the political arena. The biological arguments about masculinity and femininity in music did not disappear
in the twentieth century. In a paper given to the Royal Musical Association
in , women were once again placed in a double bind, being told on the
one hand that the womans mind is receptive, not productive,122 and on the
other hand that by imitating men (which, it would follow, is the only possibility available) a woman insults her own sex.123 There is no room here to
discuss how and why the sexual politics of Victorian musical aesthetics
proved so enduring. The opinions just cited, for example, need to be considered alongside a discussion of the impact of women having taken over
male roles when they did the work of those who had been sent to the front
during the First World War. Biological determinism returned in the s
with a vengeance in the writings of Camille Paglia. Raising the subject of
serial killing, she states that though it is a perversion of male intelligence
it is nevertheless masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness and
claims: There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the
Ripper.124 Paglias confidence in the absence of female serial killers must
have been shaken the year after this book was published, when Aileen Wuornos confessed to the murders of seven men in Florida.
part two
ideology and
the popular
3
.
the native american

in popular music
first a word on ter minolo g y : the description Native American

is not universally admired or accepted (since it performs an assimilating
function), but it has gained wide currency and so I use it here, as Jacques
Derrida might say, under erasure. Indians had no legal status as American
citizens until .1 The term Indian presents difficulties, too; these have
been explained by Robert F. Berkhofer:
That the idea of the Indian originated and continues up to the present as a White image poses major dilemmas for modern Whites as
well as for Native Americans. Through continued use of the term Indian, does the present-day White still subscribe to past stereotype?2
In addition to these words of caution, I should warn the reader that my title
is ambiguous, since my focus for most of this chapter is not on Native American performers of popular music. A title such as The Pretend Indian in
Popular Music would not completely solve the problem, however, since it
may suggest a certain intentional artificiality in the representation or even
deliberate misrepresentation. That is often not the case. The American Indian in song and film was, for the larger part of the twentieth century, as
much a simulacrum, in Jean Baudrillards use of the term,3 as the American
cowboy: there was rarely any attempt to relate the representations of either
of them to the actualities of their lives.4 In the main, we simply witness the
reproduction of copies of what had never existed in the first place. Moreover, these copies of a nonreality, it must be emphasized, became reality. Native American actor Chief Thundercloud had to be transformed by makeup
artists into what a chief was expected to look like in Geronimo ()the
disconcerted movie men didnt think he looked real enough.5
ideology and the popular
Early representat ions

No obvious musical signs of difference accompany the earliest appearances
of Native Americans in Western music.6 Rameaus harpsichord piece Les
Sauvages, for example, was inspired by seeing two North American Indians
perform in Paris in , yet we are, in Miriam K. Whapless words, bemused to read Rameaus claim that he had captured the character of their
song and dance.7 In Stephen Storaces opera The Cherokee of ,8 the
Cherokee March and the British March could be interchanged without
noticeable effect (see Exx. . and .). Interestingly, these examples show a
reverse of later Orientalist representational convention, since it is the Self
that is feminized here rather than the ethnic Other. The British March can
easily be heard in the position of a feminine second subject to the masculine
first subject gestures of the Cherokee March. Perhaps the intention was to
contrast the latter with British refinement and grace. A feature in this opera
that was to prove significant later, however, is the emphasis given to the
Indians war whoop. Storace does offer a musical representation of this
by setting the word to longer note values, but its otherness is dissipated by
his weaving it into imitative part writing so as to suggest agitation in the
conventional eighteenth-century manner.9 Nevertheless, the War-Whoop
Chorus, as it came to be known, was a big success and, in recognition of
that, was moved to the end of act to provide an exciting close.10
The accolade of first Indian play by an American11 was given to The
Indian Princess of , a tale revisited many times, most recently in the Walt
Disney animated film musical Pocahontas ().12 The importance of music
is such that, despite the nonsinging roles, The Indian Princess could be described as an opera, and its composer, John Bray, again happened to be English. He makes some attempt to match the ethnic origins of certain characters to suitable music. The Indians as an undistinguished group, such as
those who drag in Captain Smith for execution,13 are treated in much the
same manner as are Turks by eighteenth-century European composers (see
chapter ): a drone bass supports a tune made up of repetitions of a rhythmic cell, a tune reinforced at its reprise by bald octaves rather than being
example 3.1. Stephen Storace, Cherokee March
the native american in popular music

example 3.2. Stephen Storace, British March
harmonically enriched. Yet markers of difference are not as developed here as

for the character Larry, whose role is that of the by then familiar stage stereotype, the comic Irishman. Of course, it is a distinct advantage that he can
easily be marked linguistically by his phraseology, such as to be sure, and
by quaint expletive vocabulary like Hubbaboo! and Gramachree!14 He
is also marked as Irish by having a girlfriend called Katy: comic Irishmen
at this time nearly always have a girlfriend called Molly or Kate.15 His music
incorporates the usual signs of Irishness: a 68 meter, drone fifths, and snap
rhythms.16 In contrast, Pocahontas has a sophisticated aria, When the Midnight of Absence, which, with its elaborate form, shifting tempo and meter,
and melody decorated with appoggiaturas and trills, is perfectly becoming
for a princess.17 Class overrides ethnic difference, as is revealed by the simpler music Bray provides for Alice and Kate. Here, as is often the case in Orientalist representations, the higher orders are less marked, if at all, by signs
of the Other.18
From noble savage to blo odthirst y savage

The idea of the Noble Savage, the civilized Westerners simpler, purer, but
uncultured counterpart, had become widely known in the eighteenth century through the writings of Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau. As applied to the Native American, the Noble Savage trope, despite a few earlier
instances, really belongs to the first half of the nineteenth century. Between
and , noble images proliferated in the arts.19 Washington Irving
wrote that the solitary savage feels silently but acutely and that his sensibilities ran steadier and deeper than those of the white man.20 A few years
after this remark there appeared James Fenimore Coopers The Last of the
Mohicans () with the noble Chingachgook. It was not Coopers novel,
incidentally, but the film adaptation of that introduced what was to become stereotypical Indian grunting and dialogue of the paleface make heap
big mistake variety. Some redress was achieved when Native American activist Russell Means got to play Chingachgook in the remake of .
Michael V. Pisani mentions that thirty-five Indian plays were produced in North America between and , though little of the music
has survived. They were largely of the Noble Savage type. Alongside this, it
should be noted that Pres. Andrew Jacksons Indian Removal Act of was
being implemented by the military during that decade and Native Americans were being coerced to settle in Indian Territory (as Oklahoma was
known in the nineteenth century).21 Jon W. Finson, in discussing the Noble
Savage trope in songs of , has argued that the implication given in
these songs that the Indian was unable to adapt to civilized life helped to
justify the forced removal of Native Americans by calling it both natural
and mutually agreeable.22 A significant literary publication of the late s
was Henry Rowe Schoolcrafts Algic Researches,23 on which Longfellows
Song of Hiawatha () is based (though Longfellow took the poems meter
from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala). Longfellows poem more or
less concludes the literary vogue for Noble Savages. In the s, parodies
and burlesques had turned the Indian into an object of ridicule. However, it
was the stage Indian that influenced Indian devices in concert music of the
late nineteenth century according to Pisani, who concludes from a survey of
such devices that they originated on the stage and largely remained there
until composers like Edward MacDowell brought them to the concert hall
in the s.24
Henry Russells The Indian Hunter has been called the first popular
Indian song.25 Henry Russell, a Jewish singer-songwriter from England, enjoyed much success when he visited New York in 26 and had his first big
hit with Woodman, Spare That Tree! (), a setting of words by George
Pope Morris, editor of the New York Mirror. In the song The Indian
Hunter (),27 Russell sets words by Eliza Cook, an English poet and journalist, that suggest, through use of a first person narrative, that most of the
hunting is done by the white man who follows the Indian like the hound
on the tigers track. The subject of this song is a woods Indian not a Plains
Indianthe dominant type in Hollywood films28 and he pleads to be allowed to live in peace in the forest. The Noble Savage trope in this song follows a typical pattern: the Other has no name (he refers to himself as the
hunter one); he is defined in terms of place (the forest shades are mine;
the golden fields of corn are the white mans) and skin tone (my dark
cheek contrasted with the white man); he is close to nature (the spirit
that gave the bird its nest, / Made me a home as well) and innocent (never
did harm). Another penchant of Noble Savages is to make sounds without
meaning: here each stanza ends with some vocalizing on the syllable yha,
which, to be fair, actually comes closer than most to the vocables hey ya favored by several tribes (see Ex. .).29
Beyond that, the song adopts a polite drawing-room style: a limited
compass (major ninth), a touch of chromaticism, a couple of modulations,
and a short vocal cadenza that precedes the refrain. These features are not
dissimilar to those of Russells better-known songs A Life on the Ocean

.. Henry Russell, The Indian Hunter
Wave and Woodman, Spare That Tree!30 It is true that engravings of male
figures with bare chests and thighs rarely grace the covers of such sheet
music, but that one does so in this case is simply in order to provide one
more sign of the Noble Savage. There is, interestingly, no trace of the blackface minstrel style of some of Russells songs about African-Americans. The
68 meter is a pastoral convention; the only suggestions of the Other, musically, appear in the leaping intervals of the excerpt quoted earlier, and in an
earlier vigorous rhythm in the accompanimentthough that could also
suggest agitation or the white man in pursuit (see Ex. .).
An indication of the esteem felt for Eliza Cooks words is that they were
set to a new tune (with the refrain changed to Illy oh) by A. F. Knight and
published as The Song of the Red Man.31 Russell is also credited with another Indian song, The Chieftains Daughter (yes, it is Pocahontas again),
with words by George P. Morris.32 Another song popular in the s might
be considered a musical ancestor of Pocahontass Colors of the Wind, the
hit song from the Disney animated film Pocahontas ().33 It was Cora the
Indian maidens The Wild Free Wind (music by Alexander Lee) from
Shirley Brookss burletta The Wigwam. It begins, Oh! the wild free wind is
a Spirit kind, / And it loves the Indian well.34
example 3.4. The Indian Hunter
By the mid-s, readers, singers, and theater audiences had become

bored with the Indian as Noble Savage. In the next decade this stereotype
was supplanted by that of the Bloodthirsty Savage. Influential in the construction of this image were the tales of brutality circulated by frontiersmen
who, of course, had a vested interest in persuading the government to remove any obstacles to their push westward. The discovery of gold in California in was a significant factor in the move westward and, at the same
time, in ensuring that no treaties entitled Native Americans to land rights on
the route to the Pacific. Moreover, was the period of the Indian
Wars. In the frontier ballad Sioux Indians, the bloodthirsty stereotype is
fully formed, at least as far as the words go. The Indians in this ballad attack
wagon trains for the sheer hell of it,35 they are merciless, and they whoop
and yell. An important distinction for stereotyping is made: cowboys have
guns and Indians have bows and arrows, although for an unexplained reason the Sioux Chief has a gun. Pocahontas has not disappeared, either, since
that is now the place name of the wagon trains destination. The song is in
the Aeolian mode, which was to become a favorite signifier for Indian
melody (see Ex. .). Here it is uncertain whether any attempt is being made
to present a melody of Indian character, since the Aeolian mode is also common in folk ballads. However, it is important to stress that even where such
an intention exists, what we are given is usually a simulacrum, a copy of an
Indian melody that does not exist, rather than a pseudo-Indian melody. When
that kind of melody is recognized as Indian, it is recognized from familiarity with such simulacra alone, not from familiarity with Native American music.
The Bloodthirsty Savage is portrayed as even more violent and ruthless
in Haunted Wood. In this ballad, no sooner has a husband gone out to collect the mail than the Indians descend, throw his wife down the mountain
example 3.5. Sioux Indians
to die in agony on the rocks, and set fire to his little dwelling with the
couples babies left inside. Yet another song, Texas Jack, concerns a massacre and scalping by Indians.36 Not that scalping was an exclusively Indian
activity; as early as the Council Chamber in Boston was offering for
male Indian scalps, reduced by half if they were taken from women or boys
under twelve.37 A rare voice of sympathy for Native Americans who have
been driven westward only to find that the palefaces great iron horse is now
rumbling in the rear is found in Henry Clay Works The Song of the Redman ().38
From disappear ing peoples to eco-war r iors

In the early twentieth century, the perception that the American Indian was
disappearing encouraged, in some quarters, a nostalgic return to the Noble
Savage trope.39 The person most prominent in lamenting the supposed
passing of the Indian in the first two decades of the twentieth century was
the anthropologist James Mooney, and, in the words of Brian W. Dippie,his
heresy became orthodoxy.40 One factor Mooney failed to take into consideration was absorption, though the brief craze for songs about Irishmen
marrying Native American women, prompted by the success of Arrah
Wanna in ,41 might create an erroneous impression about the extent of
ethnic mixing.42 The Bloodthirsty Savage was to continue to dominate in
films, though there were exceptions. An early example of the latter was The
Vanishing American (), and its title (that of Zane Greys novel on which
it is based) certainly did much to promote that enduring twentieth-century
myth begun by Mooney, especially since the action was set during .
It is an irony that Indians only acquired legal status as American citizens the
year before the film was released, when many people presumed them to be
disappearing. Now it was a matter of providing the Indian with paternalistic care. Zane Grey put it thus: The Song of Hiawatha is truetrue for all
Indians. They live in a mystic world of enchantment peopled by spirits,
voices, music, whisperings of God, eternal and everlasting immortality.
They are as simple as little children.43 Greys citing of Longfellows Hiawatha illustrates the power of poetic forms to construct recognizable truths
for particular readers. The song Red Wing of 44 has no obvious Indian
signifiers, but in its childlike simplicity it relates to the quotation from Grey
and the perception of native peoples as being like children, an idea ideologically embedded in colonialist discourse. This is the innocent world of Red
Wing, who is a shy little prairie maid with nothing to do but while away
her day until her brave returns (though, predictably, he does not).45 The
melody was appropriated with knowing irony by Woody Guthrie for a song
about a militant female trade unionist.46
In contrast to the simplicity of Red Wing, Rudolf Frimls music for
Indian Love Call ()47 is, in the main, a collection of diverse exotic signs
that connote an ill-defined Other. It could easily be a representation of the

East, but then, as Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari remarked, America reversed the directions: it put its Orient in the West, as if it were precisely in
America that the earth came full circle; its West is the edge of the East.48 For
America, read the whole of North America; indeed, Rose Marie, the musical from which this song comes, is set in Canada. A feature of this song that
was to prove common was that the verse rather than refrain plays the larger
role in signifying the Other. The verse makes use of angular melodic intervals and whole-tone movement joined to chords with augmented fifths to
represent the love dreams of Indian maidens.49 The refrain has pentatonic inflections, the odd moment of pounding fifths, and, often ignored in
performance, a melisma that the printed music shows should be performed
by continually restressing the vowel sound oo. Since it would have been a
simple matter to exchange this for one long line that indicated a syllable extension, it is clearly intended as a special effect (see Ex. .).
The Indian enters the ballroom in Indianola of .50 This instrumental novelty, as it calls itself, opens with percussive chords that signify
Indian drums51 and, later, introduces pounding drone fifths while making an effort at an Indian melodywith a style hongrois raised fourth (see
Ex. .). It is important to remember that meanings arise from the interrelations of signs; that is how we recognize this dance piece as a representation
of American Indians. Otherwise, taken as a whole, it could be thought an
unaccountable mixture of one of Brahmss Hungarian Dances, a powwow,
and a fox-trot. It was, after all, merely a novelty item: one of its two composers, S. R. Henry, is credited on the sheet music as the composer of By
Heck, which suggests a reputation for depicting the English North West
rather than the American Wild West.
This was not the only occasion on which ballroom dancing was given
an Indian dimension. Twenty years later, Ann Dvork, who performed movingly as the young Indian heroine in the film Massacre (), raised more
than a few eyebrows when, shortly afterward, she sought to popularize a new
ballroom dance called the Sioux Stomp.52
In the swing era, Indian devices were accommodated into syncopated
rhythms. An example is Big Chief Swing It (Mitchell-Pollack, ). In
the excerpt from the verse given in Example ., the Indian signifiers consist
of pounding fifths, flattened seventh, chromatic descending bass, and accia-
example 3.6. Rudolf Friml, Indian Love Call

example 3.7. S. R. Henry and D. Onivas, Indianola
cature. The intention of the latter is made clearer when, later on, the words
Indian whoop are written above them on the sheet music (see Ex. .).
The last bar of the musical example introduces a minor chord with a
major sixth added above its root; just before the coda, this same dissonant
harmony is pounded out (see Ex. .). This chord is also an Indian signifier,
example 3.8. Sidney D. Mitchell and Lew Pollack, Big Chief Swing It

example 3.9. Big Chief Swing It chords
though it bears no relation to anything in Native American musical practice.

It is a demonstration that musical signs, cuckoo calls aside, share the arbitrary character of linguistic signs, since this chord has acquired its connotations only through use in Indian pieces of a similar stylistic code. It can
found, for example, in the previously discussed Indianola (see Ex. .). In
slightly altered form (as a dominant ninth) but with similar effect it can be
found even in Viennese operetta, set to the same rhythm as in Indianola
and joined to other familiar signifiersan Indian drum and Phrygian inflections (see Ex. .).53
The refrain of Big Chief, as usual, has less of the Other and features elements of swing more prominently. The song concludes with a sforzando
chord to accompany the shout, Ugh! It would be remiss of me to leave
readers with the impression that this song was typical of Indian music in
jazz. Charles Barnet provides a marked contrast: his celebrated recording of Ray Nobles Cherokee () is free of obvious Indian signifiers.54 It
met with sufficient admiration, in fact, for him to be honored with membership in the Cherokee Nation. This same piece also was the launching pad
for Charlie Parkers early improvisational experiments in that led directly to bebop, the musical style that replaced swing.55
Since, in the nineteenth century, as Michael Pisani found, the stage was
the main source of musical signs for the Indian, it is no surprise to discover
that, in the twentieth century, film music functioned in a similar way. These
signs, it must be stressed, are not clichs, as some people may assume. A
clich has lost its meaning. Pull the other leg; its got bells on is now simply a tiresome way of saying dont take me for a fool. The Indian signs,
however, may be routine stereotypes, but they certainly do possess meaning,
and a dehumanizing meaning at that. This can even be the case when the Indian signifier is derived from Native American musical practice. The way
example 3.10. Indianola chords

example 3.11. Emmerich Klmn, Rose der Prairie
such material is arranged and the use to which it is put are crucial to the way
it is received. The Native Americans in Max Steiners score to that celluloid
eulogy to Custer They Died with Their Boots On ()56 are represented by
what the composer terms an authentic Indian tune (which he claims to have
taken down by ear).57 However, it receives a treatment similar to the theme
associated with the films devious villain, Sharp. Furthermore, its prominent
tritone can easily be interpreted as a conventional marker for evilan illustration that even if material is incorporated from a Native American practice, its meaning may still be interpreted in terms of white Western cultural experience. This is particularly likely to happen since Steiner elsewhere opts to
characterize Indians with typical Orientalisms such as snaking woodwinds.
For most of the time the semiotics of the film are at the basic level of pounding drums (signifying Indians) and raucous bugles (signifying cavalry).
Thus, in the end, Steiners music embraces the ideological values of the film.58
The Indians are portrayed as bloodthirsty savages, with the exception of
Crazy Horse (the Sioux chief), who is, significantly, played not by a Native
American actor but by Anthony Quinn. Nevertheless, we should not conclude that a straitjacket is thereby imposed upon reception: John Fiske has
pointed out how the Australian Aboriginal population, for example, construct meanings out of the white, colonialist ideology of the Western, evading the dominant message and taking pleasure in the Indians successes in
the middle of the Western narrative, even though this pleasure is, in part,
dependent on their inevitable defeat at the end.59 It is the end that fixes the
films relevance to the Aboriginal populations immediate social experience.
The impact of Hollywood film scores is seen in the expanded number
of signs for Indians and the consistency with which they are used in popular songs. However, the old signs continue to exercise their attraction. The
Aeolian mode of Sioux Indians reemerges in Hank Williams Kaw-Liga
(cowritten by Williams and Fred Rose), a number-one country hit in February .60 Kaw-Liga is a wooden Indian, an object that was once a common
sight standing outside cigar stores (a convention begun in the nineteenth
century).61 The modal character of the song is especially prominent in the
solo violin part, though there is an attendant problem in the lack of Indian
associations linked to this instrument. Therefore, to compensate, we are
given eight-to-the-bar tom-tom drumming, which would have made a considerable impact since drums were not a feature of Nashville country music
at this time. The move from verse to refrain is accompanied by a shift to the
major key and the adoption of a full-blown county style. This contrast finds
an appropriate match in the lyrics: the verses narrate, apparently sympathetically; the refrain comments scornfully.
In Running Bear (J. P. Richardson), a big hit in and eventual
million-seller, Johnny Preston sings of two lovers who belong to two tribes
that fought with each other, and so their love could never be.62 The
lovers, Running Bear and White Dove, stand on each side of a raging river
and die in an attempt to swim to each othera tragedy relieved for us by
the welcome assurance that they will now always be together in that happy
hunting ground. The story is indebted to Romeo and Juliet and acquires an
added reminiscence of that play when we consider the name White Dove
and recollect that Romeo called Juliet a snowy dove.63 A final confirmation
that this song is not really about Native Americans will be found if one looks
it up in Lee Coopers magisterial guide to themes in American song lyrics. It
features under the theme of Suicide as well as that of Dating and Going
Steady64 (I should point out that there is an entirely separate theme of
Sexual Activity, but that is not thought to apply in this case). The key is
major, but simplicity or primitivism is connoted by the tunes construction
out of pentatonic fragments (see Ex. .). The eight-to-the-bar tom-tom
drumming is present again but now joined by hoomba hoopa backing vocals. Once more, signs of difference are reserved for the verses and, just as
Kaw-Liga moved to a typical country style for its refrain, Running Bear
switches to a rockabilly style for its refrain. The direction with a beat in
Example . may seem superfluous or odd unless it is taken to be an indication to the performer that the straight eights of the verse now give way to
a boogie-type bass played with a triplet feel.
This song stands as a warning to those who would seek to find a correspondence between some of its features and actual Native American musical practices. The drumming does indeed suggest a resemblance to certain
tribal war dances65 (though how suitable that is for a song about dating and
going steady is debatable), but the backing voices merely echo the familiar
ugh and grunting sounds of the Hollywood Indian.66 In fact, this song has
a recognizable musical ancestor in the song What Makes the Red Man
Red? from Walt Disneys Peter Pan (), which, besides the question in its
title, memorably inquires, When did he first say ugh? In Disneys film,
this forms part of a song and dance interlude introduced by the Big Chief in
examples 3.12 and 3.13. J. P. Richardson, Running Bear verse and chorus
order to teach paleface brother all about red man. Of course, it does nothing but confirm for paleface brother everything he knows already. The
tune employs the Aeolian mode and is supported by a repetitive drum pattern and onnawannagunda chanting that eventually changes into equally
meaningless hollering.67 These nonsense syllables are not, of course, to be
confused with the vocables that are substituted for sacred words when Native American songs are performed outside of their ritual contexts.
Signs for Indians had become so well established by the second half of
the twentieth century that there was no difficulty separating friend from foe
even in instrumentals. The stereotypical Indian enemy was the Apache, despite the fact that there was never a single political, geographical, or tribal
group of this name, only a variety of nomadic families, some of whom
banded together. In French slang, apache came to mean simply ruffian.
The notorious danse apache created by Mistinguett and Max Dearly at the
Moulin Rouge in had nothing to do with Native Americans and used as
its music an arrangement of the Valse des Rayons from Offenbachs ballet
Le Papillon ().68 In among the Indian drumming in the million-selling
instrumental record Apache (Jerry Lordan, ) by the Shadows,69 a cowboy presence is detected, intimating that relief from the foe is at hand. It is
heard in the twangy guitar and sections in galloping rhythmboth wellestablished signifiers for cowboys.70 It opts for the Dorian rather than Aeolian mode, although this would later prove ambiguous, since that mode became a favorite of MGM biblical epics, beginning with Exodus, released in the
same year as Apache. In the groups next Indian piece,Geronimo of ,71
the combination of a more persistent gallop rhythm joined to brass interjections served, for the most part, to connote cavalry rather than Indians.
In contrast, Johnny Cashs recording of The Ballad of Ira Hayes (La
Farge) contains no Indian signifiers; in fact, it exchanges them for the signifiers of the white soldierespecially the bugle but also, significantly, the snare
drum, rather than tom-tom, that is heard at the very end.72 The style is
Nashville, too. In other words, Cash pays tribute to Ira Hayes by not characterizing him as Other, though the song describes Hayes with a challenging use
of two contradictory images, that of a stereotype, the whisky-drinking Indian, and that of the marine that went to war. As a patriot, Ira Hayes cannot be given signifiers for Indian, since those may also connote enemy. Hayes
was a member of the Pima tribe who enlisted in the marines in and soon
became a corporal. In he acquired fame after he appeared in a press photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal that showed him with five others helping to
raise the flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle for the island of Iwo Jima:
His struggle to raise the Stars and Stripes appealed to the sentiments
of white AmericaHollywood could not have created a better advertisement of a people united against a common foe . . . he personified the hoped-for assimilation of Indians into the mainstream of
American life.73
Three and a half million war posters carried the picture, and it was also put
on three-cent stamps. Yet, despite his heroic renown, Hayes died a destitute
alcoholic, aged , in . The song attempts to show the contradictions in
the image of Hayes as assimilated Indian by focusing on white American
greed and mistreatment, such as the stealing of water rights from Pima Indians in Phoenix Valley, Arizona. When Cashs record appeared, his emotional performance of the song would have no doubt been related to his own
supposed Cherokee roots.74
A new Indian stereotype began to take over the popular imagination
from around on, that of the Indian in harmony with nature, noncompetitive, nonmaterialistic, and profoundly wise about the universe.75 The
eco-warrior appeals today because of a wide range of environmental concernsto name but a few, greenhouse gases, oil spills, acid rain, and toxic
waste. Unfortunately, this image can prove no less dehumanizing and also
has a tendency to imply that Native Americans are unable to cope with the
grim practicalities of modern life. How shocking it is for some to see litter
lying around on a modern reservation! The fear then follows that the Native
Americans culture is being eroded and needs to be preserved by white anthropologists.76 In Dee Brown, in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,
provided an Indian perspective on the American West, countered the ruthless savage myth, and expressed the hope that readers would learn something about their own relationship to the earth from a people who were true
conservationists.77 A film that showed what it was like to be on the receiving end of an attack by General Custer was Little Big Man (), a satire that
served an allegorical function in the context of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
A book that had an impact on awareness about what modern society was
doing to the earth and, at the same time, established a firm link between Native Americans and environmentalism followed soon after; it was God Is Red
by Sioux scholar Vine Deloria, Jr.78
In the s there was a tendency to cast well-worn Indian signifiers
aside. In City of Dreams, David Byrnes subject is the legendary domain of
the Caddo Indians who were wiped out by the Spanish when the latter
moved into Texas.79 The message of the song is if we can all live together this
dream of the Caddo can come true. A perhaps surprising sympathy has been
shown for the plight of the Native American within the genre of Heavy
Metal. There is Iron Maidens Run to the Hills (Harris), which deals with
oppression and genocide, and Hawkwinds Black Elk Speaks, in which
Black Elk does indeed speak. The Iron Maiden song is notable for its adoption of two different enunciating subjects: the first two verses are given as
if issuing from the mouth of a Cree singer, but then the viewpoint shifts to
that of an onlooker who vents anger.80 This is a subtle variant of the verse
Other, refrain Self format found in Kaw-Liga and Running Bear.
In the s new signs became established as the Indian stereotype
moved decisively to that of eco-warrior, in touch with nature and the vibrations of the universe. The film Dances with Wolves () set the tone.81 In a
contemporary review, critic Dan Georgakas could not resist accusing the
main character, John Dunbar, of spouting New Age gibberish such as As I
heard my Sioux name being called, I knew for the first time who I really was,
but concluded his review approvingly: Moviegoers in the United States have
finally reached a state of consciousness where they applaud and identify with
a daring individual who is willing to approach Native Americans as fellow
human beings rather than as hostile Others.82 It is an image, however, that
not only conjures up New Age mysticism, as Georgakas recognized, but also
demands a role in ambient dance tracks. In respect of these shifting attitudes,
John Barrys romantic score was not as innovative musically as the film itself
was in its representation of the Lakota Sioux.83 Ry Cooder went further in his
music to Geronimo: An American Legend (), having been asked by the director, Walter Hill, to find sounds to valorize cultures of both sides.84
The first album that was not originally a soundtrack and that most fully
capitalized on the new (and desired) image was Sacred Spirit ().85 It was
a best-seller, and undoubtedly its carefully chosen title coupled to a cover
that contained a Christ-like image of a Native American reproduced in nostalgic sepia contributed to that commercial success.86 As part of the albums
nonmaterialistic character, however, it came with a promise that a donation
would be made to the Native American Rights Fund for each album sold.
There appeared to be a widespread readiness to believe that a cognitive understanding of the meaning of the chants contained within its washes of atmospheric synthesized sounds was unnecessary, that one could understand
them intuitively as a kind of nonrational communion with nature. One
track from Sacred Spirit that includes samples of Native Americans chanting
was advertised on British TV (Nov. ) as being part of a great instrumentals compilation album. That description is not without a certain logic,
because the chant is packaged to be consumed as linguistically meaningless.
The excerpt of chant played in the advertisement prompts no debate about
logocentrism; it is, indeed, to be accepted as an instrumental. These Native
Americans are producing sounds without meaning, thus signifying their
closeness to the earth by identifying with nature rather than discursive
meaning. Some of the romantic arrangements 87 on this disc recall Marjory
Kennedy-Frasers reinterpretations of Gaelic music making in Songs of the
Hebrides. On the one hand, listen to the modal harmonies and romantic
cello obbligato in Wishes of Happiness and Prosperity (track ). On the
other hand, Celebrate Wild Rice (track ) is housed up with a looped
Phrygian ostinato figure and other features that lend it the character of a
dance piece for late-twentieth-century urban club culture. Sampling technology has undoubtedly allowed greater use to be made of Native American
music in the s, since features that once proved so difficult to reproduce
vocally or instrumentally could now be sampled and looped into ambient or
chill out music. It might have seemed that the potential of this music had
been exhausted, however, when Sacred Spirit Volume abandoned Native
American chants and attempted, instead, to create a fusion between classi-
cal music and the blues.88 Again the album boasted a charitable purpose:
support of the nonprofit Rhythm and Blues Foundation. However, other
record companies were ready to satisfy the demand for more in the way of
the first Sacred Spirit: the album Raindance used a title font with As made
to look like tepees and styled itself an ambient musical experience inspired
by Native American chants.89
Since , films and TV have reproduced a range of received ideas
about Native Americans, many of which contradict one another. Even in
Dances with Wolves there is a contradiction in the way the Pawnee are represented, compared to the Sioux (it carries a suggestion of bad Indian, good
Indian). One of the most enduring images in American TV advertising is
that of the crying Indian; it was first shown in the s but was still being
used as an image of environmental concern at the end of the century. When
he died in , the actor who played the Indian, widely believed to be
Cherokee, was found to be the son of an Italian greengrocer.90 Native Americans as objects of amusement rather than fear featured in a British TV advertisement for Mars chocolate bars in . These confectionery treats were
shown to have the same euphoric disorienting effect as the firewater of
countless old westerns: an elderly member of the tribe tastes one and is suddenly seized with lust for Little Flower.91 Yet running concurrently with
this was an Organics hair shampoo advertisement in which a modern Native American woman visits her wise, dignified mother and father on the
reservation. Unfortunately, the advertisements punning message about
needing to get to your roots did little to complement the high-minded imagery. The favorite image, however, is the Indian as eco-warrior, the specifics
of tribe, time, and place being of no great concern. As I write, in September
, the New Internationalist Magazine has been trying for some weeks to
attract new subscribers by running an advertisement that quotes an anonymous Cree comment: Only when the last tree has been poisoned and the
last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. Unfortunately,
photographs of wise Cree elders must have proved elusive, for we are given
instead a photograph of Wolf Robe, a Southern Cheyenne, taken in .
Where songs of the s were concerned, there was not the same willingness to tolerate stereotyping that can be found in earlier decades. In
Indian Outlaw92 sung by Tim McGraw, created controversy. The song borrows the violin solo from Kaw-Liga and quotes from Don Fardons hit
Indian Reservation,93 but it was the lyrics that gave particular offense. Jo
Kay Dowell, coordinator for the American Indian Movement of Northeastern Oklahoma, stated:
Some people seem to think that those who practice our traditional
culture dont exist anymore, but thats not true, and this song is offensive to those people that do. Sitting in my wigwam, beating on
my tomtom, this is the image weve been fighting against for the past
years.94
Native amer ican perfor mers of p opul ar music

That there are today more than million registered tribal members spread
across the whole of North America adds to the absurdity of the misconception that there was a homogeneous Indian culture that disappeared shortly
after the last battle of the Indian Wars at Wounded Knee (). There has
always existed a diversity of regional cultures, many of which not only survived the twentieth century but also have entered the twenty-first century
revitalized. If, however, there is one shared quality among Native American
cultures, it is a spiritual character coupled to an idea of a life harmony or
balanced world. Native Americans remain active in environmental matters
and have been at the fore in staging cultural events to raise awareness of
their importance: for example, the Honor the Earth powwow that has been
an annual event in Wisconsin since . Native American cultures are not
museum relics; they are living and changing. In the sociopolitical sphere,
one could point to Wilma Mankiller, who became the first woman chief of
the Cherokee Nation in . In the economic sphere, one could point to the
phenomenon of the Indian casino, an institution that flourishes as a result
of reservations being exempt from state laws on gambling.95 In the artistic
sphere, there is no better example of the process of adaptability and change
within Native American cultural traditions than the output of musicians.
The Tohono Oodham tribe of southern Arizona, for example, started playing dance music of Mexican and European origin as long ago as the end of
the nineteenth century.96 Some uses of music are, indeed, intertribal (victory powwows and healing songs, for example), but the diversity of genres
and styles found among the different Native American peoples increased,
rather than narrowed or disappeared, during the twentieth century. Today
Native American musicians will be found performing in all popular styles
or fusing them with their own traditions. Some examples may be mentioned: Bill Miller with his country style, the jazz-influenced wooden flautist
R. Carlos Nakai, Redbone with their Cajun style, the folky singer-guitarist
Sharon Burch, the rappers WithOut Rezervation, Walela with their gospellike style, the Latin-influenced trio Burning Sky, and the internationally esteemed Joanne Shenandoah, who mixes pop, country, and traditional in the
songs she writes and performs. It should not be thought that the incorporation of traditional elements serves merely to provide a spicy ethnicity to
otherwise familiar idioms. Shenandoahs music, for instance, is founded on
a comprehensive knowledge of a huge collection of Iroqois music amassed
by herself and her husband.97 In Andy Bauschs film documentary
Rockin Warriors was premiered at the American Indian Film Festival in San
Francisco, showing evidence of the extent of Native American involvement
in rock, jazz, blues, and rap.
I have been reserving discussion of Buffy Sainte-Marie, one of the pioneers of fusion between folk, pop, and Native American musical practices,
in order to collect some final thoughts together. She did, of course, write the
title song for the film Soldier Blue (). She explained that its lines Yes,
this is my country and Cant you see theres another way to love her? were
to be understood in the context of the songs overall message, which is not
about loving ones own nation state; its about loving the natural environment.98 There is much Native American influence to be found in her songs.
Sometimes, as in Soldier Blue, it is located in the words rather than the
music.99 Other examples are the politically charged songs Now That the
Buffalos Gone (still relevant today as indigenous lands are once more being
eyed acquisitively) and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Sometimes it is
present in both words and music, as in the song Starwalker.An uplifting example of her work is Darling Dont Cry, which she cowrote with Edmund
Bull and describes as a cross-the-borders pop song. On this song she is
joined by the Red Bull Singers, and she says of it that she would love the
world to know about grassroots powwow music.100 The hey ya refrain provides an interesting point of comparison with Russells The Indian Hunter.
In Darling Dont Cry we see how a stereotype may be overcome: the drumming here does not connote the usual message of fear but stirs the body to
excitement. It is, as Buffy Sainte-Marie emphasizes, the heartbeat drum, a
conception that lies within Native American culture but one blocked to outsiders who hear the Indian drum only through the distorting reminiscences
of their own cultural representations.101 This song offers an opportunity for
myth to fall away, as pleaded for by Sioux author Vine Deloria, Jr.102
My intention in this chapter has not been to present a round condemnation of stereotyping.103 Even stereotypes need not be entirely negative:
their function as a critical stimulus in allegorical fantasy and in the mundus
inversus of the carnival (as analyzed by Mikhail Bakhtin) is well known to
cultural theorists.104 However, I have been trying to demonstrate that most
of the musical representations I have been discussing tell us only about the
way white Americans and Europeans build their own sense of identity, and
reveal little or nothing about the people who are supposedly the subject of
those representations. Even carnivalesque inversions enlighten us only about
the persons whose values are being inverted, rather than offering an insight
into the culturally alien. The Buffy Sainte-Marie song just cited succeeds, I
think, in communicating a deeper awareness of the cultural energy of those
she identifies with as her people. Listeners with a white Western cultural
background will, of course, hear it as a Western popular song that embodies
difference. Yet, the raison dtre of that difference is not simply that it differs
from those particular listeners, as was the case with so many earlier popular
songs. Instead, it offers a positive insight into a different culturea culture
that, paradoxically, also happens to be Western.
4
incongruity and predictability
in british dance band music
of the 1920s and 1930s
this chapter was prompted by a number of questions: How do we

approach the study of British dance band music of these vintage years? Do
they represent a golden age in quantity rather than quality? Is it possible to
construct criteria for deciding what is good and bad in music whose social
moment has passed? I am particularly interested in asking these questions
of dance band music of the s and s because, despite the enormous
attraction dance bands held for a majority of people in the United Kingdom
between the two world wars and despite this periods mythic status as the
golden era of the dance band (at least in the eyes of the publicists for the
record industry), it is not uncommon to find dance band music neglected
or despised (usually when compared to real jazz) even by writers normally
sympathetic to popular music. How do we explain the contradictory response to an old dance band record summed up in the phrase wonderfully
awful? Perhaps, in this particular case, the answer is that such things as
humor and sentimentality are very period-specific; they quickly become
dated, and so an old record often seems to lend insight into the way people
felt at a specific time that, being past, in turn evokes nostalgia and a feeling of
empathy with those whose lifetimes preceded our own. At the same time, it
must be acknowledged that when we respond in such a manner the meaning
of the music to us differs from its meaning to its original listenersa neat illustration that history and aesthetics are not mutually exclusive categories.
Is it at all possible, then, to take any steps toward finding answers to the
preceding questions in the current relativistic climate, or can we speak only
of differences rather than aesthetic values? What methodology, distinct
from that used in the study of Western classical music, is best suited to a
consideration of the aesthetics of dance band music of the s and s?
Two favorite attacks made by critics of commercial popular music are: () to
incongruity and predictability in british dance band music
claim it is clich-ridden and () to condemn it for being badly performed.

The first can be parried by considering the music from the point of reception (for example, certain structural parameters may be standardized, but
how predictable does the listener find the music as a whole?). The second
can be countered by considering matters of incongruity. Incongruity is produced as the effect of conflict between stylistic codes, so that the conventional meanings of these codes are negated or thwarted. Alternatively, one
might say that incongruity results when predictability is avoided by unstylish means. This may be unintentional and therefore likely to produce purposeless conflict or confusion of meaning or premeditated conflict, as is the
case with parody, where a clash of codes is used deliberately so as to provoke
critical awareness of style.
Incong ruous mixing of st yles

By the turn of the twentieth century, Britain had long adopted a European
classical perspective on what constituted qualitative norms in music and was
restaking its own claims as a major player in this field with composers such
as Elgar, Holst, and Vaughan Williams. Moreover, there was a history of importing elite French, Italian, and German music to satisfy the tastes of the
English, Scottish, and Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Now if we note that before the
s the only musical import associated with North America was blackface
minstrelsy and that this was followed by a variety of other popular styles,
such as the songs of Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, and jazz, the complexity of the reception given to jazz and of the cultural environment within which British
dance bands emerged can easily be imagined. An immediate way in which the
contradictory welcome given to popular music from the United States becomes apparent is in the urge to mix elite and popular styles. Yet this desire
to elude the vulgar often creates incongruity, since what counts as good in
elite music may not be regarded as being so in popular music, and vice versa.
Consider the incongruous effect of quasi-operatic singing on some early
dance band records1 even as late as Henry Halls recording in of Its a
Sin to Tell a Lie, Elizabeth Scott is still operatic (perhaps an indication of
how enduring an influence the BBCs efforts to encourage highbrow taste
had been).2 The incongruous mix of styles is also found in the United States
(the Silver-Masked Tenor). What does it tell us about style? Is it not simply
good singing? These singers certainly possess the skills to excel in one kind of
music, but that proficiency is no more apt for this idiom than Frank Sinatras
for singing On the Road to Mandalay (Kipling-Speaks), which he once misguidedly did. The classical voice can be related to instrumental techniques
and standards of beauty of tone production within that style. Dance band
songs have their own range of associated vocal techniques that are not found
in elite musicscatting, growling (both pioneered by Louis Armstrong),
speaking, whistling, whispering, crooning, yodeling, and smearing or bend-
ing notes (and many of these can also be related to dance band instrumental
techniques, for example the use of a plunger mute to create a growling sound
on trumpet or trombone). Even the singers pronunciation may be a crucial
part of style: many British singers in the s felt the need to adopt American accents to sing dance band songs stylishly, just as British singers in the
s felt it necessary to use an American southern accent for country music.3
Some singers adopted the new crooning style, sometimes even a dirty jazzy
style. Some performers developed more than one style of singing: Gracie
Fields, for example, could sing in either her comic cracked voice or her
classical voice, both with commercial success.4 Two performers, each
adopting a different singing style, can persuade the audience to think of the
same song as belonging to two differing genre categories. Indeed, Charles
Hamm has gone as far as to argue that the audiences perception of the
meaning of a song, shaped at the moment of performance by the singers
vocal quality, diction, and other nuances of delivery, is more important to
definitions of genre in popular music than is formal structure.5
Any criticism of vocal style that fails to take account of the problem of
incongruity is going to misfire. The classical listener may accuse the dance
band singer of unclear vowels, exaggerated vibrato, insincere accent, nasal
production, and so forth, in the mistaken belief that excellence is to be attained by adopting classical practices. However, a musical style is a discursive code that has developed from the solidification of conventions, and although it may be subject to further development and change, that process
cannot be achieved by rupturing, negating, or contradicting its most important and defining attributes.
The mix of jazz and folk was something else that was tried out in the
s. This is a stylistic hybrid that returns periodically as a fusion that seems
possible and, indeed, desirable to some.6 Leonard Feather was the first to have
the idea of jazzing up English traditional airs and recorded two arrangements
in . The next year he re-formed what he called Ye Olde English Swynge
Band, which now included West Indian musicians Dave Wilkins (trumpet)
and Bertie King (tenor saxophone), with the support of Harry Sarton at
Decca.7 Interest then faded, but further attempts along these lines were made
by others after the war. The assumption was often made that because jazz and
folk could both be fitted into the same ideological category of authentic proletarian voice distorted by culture industry there ought to be a similar fit
between their musical idioms. The difficulty here is that, as Gino Stefani has
pointed out, style codes are not only rooted in social practices but are also a
blend of technical features, a way of forming objects or events.8
Certain other stylistic fusions occurred as a result of shared repertoires,
with varying degrees of incongruity in performance. The dividing line between the military band repertoire and that of the dance band or the light
orchestra was not sharply drawn. In the s, for example, Lon Jessels
The Parade of the Tin [or Wooden] Soldiers () was commonly played
by all three. The music is described as a Fox Trot or March but bears little
resemblance to the former (besides, the origins of the fox-trot are normally
traced back only as far as ). Even in the s, the Squadronaires9 played
the occasional military band piece, such as American Patrol (Meacham),10
and military bands sometimes played for dances (though they had to endure
the grumbles and sarcastic comments of those dancers who found their style
too rigid).11 The light classics were another, and bigger, source of potential
dance band repertoire: the popular song Moonlight and Roses, for example, was adapted from Edwin H. Lemares Andantino in D () by Ben
Black and Neil Mort (). Ted Heaths band12 played everything from
Olde Englyshe airs to Debussys Clair de Lune.
Incong ruit y bet ween music and ly r ics
Occasionally an element that would appear to be incongruous with the verbal content of a dance band number is, nevertheless, pertinent to the musical style. Take the strangely withdrawn quality of male trios even where
the mood of the words seems to dictate exuberance, a striking example of
which occurs in Jack Hyltons recording of Happy Days Are Here Again.13
How happy do the singers sound compared to the good-humored trombone and the effect of joyous tap dancing with musical pitches created by
the -bar xylophone solo? And how are we to understand the meaning of
a trio singing as one person, as in Lew Stones recording of Zing! Went the
Strings of My Heart?14 Again, this occurs alongside some otherwise readily grasped instrumental word painting (zinging strings on the guitar).
These trios, as well as duets such as that on the Savoy Orpheans recording
of Baby Face,15 challenge Peter Wickes contention that it was the Beatles
who introduced the collective we in opposition to the romanticized I of
earlier love songs.16
Incong ruit y bet ween dance band
st yle and cl assical st yle
One of the most radical departures from classical vocal style in dance band
records was the amplification of a soft voice. In classical style, where balancing sound is a matter for composers, not studio producers, such a voice tone
would sound incongruous and suggest an artificial remedy had been sought
for a lack of projection techniques. The change from recording horn to microphone with the advent of electric recording in made possible the
popularity of the crooners Whispering Jack Smith, Rudy Vallee, and, in the
United Kingdom, Al Bowlly. Whispering Jack Smith was a frequent visitor
to Britain from to , recording with Bert Ambrose17 and Richard Caroll Gibbons.18 Smiths version of My Blue Heaven was an enormous success
and helped to establish the new crooning style.19 It is still debated whether or
not Smith crooned from necessity (a lung injury from a wartime gassing) or
as a novelty (possible only with the new microphone technology). Crooning

worked well for records, since it added to the intimacy of a musical commodity that could be consumed personally and privately in the home.
It is, in general, incongruous with classical style for instruments to be
given priority over voices when both were used, but that such priority was
for a long time the case with dance bands is shown by the anonymity of
singers of vocal refrains on record labels of the s and by Lew Stones
trick, even well into the s, of asking band members to take vocal refrains.
The individual identity of singers was deemed relatively unimportant until
Al Bowlly built a following of admirers.
Recording technology was most notably exploited in matters of balance: only with the arrival of the microphone was the double bass able to replace the tuba, the former being all but inaudible on acoustic recordings.
The artificial balance of the microphone recording opened up a new world
of possibilities that inevitably conflicted with classical orchestration, the fundamental skill of which was to create a natural balance of sound among
instruments (and voices). Recording technology could be used to create
novel effects. Billy Cottons record Ive Got Sixpence () has a fade-out
ending; that is to say, it exploits the possibilities of sound recording to produce an effect that could not be reproduced in live performance.20 The impression given by this record is that Cottons band is marching toward the
listener at the beginning and marching away again at the end, playing all the
while. Henry Halls record Rusty and Dusty () has a similar fade effect,
but on this occasion the song remains a complete musical entity: the fade
is a technologically engineered crescendo and diminuendo that could just
about be emulated live.21 It demonstrates an initial reluctance to move beyond the bounds of what was possible in live performance, the reason for
such reluctance being, perhaps, that commercial music was at this time
thought of as a literate culture typified in commodity terms by the song
sheet and not as an electronic oral culture typified by records. Evidence for
this is given by the common practice of releasing simultaneously different
band arrangements of new songs: consumers were expected to buy the interpretation they preferred. Only when sales of records began to overtake
sheet music sales in the mid-s did a record that was particularly successful come to represent the Urtext of a song. This, in turn, gave rise to the
practice of releasing budget-price recordings that closely copied an existing
record, rather than offering an alternative interpretation.22
The so cio cultur al context of dance band music

Since the problems of incongruity outlined earlier are as much involved
with the historical and social context of the production of dance band music
as with its technical features, we should seek to understand what was peculiar about the cultural context in which this new music emerged and estab-
lished itself. For example, how important for the emergence of a distinctive
cultural epoch, characterized as the jazz age, was the decline in infant mortality rates during the first quarter of the twentieth century? After all, the
rock revolution is often traced to the postSecond World War baby boom
that produced the teenage market of the late s. There was an unexpectedly large number of young people around in to take the place of those
who had been slaughtered in the First World War, and many of those born
in the new century would have been too young to have fought in that conflict. Furthermore, the psychological effect of being born near the start of
the new century must have contributed to a sense of difference. A distinctive
generation, therefore, was ready to identify with a distinctive and, in many
ways, consciously oppositional music.
It is not surprising that this generation should favor songs with romantic, escapist, even frivolous lyrics, in reaction to the improving tone of
drawing-room ballads and the association of the latter with the call of
morality, duty, and patriotism for which so many lives had recently been lost
in a questionable cause. Perhaps this explains why dance music, unlike the
music hall, succeeded in winning over a large fraction of the middle and
upper classes. In consequence, a figure such as Ambrose acted as a symbol of
a broad class alliance, which stretched from the wealthy clientele of the Mayfair Hotel (see Fig. .) to the working-class family who listened to his band
figure 4.1. Bert Ambrose and his band at the Mayfair Hotel in (photo
Hulton Deutsch)
at home on the wireless. During the depression, for example, Ambroses

The Clouds Will Soon Roll By, recorded at the Mayfair Hotel in , could
have been interpreted symbolically as a plea for patience and restraint and,
if so, would have performed the hegemonic function of urging people to resist being drawn into class antagonism.23 The years immediately after the
First World War had witnessed some major political upheavals at home and
abroad, troubling to both the Left and the Right: in the autumn of , for
example, Mussolini had consolidated his power (becoming Il Duce), and in
December of that year Britains first Labour government (under Ramsay
MacDonald) was elected. Dole and the means test had been the fate of many
after the First World War, and consequently the emotional temperature of
the United Kingdom was running high.
Predic tabilit y of repertoire and perfor mance

The repertoire of some bands was more predictable than others. Accordion
bands were inevitably drawn towards tangos, just as banjo bands found the
blackface minstrel repertoire irresistible. Accordion bands were a feature of
the s; the most famous, Primo Scala (real name: Harry Bidgood) and
His Accordion Band, was formed in . Accordion bands, mandolin
bands, and banjo bands all featured a rhythm section of piano, bass (sometimes bass banjo in banjo bands), and drums and often a xylophone (which
provided an attractive percussive contrast with the reedy accordion tone).
Black performers found themselves affected by predictabilitythe audiences expectation that they should perform in a certain way. The history of
the involvement of black musicians in British popular music of this period
has been only recently the subject of research.24 Small black bands, however,
were not uncommon in London clubs by , and these bands included not
only African-Americans but also Africans and West Indians. The Versatile
Four (two banjos, piano, and drums) performed in the clubs from and
had some success in with their recording of After Youve Gone.25
The history of blackface minstrelsy weighed heavily upon black performers at the same time as it accounted for the continuing attraction of
blackface performers such as Al Jolson and G. H. Elliot. Jolson was heir to
the emotionalism and sentimentality of the U.S. postbellum minstrels, as
Elliot was inheritor of the refined style of minstrelsy that dated back to
troupes of the s such as the Virginian Serenaders and Ethiopian Serenaders.26 Much blackface minstrelsy and associated music had been misrecognized as a part of a real African-American culture rather than as an
ideological construct: for example, Alfred Scott Gattys Plantation Songs
(published in the s) represented a realistic picture of plantation life for
many Victorians. When Sam Hagues all-black, ex-slave minstrel troupe
toured Britain in , he emphasized their naturalness. Yet, like succeeding black troupes, they were not natural but working, instead, within white
expectations of the genre. Black bands at first found themselves judged by

minstrel standards, and early jazz musicians found it almost impossible to
disentangle themselves from minstrel business. There was no obvious alternative to this way of performing to a white audience. As an example of
confusion that concerned jazz and blackface one has only to think of the
first talkie, The Jazz Singer (Warner, ), starring Al Jolson. It was a confusion that existed in the United States as well as Europe and was shared by
both audiences and performers. Bing Crosby was regarded by many as a
stylish jazz singer in the s, yet David Brackett maintains that biographical evidence strongly suggests that minstrel performers such as Al Jolson
and Eddie Cantor were stronger influences on the young Crosby than King
Oliver or Bessie Smith.27
As far as the music is concerned, however, it cannot be emphasized too
strongly that while the score may appear predictable, the performance may
not be so. The major figures in dance band music are generally performers
rather than songwriters, a fact that indicates a particular musical emphasis.
For we study the bulk of the commercial popular music of the s and
s through recordings, whether live, radio, or studio recordings (the last
often being one of several takes). In a survey of classical music we would examine scores; but even for a dance band record with little or no improvisation, the score of the arrangement is an inadequate representation of the
music. To clarify the position, we might contrast the relative ease of studying a stage play from the printed page with the difficulty of studying a film
from its screenplay. In the case of a film, the montage, the photography, the
soundtrack, and an actors performance may each at times take precedence
over the script. There are those who, where dance bands are concerned,
value recordings for the extent to which players depart from a literal reading
of the score; this is a criterion for assessing value that is completely at odds
with judgments on contemporaneous art music. As Rose Rosengard Subotnik has remarked, The ideal of structural listening has made our perceptions and analytical concerns as musicologists almost completely dependent on scores, as if the latter were books.28
Most important, the nature of jazz improvisation must be considered.
If transcribed, it will often produce complex notation (for example, five
against three) and awkward-looking syncopation. Of course, it could be argued that expressive playing produces a similar effect on the rhythm of
other kinds of music: a computer transcription of a concert harpsichordist
playing the C-major Prelude from book of Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier
would not reveal a succession of even quavers. However, jazz flexibility differs in that it is part of a polyrhythmic structure. A predictable rhythmic
pattern in an unchanging tempo may form the background to an unpredictable and rhythmically flexible improvisation. The question of how much
of this flexibility is demonstrated by a dance band is therefore crucial for
many jazz enthusiasts and can be used as a yardstick by which to judge the
bands jazz credentials.29
In the late twenties a group of influential musicians and critics was determined to define jazz in a particular way. Indeed, but for the fact that
jazz had stuck as a label for syncopated music, they would have preferred
a more dignified term, such as rhythm style, for the music they wished to
privilege.30 The key figures were Edgar Jackson, editor of the then monthly
music paper Melody Maker, and bandleaders Bert Firman and Fred Elizalde.
Jackson attempted to distinguish as true jazz music innovative in style, which
contained improvised solos. He was as committed to the idea of progress as
any modernist of the concert hall and heard evidence of progress in recordings of white rather than black musicians, interpreting performances by the
former as innovative and polished and by the latter as retrogressive and crude.
In his review of Duke Ellingtons Black and Tan Fantasy in Melody Maker,
in March , Jackson states that he has considered previous records by
Ellingtons band to be highly crude.31 It is ironic that the tune he now finds
far above the average in melody is Bubber Mileys minor-key version of
the refrain of Stephen Adamss drawing-room ballad The Holy City ().
The influence of white American bands such as Red Nichols and His Five
Pennies suffuses the early Zonophone recordings Bert Firman (b. ) made
with his Dance Orchestra and, especially, with the Rhythmic Eight (not always eight in number). As musical director of Zonophone, Firman must
have had enviable freedom of choice, and these recordings, with their
improvised solos, lay claim to be the first British examples of jazz that complied with Jacksons redefinition of that term. Firman was first influenced by
the two-beat ragtime style but moved to a four-beat style before the decade
ended. The four-beat bar of Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (DubinBurke) recorded in 32 allows greater variety of syncopation and a more
interesting bass part. The first chorus sounds like classic New Orleans threepart polyphony, except that the front line is clarinet, trumpet, and, instead
of trombone, tenor saxophone.33 Hot as it is for British jazz of this period, it
is still dominated by paraphrase improvisationa term coined by Andr
Hodeir to describe improvisation based on the original melody.34
Fred Elizalde () started a jazz group with his brother at the University of Cambridge in , then led a band at the Savoy that included exmembers of the California Ramblers. A progressive feature of some of
Elizaldes recordings is their move away from paraphrase improvisation toward improvisation around chord changes. The technique can be heard in
Misery Farm (Wallis) of ,35 the singer on which is Al Bowlly (
), whose first engagement in Britain was with this band. Elizalde was
voted number one in a Melody Maker poll in November , indicating the
paper had become a focal point for jazz enthusiasts. Opinions elsewhere differed: the BBC stopped broadcasting his band in the spring of , and the
Savoy management terminated his contract in the summer.36 His music was
not at home in the cultural environment of the upper-class hotel and was
obviously regarded as morally suspect by the BBC, yet Elizaldes artistic aspirations for jazz extended to his writing concert suites.
Another important figure in British jazz at this time was Patrick Spike
Hughes (), who recorded for Decca in the early s with his Dance
Orchestra (at first called the Decca-Dents, a name that pointed with punning humor to the disapproval some felt for the music). His band included
Americans, and his records met all the criteria of the latest real jazz: Its
Unanimous Now (Stept-Green), for example, is four-beat and full of improvisation around chords and contains jazz devices such as the two-bar
chase (one solo succeeding another at two-bar intervals).37 Hughes enthused about black jazz musicians, a symptom of a changing mood and future challenge to Jacksons theoretical paradigm. However, Hughess idea of
jazz stood as far outside the dominant musical aesthetics of the time as did
Elizaldes. Nevertheless, an event in showed that there was a growing
oppositional cultural formation given identity by the popular music paper
Melody Maker. On Monday, July, Louis Armstrong began his British visit
by performing at the London Palladium. He came without a band of his own
and was part of a variety bill. The reception ranged from surprised bewilderment to the ecstasy of Melody Maker readers whose excitement had been
stirred up beforehand. When Duke Ellington and His Orchestra visited in
, Melody Maker arranged a special concert for jazz cognoscenti at the
Trocadero Cinema, Elephant and Castle. Ellington wrote of that occasion in
his book Music Is My Mistress:
We were to avoid commercial numbers and apparently on this occasion we lived up to expectations because Spike Hughes, the foremost critic at that time, didnt criticize us at all. Instead, he criticized
the audience for applauding at the end of solos and in the middle of
numbers! Thats how serious it was.38
Ellington had begun his visit as Turn Number , last on the bill, at the
Palladium, something he took easily in his stride. His puzzlement at the Trocadero is another matter. As late as he was proclaiming, Sure Im commercial.39 He seems to have remained unaware that being uncommercial
was crucial to the arguments of Jackson and Hughes (the latter writing
under the pseudonym Mike in Melody Maker), who were struggling to
achieve recognition for jazz as a form of art music.
In the early s, despite efforts by Jackson, Hughes, and others, jazz
was still being defined by reference to dance music: I have played dancemusic with genuine sincerity of purpose, claimed Jack Hylton,for I believe
that in many ways clever and melodious jazz-music portrays the spirit of
this age.40 This is not to say jazz was being used as an undiscriminating
term. The criteria that underlie the aesthetic values of Stanley Nelsons All
about Jazz (), for example, may seem very different from Jacksons, but
all these criteria are alike in that each writer sees jazz evolving along approved lines. Nelson makes the revealing comment: From the jungle to the
ballroom is a long step and jazz has undergone a refinement in keeping with
such a transition.41 Jacksons own notions of progress and refinement mar-
ginalized the efforts of many black musicians. Constant Lambert, in , argued against jungle metaphors but stated: The next move in the development will come, almost inevitably, from the sophisticated or highbrow composers, because they alone can rid jazz of its nightclub element, the way
Haydn rid the minuet of its ballroom element.42 It is difficult to imagine
how this would work with Ellingtons Hot and Bothered, which Lambert so
admired. He was merely replacing one disparaging label (jungle music)
with another (nightclub music). Elizalde, in contrast, pleaded for jazz to be
thought of as an art apart, and not in any way comparable to the classics.43
The predictable, the functional,

and ext r amusical necessities
In order not to confuse the predictable with the functional, it is important
to weigh the importance of differing extramusical necessities when considering the musical output of the palais (or dance hall) band, the show band,
and the radio band. In trying to understand how the popular music of this
period was consumed, the importance of the dance is not to be underestimated. The primary function of much of this music was what anthropologists term conative, its main object being the regulation of physical movement. In the s, the dance as a set piece for couples that demanded many
prelearned movements declined in importance and young people began to
dance at bands rather than to bands. This is not to say that ballroom dances
were so rigidly codified that space was unavailable for individual freedoms:
quicksteps, for example, offered skillful dancers an opportunity for fancy
footwork. Anyone who simply listens to old dance band records is not repeating the same experience of consumption as was had by those who were
familiar with the functional side of the music. This is true even though there
is no doubt that dance band records were also played simply to be listened
to and many were not strict enough in tempo to substitute for the rehearsal
pianist in ballroom dancing classes.44 As Dennis Potters TV drama (and,
later, film) Pennies from Heaven demonstrated, it is when this music is choreographed and connected to the body that it really comes to life. It is significant that when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) first appeared
in Britain, at the London Hippodrome on April , they performed with
a male and female dancer.
The predictability of dance rhythms must also be weighed against their
effect (deliberate or otherwise) as a counter to sentimentality. An illustration would be Whispering Jack Smiths recording of My Blue Heaven,
where the strictness of the tempo acts as a foil to the sentiment of the words.
Instead of the texts being subjected to a range of conventional classical devices for evoking sentiment (for example, a generous rubato or the lingering
emphasis of a pause or ritardando), the unchanging pace (and, it must be
added, Smiths crooning) creates an impression of understatement.
Show band numbers often involve a visual element that needs to be

considered as a vital part of the experience. (See the photograph of Harry
Roys band [Fig. .].) A show band was to be looked at, hence the routines:
for example, Jack Hylton and His Band sank on stage45 at the end of He
Played His Ukulele As the Ship Went Down (le Clerq), and Jack Paynes
band46 positioned themselves around a model of a locomotive to play Choo
Choo (Trumbauer-Malneck). Billy Cottons band evolved from palais band
to show band and later moved from variety theater to TV (where he was
given his own show). Since people were watching, not dancing, show bands
were less predictable in matters of tempo than the palais bands.47
The medium of radio was as important to the production and reception
of items by BBC radio bands as was the visual element to show bands and
the dance to palais bands. In Henry Halls recording of Rusty and Dusty,
the fade-in beginning and fade-out ending are effective on radio and reminiscent of the listeners own activity of tuning into the station and turning
the volume control. It also differs from a typical dance hall number in being
a song for children. Like The Teddy Bears Picnic, it caters to the radio
figure 4.2. Harry Roy and his band performing in (photo Hulton Deutsch)
figure 4.3. Henry Hall and his orchestra broadcasting from a BBC studio in
(photo Hulton Deutsch)
family audience. Another obvious radio entertainment is Henry Halls I

Like Bananas, the evidence here being the quantity of spoken humorous
material (see Fig. .).48
Predic tabilit y of ly r ic content
Not all the lyrics of popular songs of this time were of the moon and June
variety, which they are often caricatured as being. There were jilt songs,
such as Its the Talk of the Town and Ive Got an Invitation to a Dance.49
Even the delicate subject of separation and divorce is touched upon in In a
Little Second Hand Store.50 There was the occasional song about current affairs. By , as a result of the slump in world trade and the subsequent
trade war, the economy had sunk into deep recession, prompting U.S. president Herbert Hoover to propose a holiday from all war debts to achieve a
world recovery. In England, Horatio Nicholls (Lawrence Wright) wrote a
song about it, titled Were All Good Pals at Last. German anti-Semitism is
criticized in Leave Abie Alone (Pearson) of , a song that, unfortunately,
does not entirely shake itself free of anti-Semitism, since it contains the re-
grettable lines, Tho hes only a Jew, hes a man the same as you. It should
be stressed, however, that care is needed when selecting songs to characterize responses to social upheaval: the anthem of the depression in the United
Kingdom was not Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (Harburg-Gorney) but
the buoyantly cheerful Sing as We Go (Parr-Davis). Gracie Fields, who
made the latter song famous, was resiliently and optimistically one of us
in the eyes of the British working class.
Predic tabilit y and musical sig ns

Certain musical and verbal signs are used time and again to evoke a particular sociocultural location in the imagination of the listener. Since such
signs rely upon a conventional association between signifier and signified,
they can be adopted by any songwriter. Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr,
one of Britains most successful songwriting partnerships, furnish many examples. In Jack Harriss recording of On Linger Longer Island, the presence of a Hawaiian guitar added to a melody suggestive of the sliding parallel chord shapes idiomatic to that instrument (see Ex. .), the mention of
wicky wacky, the greeting Aloha, and even the word linger in the title
tell us instantly it is a tropical island and not, say, a Hebridean island, even
without our being given the confirmation of the place name Waikiki (itself
the most popular choice in songs of this type).51
The word misty, however, in Misty Islands of the Highlands is just
what one would expect to find as a description of the Hebrides. The song
contains references to the glen, heather, and a crofters cabin (sicperhaps
bothy was thought insufficiently familiar outside Scotland), and there are
lots of sentimental appoggiaturas.52 In fact, it continues a Scottish nostalgia ballad tradition that dates back to the times of the Highland clearances,
when crofters were being evicted to make room for sheep.
In addition to the misty Celtic romanticism of Marjorie KennedyFraser (Songs of the Hebrides, ) and Duncan Morison (Ceol Mara,
), who had turned Hebridean melodies into drawing-room ballads,
there had developed another kind of pseudo-Celtic music, illustrated by the
Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr song cited earlier and their Did Your
Mother Come from Ireland? An Irish song aroused certain expectations,
and this one satisfies most of them: there are references to the shamrock,
example 4.1. Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr, On Linger Longer Island
blarney, Kerry pipers, and Saint Patrick; the music features a solo fiddle (in
Billy Cottons version53) and modulates to the relative minor for a contrasting middle section, a device that can be traced back to several well-known
Irish ballads of the nineteenth century.54 Did Your Mother Come from
Ireland? arrives as the continuation of a -year-old cultural history of
commercial Irish song that brought its own necessities. Jimmy Kennedy,
who was Irish, and Michael Carr, who moved to Ireland as a child, could no
more ignore those necessities than Louis Armstrong could suddenly shake
off a history of expectations associated with blackface minstrelsy. If You
Want to Touch an Irish Heart (Castling), for example, treats Claribels
Come Back to Erin as an authentic Irish song. This type of pseudo-Celtic
song has to be distinguished from deliberate attempts at caricature, as in
Flanagan and Allens Thats Another Scottish Story, where a mean Scot
stereotype forms the running gag.55
Some subjects prompt the production of an instantly recognizable
chain of signifiers. In The Generals Fast Asleep and The Handsome Territorial, arpeggio shapes and repeated notes are used to connote bugle
calls.56 South of the Border uses a bass pattern that signifies cowboys or a
trotting horse (see Ex. .).57
Similar patterns are also found in Kennedy and Carrs Sunset Trail
and Ole Faithful.58 The illusion of South of the Border being a cowboy
song was enhanced when Gene Autry began to sing ityet as a screen cowboy he was no more a real cowboy than it is a real cowboy song. Once more,
as in chapter , we find ourselves in Baudrillards world of third order simulacra. As a less extreme and more theatrical form of simulation, Duke
Ellingtons band at the Cotton Club was often having to pretend to be in the
jungle (though some of the clubs clientele probably believed they were
hearing echt jungle rhythms). British bands usually found themselves pretending romantically to be in the Wild West or the South Seas.
example 4.2. Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr, South of the Border
Mixtures of incong ruit y and predic tabilit y

Predictability and incongruity mingle together when use is made of what
Barthes in Mythologies labeled a second order semiological system: That
which is a sign (namely the associative total of a concept and an image) in
the first system, becomes a mere signifier in the second.59 In the case of
music, we need to consider how the associative total of a concept and a
sound is made to function as a signifier.
Ambroses recording of Ho Hum opens with a quotation of Mendelssohns Spring Song.60 It is not there to function simply as a sign that combines a signifier (sprightly, innocent, lyrical theme) and a signified (springtime). It is being used, as a quotation of the music of the classical composer
Mendelssohn, to signify an artistic, poetic, and elevated vision of spring. The
effect then achieved is that Mendelssohn is mocked by what followsmusic
markedly different from his own.61 We are being told with humorous effect,
even a hint of naughtiness or subversion, that that music is nothing like this
music. The technique could be compared to that of montage in film, although here it is a juxtaposition of two different sound images, or to the
startling juxtapositions found in surrealism or subcultural bricolage.62
In Jack Hyltons recording of Meadow Lark, a similar effect to that described earlier is created by its opening quotation of Griegs Morning from
Pier Gynt.63 This is not intended to simply signify morning by using a conveniently already-composed pastoral pentatonic theme; it is intended to signify morning as represented in elite or art music. An immediate contrast
again follows and draws our attention to its incongruity in this context, to
the difference of what is Hyltons musicand the assumption is that the
latter is also our preferred style of music. The classical quotation was by no
means a peculiarly British affair; in the song Bill, from Jerome Kerns Show
Boat (), the introduction quotes from Beethovens Leonora Overture
no. and does so with a certain sourness, since its connotations of heroism
(associated both with Beethovens opera and, indeed, with Beethovens own
character) only serve to emphasize that Bill is neither a hero nor a person
who would appreciate Beethoven.
What has been written here concerning classical quotations should not
be taken to apply to all quotations: for example, the quotation may be assimilated into the song as the same sort of music, as happens when Stephen
Fosters My Old Kentucky Home () is quoted in Jack Hyltons recording of Speaking of Kentucky Days.64
Sometimes audience expectations are challenged. In Lew Stones recording of My Old Dog, Nat Gonella is not singing in a Cockney accent for
humor, even if the song by comic songwriter Leslie Sarony is, in many ways,
a typical vehicle for a comedian in tearful clown moodand Cockney,
Yorkshire, and Lancashire accents are usually good for a laugh in parody
songs or songs that concern working-class manners. Many sublimely ridiculous things seem to have been introduced deliberately into this recording:
for example, the romantic virtuoso piano accompaniment to words that

describe roses growing in the corner of the garden where the dog lies (dog
roses?) and the chorus whistled in unison by several members of the band
(you whistle for dogs, of course). The band appears to be adopting the sophisticated strategy of sending up the song by being serious.65 This is a strategy well known from Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but because the style of
those works is incongruous with that of dance band music, the use of similar
devices will not necessarily produce similar effects. For example, the use of a
chorus to echo ends of lines is, for Gilbert and Sullivan, a common humorous device, but listen to Roy Foxs recording of Calling Me Home where,
in the sentimental context of boy treble, muted trumpet, and sustained saxophone chords, that same feature is intended to be taken seriously.66
Predic tabilit y of r hythm and har mony

Some additional words are necessary concerning predictability as it relates to
rhythm and harmony. To the classically trained musician, much dance band
music appears to consist of repetitive rhythmic patterns bound into a metrical straitjacket. Often the attention of the classical musician has been arrested by a kind of repetition that is used regularly in this style instead of the
kind of repetition found in classical style. The device of the riff will serve to
illustrate the point. Richard Middleton67 takes up the term museme coined
by Philip Tagg68 and refers to the riff as an example of a museme, a unit of
musical expression that cannot be broken down further without losing meaning (this is not an exhaustive definition, and it is doubtful whether one can be
found). Western music, Middleton explains, is normally characterized by discursive repetition, repetition that operates from the level of the phrase to
longer units. Musematic repetition shows the influence of African-American
music, and musematic techniques become increasingly common in twentiethcentury dance music, reaching a peak in swing tunes and arrangements.
There are earlier examples of musematic repetition, such as Yes Sir, Thats
My Baby (Kahn-Donaldson, ), but what was rare in the s became
typical of the dance band music of the late s and early s.
There was a preponderance of heavy two-beat feel in s dance music,
which could prove unyielding with little syncopation and a tuba remorselessly pounding roots and fifths of chords, as in Jack Hyltons recording of
Yes Sir, Thats My Baby.69 Even complex syncopations may bounce off this
basic pattern (for example, Fascinating Rhythm, by Ira and George Gershwin); that is, they work around a divisive meter. The newness of the
Charleston was that it was not just the melody that was syncopated, but an
additive meter ( ) was created as a result of syncopating all parts
(including those playing accompanying harmony) simultaneously. The
Savoy Orpheans recording of Charleston contains a spoken introduction
by Ramon Newton that points out its novelty: This record is unique, in that
it features a distinctly new syncopated rhythm called the Charleston.70 The

remark stands as testimony to the paradoxical value of unpredictability in a
capitalist society; there are always potentially large profits to be made from
a mass-marketed unique commodity. The additive rhythm used in the
Charleston is not, in itself, distinctly new71 but it received greater emphasis than ever before.
Around , there was a change from two-beat to four-beat,72 a merging of ragtime two-beat and blues four-beat that offered greater swing.
Duple meter of the s was likely to be emphasized by a banjo as two semiquavers plus three quavers per bar, or two quavers plus two semiquavers plus
one quaver per bar.73 There was not yet the backbeat emphasis of one quaver plus two semiquavers plus two quavers. In Feather was complaining
about the lack of jazz in triple meter, yet the ODJB had 43 tunes in their repertoire: for example, Im Forever Blowing Bubbles, and Alice Blue Gown.74
It is not surprising that Feather would become the first to compose a 45 blues
(Bass Reflex).75
While there often does seem to be a high degree of predictability regarding the overall shape of a song arrangement (introduction, instrumental chorus, vocal chorus, instrumental chorus), it rarely applies to the disposition
and duration of instrumental solos. The imagination shown in some arrangements is considerable: for example, Lew Stones moody arrangement of
Reginald Foresyths Garden of Weed76 and Sid Phillipss many inspired
arrangements for Ambrose.
However, the characteristic parallel motion of dance band harmonies
can in some hands result in awkward voice leading; in such cases, the unpredictability of individual parts is scarcely a matter for praise. Consider the
lower violin part in When Day Is Done (Katscherde Sylva, ) in a
dance band arrangement of made by Walter Paul (see Ex. .). Note, for
example, how the desire to write sweet parallel sixths results in awkward
augmented fourths for the lower violin during the phrase in my arms (immediately followed by an ungainly leap of a major seventh). The fondness
for parallel motion means that consecutive fifths also feature as a matter of
contingency rather than deliberation; thus, the effect they produce is again
born of accident rather than imaginative usage. See the extract from Jack
Masons arrangement of Alexanders Ragtime Band (Berlin, )
given in Example .. In instances like these, the unpredictable elements are
merely random by-products of an overly rigid treatment of one musical parameter at the expense of others. There is no purposeful design to stimulate
or delight; they issue instead from a pursuit of stylistic practice in which the
mechanical has overridden the imaginative.
Absorbing the commercial -bar Tin Pan Alley song form into jazz did
not have all ill effects, whatever some may have feared: for example, it brought
a more complex harmonic vocabulary that extended the possibilities for improvisation and melodic Affekt, thereby offering opportunities for imaginative avoidance of the predictable. Honeysuckle Rose (Razaf-Waller, )

example 4.3. Robert Katscher and B. G. De Sylva, When Day Is Done
shows how melodic Affekt is transformed by use of extended harmonies

rather than simple triads, which here (i.e., the predictable ones) would
steadfastly affirm the home key with alternating IV and I chords instead of
building expectation (by delaying the tonic) with alternating chords of II7
and V13. Note also that the tune continually outlines a D-minor triad, yet
Waller does not use this chord once in the entire song. In this song unpredictability is clearly linked to musical imagination (see Ex. .).
example 4.4. Irving Berlin, Alexanders Ragtime Band

example 4.5. Andy Razaf and Fats Waller, Honeysuckle Rose
As far as -bar structures themselves are concerned, it is possible for

the overall number of bars to be predictable, but not their phrasing within
the -bar chorus: in Lets Put Out the Lights (Hupfeld), for example, the
bars divide into .77 Even songs that fall out as
do not necessarily have foursquare phrasing within the eight-bar periods.
What is more, the effects of syncopation can be enormous: in Irving Berlins
Puttin on the Ritz the opening bars of the chorus contain a syncopated
rhythm that metrically displaces the sixteen crotchet beats so that, instead of
a grouping of , they fall into . Not all songs
use the -bar chorus: Valencia, a one-step recorded by the Savoy Orpheans (billed on the recording as the Savoy Havana Band), is constructed
in the main of ten-bar melodic sections (dividing into / / bar
phrases).78 Finally, if the -bar chorus was in itself such a successful formula, why has it been of so little importance to rock?
Conclusion
Apropos of music hall, Raymond Williams remarked that some performers
brought new kinds and areas of experience which the legitimate drama
neglected or unreasonably despised.79 It might be argued similarly that the
dance band provided a musical experience the concert hall despised (though
not all concert hall composersVaughan Williams titled the third movement of his Partita Homage to Henry Hall). Some scorned this music for
being riddled with musical errors and being poorly performed when what
was really at issue was the incongruity between its stylistic practices and the
conventions of classical music.80 Others were content to condemn this
music because they assumed, as did Theodor Adorno, that it epitomized in
practice the kind of advice given in Abner Silver and Robert Bruces How to
Write and Sell a Hit Song ().81 This second line of attack amounts to a
condemnation of predictability, which is seen as the inevitable outcome of
basing a musical practice on the notion that there is a formula for success.
To draw a parallel in the classical field, no one was keen to suggest that the
success of the second English musical renaissance was directly linked to the
explanations of classical good practice given in Ebenezer Prouts Applied
Forms, because classical good practice was thought of as placing emphasis
on individual imaginative reworkings of musical forms and devices (this allows a fox-trot to be accused of standardization but not a classical minuet).
Such matters as the ubiquity of formal devices like the -bar chorus
and the need to tailor musical items to fit rpm records have indeed raised
the issue of standardization. It is better, though, to think of the problem from
the angle of reception rather than production, as a problem of predictability rather than standardization, since the latter concept works against the
perception of a dialectical relationship between the production and consumption of this music by suggesting that the listeners role is passive and
that a formula for commercial success (if, indeed, such a formula were to
exist) lies with the producer alone.
part three
the sacred and the profane
5
Lux in Tenebris: bruckner
and the dialectic of
darkness and light
bruckner is often re garded as that rare phenomenon among

nineteenth-century composersthe pure musician.1 This supposed musical autonomy did not prevent the appropriation of Bruckner by the Nazis,
and, what is more, the aim of the International Bruckner Society in the s
to cleanse (reinigen) Bruckners works easily slipped into ideas of purifying
them of the corrupt influence of both well-meaning Jewish friends and hostile Jewish critics of his music.2 After the Second World War, however, the
key to understanding Bruckner was no longer in terms of peasant roots, Blut
und Boden (blood and soil), and affinity with nature but instead to recognize him as the king of absolute music.3 The reception of his music today
is undoubtedly affected by this abstract conception of his compositions. His
music certainly poses marketing problems for record companies: no Bruckner appears on any of the EMI Classical Moods albums, which include Passion, Melancholy, Dreams, Celebration, Spiritual, Tranquillity, Romance, and
Power. Bruckner is not seen as a typical classical composerhe does not appear on any of EMIs four double albums titled The Classic Experiencenor
is he seen as a popular figure (Castle Communications five-CD set Popular Classics contains no Bruckner).
Bruckner also presents hermeneutic difficulties for critical musicologists engaged in the ideological critique of sexuality and gender in music.
The issue of gendered themes and the erotic character of the climax in tonal
music suddenly seem irrelevant or inappropriate when discussing Bruckner.
In fact, New Musicologists and Critical Musicologists of every hue appear
reluctant to discuss Bruckner or offer any explanation of his famously massive climaxes. Yet Constantin Floros, one of the few scholars to call for the development of hermeneutic strategies for understanding meaning in Bruckner, has asked that the symphonies should not be classified as absolute music
in any circumstances, arguing that they are far removed from the formalist
aesthetics of Eduard Hanslick.4
This chapter is an attempt to provide further critical insight into the
meaning of Bruckners music. The strategy I am adopting is: () to establish
the sacred character of Bruckners music and show how he inherits religious
signifiers for darkness and light; () to show how he uses these signifiers;
() to explore the appropriateness of the darkness/light trope, with all the
connotations it would have for a deeply religious composer; and () to put
forward a theory of transfiguration of themes in Bruckner, as distinct
from Liszts transformations, and assess the appropriateness of the idea of
there being plateaus of intensity in his music rather than peaks. It is also my
purpose, with reference to the words Lux in Tenebris in my title, to consider
whether the applicability of the Hegelian dialectic to Bruckner (in the way
it has been applied to Beethoven) is open to challenge. In doing so, I shall
take advantage of the turn away from dialectics and hermeneutics presented
by Jacques Derridas philosophical project of deconstruction.
The sacred char ac ter of bruckners music and the

for mative influences on his semiotic mar king s
Bruckners deeply religious character and submissive attitude to authority
have been explained by the entrenchment of Catholicism in the rural districts of Austria during the Vormrz (the period preceding the revolution of
).5 He was born in Ansfelden, near Linz, in an area of peasant farming
land during a period of deepest reaction and intolerance when the iron
grip of the State was reinforced by the authority of the Roman Catholic
Church.6 Between the ages of and he lived in the seclusion of the Abbey
of St. Florian, one of Austrias most majestic edifices in pure baroque
styleJesuit style.7 Any freedoms gained by the revolution were shortlived; thus, when he left, in , he may not even have been aware of any
change. That year he began his studies with the conservative and exacting
Simon Sechter; it was also the year of the Concordat, which in effect
handed over the whole educational system . . . to the representatives of
Rome.8 The narrowness of Bruckners intellectual curiosity is indicated by
his personal library: but for two books, it reputedly consisted entirely of
music and religious works.9
The formative influence on Bruckners semiotic markings was Austrian
church music and the works of the Viennese classical composers. He became
familiar with Mozarts Masses and Haydns Creation during the year (
) spent with his relation and godfather Johann Baptist Weiss, organist at
Hrsching. Bruckners Missa Solemnis () is indebted to Mozart and
Haydn, reminiscences of whom are also occasionally found in his early symphonies. Robert Simpson, for example, points out that the continuation of
the opening of the slow movement of the Third Symphony recalls in texture
Lux in Tenebris
and mood the introduction to Haydns Seven Last Words.10 This movement
also contains at bar a Marienkadenz, a feature common in Viennese sacred
music that appears in some of Bruckners choral music, for instance, the
seven-part Ave Maria of . Still earlier sacred musical influences are in evidence: the Sanctus of his E-minor Mass builds on a theme from Palestrinas
Missa Brevis.11 Several of his motets are written in the old church modes:
Pange Lingua () is Phrygian; Os Justi () is Lydian.12
More generally, his compositions rely on our knowledge of a sacred
music paradigm, so that we recognize, say, the use of a choralelike theme, a
Marienkadenz, or other signs established within the discursive code he uses
(such as the connotations of major and minor). In Hans-Hubert Schnzelers opinion, Bruckner achieves moments of utter sublimity with his chorale themes; they can be climactic on brass or pianissimo on strings, providing moments of repose, of peace and meditation.13 Deryck Cooke remarks:
The liturgical character of some of the chorale themes in the symphonies
arises out of their simultaneous melodic and harmonic reliance on the archaic church progression from tonic to subdominant and back.14
Sometimes Bruckner makes his sacred intentions unambiguous, as with
his characteristic expression mark Feierlich (meaning solemn) and by planning to dedicate the Ninth An meinen lieben Gott. Elsewhere, we are left to
make the appropriate connections: for example, bare fourths, fifths, and octaves may be associated with organum, hence the sacred character of the
opening of the Te Deum. Liszts Missa Solemnis () plays with the same
associations, opening with the sound of a bare fifth. Providing further evidence of a larger sacred paradigm, the vision of an angelic choir is easily conjured up at such moments as the conclusion to Psalm .15 This image may
also be evoked by the symphonies: compare the Hallelujah conclusion to
Psalm with the end of the Eighth, where there is much in common
even a similarity in violin figuration. Compare, likewise, the conclusions of
the Te Deum and the Third (though the latter is in D major, not C major).
Bruckners move from Mass to symphony was made, perhaps, in order
to explore additional sacred possibilities in music. Explaining why Bruckner
wrote no more Masses after , Schnzeler remarks: He was able to sing
his Gloria, his Credo and his Benedictus in the wordless, all-embracing, absolute music of his gigantic symphonic movements.16 The opening notes of
the Second Symphony, for example, make up a characteristic Brucknerian
phrase for Benedictus (cf. the Benedictus of his E-minor Mass). Symphonic form, however, offered fresh opportunities, especially that of a massive affirmative ending not suited to the Mass because of its concluding
humble prayer. Bruckner was more aware of liturgical propriety than most:
Crawford Howie comments that the first and last movements of Bruckners
D-minor, E-minor, and F-minor Masses, in contrast to those of the Classical composers, were inspired by the penitential tone of the text.17 Cooke
suggests that the theme of the third movement of the Ninth is too full of a
peculiarly personal anguish for Bruckner to have used in a liturgical con-
text18 and that the polka/chorale of the Third presents related liturgical
problems. However, Dika Newlin asserts, the spiritual content of his works
deepened but remained essentially the same.19
Bruckners inclination toward self-quotation is evident in his earliest
symphonies: for example, the Andante of Die Nullte (Symphony no. ) contains two quotations from the Qui Tollis of his E-minor Mass, while the Finale quotes the Osanna from his Requiem (letter A) and his seven-part Ave
Maria at the junction of the development and recapitulation. The slow
movement of the Second Symphony quotes (at bar and following) the
Benedictus from his F-minor Mass in the correct key; at bar it returns
following a key change that again enables it to appear in its original key, disposing us to attribute hidden significance to this tonality.
Let us explore possible meanings of some of Bruckners borrowings and
self-quotations with reference to the Third Symphony. In the first movement, bars of the version, the miserere of his D-minor Mass is
quoted (see the Gloria, bars ). This sacred quotation at the end of
the exposition may remind us of the Kyrie quotation (from the F-minor
Mass) at a similar point in the Finale of the Second Symphony. The close of
an exposition is obviously felt to be an appropriate place for piety, whereas
sin, in the shape of Venusberg references introduced in the revision of ,
appears just before the recapitulation. Bruckner clearly added these references for a purpose; he had known Tannhuser for years,20 so there is no
reason that they could not have appeared in the version. Perhaps, in a
transitional work such as this, Bruckner was attempting to bring a moral
and religious character to sonata principle, before realizing that the sonata
structure he had inherited was itself incapable of accommodating his musical vision. The coda contains an ostinato pattern that shows the lingering influence of Beethovens Ninth (cf. the codas to the first movement of Die
Nullte and the Finale of the Second). Another Wagner quotation in this
symphony is the sleep motive from Die Walkre just before recapitulation of
the first movement (and in the coda of the second movement). Again, I
would suggest that Bruckner finds the approach to a recapitulation a suitable point to present a darker side. Sleep is associated with darkness and
death, because it eclipses conscious thought.21 Bruckner has removed all
traces of magic and phantasmagoria from the Wagner, strengthening the
darker connotations.22
The urge to self-quote continues to the end of Bruckners symphonic
career and therefore functions as a means of asserting a unitary sacred paradigm for his compositions. In bars of the Adagio of the Ninth, he
again quotes the miserere of his D-minor Mass. The second theme of the
Adagio begins with an inversion of this motive (bar ), and the rocking
viola accompaniment resembles passages of the Benedictus in the F-minor
Mass (bars , sopranos and altos; bars , tenors). The movement
opens with an approximate inversion of the fugue subject of the Finale of
the Fifth and, later, contains more specific references to the Seventh and
Lux in Tenebris
Eighth Symphonies. Bruckners sketches reveal, too, that the string figure
from the opening of the Te Deum was to return in the Finale of the Ninth.23
If we accept, then, that these are religious symphonies (with the arguable exceptions of the First and Fourth) or, at least, that the religious element is of enormous importance,24 it is important to examine religious signifiers in music of a similar stylistic code. Before Bruckner, the minor triad
and key had changed in its signification. In the early Baroque, minor tonality (as distinct from the modal) was too recent to have acquired the conventional character of a signifier. The affective code for grief in the seventeenth
century is shown by the chromaticism, angular intervals, and dissonance of
When I Am Laid in Earth from Purcells Dido and Aeneas. Contrast this
with Purcells use of the minor key in the marriage hymn in The Fairy Queen
and Ah! Ah! How Happy Are We from The Indian Queen. Minor could still
signify happiness (in the sense of contentment) as late as (see the aria
Happy Is the Land from Bachs Peasant Cantata). Major gradually became
an opposition to minor in the Baroque. The People That Walked in Darkness from Handels Messiah shows the use of unison, minor key, and angular chromatic melody for darkness and thickened harmonic texture, major
key, and diatonic melody (given added stability and predictability by containing a repeated phrase) for light. Total Eclipse from Handels Samson is
quoted in Deryck Cookes The Language of Music, where he remarks upon
the use of minor for all dark and major for the blaze of noon.25 The chorus O First-Created Beam from the same oratorio anticipates Haydns
famous chorus in The Creation, moving from low pitch and minor to loud
C major after the words Let there be light!
Turning to representations of darkness, in He Sent a Thick Darkness
from Handels Israel in Egypt we find unpredictable and ambiguous tonal
movement and so are led to equate the lack of tonal clarity with darkness.
This convention persists into the nineteenth century: a minor key, chromaticism, and angular intervals (especially the tritone) are heard during the opening of act of Beethovens Fidelio, before Florestans first words: Gott! welch
Dunkel hier! The key then changes to major as he puts his trust in God.
Bruckners sig nifiers for dar kness and lig ht, and
the meaning of dar kness and lig ht in his relig ion
Bruckners early familiarity with conventions for signifying light can be seen
in the Domine Jesu Christe section of his Requiem of . Immediately
following an agitated setting of ne absorbeat eas tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum, the C minor of tartarus is exchanged for C major for the words
sed signifer sanctus Michael repraesentet eas in lucem sanctam (see Ex. .).
A similar change from minor to major occurs at the word lux in the
Agnus Dei of the same work. In another early work, the Missa Solemnis, he
moves from minor to major at Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine. The semi-

example 5.1. Requiem
otic code he adopted in his early works proved as enduring as his own character, which was not changed by his move to Vienna in or by any growing liberalism in Austrian politics.
The use of low and high pitch as signifiers is evident in the B , D-minor,
E-minor, and F-minor Masses, in each of which the words judicare vivos et
mortuos are given a high pitch for living and low for dead, as Beethoven
treated them in his Missa Solemnis, Haydn in his Nelson Mass, and Schubert
in his A Mass of . This helps us to locate the historical specificity of
Bruckners semiotic code; one would expect to find this feature in most eigh-
Lux in Tenebris
teenth- and nineteenth-century Masses but not in earlier Masses. Indeed,

William Byrds Mass for four voices rises in pitch at the word mortuos.
It is well known that light and darkness have important sacred connotations. As a religious signifier, light may be lux sancta or a trope for the
divinity/godheadGod of God, Light of Light: Lux mundi.26 As such, it is
associated with goodness, morality and, importantly, salvation: a psalm of
David begins: The Lord is my light and my salvation.27 For Bruckner, light
is not associated with reason as in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment;
instead, it is lux sancta, the holy light of salvation for the believer. In contrast, darkness has connotations of immorality (especially lust), evil, and
Hell. The association of darkness with lust is confirmed by linking Judes
statement (in his New Testament Epistle) that the fallen angels are in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day28 to the
explanation in the apocalyptic Book of Enoch that the main cause of their
fall was lust. Saint John makes a direct association between darkness and evil
by claiming: Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
evil.29 In Bruckner we encounter yearning but not the lusting for climax
found in, say, Wagners Tristan. There is calm at figure T only a dozen bars
before the massive climax of the Adagio of the Eighth Symphony (Nowak
edition). The spiritual character of Bruckners yearnings appears to be confirmed by the fact that they are frequently followed by tranquil sections
which signify, perhaps, meditation or prayer. Besides, you can never be certain of the outcome of a buildup of excitement in Bruckner: for example, the
positive-feeling approach to figure Ss in the Finale of the Eighth (Nowak
edition) leads to the grim return of the annunciation of death (Bruckners
description30) theme. The Scherzo of the Ninth opens with the Tristan
chord, but how unlike that of Wagner is Bruckners treatment of it! It is as if
Bruckner were saying, No, this chord of desire is evil!31 In this context we
may recall the prominent trumpet and upper wind tritonediabolus in
musicaas the first movement drew to a close.
Life is associated with lightthe light of life32 as death is with darkness (the shadow of death being a common image).33 We find associations
of C minor with death in the funeral marches in the slow movements of
the Fourth and the Sixth (its third theme); Simpson remarks that before the
latter commences the light of C major fades slowly.34 We really know what
the climax of the Adagio of the Seventh represented for Bruckner: the non
confundar theme of the Te Deum is quoted, and he described the beginning
of the coda as funeral music for the Master.35 Here the C-major climax has
connotations of light, God (In te, Domine, speravi), and glory.36
According to the Bible, darkness existed before God created light, and
after creating light God divided the light from the darkness.37 It was the
latter image that Michelangelo placed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
immediately above the altar; it is the birth of form. Bruckners tremolando
beginnings have often been interpreted as birth tropes: Max Auer, for example, wrote of thematic structure raising itself out of nothingness,38
and August Halm remarked: We think we are inhaling something like the
breath of creation, when we are enveloped in the first tones of his Seventh,
Ninth, or Fourth Symphonies.39 Derek Watson writes of the evocation of
creation itself in these beginnings.40 Sometimes the music emerges literally
from nothing: the first bar of the Scherzo of the Ninth is empty; nothing is
heard until the third beat of the second bar.
The dialectic of dar kness and lig ht :

st ruc ture and meaning in bruckner
Auers description of the openings of most Bruckner symphonies as an
awakening from unconsciousness and darkness to light and clarity41 could
also be applied to most codas. These are especially helpful for showing the
appropriateness of the darkness/light trope, because they are tonally static
(note the use of pedals and ostinati). Simpson commented that most of
Bruckners ultimate passages open in darkness.42 So they move from darkness to light, but it is not achieved as in the Hegelian dialectic, through
struggle and reconciliation, and the end presents us with only a contingent
victory. There is no reconciliation of contradictions: in a word, light cannot
be reconciled with darkness.
Bruckners dialectic is of a peculiarly nonmuscular character. It is in
some ways epitomized by the lack of struggle between the polka theme and
the chorale theme in the Finale of his Third Symphony (see Ex. .). Here a
Hegelian dialectic cannot work because there can be no reconciliation between life and death.43 More of a conflict could have been suggested; we have
only to think of the third movement of Mahlers First Symphony. Bruckners
polka-chorale that signifies life juxtaposed with death or, rather, In the
midst of life we are in death44 is antidialectic.
In attempting to understand Bruckners lux in tenebris,45 we should
note that the initial term of the opposition light/darkness is privileged over
the other: darkness is absence of light; light is not absence of darkness.46 Although light/darkness is not itself a metaphysical opposition (since darkness does differ naturally from light), its connotations, with the exception of
life/death, are metaphysical: for example, night can suggest the feminine,
lust, and evil. Therefore, it offers itself up to Derridas deconstruction, which
is concerned with demonstrating the privileging of one term over another
in metaphysical oppositions.47 Moreover, light/darkness is metaphysical in
Bruckner, because it exists only as representation. Meaning is created by differing and deferring (Derridas diffrance): a musical illustration of this in
Bruckner is that minor does not simply differ from major; it is governed by
major. Therefore, the minor opening of the Third Symphony is not mistaken for the dominant term of the opposition major/minor; we know
major will triumph, though its triumph is deferred. Minor is always the antithesisbut not a true antithesis, because Bruckner privileges major over
Lux in Tenebris
example 5.2. Symphony no. , version, Finale, bars
minor. In Bruckners music, major is the commanding term for ideological

and not structural reasons: major connotes light and minor connotes darkness; or, we might say, minor is major with a lack, as darkness is light with a
lack. There is no structural reason that minor should not command major:
for example, in Mahlers Sixth all light is extinguished (adumbrated early on
by the major triads turn to minor). The fact that light does not shine forth
in the revised first movement of Bruckners Eighth is what makes it so exceptionally doom-laden.
Ap o caly p tic v ision in bruckners music
The religious meaning of the term Apocalypse is unveiling or disclosure.48 I would argue that Bruckners treatment of structure can often be
understood as a process of revelation, thereby presenting us with a musical
form of apocalyptic vision. Consider, for example, the unexpected revealing
of the tonic at the point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Seventh Symphony (see Ex. .) or slow unveiling of the tonic in the first movement recapitulation of the Eighth (in both case effected without struggle or
drama). Also, consider Simpsons description of the Finale of that work as
the cathedral Bruckner has been trying to envisage during the course of
the symphony: One by one the impediments have been removed, until the
image is clearly revealed.49 Liddell and Scotts Greek-English Lexicon50 gives
an uncovering, (revelation N.T.) as its definition of ajpokaluyi~. Again an
analogy may be found with Bruckners formal method: for example, Simpson described Bruckners music as having a tendency to remove, one by
one, disrupting or distracting elements, to seem to uncover at length a last
stratum of calm contemplative thought.51 Ernst Bloch maintained that in
Bruckners finales
the listener is released from the pressure of the temporal world in a
contemplative review of the passions, territories and the established
primary colour of the whole performance, in the expectation of visionary prospects and with the consciousness of standing at the
birthplace of that which is lyrically essential in the symphony.52
Instead of Beethovens version of the Hegelian dialectic in his middleperiod sonata form movements, where there is dramatic conflict of key and
material in the exposition, struggle in the development section, and reconciliation in the recapitulation, Bruckners dialectic of darkness and light involves slow discovery rather than muscular striving, and resolution without
reconciliation. For while we do have opposing forces, there is no sense of
Hegels inadequate thesis versus inadequate antithesis finally reaching a
higher reconciling synthesis or sublation (Aufhebung) that preserves what is
rational in them, canceling out the irrational. As an illustration of Hegelian
sublation applied to sonata form, here is Rose Rosengard Subotnik explaining the reconciliation of dialectical opposites in middle-period Beethoven:
Lux in Tenebris
example 5.3. Symphony no. , Nowak edition, bars
Through the recapitulation the subject seems not only to bring together within itself, but actually to derive from within itself, the
principles of dynamic development (historical change) and fixed,
eternal order (unchangeable identity) and to synthesize the two into
a higher level of reality.53
In the dialectic of darkness and light we cannot move toward a higher synthesis. Apocalyptic literature emphasized the dualism of good and evil, gave
structure to the notion of Heaven and Hell, and created the idea of the final
judgment. Good cannot achieve a higher synthesis with evil, nor Heaven
with Hell; thus, the very existence of a dialectical conflict is questioned. This
also holds for darkness and light: as stated earlier, darkness is understood as
absence of light and not vice versa. The first theme of Bruckners Third Symphony does not undergo a tonal struggle to become light; light (in the
form of major tonality) is merely absent from it until the end of the symphony. Changing the order in which major and minor appear makes no difference: in Bruckners Seventh, where the opening theme is major, we do not
interpret the dark inverted minor form of the theme midway through the
movement as dominant, because we do not perceive a lack, a desire for darkness, in its original major form.
Bloch expresses concern about the profound problem . . . of the musical finale as happy ending in Bruckner and Beethoven.54 While agreeing that
climax and resolution are necessary, Bloch insists that the through darkness to light! or the joyous ending does not stem from the music-making
itself in an inexorable way.55 As I have argued, there is no innately musical
logic for Bruckners Third to end in D major rather than D minor. Bloch is
seeking an inner human essence that makes itself felt in the musical
processes themselves, so that joy is achieved by the work itself and not just
by the will of the composer: he speaks of a birth of faith out of music, coming from the quietest, innermost, farthest depths of the musicians soul,
which could finally strike up the Sed signifer sanctus Michael.56 But there
is no inexorable logic about darkness moving to light, and in the Christian
religion the movement from darkness to light is interpreted precisely as a
matter of free will. Blochs search for deeper unity and organic growth in
music is motivated by his need to find logical explanations for what is happening on the surface. Today we must recognize that postmodernist theory,
poststructuralism, and deconstruction have strongly challenged notions of
organic unity and the composers expressive presence within his or her
music.57 Because of the presence of multiple versions of his music, concern
with deep structure in Bruckner gives rise to something similar to demands for the directors cut in filmthe Haas editions are just such an attempt to provide the originary, univocal creations of the master artist. It is
instructive to read Subotnik on Theodor Adornos opinion that exaggeration enters Beethovens preparations for recapitulation as he begins to realize that the principle of reprise . . . arises from no logical necessity within
the subject.58 She explains:
By contrast with logical implication, as embodied in the syllogism,
musical implication, as Adorno understands it to occur in the classical style, is a temporal rather than a formal process. . . . musical implication makes itself fully known only in terms of an actual and
hence subsequent resolution.59
However, Adorno regarded nineteenth-century music as lacking implicative

power.60 As an example of our not understanding an implication until reexample 5.4a. D-minor Mass, Gloria, bars
Lux in Tenebris
example 5.4b. Symphony no. , Adagio, bars
vealed, note that the third bar of the fugue subject to et vitam venturus in the
F-minor Mass moves stepwise up a fourth, but its meaning is deferred, and
it only becomes clear that this is an inversion of the Kyrie motive during the
last dozen bars of the Mass.61
In Bruckner, imbalance is created between tonal forces without the
physical struggle associated with Beethoven. Simpson remarks of the first
movement of Bruckners Seventh: Throughout the whole first part of the
movement B major takes over, as it were, by stealth, in a manner remote
from the muscular action of sonata.62 I would argue that this is why the
metaphors of darkness and light so often work in Brucknerbecause darkness does not struggle to become light. Instead, night is gradually transformed into day (Bruckners gradual unveiling) or a light suddenly shines
in the darkness. There may be a crisis at the inversion of the main theme in
the C-minor middle section of this movement (bars ), but it is not
treated as part of a process of tonal tension and release. As a result, the home
key does not feel stable at the recapitulation. While the C-minor passage
may readily be interpreted as the dark antithesis of the movements opening
(this key carrying, as it does, connotations of death), it should be emphasized that inversion itself does not work as an opposite in musical semiotics.
Consider what happens when the miserere motive from the Gloria of the Dminor Mass appears in inverted form in the Adagio of the Ninth (the A
theme at bar ); it does not become jubilate (see Exx. .a and .b). Moreover, notice that when the fugue subject of Psalm is inverted it is still sung
to the same words. The inverted theme in the Seventh Symphony does work
as an opposite because musical descent has been established by convention as
an opposite to ascent in music of this style and period and the inversion of
this theme produces an unwavering descent (see Exx. .c and .d).
example 5.4c. Symphony no. , st movement, bars

example 5.4d. Symphony no. , st movement, bars
Since many musicologists have commented on the gendered character of

nineteenth-century sonata structures, we should consider the applicability of
such ideas to Bruckner. Susan McClary summarizes the argument thus:
In sonata, the principal key/theme clearly occupies the narrative position of masculine protagonist; and while the less dynamic second
key/theme is necessary to the sonata or tonal plot (without this foil or
obstacle, there is no story), it serves the narrative function of the
feminine Other. Moreover, satisfactory resolutionthe ending always generically guaranteed in advance by tonality and sonata proceduredemands the containment of whatever is semiotically or
structurally marked as feminine, whether a second theme or simply a non-tonic key area.63
McClary is discussing what she regards as a typical narrative and what

she describes elswhere as tonal striving, climax, and closure.64 Bruckners
climaxes, however, are not really reached by tonal strivingthe E climax of
the Adagio of the Eighth did not have to be in E (as we know, it was in C
major in the first version); there is more in the way of tonal balancing in
Bruckner. I am referring here to balanced tonal masses rather than a balance
of power. In a rudimentary musical structure, for example, a move from
tonic to dominant may be balanced by a flat-side move to the subdominant.
This does not mean that the tonic does not remain the commanding tonal
area; the tonic chord was the Generalissimus for Bruckner.65 Constantin
Floros has remarked: For all Bruckners modulatory flexibility, the harmonic design is always lucid and methodical.66 Equal attention is devoted
to balancing his phrase structure, building short blocks into huge formal
designs.67
Tr ansfigur at ion of themes

I am not the first to recognize the appropriateness of the word transfigure
to Bruckners music. Crawford Howie claims: In no other settings of the
Mass is one so aware of the transfiguration of the contrite mood of the
opening Kyrie into the confident mood of the final Dona nobis pacem.68
Edwin Doernberg speaks of two delicately transfigured greetings from the
Lux in Tenebris
.. Beethoven, Symphony no. , st movement, bars
.. Beethoven, Symphony no. , st movement, bars
.. Bruckner, Overture in G Minor, bars
.. Bruckner, Overture in G Minor, bars
Eighth and Seventh Symphonies at the close of the Adagio of the Ninth.69
As long ago as , Willibald Khler described the Adagio of the Eighth as
solemnly transfigurative.70 I wish to use transfigure in a more specific
sense, however, in what I have to say here. By describing any theme or motive as transfigured, I mean that it acquires a new radiance while its rhythmic identity remains unchanged.71 This radiance may be created by an alteration from minor to major, from low to high pitch, or from chromatic to
diatonic, and in each of these cases a change in texture is usually involved.
Examples are found as early as the coda to the G-minor Overture () and,
in this piece, the transfiguring may derive from Beethoven. Just before the
coda of the first movement of Beethovens Ninth (bars ), the developments minor fugue subject (bars ) changes to major, resembling a
procedure adopted in Bruckners Overture in G Minor (see Exx. .a, .b,
.c, and .d).
Beethovens coda, however, reasserts darkness, and nowhere else does

the light shine upon this theme or upon any of his dark themes. To have concluded his Ninth Symphony with a loud tonic major version of the first subject of the first movement would have been out of the question. A resolution
in Beethovens dialectic has to be reached by agreement, even if this can only
be attained with bitterness and after hard struggle. In contrast, Bruckner
often presents a sudden outright victory, but with a sense that the conflict
may recommence.72 Sometimes a theme seems to epitomize lux in tenebris:
the revelation of the final bars of the Third, for example, is that the trumpet
theme has from the beginning been designed for transfiguration by the tonic
major chord (it is accomplished by the alteration of a single note). Light is
absent at first but destined to shine in the darkness at the end. I think the
most likely prototype for this type of Brucknerian transfiguration occurs at
the end of Wagners Der Fliegende Hollnder, where the Dutchman and
Senta appear in verklrter Gestalt (in transfigured form) as they ascend to
Heaven. The Dutchmans motive is lit by major harmony without any change
to its melodic structure, thus demontrating a remarkable resemblance to
what happens in Bruckners Third Symphony (see Exx. .a and .b).73
Bruckner does not transform his themes by changing tempo, meter, and
rhythm (like, say, Liszt in Tasso); he transfigures by changing pitches and
.. Wagner, Der Fliegende Hollnder, the Flying Dutchmans motive at

the beginning of the opera
Lux in Tenebris
.. Wagner, Der Fliegende Hollnder, the Flying Dutchmans motive at
the end of the opera
harmony. Carl Dahlhaus remarks that Bruckners symphonic style . . . is

primarily rhythmic rather than diastemic, and thus seems to stand the usual
hierarchy of tonal properties on its head.74 When Bruckner changes the
pitch structure (the meaning of diastemic) of his motives, there is no need
to search for an overriding thematic process to legitimize the change75 as
one would seek to do with Brahms. In certain cases, pitch is important: inversions, for example, are not accidents. However, Bruckner does not abide
by the musical logic of the Brahmsian developing variation for which pitch
structure is the crucial parameter. Bruckner, it may be noted, uses inversion,
augmentation, and diminution but not retrograde, which drastically affects
rhythm.
Let us examine various kinds of transfigurations in the later symphonies. In the coda of the first movement of the Sixth, the theme that, for
Simpson, originally heaved darkly in the depths76 now rises and falls like
some great ship, the water illuminated in superb hues as the sun rises, at last
bursting clear in the sky.77 The theme is here transfigured by an alteration
in shape, a transposition upward in pitch, glowing brass timbre, and a new
accompaniment of religiously symbolic plagal harmony (see Exx. .a and
.b). At the close of the symphony, the theme is transfigured by a change
from Phrygian mode to diatonic major (see Ex. .c) while, above it, the
string figure from bars of the Finale returns transfigured by a change
from chromaticism to diatonicism. These changes conform to my earlier
definition of transfiguration as a process in which rhythmic identity is re-
.. Symphony no. , st movement, bars

.. Symphony no. , end of first movement
.. Symphony no. , end of Finale
tained while other parameters are altered in a way that marks them semiotically as elevated, glowing, and so forth.
Watson speaks of the grim darkness of the C-minor inverted statement
of the main theme in the first movement of the Seventh.78 It is in marked
contrast to the close of the movement, when E major shines forth.79 A parallel may be found in Raphaels Transfiguration ( ), in the Vatican
Museum, Rome (see Fig. .). This painting, which Bruckner may well have
known, is based on Saint Matthews description of Christs transfiguration:
His face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.80
Raphaels Transfiguration is interpreted by Linda Murray as follows:
The contrast between the divine radiance of the vision and earthly
confusion and sorrow, between the means of salvation in which one
must believe rather than just witness, and the blindness and suffering of unregenerate human nature, made insensible of its state by
possession of sin, seems to be the programme behind this work.81
Raphael depicts a light/darkness opposition, which Murray reads metaphorically as vision and blindness. The clear-cut division into faith and
sin would no doubt have appealed to Bruckner.
Lux in Tenebris
.. Raphaels Transfiguration
The main motive of the first movement of the Eighth is identical in

rhythm to the first subject in the opening movement of Beethovens Ninth,
as Doernberg points out.82 This is more than simple coincidence, for although they have only rhythm in common, this is the crucial parameter for
Bruckner. The motive is, in fact, restricted to a single pitch for the annunciation of death, but is transfigured as a C-major broken chord at the symphonys close. The annunciation of death is followed by what Bruckner
labeled the Totenuhr.83 Rather than hour of death, this refers to the Klopfkfer (knocking beetle), whose sound was a sign, in folklore, for impending
death.84 The negative impact of the ending of the first movement is counterbalanced by the extremely positive effect of four simultaneous thematic
transfigurations at the symphonys close. Moreover, the transfigured main
themes from each movement are joined by a fifth transfiguration: it is of a
figure that appeared in C minor at the beginning of the coda and now resounds in C major.85 After the first performance of the Eighth, no wonder
Hugo Wolf felt impelled to write that it was the absolute victory of light
over darkness.86
Transfigurations are not restricted to the endings of movements. In the
Adagio of the Ninth, the flaming light87 that shines at letter A is a transfiguration of the first bar of the movement. Then darkness returns again
for the Farewell to Life88 at bar .
Pl ateaus of intensit y
Bruckners music presents us with plateaus of intensity rather than orgasmic
releases. His method of breaking off, replacing, then reinstating is not the
typical tonal process of tension and relaxation. Because there is no reconciliation in Bruckners dialectic, the resolution of conflict needs massive emphasis and yet may still be heard as uncertain, conditional, abrupt. In a
commentary on St. John : , A. E. Brooke explains that in men life takes
the higher form of light, moral and spiritual life of which God is the
source, and that the fight between this light and its opposite, the moral
darkness of evil, has always been going on, and the light has never been conquered.89 The phrase lux in tenebris affirms that light has never been
conqueredbut, then, neither has darkness. In this context, consider Martin Kettles warning: The biggest error you can make with a Bruckner symphony is to mishear its emphatic sounds and believe they are conclusive . . .
His symphonic writing aims at a distant resolution, but when it arrives it
only does so through contingent climaxes.90
Perhaps all climaxes for Bruckner are contingent until the tuba mirum
sounds for judgment day. Until then, darkness cannot be completely and
forever vanquished by light. The fact that darkness so often returns at the
beginnings of his codas shows the provisional nature of his climaxes. If
brightness can be eclipsed at this late stage, what sense of finality is really
Lux in Tenebris
achieved in the concluding blaze of sound? Bruckner seeks a spiritual closure in his codas, but it is never more than provisionally attained, because
any sense of a telos (or final goal) has been displaced by a multiplicity of
break-flows and reversals.
For Watson, the C-major climax of the slow movement of the Seventh
is a most wonderful letting in of the light.91 Yet in the bar prior to this blaze
of light, we are poised on the dominant of C minor, the movements tonic.
Halfway through this bar, the dominant harmony is interpreted enharmonically as a German sixth in C major/minor, facilitating an abrupt shift of
tonal direction. The massive C-major climax in this C minor movement
satisfies an ideological, not a structural, need. Its meaning must be sought in
an intertextual field of reference; it is not to be found embodied in some
purely compositional logic. The climax of the Adagio of the original Eighth
was also C major, a key that had already been loudly proclaimed at the end
of the original first movement. Like Watson, I assume that when Bruckner
revised the loud C-major ending of the first movement, he changed the climax of the Adagio for same reason, to maximize the impact of the C-major
climax to the Finale. Watson is surely wrong, however, to claim that the original first movement ending weakens the overall tonal pattern.92 The revised ending is also in C major, although it may not feel much like it (and
the last nine bars are hollow fifths). The devout Bruckner could not allow
what he himself termed, with its religious connotations, an annunciation of
death to be followed by a nihilistic minor conclusion as Tchaikovsky or
Mahler might have done. In the original version it is the triumphal impact of
C major at the symphonys conclusion that is weakened, not the symphonys
overall tonal pattern.
Bruckners main climaxes resonate darkly as quantus tremor, dies irae,
or the shadow of death or blaze radiantly as rex gloriae, Gloria/Hosanna in
excelsis, or lux sancta. The Finale of the Fifth, which Simpson labeled one
of the greatest climaxes in symphonic music,93 is a climax of the Gloria/
Hosanna type. The first fugue subject is bars long, like that to the words
Alles was Odem hat in Psalm , and the two are clearly related. There are
no erotic Tristan climaxes in Bruckner; he does not build climaxes with
yearning appoggiaturas but by accretion of motives, and his climaxes end
far too abruptly. While a tragic climax, complete with aching or despairing appoggiaturas, sometimes occurs,94 it is never the movements, or symphonys, main climax. Bruckner avoids the heroic climax, too, and this is
not to be put down solely to an absence of percussion and rhythmic figures
suggestive of drums. The endings of Liszts Tasso (see Exx. .a and .b) and
Les Prludes, for instance, are heroic transformations of material, not Brucknerian transfigurations.
Eero Tarasti comments that the fanfare theme of Les Prludes moves
in the Beethovenian tonality of triumph, C major, but whose dotted rhythmic figure, the unison sound of heavy wind instruments, cellos and basses
as well as plagal harmonies give this theme an ideal and sublime hero-
example 5.8a. Liszt, Tasso, Adagio, bars
.. Liszt, Tasso, Moderato, bars
mythical quality typical of Liszt.95 It was not inappropriately used many

years ago as incidental music to the film serial Flash Gordon Conquers the
Universe. The endings of Tchaikovskys Fifth and Mendelssohns Third
Symphonies are no more Brucknerian, despite their victories of major over
minor.96 They sound too comfortable with their march rhythms and heroic brass. Bloch would undoubtedly argue that an impression is given of
assertion for its own sake. Beethoven, much admired by Bruckner, is associated with the hero-mythical, typified by the Eroica Symphony.97 Sometimes
Bruckner elevates the hero-mythical to the sacred: for example, the Wagner
tribute in the Adagio of the Seventh.98 To use Tarastis semantic vocabulary,
there is a sacred isotopy in Bruckners music into which other mythical
semes merge. In the Fourth, it could be argued that the nature-mythical and
the pastoral dominate; indeed, in this work Martin Pulbrook claims that
there is evidence of Bruckners making a conscious effort to move away from
specifically religious inspiration.99
Simpson declares that the typical Bruckner finale is
not really a summing-up, despite the immense climaxes that end the
Fifth and Eighth symphonies. Such climaxes, far from being driven by
the accumulated energy of a vividly muscular process (as in a classical symphony) or by the warring of emotive elements (as in the purely
romantic work), are rather the final intensification of an essence.100
For Cooke, too, a Bruckner finale is not the culminating high point of the
symphony; its function is rather to simply ratify the world of the first three
movements on a larger scale.101 Simpsons and Cookes comments provide
evidence for my contention that it is more appropriate to speak of plateaus
in Bruckners music rather than peaks.102 The typical Bruckner climax is at-
Lux in Tenebris
tained as a plateau of intensity, as distinct from the more usual nineteenthcentury process of arsis, climax, and catharsis. The various stages of Bruckners formal process, states Cooke, are not offered as dynamic phases of a
drama, but as so many different viewpoints from which to absorb the basic
material.103
Gregory Batesons idea of a plateau of intensity,104 which he finds, for
example, in Balinese culture, has been taken up by Gilles Deleuze and Flix
Guattari. They explain this plateau as a continuous, self-vibrating region of
intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination
point or external end.105 The idea leads them to envisage a book that, instead
of having chapters with culmination and termination points, is composed
of plateaus that communicate with one another across microfissures.106
The Bible might already be thought to approach this description,107 and so
do Bruckners nonculminative and fissured structures. Heinrich Schenker
complained that Bruckners musical thought admits no inner need for a
middle, a beginning, or even an end,108 and a later music analyst, Derrick
Puffett, commented on determinedly non-functional (dysfunctional?) harmony in the Adagio of the Ninth Symphony and the ambiguous tonality
found at the recapitulation.109 The parallel should not be overdoneDeleuze and Guattari have a much freer assemblage in mind than a Bruckner
symphonybut let us explore further. By plateau, Deleuze and Guattari
explain that they mean any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities
by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome.110 Cookes ratifying on a larger scale would suggest just such an extension. Furthermore, Simpson insists: The massive endings of all Bruckners symphonies are (with the exception of that of the Fifth) not really
culminative in the old sense; they are formal intensifications that blaze with
calm. Even in the Fifth there is ultimately this sense of a calm fire.111
I have argued that the Bruckner climax is provisional and would suggest
that the lack of synthesis in his work is made evident by the lack of, or difficulties in obtaining, closure. Darkness keeps returning. For example, after
the climax at letter F in the Finale of the Second, there is an abrupt silence,
then a pp quotation (bar , Haas edition) from the Kyrie of the F-minor
Mass (bars onward) and the exposition concludes in this mood (with a
plagal cadence). The Kyrie is quoted again (bar , Haas edition) shortly
before the coda; it is again pp following an fff climax and unexpectedly
quiet intervening bars. The coda itself fails to achieve closure at its first attempt. I cannot agree, therefore, with Newlins view that Bruckners ideal finale is one in which all that has happened in the preceding movements is
synthesized and that such a synthesis is symbolized in the citation of
themes from previous sections of the work.112 In the closing bars of the
Sixth, two themes from the Finale are presented simultaneously with a transfigured version of the main theme of the opening movement, yet Simpson
remarks, rightly it seems to me, on its inconclusiveness. The nocturnal
mystery113 with which the Finale opens has passed and the A major sun is
high in the sky, but the ending leaves dark questions unanswered.114 I assume he has in mind the turns toward B minor at letter X and at bar ,
which are too close to the movements end for comfort.
Ernst Kurth notes perceptively that harmonic and instrumental darkenings frequently occur at the moment of achieved apexes in Bruckners
music.115 Kurth sees it as symptomatic of Bruckners anxiety in the midst of
exuberance. However, anxiety can suddenly become exuberance. Doernberg, remarks of the end of the Second Symphony: When a defiant C minor
ending seems inevitable, there is a striking change to the major and the symphony ends with positive confidence.116 Confidence, however, is never secure. Bryan Gilliam writes of the first movement of the Eighth: As Bruckner originally conceived it, the movements chief dramatic event was a final
presentation of the tonally ambiguous opening themeat the very end of
the codanow resonantly clarified into an unambiguous tonal context.117
Indeed, the coda of the first version concludes with loud bars of C major.
Gilliam claims that Bruckner clearly intended the coda as an apotheosis118;
therefore, the revision represents a fundamental change from his original
structural concept.119 One might also add that it represents a fundamental
change of mood. Bruckner, from the G-minor Overture on,120 is always at
his least secure when trying to attain closure, which is why his music lends
substance to Deleuze and Guattaris claim that musical form, right down to
its ruptures and proliferations, is comparable to a weed, a rhizome.121
Doernberg, commenting on the climax of the Adagio of the Ninth, remarks that no solution is offered to the paroxysm of dissonance and restlessness.122 The music is shattered at this point, yet it reviveslike Deleuze
and Guattaris rhizome, it may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it
will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines.123 Examples are
legion in Bruckners symphonies: at letter N in the first movement of the
Eighth (after the third fff statement of the main theme), the music splinters
into fragments but then begins to reconstruct itself; at letter D in the Finale
of the Eighth, the music starts up on new lines after having broken off (at I
and between P and T there are other examples).124
Conclusion
It has not been my intention to argue that Bruckners music is solely about
darkness and light; neither has it been my contention that Bruckners music
is sacred to the exclusion of all else. Constantin Floros sums up the contradictory elements embraced in the cosmos of the Bruckner symphony as the
sacred and profane, the ceremonial and the intimate, religious and romantic, drama and lyricism, march and funeral march, the Lndler and the
chorale.125 Lndler rhythms can be found in the Scherzos of the Third and
Fifth Symphonies. Bruckner was once in demand as a fiddler at village
dances, loved dancing himself, and wrote dance music for piano. He was dis-
Lux in Tenebris
appointed in love many times and was far from uninterested in romance.
His love interests probably spilled over into his songs and piano music, for
example, Mein Herz und deine Stimme and Steiermrker). He referred to
his First Symphony as s kecke Beserl, which, according to Newlin, was a
favourite expression of Viennese students designating a bold young girl.126
Ludwig Finscher regards this symphony as a secular work in contrast to Die
Nullte (Symphony no. ), which conforms to the sacred paradigm.127 Bruckner often described a lyrical second group of themes in his scores as Gesangsthema or Gesangsperiode,128 and it is possible that feminine connotations may be found here. Ludwig Wittgenstein considered this section of a
Bruckner symphony the wife to the husband of the first subject.129 Nevertheless, it is important to recognize a distinction between a gendered theme
and a gendered sonata structure, and there is something strangely apposite
about the Bruckner monument in the Volksgarten, Vienna, which shows a
bare-breasted muse raising her arms toward him while he stares in another
direction.130
I have argued that darkness and light proves to be a productive trope for
understanding certain structural and ideological processes in Bruckners
music; and this is partly, of course, because darkness and light are themselves not just about darkness and light. Both terms are rich in the connotations, especially of a religious kind, that were deep concerns of the composer. The darkness and light trope reveals Bruckner to be a man of religious
doubt. The blaze of light that follows the repetitions of the Non confundar
in aeternam theme in the Adagio of his Seventh Symphony turns quickly to
darkness: bars after a massive climactic assertion of C major (bars )
we are cast into a despondent C minor. Bruckner cannot be sure whether
he will be confounded or not. His friend and ex-pupil Carl Hruby claimed
that Bruckner was a perfect example of speculative Christianity: he wanted
to be insured against every eventuality.131 Two years before his death, his
private diaries reveal him meditating on the words of the anatomist Hyrtl:
Is that which Faith calls the immortal soul of man only an organic reaction
of the brain?132 Enormous imaginative richness and variety of detail can be
encompassed in a journey from darkness to light. For further exemplification of the variety of possibilities available, one has only to compare Bruckners symphonies with the darkness-to-light journeys of the Second, Fifth,
and Seventh Symphonies of the temperamentally very different Mahler.
Newlin suggests that certain stylistic traits are persistent in all Bruckners
symphonies and may be thought of as symptomatic of a higher unity
among the works.133 This is, perhaps, the reason a light/darkness trope
works so consistently. It is the case, sadly, that Bruckner has even been pilloried in terms of darkness and light: Hanslick, after the first Viennese performance of the Seventh in , complained: In between the lightnings are
interminable stretches of darkness.134
6
Diabolus in Musica:
liszt and the demonic
one pur p ose of this chapter is to present a typology of the demonic in the music of Franz Liszt ( ), but I am also seeking to answer
a number of related questions that concern the role Liszt played in the establishment of demonic genres, the techniques he employed in representing
the demonic, and the impact they had on his stylistic development as a composer. Do demonic elements appear even where Liszt has not chosen to indicate their presence by title? A wider issue is how we interpret the demonic
in Liszt and whether this subject matter brings with it certain structural
constraints for the composer.
It is scarcely a coincidence that two of the most celebrated evocations of
the demonic that precede Liszts efforts are both found in operas: Mozarts
Don Giovanni () and Webers Der Freischutz (). A staged spectacle is
an efficient means of establishing particular connotations for musical devices, following which they may acquire a degree of independence as musical signs that can be employed in instrumental programmatic forms. Liszt
believed that musical form was enriched and enlarged precisely by those
who make use of it only as one of the means of expression.1 He admired
Berlioz for subordinating musical structure to the poetic idea and not cultivating form for forms sake.2
Seeking out demonic devices in act , scene , of Don Giovanni, we find
a fortissimo diminished seventh chord (with prominent trombones) at the
sudden appearance of Commendatore, then dissonances, syncopations,
chromaticism (which includes the sharpened fourth), an insistent rhythm,
a slow chantlike delivery by Commendatore, tritones after his second call for
Don Giovanni to repent, and a slithering bass line. Liszt produced his Reminiscences of Don Juan in , making much use of the Commendatores
music of act . In the Wolf s Glen scene of Der Freischutz, we find tremolo
Diabolus in Musica
strings, low clarinets, a chromatic descending bass, trombones, shrieking

woodwind, unexpected harmonies, jagged motives, diminished sevenths,
slithering bass lines, ostinati or ostinatolike patterns, a tritone on the appearance of Samiel,ominous soft timpani strokes, and acciacaturas (horns
from bar ). Liszts demonic music is saturated with such devices, to which
he added many more of his own.
Negation
In constructing the demonic, the primary musical technique for Liszt is
that of negation: negation of the beautiful so that it becomes the ugly, of nobility so that it becomes vulgarity, of grace so that it becomes awkwardness,
of tranquillity so that it becomes perturbation, and so forth. The secondary
technique is parody, though qualities are often negated and parodied (or
mocked) at the same time. There is a sense that the demonic is not just
malevolent but gleefully malevolent. In music, terms that form binary oppositions are rarely of equal status. One term is usually the negative rather
than the opposite of another, its identity is, as it were, that of the other term
with a minus sign. Dissonance is a lack of consonance, yet consonance is not
a lack of dissonance. This is clear when we look at the etymology of those
words: the dis in dissonance is taken from the Greek prefix duswhich
carries the notion of unlucky or bad (a dusaggelo~ is a messenger of ill
tidings). The bad connotation of dis is why some prefer to speak of
themselves and others as differently abled rather than disabled. Chromaticism and whole-tone scales negate diatonicism and, in doing so, negate
tonality. Again tonality is the dominant term; we do not think in terms of
lacking atonality. Here Liszts late piece Bagatelle ohne Tonart (Bagatelle
without tonality) underlines the point and, since this was originally intended as the Fourth Mephisto Waltz, suggests that it is the ohne or the
minus sign that we should be looking for in his representations of the demonic. That Liszt himself conceived of the demonic in this way is evident
from his description of Satan (of Miltons Paradise Lost) as a spirit of darkness who casts rays of negation and death.3
When seeking out demonic signifiers it is important to remember that it
is only as signs relate to other signs that their meaning is recognized. Acciacaturas, for example, are common in elfin representations, but in Baroque
harpsichord music they merely function as a way of giving a rhythmic accent to a note, since no dynamic accent is possible on that instrument. Hence,
it is important to locate chains of signifiers (syntagmatic chains) that, in
representing the demonic, will link together some of the following: minor
key (especially D minor), chromaticism, dissonance (especially involving
diminished seventh chords and augmented triads), angular melody (especially tritones), syncopation and tempo fluctuation (creating a disintegrating effect on meter and tempo), sacred or noble signifiers in the wrong
context (trombones in Mozarts Don Giovanni, the Dies irae in Berliozs

Symphonie fantastique and Liszts Totentanz), glissandi, acciacaturas, slides,
and chromatic slithering (having a disorienting effect on pitch). In general
terms, my argument is that the demonic sign is one that is read as destructive, negating, or mocking because it attacks a particular musical parameter,
for example, pitch, regular rhythm, and consonance.
A t y p olo g y of the demonic

The various demonic types involve musical representations of grotesque
dancing, shrieking, malicious laughter or cackling, blaspheming or cursing,
and malevolent parody. Among them, the tritone has long represented the
devil in music by negating a sense of modal or tonal stability. Originally, it
acquired the name diabolus in musica because of its disruptive effect on the
concordant fourths and fifths of Western European medieval music: the interval B to F needed to be corrected by flattening the B or sharpening the
F.4 As a counterpart to the tritone, Liszt had a more personal sacred sign, his
cross motif taken from the first three notes of the Gregorian chant Crux
fidelis, which he used in several of his works. Liszt mentions his use of Gregorian melodies in his compositions in a note to the score of St. Elizabeth.
The idea of music without tonality probably emerged from Liszts experience of composing using whole tones: the passages of whole-tone scales
and whole-tone derived chords (like augmented triads) of Der Traurige
Mnch had already been described by Liszt in as tonartlosen Dissonanzen.5 Liszt was not the first to make use of whole-tone music: Chernomor is characterized with descending whole tones in Glinkas Ruslan and
Lyudmila () though seldom, as Serge Gut notes, with augmented triads.6
Moreover, daring beyond anything in Glinka is the descending whole-note
scale from D to F , each note harmonized as the root of a major triad, towards the close of Liszts Dante Sonata.
A whole-tone theme opens the last movement of Von der Wiege bis zum
Grabe (), and Liszt goes on to make use of whole-tone derived chords
(bars , , , etc.). This shows the consistency with which he coded
his representations, since his first use of whole tones with augmented triads
was in an earlier contemplation of death, Pense des morts of . Wholetone motion and augmented triads are also important in his late piano piece
Unstern! and would thus appear to imply that death is part of the disaster
of its title.
Another catalyst for composing music without a key came from the
chromatic-melodic implications of Liszts harmonic predilections. The four
possible augmented triads provide all twelve notes of the chromatic scale
(cf. the first theme of the Faust Symphony), as do the three possible diminished seventh chords. As Liszt approaches the choral ending of his Faust
Symphony (), he presents a broken diminished seventh chord in the
Diabolus in Musica
bass, treating each note as the root of a triad after the manner of his treatment of the whole-tone scale toward the end of the Dante Sonata.7 Besides
this, some of Liszts demonic music is so chromatic that a key signature is
unhelpful. Hence, although the Inferno movement of the Dante Symphony is, overall, in D minor, Liszt omits the key signature.
In contrast to chromatic and dissonant harmonies but lending a Gothic
dimension to the demonic is Liszts use of bare fifths. They carry connotations of medieval church ritual, but this is negated by a demonic context
turning, as it were, mass into black mass. The sacred and demonic were
never far apart in the Middle Ages (consider the demonic gargoyles of Notre
Dame Cathedral in Paris). Bare fifths open Beethovens Ninth Symphony
and the key is D minor, but these do not constitute a chain of signifiers sufficient to represent the demonic and communicate, rather, hollowness or
emptiness. A more demonic context for bare fifths is found in Schuberts
song Der Doppelgnger (), and a tritone sounds as the singer confronts his double (bar ). However, in the context of the variations on the
Dies irae heard in Liszts Totentanz (), bare fifths create a different and
striking effect, a kind of Gothic horror. In the third variation, for example,
they are employed as the norm, the thirds of triads being produced only as
a matter of contingency by the melody of the Dies irae (see Ex. .).
The Csrds macabre () takes fifths to extremes, but this is
parallelism of the organum type (see Ex. .). It is macabre because the incongrous mixture of ancient harmony and modern chromatic motion
creates a weird, uncanny effect (a quotation from the Dies irae follows a little
later in the piece).
Liszts interest in fifths no doubt suggested to him the idea of quintal
harmony. The harmony of the opening bars of the First Mephisto Waltz
is constructed by layering fifths on top of each other (see Ex. .). This is the
harmony that results if all four strings of the violin are sounded together.
The violin is, of course, commonly thought of as the devils instrument. The
devils partiality to the violin is of a considerably older vintage than the rumors that surrounded Paganini and it was an idea that crossed a variety of
.. Totentanz (Var. )

example 6.2. Csrds macabre
cultures. For example, Tartinis Devils Trill Sonata was supposedly inspired
by a dream or vision of the devil playing, as was Fanitullen (The devils
tune), a traditional Hardanger fiddle tune from Norway.8
Liszt also uses quartal harmony for demonic effect. An early example is
found in the chord on which the opening of the Maldiction Concerto
() is based (see Ex. .), but quartal harmony makes a more extended
appearance in the Third Mephisto Waltz of (see Ex. .).
Liszts choice of keys, insists Alan Walker,is frequently determined by
a higher expressive purpose, and is rarely the result of random selection.9
He gives as examples the association of the divine with F major, love with
A major, and Hell with D minor. The Magnificat of the Dante Symphony
(), for example, begins in F major. Moreover, its high pitch (musical texture pitched above the bass clef) contrasts with the low-pitched texture of the
demonic first movement (implying Heaven is on high, Hell down below).
Liszts orchestration is rich in demonic signifiers; some of them, as we
have noted, have been inherited, but others are of his own devising. A subtle
example is the harp diminished seventh glissando in the Inferno movement of the Dante Symphony, bar ; the effect was reused in Mephisto
Waltz no. at bar . It is another example of negationit denies the harp
its idiomatic diatonic scale. Liszt instructs that if no harp is available for the
diminished seventh cadenza in the Dante Symphony it is to be omitted rather
.. Mephisto Waltz no. , bars
Diabolus in Musica
.. Maldiction chord
than played on a piano. On the piano the effect would be lost: the harp is
characteristically diatonic, the piano not. The arpeggio is achieved by retuning strings to enharmonic equivalents through use of the harps pedals
(see Ex. .).
The question is sometimes raised concerning Liszts intellectual ownership of the orchestral effects he employed. Peter Raabe concluded from
lengthy examination of the many extant manuscripts of Liszts orchestral
music that whatever scoring suggestions had been made by the likes of Peter
Cornelius, Joachim Raff, and Johann Conradi, these occurred at draft stages.
The final versions were written in Liszts hand and were undoubtedly affected by his experience of working with the Weimar orchestra.10
Some orchestral effects were part of a Romantic general currency, and
Berliozs Grande traite dinstrumentation et dorchestration modernes ()
provides insight into their origins and how they were received in the mid
nineteenth century. For example, the slides of short notes, preceding longer
ones on double bass found in the Hades scene, act of Glucks Orfeo, at the
description of the howling of Cerberus,11 can be seen as a source for the
opening of the Mephistopheles movement from the Faust Symphony. In
each case, the slide is a tritone in compass (see Exx. . and .).
.. Mephisto Waltz no. , bars

.. Dante Symphony, harp cadenza
Liszts Dante Symphony begins with a recitativelike setting for fortissimo

trombones, tuba, and lower strings of the words (from canto ) written over
the gateway of hell. Regarding the timbre of trombones, Berlioz states: In
fortissimo it is menacing and terrifying, especially if the three trombones are
in unison, or at least two are in unison and the third takes the octave of the
same tone.12 He cites the Chorus of Furies in act of Glucks Iphignie en
Tauride (incidentally, it is in D minor) and Alcestes aria Divinits du Styx
in Alceste, act . It is clearly a lesson Liszt has learned. Moreover, he chooses
to punctuate this instrumental recitative with rolls on two timpani and
strokes on a tam-tam. To cite Berlioz again: The gong or tamtam is used
only in compositions of a mournful character or in dramatic scenes of the
utmost horror. Its powerful, vibrating sound combined with heavy chords
of the brass (trumpets and trombones) has a truly awful effect.13
The passage culminates in a chantlike monotone (except for the final
note) of Lasciate ogni speranza, voi chentrate on trumpets and horns
against a string tremolo (see Ex. .). Then a representation of the whirlwind (marked tempestuoso) begins in cellos and basses accompanied by a
bass drum roll (a bass drum roll had featured in the Songe dune nuit du
Sabbat of Berliozs Symphonie fantastique, ), and a theme appears that
descends chromatically and gives emphasis to the tritone (see Ex. .). The
devices of accelerando and stringendo in this movement can be interpreted
as being designed to have a negating effect on steady tempo.
A particularly demonic passage occurs after the Lasciate ogni speranza theme returns at letter Q, complete with a newly acquired tritone ending. The orchestration of the bars that follow () serves to illustrate
another comment from Berliozs treatise:
.. Orfeo, act , Hades scene
Diabolus in Musica
.. Faust Symphony, Mephistopholes
The combination of the low tones of the English horn with those of
the clarinets and French horns during a tremolo of the double-basses
produces an effect as characteristic as it is novel; it is particularly well
suited to cast a menacing color upon musical ideas in which fear and
anguish predominate. This effect was known neither to Mozart nor
to Weber or Beethoven. A magnificent example is to be found in the
duet in the fourth act of Les Huguenots; I think Meyerbeer was the
first to have used it in the theater.14
Here we can see clearly how a signifier that is given a concrete signified in
opera is able to establish itself as a convention. Furthermore, these bars from
Inferno contain fortissimo runs of notes on the piccolo, something Berlioz
pronounced excellent for violent and incisive effectsfor example, in a
thunderstorm or in a scene of fierce or infernal character.15
Liszt states in the score that the trills in clarinets and viola, bars ,
represent mocking, scornful laughter and are to be very sharply marked16
(see Ex. .). Once more, Liszt is indebted to a sign born of opera. Berlioz
attributes to Weber the use of the low register of the clarinet to produce
those coldly threatening effects, those dark accents of quiet rage.17
To summarize other demonic signifiers present in this movement, there
are sforzandi and accented notes; expression markings such as violente,
tempestuoso, and frenetico; extremes of tempo (it opens lento, at letter G
.. Inferno, bars , Lasciate theme
.. Inferno, bars
is presto molto, and at Q is back to lento); plenty of tritones; short, dry sforzandi from heavy brass; descending chromatic lines; bare fifth harmony for
the last statement of the Lasciate theme; D minor but much tonal ambiguity (the Lasciate theme is first announced over a chord of C minor);
two timpanists; and violente strings and a snarling low horn created by its
being stopped yet played forte for the bars that lead to letter B.
It might be thought from the foregoing that Liszt relied heavily on the
orchestra for his demonic effects. However, the Dante Sonata ( )18
shows that Liszt could achieve novel demonic sonorities even without the
timbral resources of an orchestra. Liszt asks for unorthodox pedaling for the
lamentoso theme, requiring the pedal to be held down continuously for
first , then bars. It is intended to represent the tumult of Hell as described
in lines of canto :
Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti guai
risonavan per laere sanza stelle,
per chio al cominciar ne lagrimai.
Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,
parole di dolore, accenti dira,
voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle
facevano un tumulto, il qual saggira
sempre in quellaura sanza tempo tinta,
come la rena quando turbo spira.
.. Dante Symphony, bars
Diabolus in Musica
(There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings

resounded through the starless air,
so that at first it made me weep.
Strange tongues, horrible language,
words of pain, tones of anger,
voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands,
made a tumult which is whirling
always through that air forever dark,
as sand eddies in a whirlwind.19 )
Evidence for his representational intentions is found in a copy owned by

Liszts pupil Walter Bache, which contains annotations that he may have
made on the basis of information from the composer.20
As early as February , a critic who commented on Liszts Dante
Sonata in the Allgemeine Theaterzeitung sees a whole future in the techniques the composer uses to capture the diabolische Element.21 At this time,
Liszt himself was not using the term Zukunftsmusik (music of the future)
to describe his compositions; Alan Walker attributes the coining of this term
to Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein in the s.22 I would certainly not
claim that all Liszts innovations result from his desire to represent the demonic in music; however, I am arguing that some of the most striking and
adventurous techniques he develops can be related to that desire. In support
of this argument, I refer the reader to Serge Guts remarks on the number of
original elements in Liszts musical language that were put to the service of
works like the Dante Sonata, the Sonata in B Minor, the Faust Symphony,
and the First Mephisto Waltz.23 It will be noted that three of his four examples have an overt demonic context.
Demonic genres
Building on the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, Liszt plays an
important part in establishing particular demonic genres, such as the danse
macabre, the demonic scherzo, the demonic ride, the vision of horror (the
Inferno movement of the Dante Symphony), and the more abstract studies like Unstern! (a dark counterpart to the mditation religieuse genre). In so
doing, he was to bequeath a fertile legacy to Saint-Sans, Franck, Dvork,
Mussorgsky, Balakirev, and others.
In Liszt made a transcription of Schuberts Erlknig that became
a favorite with the public.24 It helped to establish the demonic ride as an instrumental genre. Berlioz includes a demonic ride, La Course lAbme, in
scene of La Damnation de Faust (), a work dedicated to Liszt. An example of one of Liszts own demonic rides is Wilde Jagd, no. of the tudes
dexcution transcendante, of . Its tempo is presto furioso, and the piece
features roaring bass octaves and irregularly placed chords interspersed with
rapid five-note runs in octaves (the tuneful second subject, however, seems
a little out of place). Mazeppa, no. of the tudes dexcution transcendante, contains traits related to the demonic ride, and these increased significantly in its orchestral version as Symphonic Poem no. .
Liszt also played a major role in establishing the genres of demonic
dance and demonic scherzo. The demonic dance overlaps with the demonic
scherzo as formerly the minuet overlapped with the scherzo: his Gnomenreigen no. of Zwei Konzertetden (), for example, is a round dance
marked presto scherzando. Precursors of the demonic scherzo are found in
Beethoven (the Scherzo of the Ninth Symphony and that of the String Quartet in E Major, op. ), Berlioz (Queen Mab Scherzo from Romo et Juliette,
), and Mendelssohn (the Scherzo from his Sommernachtstraum incidental music, ).
In Liszt produced Reminiscences of Robert le Diable: Valse infernale, with which he enjoyed great public success.25 The piece focuses on the
waltz sung in act of Meyerbeers opera () by Roberts demonic father
Bertram and a horde of evil spirits. This may have given Liszt the idea of
composing a demonic waltz of his own. However, it was some time before
he acted upon it, and Johann Strauss II beat him to both the composition of
a waltz with a demonic theme, Mephistos Hllenrufe (Mephistos summons to Hell) of , and a polka, Lucifer of .
In all, Liszt was to compose four Mephisto Waltzes and a Mephisto
Polka. The First Mephisto Waltz was for orchestra originally, being the second of his Two Episodes from Lenaus Faust ( ), but Liszt created a
piano version that differs in several respects. The orchestral version is titled
Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (The dance in the village inn) and represents
Mephistopheles playing the violinthere is an explicit program attached to
the score that quotes Nikolaus Lenau ( ), a Hungarian poet who usually wrote in German. The Second Mephisto Waltz was again for orchestra
but also exists transcribed for piano. Leonard B. Meyer explains that the satanic malevolence in this waltz is delineated by predominantly low register, loud dynamics, rapid tempo, discordant harmony and disjunct motion,
and ironically irregular waltz rhythms.26 The waltz makes dramatic use of
the tritone at both beginning and end. Humphrey Searle regards the Third
Mephisto Waltz of as one of the composers finest achievements, which
shows Liszt at his most ruthless and savage.27 Sacheverell Sitwell, too, valued it as among his very finest and most powerful works.28 That same year
he wrote the Mephisto Polka, also for piano solo.
The Bagatelle ohne Tonart () for piano was originally intended
as the Fourth Mephisto Waltz. Its demonic character remains evident in its
opening tritones and the series of unresolved diminished seventh chords
with which it ends. The actual Fourth Mephisto Waltz () for piano has
an unfinished middle section. The outer sections are complete, however,
and show Liszts continuing interest in experimenting with tonality: its key
signature is two sharps, but it begins and ends in an Aeolian C minor.
Diabolus in Musica
A large-scale demonic concertante work is Totentanz. It is subtitled

Danse macabre, which illustrated a common confusion between the latter
and the dance of death in the nineteenth century. In the Middle Ages, the
danse macabre was a processional dance toward death that involved all social ranks.29 The dance of death, however, was supposedly performed by the
dead rising from their graves at midnight (prior to seeking out new victims).30 The first sketches were made in Pisa in , and it has been argued
that Totentanz was originally inspired by a fresco, The Triumph of Death
(Trionfo della morte), in the Camposanto. The fresco was once thought to be
by the fourteenth-century Florentine artist Andrea Orcagna but is now considered to be the work of Francesco Traini.31 Death is portayed as a woman
with a bats wings swooping down on a company of nobles and swinging a
scythe in her clawed hands. The personification of Death as a woman has a
precursor in Petrarchs Triumph of Death, and this may account for the
frescos title. Yet why did Liszt choose dance of death rather than triumph
of death for his own title?
Another theory is that the Totentanz relates to Holbein. Nineteenthcentury editions of Holbeins woodcuts of were readily available.
Sharon Winklhofer argues that Hans Holbeins Der Todtentanz (sic) was a
more likely stimulus for Liszts Totentanz and that the variations relate to
characters depicted in that series of prints.32 She suggests that the Camposanto fresco inspired, instead, the Maldiction Concerto. Yet the musical
images most attached to the dance of death in the nineteenth century have
been identified by Robert Samuels as the masked ball and the waltz.33 It
would seem that such images influence Liszts Mephisto Waltzes rather than
the Totentanz. The waltz was thought to stimulate sexual desire, and the
masked ball offered opportunities for licentiousness; moreover, like the
dance of death, it did not discriminate along the lines of social class. The linking of both masquerade and waltz to the dance of death can be seen in
Charles Rowlandsons engravings The English Dance of Death ( ).
In deciding to use the Dies irae in his Totentanz, Liszt was no doubt influenced by Berliozs Songe dune nuit du Sabbat,34 where it makes its first
awesome appearance played by two trombones in unison, doubled at the
lower octave by four bassoons. Later the dance theme of the Ronde du
Sabbat is combined with the Dies irae to blasphemous effect (note that this
works as a clash of styles even if the program is ignored). The Dies irae
makes an equally daunting first appearance in Liszts Totentanz, where it is
pitted against a diminished triad ostinato hammered out by piano and timpani. This anticipates his later use (for example, in Unstern!) of a constantly
repeated dissonant chord that makes no attempt to be reconciled with a
theme being played simultaneously.
The demonic symphonic piece overlaps with all of the above but has its
own distinctiveness as in, for example, the vision of horror that is the Inferno movement of the Dante Symphony or the venomous parody of the
Mephistopheles movement of the Faust Symphony (which will be dis-
cussed in the next section). Arguably, the symphonic poem Hunnenschlacht,

too, falls into the demonic category; Ben Arnold describes it as a triumph
of God over Satan, good over evil35 (it makes explicit use of the Crux fidelis). The Dante Symphony was originally intended to be a multimedia
experience. Liszt planned to project slides made from Bonaventura Genellis
illustrations to the Divina Commedia during the performance.36 A performance of the symphony with slides was eventually given in Brussells in .37
Liszt also wanted to use an experimental wind machine in the final section
of the Inferno movement to depict Hells whirlwind.38 It was going to cost
, thalers, a sum Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein was prepared to provide,39 but the idea was abandoned.
Inter pret ing the demonic in liszt

Lawrence Kramer suggests that the satanic mystique of Paganini and the
demonic/erotic aura of Liszt were derived in part from a sense that these
musicians were driven to create works of superhuman difficultyobjects
impossible to anyone but them.40 This was, indeed, only part of the explanation, and sometimes the perception of demonic possession shifted from
performer to audience if fearful critics thought the latter was responding
with diabolic enthusiasm, as at Paganinis concerts at the Opera, Paris, in .
In the case of Liszt, his levelheaded pupil Amy Fay, who knew him as a human
being rather than a concert virtuoso, wrote of his playing: It gives me almost a ghostly feeling to hear him, and it seems as if the air were peopled
with spirits.41 While acknowledging that the younger Liszts uncanny skill
prompted ideas of the devil having aided him, Sacheverell Sitwell reminds
us that Liszt played the role of Mephisto to an ever-increasing extent in old
age, when he looked like a wizard, a Merlin.42 Liszt, in fact, produced some
of his most demonic pieces after he had given up public recitals.
The legend of Fausts compact with the devil, as reworked by Goethe,
was an inspiration to many Romantic composers. Wagners Faust Ouvertre (), for example, was based on Goethe. Liszt conducted Schumanns
Scenes from Faust at Weimar in and invited Berlioz to conduct La
Damnation de Faust at Weimar in (though this merely borrows a few
scenes from Goethe). In the early s, Liszt had ambitions to compose a
Faust opera to a libretto by Grard de Nerval and Alexandre Dumas pre.
Nerval had published a French translation of Goethes Faust in , to
which Berlioz introduced Liszt in ,43 and had himself written four dramas based on the Faust legend.44
Serge Gut explains the appeal of this subject to Liszt by remarking that
in the Faust Symphony Liszt avait la possibilit de peindre musicalement la
dualit de son me: Faust et Mphisto.45 Walter Beckett describes Liszt in his
early twenties as being torn between his strong impulse towards religion
and his great and natural delight in worldly things.46 We might consider
Diabolus in Musica
also the well-known description Mephistopheles disguised as an abb furnished by the historian Gregorovius after seeing Liszt in Rome in .47
Goethe represented Faust as having this duality in extremes:
Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach in meiner Brust,
Die eine will sich von der andern trennen;
Die eine hlt, in derber Liebesluft,
Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen;
Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich von Duft
Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.48
Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for mastery there;
The one has passions craving crude for love,
And hugs a world where sweet the senses rage;
The other longs for pastures fair above
Leaving the murk for lofty heritage.49
Yet in the character study that forms the first movement of Liszts symphony, Faust is not portrayed in a negative or vulgar way. In fact, he cannot
be, since Liszt has chosen to give the role of negating and vulgarizing Fausts
themes to Mephistopheles. Thus, it is only by taking the two characters together that we can come close to making up the sum of Goethes Faust. Yet in
doing so we would include a capacity for self-parody that Goethes character
does not possess and, at the same time, would remove the role of Goethes
agent of denial and destruction, Mephistopheles, who announces shortly after
his arrival in Fausts study:
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht
Ist wert, dass es zugrunde geht.50
(I am the spirit that denies!
And rightly so; for everything that is created
Is worth destroying.)
In Goethes view of evil, Alan P. Cottrell informs us, the forces of denial do not enjoy coequality with those of divine goodness, though they remain an indispensable attribute of the Creation.51 Cottrell describes
Mephistopheless modus operandi as being characterized by two tendencies,
illusion and denial. He encourages flights of fancy, idle dreaming, vain rapture and the hubris of self-importance yet proceeds to mock mans sense
of individual worth, ridicules his ideals, and jeers at his struggle for freedom and dignity.52 It is the second of these tendencies only that we find in
Liszts Faust Symphony () and, as such, Liszt also departs from Goethe
in his character study of Mephistopheles. Cynicism is the trademark of
Goethes Mephistopheles: he shows no principled preference for the material over the spiritual but, instead, a determination to use either as a means
of temptation. Goethe suggests by this that both body and mind are vulnerable to the forces of evil. There is a parallel in Kierkegaards contention
that the demonic can take spiritual forms if such are needed to play a selfdefensive role in denying faith and the eternal.53 However, Kierkegaards demonic is distinct from Goethes. For Kierkegaard, George Pattison explains,
that which in nature, in childhood and in the pagan world is experienced as innocent and thoughtless immediacy comes to be regarded
as demonic when the Christian revelation establishes the goal of
higher self-consciousness and ultimately self-responsible life as the
true telos of human experience.54
For Goethe, it is art that makes order of nature and provides a defense
against its destructive power.55
I am not citing Kierkegaards philosophy because I believe it was something with which Liszt was familiar. Kierkegaard was little known in Europe
before his discovery around . My reason for making reference to his
theory of the demonic is because it developed in the s and throws useful light on the contemporaneous development of the demonic in Liszt.
Kierkegaards thoughts usefully illustrate the problem this subject matter
holds for dialectic argument of the Hegelian kind, and this is not without its
musical implications. The demonic character is, for Kierkegaard, not the opposite of the good but, rather, one that despairingly defies the good in fear of
what is ultimately the source of personal salvation (thus resembling the condition termed resistance in psychiatry).56 Kierkegaards arguments therefore suggest reasons for Liszts avoidance of dialectical struggle that leads to
higher synthesis in his demonic compositions. In the Faust Symphony there
is no higher synthesis of the characters of Faust and Mephistopheles, since
the latter merely negates the former. The final chorus mysticus, though it sets
Goethes words, offers a Kierkegaardian solution to the musical struggle between Faust and the demonic. Here no sublation is possible; either Mephistopheles triumphs or Faust triumphs. For Gretchen, too, it is a matter of
gerichtet or gerettet, judged or saved. Kierkegaards antidialectical position,
and his break with Hegelianism, is flagged up in the very title of his book
Either/Or.57 Fausts victory can only be achieved by redemption, an idea with
which Kierkegaard challenges Hegels dialectical thought. A moral choice is
to be made between alternatives, rather than seeking a reconciling synthesis.
The first part of Either/Or contains a long essay on the demonic in
Mozart, in which Kierkegaard advances the idea that music is an imperfect
medium, unlike language, and thus cannot have its absolute object in the
immediately spiritual.58 This is not to claim that music is the work of the
devil, but that music is available and suited to the sensuous and demoniacal
because, while being of a much greater degree of abstraction than language,
it is able better to depict mood and passion.59 For Kierkegaard, Christianity
is the Word made flesh and music is a communicative medium that does not
have the same ethical and religious relationship to Christianityin short,
Diabolus in Musica
music is not part of a moral or ethical domain.60 He refers to the many stories and legends in which persons are put under a musical spell by mermaids
or mermen.61 Breaking such spells often requires the music to be played
backward. Similarly, the demonic character inverts meanings and negates
the truth: What the demoniac says is of such a nature that the truth is present as soon as the meaning is inverted.62 Kierkegaard uses the legend of
Agnes and the merman to sketch out further his ideas on the demonic in
Fear and Trembling ()63 and states that the demonic can express itself as
contempt for men.64 This certainly accords with Liszts musical representation of Mephistopheles.
For the demoniac there is only the choice between moving to faith and
remaining within the demonic.65 No reconciliation between the two is possible. We find a similar bind in the Dante Symphony. Heaven and Hell cannot be reconciled. In the Inferno movement, the only musical conflict
presented is that between the restless and consuming love of Paulo and
Francesca and the horrors of Hell.66 Kierkegaard would argue, however, that
the lovers are in Hell because they exhibit a demoniac absorption in one
idea.67 For Kierkegaard, Don Giovanni exhibited a demonic absorption in
desirein Geoffrey Clives words, his unwillingness to sleep or rest, his indefatigable loyalty to the sensual principle.68 It is an idea that can readily
be related to obsessive features in demonic music, like ostinati and the
relentlessly repeated motives in late Liszt. Though Liszt was persuaded by
Wagner not to conclude the Dante Symphony with a Paradiso movement,
it would have been there that resolution of the anguish of the earlier music
would have been found and, again, via the only means possible, that of redemption. This is why Ronald Taylor misjudges the work when he states:
Open conflicts are subsumed in a predetermined aura of peace, and
the balanced juxtaposition of contrasted forces, the structural principle on which the aesthetic satisfaction of any extended musical
work depends, is undermined from the outset.69
It is a criticism that fails to recognize the particular structural problems

posed by the subject matter of the demonic and the divine and instead implies that these are formal weaknesses due to either misjudgment or poor
technique on Liszts part.
Nevertheless, Taylors criticism is no doubt one with which Heinrich
Schenker would have concurred, though he avoided discussing the music of
Liszt. One reason for Schenkers neglect of Liszt may have been, as John D.
White has suggested, that Liszt was not part of the German tradition. However, since Schenker avoided Bruckner in equal measure, I would opt for
Whites second suggested reason for neglect, that Schenker found some
composers to be lacking in the kind of basic musicality inherent in his theories.70 Part of the problem can be related to Liszts interest in the musical
possibilities of the tritone. For example, White demonstrates that a Schenkerian analysis of Chasse-Neige works plausibly but recognizes that Schenker
would have had problems with the prolongation on E major in this B minor
piecethe tritone relationship being incompatible with his concept of the
Urlinie.
It is now time to look at the Faust Symphony in closer detail, especially
the Mephistopheles movement. You can read in countless places how, in
this movement, Fausts themes are subjected to malicious parody. Sometimes simple assertions are given; sometimes musical quotations are presented as if they furnished transparent evidence. Here is Sacheverell Sitwell
giving full reign to his imagination:
The simple, blatant themes are tortured and twisted out of all semblance to themselves. They are given sneering, sarcastic shape; are corrupted and made evil and embittered; are presented in triumphant,
exultant loudness: they sound forth in the guise of sardonic laughter:
they mock and imitate: they travesty and burlesque the truth until
the original themes can hardly be recognized behind their derision.71
What is needed is an attempt to account for why these meanings are found
in the music and explain how such ideas are represented by the composer.
For example, though Liszts compositional procedure that involved the
transformation of themes is well known, it is necessary to decide what distinguishes a particular variation or transformation of a theme as a parody of
that theme and what makes a transformation of a theme communicate maliciousness. In Berliozs Songe dune nuit du Sabbat, the Allegro proper begins with a parody of the beloveds theme, effected by means of acciacaturas,
trills, and a bouncy 68 rhythm. The small E clarinet playing high in its range
suggests a vulgarizing and trivializing of the formerly elevated violin theme.
Liszt, perhaps, learns from this that acciacaturas and trills can be used to destroy a legato line and that a jigging rhythm can be used to turn music that
connotes spiritual yearning into music that connotes physicality. He uses
similar techniques to debase Fausts themes in the Mephistopheles movement of his Faust Symphony.
Chromatic slithers and scherzando comments are added to the symphonys mysterious opening theme (see Ex. .). The dolente theme that becomes linked to Fausts love of Gretchen (first heard on solo oboe st mvt,
bb. ) becomes a comical staccato exchange between horns and bassoon
(see Ex. .). The dolente theme develops into the love theme (affettuoso) in
the first movement but becomes a sehr scharf markiert und abgestoen fugue
subject in the Mephistopheles movement (see Ex. .). Fausts agitato ed
appassionato theme (D, p. ) is turned into a dance ( ), which denies
the romantic status of Fausts yearning and relocates his desire in the body
(see Ex. .). Fausts grandioso theme (O, p. ) becomes giocoso and is given
a bucolic character with drone fifths in cellos, suggesting that Faust is dancing to the devils tune (see Ex. .). There is a particularly diabolic passage
at letter Nn where Fausts grandioso theme is twisted into a tritone pattern
that accompanies the former dolente theme alongside the sound of timpani
Diabolus in Musica
.. Faust Symphony
Faust movement, opening
Mephistopheles movement, Letter E
a tritone apart and woodwind trills. Faust is restored to dignity only after
Gretchens intervention: a bass ostinato on his grandioso theme is then heard
against a shimmering C-major chord (letter K). In this symphony the feminine wins out, despite the phallic striving that takes place.
Liszt conveys the idea that Faust is torn apart by Mephistopheles by ripping his themes into fragments. This is suggested metaphorically by the use
of rests and the dispersing of notes between different instruments, as in Example .. Lawrence Kramer describes Fausts themes as literally taken
.. Faust Symphony
Faust movement, bars 3-5
Mephistopheles movement, 1 bar after B

.. Faust Symphony
Faust movement, 3 bars after Letter Dd
Mephistopheles movement, Letter S
apart and tossed in fragments from one instrumental group to another.72

Mephistopheles does not have themes of his own; he simply negates Fausts
themes. His function is to deny the first term of the binary opposition good
evil. Therefore, there is no genuine opposition: one term, instead, draws its
meaning from the other, which, effectively, commands it. The only new theme
in this movement is taken from Liszts Maldiction Concerto, where it is labeled orgeuil (pride). Paul Merrick finds it significant that the fugue in the
Faust Symphony is preceded by the orgeuil theme: Thus before the fugue
starts Liszt points to the Devils pride.73 Pride was, indeed, responsible for
Lucifers fall. Merrick comments that the curse theme of the Maldiction
Concerto is followed by a cadenza based on the triads of F and B major and
then by the pride motif. He sees this as psychologically speaking, the origin of Liszts approach to programme music. If music is divine, then the purpose of men is to use it to return to God. The path to the divine is blocked
.. Faust Symphony
Faust movement, Letter D
Mephistopheles movement, 3 bars after Letter F
Diabolus in Musica
.. Faust Symphony
Faust movement, Letter O
Mephistopheles movement, 4 bars before Letter Y
by the Devil, who must be overcome.74 This explanation, with its reference
to overcoming, makes evident that no higher synthesis is possible here.
Does an examination of the demonic in Liszt shed interpretive light on
his Sonata in B Minor ( )? Tibor Szsz interpreted the sonata as a
struggle between God and Lucifer over the human soul.75 Others, more commonly, have advanced the idea of a Faust program.76 My concern is musical
signs, not musical programs, and I intend to offer no such narrative explication of musical processes or structure in Liszt. However, as Vera Micznik
has pointed out, if those signs that initially result from the ad hoc, artificial
combination of concrete signifieds articulated verbally in the programme
with freely interpretable musical signifiers eventually become conventions,
these, too, turn into musical signs (independent of their original program).77
Such signs are what I would claim can be found in the Sonata in B Minor, a
work with no explicit program. Liszt uses devices that have a connotative
dimension for listeners who are familiar with the way these devices have previously been used in program music and opera (and, once more, the role
Liszt played in disseminating operatic music as instrumental music through
his transcriptions and reminiscences is important). A variant of the cross
motif (derived from Crux fidelis) is present at the passage marked grandioso, though Liszt had not made the use of this motif explicit in any of his
other music at this time (he was to do so in Hunnenchlacht of ).
David Wilde, in a Jungian interpretation, maintains that the sonata is
concerned with three archetypes: the Hero, the Anima and the Shadow.78 In
more traditional terminology, though it does damage to the subtlety of
Jungs thought, the Anima and the Shadow might be spoken of as the soul
and the devil. Rather than Szszs God versus Lucifer, then, Wilde sees the
subject of the sonata as Liszts struggle with the Shadow.79 The first three
themes of the sonata he calls the melancholic, the heroic, and Mephisto. The
feminine version of the Mephisto theme (see, for example, bars )

he understands as woman represented as temptress and servant of Satan.80
Louis Kentner finds the spirit of mockery, of negation and savage distorting caricature in the Allegro energetico section of the sonata.81 What Wilde
terms the Mephisto theme is an active component in all this. There are certainly resemblances to be found between this section of the sonata and the
fugal section that begins at Letter S in the Mephistopheles movement of
the Faust Symphony.
The conclusion of the sonata was subject to a late revision; its original
ending was a loud and extrovert B major.82 The revised ending makes clear
that there is to be no reconciliation at the end of this sonata, and, far from a
confident dominant to tonic close, the final B-major chord is preceded by an
F-major chord, the harmony a tritone away. As we shall see in the next section, a late work, Unstern!, also struggles to achieve closure in B major but,
instead, remains hanging on the dominant seventh, the bass proceeding to
step up a tritone from E to A and down again without finding resolution.
Late demons
Bence Szabolcsi describes Liszts late music as haggard and sharp-featured,
harsh and mordant, sometimes even caustic, yet, more swirling and nightmarish, more demonic and threatening than any music before.83 His argument differs from mine, however, in that he is keen to interpret the late style
in the context of Liszts experimenting with Hungarian features. While acknowledging the importance of this experimentation, I am persuaded that
many of these nightmarish and threatening features have their roots in
Liszts attempts to develop signifiers of the demonic. Szabolcsi sums up the
features of late Liszt as hammering motifs incessantly repeated, the tendency
to fade out or conclude on a dissonance, and an emphasis on the tritone
and whole-tone scales,84 to which might be added augmented triads, bare
fifths, and an increased level of dissonance.
In the last decade of his life, Liszt produced demonic pieces that were not
always virtuosic, one such being Unstern!: Sinistre, disastro ( ). The
title raises a number of puzzling questions. The German might be translated
as dark star or evil star, and Liszt added a subtitle of French and Italian
terms. Are they synonymous? As an adjective, the French sinistre can mean
evil as well as inauspicious; as a noun it denotes disaster. Yet the word
dsastre exists in French, so why use sinistre? Is it to ensure that there are
three different-sounding though synonymous words in the title? Is it because sinistre connotes a natural catastrophe (e.g., flood or fire) while dsastre is more abstract (e.g., a serious misfortune or fatal accident)? Was
there a natural disaster with which Liszt was concerned?85 Was the French
chosen because of the quantity of melodic material given to the left hand?
The German and Italian nouns (and for that matter the English disaster)
Diabolus in Musica
derive from the idea of an unfavorable or negative aspect of a star. Unstern!

is another example of a positive term being given a negative twist. When you
wish upon a star, Disney fashion, you pray it is not this one.
An impression of doom is conveyed by the tense use of dissonance and
the evil tritone. Allen Forte comments that the opening passage of Unstern! is remarkable and novel even in Liszts innovative works because it
exhibits a highly structured pitch-class set hierarchy and includes the set
-, one of only six heptads [seven-note sets] to contain three tritones.86
The movement EFB with which Unstern! begins is a pitch motto often
found in the late works.87 Bars are based entirely on a whole-note
scale. Then, at the reprise of the first theme of Unstern!, the tritones resolution to C is frustrated (see Ex. .). The grating discord here is not arbitrary:
the F and B here could resolve onto E and C.
In the whole of the final section, which has a key signature of B major
(bars ), there is never once a B-major chord in root position. It begins
with a second inversion B-major chord and another appears at bar , but
there is no chord of B major for the remaining bars. Unstern! appears,
musically, to be about the unobtainable. Dissonance strives for release but is
thwarted.
The augmented triads that are such a characteristic of Liszts music are
used in late pieces like this to eat away further and further at tonality.
Humphrey Searle, apropos of the harmony found in Liszts late works, comments that
while he still used augmented and diminished chords and frequently
used the whole-tone scale, he created new contrapuntal effects by
playing themes and accompaniments against each other without any
regard for the rules of harmony.88
In the late works, clashes often result from the use of ostinati. Perhaps these
can be traced back to that striking early example, the opening of Totentanz.
Chromaticism also becomes more daring.
.. Unstern!, bars
Liszts demonic legacy

Allen Forte holds that, from the theoretical standpoint, what makes Liszts
experimental music
so special and so interesting is not its unusual surface features
which are, of course, extraordinarybut the fact that it represents
a systematic expansion of traditional voice-leading and harmonic
models, an expansion that incorporates, as basic harmonies, sonorities (pitch-class sets) that are not part of the central syntax of tonal
music, but that derive, in the most extreme instances, from a process
of accretion to the augmented triad and the diminished triad.89
It will not now surprise the reader that it is my opinion that Liszts efforts to
represent the demonic were what stimulated his interest in these augmented
and diminished sonorities. Liszt was himself convinced that musical innovations came about through the efforts of those who employed music in
accordance with the dictates of the ideas to be expressed and that formalist
composers merely popularized, subdivided, or reworked what the tone
poets have won.90
It must be borne in mind that little of Liszts late experimental work was
known during the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, though a case can
be made for the influence on Bartk of demonic works like the Dante Symphony, any resemblances between Bartks mature style and that of the late
Liszt is coincidental. For example, Bartk did not see the London manuscript of Csrds macabre until ,91 twenty-six years after his Allegro barbaro, with which it may be thought to share certain resemblances.
Bence Szabolcsi claims that Dvorks later compositions are inconceivable without Liszt.92 Certainly you can recognize Dvorks indebtedness to
Liszt in The Water Goblin () and such passages as that which depicts the
witchs appearance in The Noonday Witch (), bars . Liszts association of whole tones and the demonic persists in the Vaults scene of
Debussys Pellas et Mlisande () and in Sibeliuss Tapiola (). The
demonic ride survives in Francks Le Chasseur maudit () and Humperdincks Hexenritt (from Hnsel und Gretel, ). The demonic dance was
taken up by Saint-Sans (whose Danse macabre of opens with a tritone
negation of the violins open strings), Mahler (the First and Sixth Symphonies of and , respectively), Stravinsky (the Infernal Dance
from Firebird of ), and Vaughan Williams (Satans Dance of Triumph
from Job of ).
The demonic symphonic piece soon found a memorable successor in
Mussorgskys Night on the Bare Mountain (). Rimsky-Korsakov (in whose
orchestration the work is best known) informs us in his autobiography that
the piece was begun under the influence of Liszts Danse macabre, which
Mussorgsky had heard in the March [of ].93 A brief summary of Nights
demonic signifiers reveals the debt to Liszt: the tempo is allegro feroce; the
Diabolus in Musica
key is D minor; the first woodwind theme outlines tritones; there is lots of
staccato; it contains a low-pitched choralelike theme for brass and bassoons
in unison; there are woodwind shrieks (piccolo prominent), acciacaturas,
and mordent figures; it has prominent percussion, which includes tam-tam;
and it makes use of bare fifths, ostinato figures, chromatic slithering, and
trills. The demonic symphonic work lived on in Balakirevs Tamara ()
and Sibeliuss Lemminkinen in Tuonela ( ), as well as Tapiola, and
the Dvork symphonic poems already mentioned. Finally, the influence of
Liszts demonic music on the twentieth-century horror film should not be
ignored. It pervaded American horror films of the s and sespecially scores by Universals composers Charles Previn, Hans J. Salter, and
Frank Skinner. Its impact continued to be heard as long as orchestral music
dominated soundtracks. In the s and s, for example, Liszts demonic
shadow fell upon Clifton Parkers score for Night of the Demon () and
James Bernards music to The Devil Rides Out ().94
part four
ideology and cultural otherness
7
orientalism and
musical style
in wester n music, Orientalist styles have related to previous Orientalist styles rather than to Eastern ethnic practices, just as myths have been described by Lvi-Strauss as relating to other myths.1 One might ask if it is
necessary to know anything about Eastern musical practices; for the most
part, it seems that only a knowledge of Orientalist signifiers is required. In
the case of Orientalist operas, I had at first thought it might be important to
understand where they were set geographically. Then I began to realize that,
for the most part, all I needed to know was the simple fact that they were set
in exotic, foreign places. Perhaps I should have remembered Edward W.
Saids advice that
we need not look for correspondence between the language used to depict the Orient and the Orient itself, not so much because the language
is inaccurate but because it is not even trying to be accurate. What it is
trying to do . . . is at one and the same time to characterize the Orient
as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose
audience, manager, and actors are for Europe, and only for Europe.2
Nevertheless, the state of affairs found in a work like Rameaus Les Indes
Galantes (), where, for example, Persians are musically indistinguishable
from Peruvians, was to change. Distinctions and differences developed in
the representation of the exotic or cultural Other, and that, as well as the
confusion that sometimes results, is my present concern. This confusion is
most evident in the nineteenth century, when Western composers, especially
those who worked in countries engaged in imperialist expansion, were torn
between, on the one hand, making a simple distinction between Western
Self and Oriental Other and, on the other hand, recognizing that there was
no single homogeneous Oriental culture. Thus, even when different Orien
talist styles had become established, they could sometimes be applied in a

careless manner.
In this chapter, because of its broad span, I am looking primarily for
changes in representation. As a caveat, I should stress that in a genealogical
critique such as this a smooth linear narrative is impossible and, owing to
the contingent nature of developments in Orientalist styles, a certain amount
of lurching around on my part is unavoidable. To begin with an example of
a significant change in representation, one might compare Purcells young
Indian with Delibess young Indian.
J. A. Westrup stated apropos of Purcells The Indian Queen: For all the
music tells us, the action might be taking place in St. Jamess Park.3 His remark indicates that there is a historical specificity to musical Orientalism
and thus helps to establish its beginnings. Consider the music sung by the
Indian Boy, which concerns native innocence, part of a favorite colonizing
theme in which the indigenous peoples of conquered countries are looked
upon as childrenand here they are indeed a boy and girl (see Ex. .). The
.. Purcell, The Indian Queen, Prologue
orientalism and musical style
harmonic language and word painting here are typical of other compositions by Purcell. The minor key, although it later becomes a marker of ethnic difference, in this work can be used for contentment (for example, Ah!
Ah! How Happy Are We); unhappiness, another later connotation of the
minor, at this time was conveyed by chromaticism and dissonance (for example, All Dismal Sounds in the same work).
Lakms O va la jeune Indoue (the Bell Song from Delibess opera
Lakm, ) is a tale of a young Indian girls seduction by the divine Vishnu.
It begins with a wordless vocalise, a device that became common in representations of the emotional Eastener, the lack of verbal content pointing
to a contrast with the rational Westener. Carolyn Abbate remarks that
such moments enact in pure form familiar Western tropes on the suspicious power of music and its capacity to move us without rational speech.4
Example ., from slightly later in the piece, shows how developed exotic
signifiers had become in the two centuries after Purcell. Note the insistent
syncopated rhythm, the bare harmony with octave doubling, the Aeolian
mode, and the pedal point. Moreover, added to this is the timbre of double
.. Delibes, Lakm
Allegro Moderato
reeds, tambourine, and, later, little bells. Such features were all now an established part of an Orientalist musical code.
Style Turc and Style Hongrois

The first type of musical Orientalism was the Turkish Style, which, according to Jonathan Bellman, evolved from a sort of battle music played by
Turkish military bands outside the walls of Vienna during the siege of that
city in .5 He remarks that few had heard it and virtually no one remembered it and that what became understood as Turkish Style was thus
almost entirely the product of the European imagination.6 It clearly gave
pleasure but also a sense of superiority over the Turks. Why did the Turkish
Style arrive as the first example of Orientalism in music? Was it because the
Turks had dared to try to conquer the West? The successful lifting of the
Siege of Vienna ended Turkish expansionism.
Typical Turkish Style of the eighteenth century would be: a 24 march
with a bass of reiterated quavers (often asserting a tonic pedal); a melody
that is decorated with grace notes (often dissonant) and insists on the notes
of the tonic triad but with an occasional raised fourth; and crude harmony, such as root position triads and octave doubling of melody.7 The
Chorus of Janissaries from Mozarts Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail ()
is a good example (see Ex. .). Alfred Einstein describes the unusual circumstances of the first performance of this work in London in :
To our astonishment, the prelude to this Turkish opera begins with
the solemn strains from the scene of the men in armour in the Zauberflte . . . Next follows the flute and drum solo of the trial by fire and
water. Only after this does Mozarts presto get under way.8
Evidently, the Egypt of Die Zauberflte and the Turkey of Die Entfhrung
lacked distinguishing codes in England at this time. My argument, however,
is that musical Orientalism has never been overly concerned with establishing distinctions between Eastern cultures and that an interchangeability of
exotic signifiers proved to be commonplace rather than astonishing.
The next style to arrive after the style turc in the genealogy of musical
Orientalism was the style hongrois, which Bellman describes as derived from
the exotic-sounding music played by Gypsy bands (not actual Magyars) in
Hungary and westward to Vienna.9 When it emerged alongside the Turkish
Style in the middle of the eighteenth century, there was no clear line between
the two. The following pieces illustrate the cross over: Haydns Rondo In the
Gypsies Style (the Finale of the Piano Trio in G Major, Hob. XV: ); the Finale of Mozarts Violin Concerto in A Major (known as the Turkish), K. ;
and Beethovens Alla Ingharese for piano (known as Rage over a Lost
Penny). The style hongrois is marked by syncopation, dactylic and dotted
rhythms, virtuoso violin or quasi-violin passages (the Gypsies were Hun-

.. Mozart, Chorus of Janissaries
garys professional musicians), a more prominent raised fourth than in the

Turkish Style, and the melodic interval of the augmented second. It becomes
a more distinct style in the nineteenth century, and the augmented second
is increasingly used to connote Gypsy. The Gypsy Scale is then theorized
by Liszt,10 who emphasizes difference by choosing the raised fourth degree
and omitting the equally common diatonic fourth degree (see Ex. .).
Hungaria, Symphonic Poem no. (), has a conventional modulation to the dominant in bars while retaining a transposed version of
the Hungarian augmented second (see Ex. .). What we have is a spicedup major-minor tonality rather than music based on a different ethnic scale
patternunorthodox augmented seconds but an orthodox modulation. In

.. Liszts Gypsy Scale
similar fashion, the old church modes were appropriated for representing
the East and treated as if they belonged to major-minor tonality. The Dorian mode beginning on D, for example, can be regarded as the key of D
minor, but with the colorful foreignness of a B . Treating modes as inflected
major and minor scales means that one can modulate from, say, an Aeolianinflected tonic to an Aeolian-inflected dominant, as Berlioz does in The
Flight into Egypt from LEnfance du Christ ().
The midd le east

Rimsky-Korsakovs theme for Scheherazade is in the Dorian mode, as is the
opening of the Dance of the Priestesses from Saint-Sanss Samson et
Dalila (). Ralph P. Locke suggests that the Bacchanale of act is based
on the Arabic Hija z mode, which provides a lower tetrachord that contains
an augmented second (here the tetrachord is A, B , C , D); then, for the
upper tetrachord, Saint-Sans uses a transposition of this (i.e., E, F , G , A)
(see Ex. .). Locke says this is an option in Arabic music (Hija z Ka r) but
thinks it more likely that
Saint-Sanss repeated insistence on the augmented second in the
Bacchanale can be seen as an instance of the standard Orientalist
practice (described by anthropologist Francis Affergan) of emphasising the [sedimentary] residues . . . of what differs most from
Western practice; such an emphasis reifies the Easteners difference, thereby heightening rather than bridging the dichotomous
gap between Self and Other.11
.. Liszt, Hungaria

.. Saint-Sans, Bacchanale
If Saint-Sans was, indeed, concerned with the accuracy of the Arabic mode,
it may strike an Arab listener as odd to hear the sound of castanets accompanying this dance. The whole thing becomes more bizarre when one considers that it was originally written, though not completed, as a marche turque.
Some nineteenth-century English and North American songs that concern Arabs, such as Ill Sing Thee Songs of Araby,12 A Son of the Desert
Am I,13 and The Arabs Farewell to His Favourite Steed14 are basically
Western European in style. The melody of Caroline Nortons No More
Sea,15 however, is labeled Arab air (see Ex. .). The description clearly
had religious connotations at that time, no doubt because of associations
with biblical Palestine. Forty years later, arranged as the Hootchy-Kootchy
Dance,16 this same Arab air signified seductive sensuality. In other words,
when Orientalism appropriates music from another culture it is not used
simply to represent the Other; it is used to represent our own thoughts about
the Other.
The opening of Ravels Shhrazade overture () illustrates the use of
whole tones for exotic effect (see Ex. .). They may have come from the Indonesian music he heard at the Paris World Exposition in or from Russian exoticism. Rimsky-Korsakov was also at the exposition performing
rarely heard Russian repertoire. Whole-tone scales had been around in
Russian music for some time; they appear as early as (in Glinkas Ruslan and Lyudmila17). The opening of Rimsky-Korsakovs Scheherazade ()
has a whole-tone character. Russia was expanding into the Orient in the nineteenth century, occupying Samarkand and Bokhara in , for example,
and extending the trans-Caspian railway.18 Richard Taruskin has argued
that Borodins Prince Igor is a racially justified endorsement of Russias militaristic expansion to the east.19
Ravels other Shhrazade consists of settings of three poems by Tristan
Klingsor (real name: Lon Leclre) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra ().
Klingsor was stimulated by the recent French publication of J. C. Mardruss
translation of A Thousand and One Nights and took the title of his hundred-

.. Caroline Norton, No More Sea
poem collection Schhrazade from Rimsky-Korsakovs orchestral work. The

very beginning of Asie from Ravels Klingsor settings is a perfect summary
of musical Orientalism at the turn of the century: consider how the signification of the first bars is confirmed by the word Asie; this is a Western musical epitome of Asia. Against the hushed expectancy of tremolando muted
strings, the solo oboe plays a theme that contains a prominent augmented

.. Ravel, Shhrazade Overture
second, and at bar the voice enters summoning Asia three times (the second
time to an augmented second). Suddenly cymbals clash, the tempo quickens, and there is a downward rush of parallel motion chromatic harmony on
strings as prominence is given to high woodwinds and a jingling tambourine.
Perhaps Ravel went about as far as a Western composer could go with a conventional orchestra. Miklos Rozsa wanted to use the Ondes Martenot in his
film score to The Thief of Bagdad 20 of , but to his disappointment, Maurice Martenot, the only person able to play the instrument, was not available.21 It is obvious that Rozsa wanted a weird-sounding instrument; his priority was not to find an ethnically appropriate instrument, but then neither
was Messiaens in Turangalla. Rozsa had his limits, though: he refused to use
Adeste Fideles for the nativity scene in his score to Ben-Hur.22
Spain
Spain seems to have been characterized first by dance rhythms, especially
the fandango, as, for example, in Glucks Don Juan ballet of . Echoes of
Spanish dance rhythms are almost all there is of a Spanish character to
Webers music to Preciosa;23 the opening of the overture, for example, has
the whiff of a fandango about it. Webers Spanish Gypsies are characterized
by the style hongrois24 (a Spanish Gypsy style had to wait for Bizet). For a
development of the Spanish code, one could compare Rimsky-Korsakovs
fandango from Capriccio espagnol with the fandango from the act Finale of
Mozarts The Marriage of Figaro, which is, of course, set in Spain, though
Mozart has borrowed the melody of his fandango not from Spain but from
Gluck. Felicia Hemanss Mother, O! Sing Me to Rest,25 from a collection
of Peninsular Melodies that dates from the early nineteenth century, has
nothing recognizably Spanish about it in either words or music. Compare
the Spanish signifiers (quasi-guitar strumming and fandango rhythm) of
E. Harpers A Bandits Life Is the Life for Me! of (see Exx. . and .).
The fandango became associated with banditsI Am the Bandolero26 is another example. It is noteworthy that when the plot of Beethovens Fidelio was moved to Spain for censorship reasons, the composer felt no

.. Felicia Hemans, Mother, O! Sing Me to Rest

.. E. Harper, A Bandits Life Is the Life for Me

.. Rimsky-Korsakov, Canto gitano
urge to make musical changes. This was not an option for later nineteenthcentury operas located in Spain, for example, Bizets Carmen ().27 However, some changes of location do not demand a change in musical style. So,
it is ideologically significant that when Verdis Un Ballo in Maschera was
moved from royal Sweden to republican America to appease the censor,
Swedes and Americans were presumed either to sound the same (be the
same) or to be like Italians (in other words, normal). In Puccinis La Fanciulla American cowboys are Italians (that is, not represented as a cultural
Other), and Verdis Hebrew slaves (Nabucco) are Italians but not, for the
most part, his Egyptians (Aida).28 However, if we turn to a composer such
as Sullivan, who was very aware of the semiotics of style, we find that in The
Gondoliers the Italian style signifies Italythis is different from using a
style as a common language: there is an element of parody here or, at least,
an acknowledgment of cultural specificity.29
In his Canto gitano from Capriccio espagnol (), Rimsky-Korsakov
opts for Phrygian inflections rather than an augmented second between B
and C (see Ex. .). The Phrygian mode was to become a favorite Spanish
signifier (a guitarist today can quickly and easily suggest Spain by playing a
vigorous rhythm on the chord changes E major to F major to G major and
back again). Bizets fate theme from Carmen has Gypsy augmented seconds but moved around within Western-style sequences: they are not part
of a mode; they form a motive fit for transposing. However, the transposing
is not random: Bizet has the best of all worlds, using augmented seconds at
all three of the favorite places for signifying the cultural Other within the
space of an octave. He thereby produces something that approaches an Orientalist tone row (see Exx. . and .). Debussy, however, decides that
Liszts Hungarian Gypsy Scale is good enough for his habaera La Soire
dans Grenade of (see Ex. .).
Before we leave Spain, it is interesting to note that a TV advertisement
for Spanish vacations (run in January on UK Channel ) used an arrangement of Ravels Bolro as background music. This must have been
chosen because it was thought to signify Spain to potential British holidaymakers better than Spanish music does.
.. Bizet, Carmen, Prelude

.. Orientalist tone row
Ethnicit y and or ientalism

At this point, it is probably again useful to distinguish between ethnicity and
Orientalism. To remain with Ravel, the point can be illustrated with reference to his Rapsodie espagnole (). The final movement, Feria, contains
castanets; but castanets are not necessarily evidence of Orientalism in themselves. It is only when they are used, in a manner we might label castanet tokenism, to signify Spain. The presence or otherwise of Spanish blood in
Ravel himself is not an issue here; it is rather his use of the devices of Western concert music to construct Andalusia as a romantic and mysterious
landscape. A few examples must suffice: the augmented second in the clarinet theme after figure in the prelude (which tells us this is an Oriental
nocturne), the trs libre de mesure cor anglais solo in the second movement, and the cobra-coaxing clarinet after figure in the last movement.
Finally, to underline the argument with which this chapter began (that Orientalist styles relate to themselves rather than ethnic practices), one might
add to the example of Mozarts having borrowed his idea of Spanish melody
from Gluck a deep suspicion that Bernstein was thinking of the theme at figure in the aforementioned Feria when he wrote the music to I Feel
Pretty for his Puerto Rican heroine in West Side Story ().
North afr ica

The next stop on our musical tour is Egypt. Rameaus LEgiptienne (The
Egyptian woman) from Nouvelles Suites de Pices de Clavecin () has no
obvious Egyptian connotations today. But if we move once again to the
nineteenth century and compare it with Ballet gyptien () by French violinist Alexandre Luigini, we will find exotic signifiers are now in place.
.. Debussy, La Soire dans Grenade
Moreover, the opening theme of no. from Luiginis ballet suite signifies
strangeness with its whole-tone character. It is no doubt intended to convey
stock notions of the mystery of Egypt: recently, for example, I received a
travel brochure that invited me to cruise down the Nile and experience the
mystery and magic of Egypt (Egypts magic being economically illustrated
by a photograph of the Sphinx and three camels). Handels Israel in Egypt
is not Egyptian, of course, but neither is Glasss Akhnaten. The latter may
demonstrate a return to non-Orientalist treatment, that is, using a musical
style typified by its own contemporary cultural-historical context rather than
by any pseudo-geographical character of representation.30 Andrew Lloyd
Webbers Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is an example of a
popular but non-Orientalist stage work.
The accepted genealogy of the Egyptian style is that Flicien Davids La
Perle du Brsil (note the location) of influenced Meyerbeers LAfricaine
(his last work, performed posthumously in ), which influenced Verdi
when he was composing Aida in .31 Berliozs Flight into Egypt, mentioned earlier, has an Aeolian/Dorian modal character and prominent
woodwinds, especially cor anglais, to add to its Oriental character. Yet, rather
disconcertingly, he reverts immediately to the French pastorale for the Shepherds Chorus.32 The French influence behind the construction of the
Egyptian style is understandable when one reads Edward Saids comment
that for something more than the first half of the nineteenth century Paris
was the capital of the Orientalist world.33 For the musical-technological
world of today, Egypt would appear to be best connoted by an electronically
enhanced cor anglais, which is what the Egyptian Reed setting on a Proteus synthesizer amounts to.
The asian subcontinent

Characterization of the Asian subcontinent emerged rather later in the nineteenth century. John Pridhams descriptive fantasia for piano, The Battle
March of Delhi (), is without exoticisms, and even the purportedly genuine
Indian air sounds as if the missionaries have already arrived (see Ex. .).
In we find, Amy Woodforde-Findens music to Kashmiri Song
(Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar)34 has an Indian introduction
and is heavily perfumed elsewhere (see Ex. .). Whether this is the Phrygian mode or Rag Multani has no effect on its reception as Orientalism (that
is, as foreign sounds understood only as signifying otherness to a Western
listener). The Western listener does not need to recognize the Rag Multani
(or the Phrygian mode, for that matter); he or she merely requires familiarity with the way signifiers of the East are handled in Western music. The
convention is that the West always exerts power over those signifiers. Here
the foreign-sounding intervals are countered by the reassuring presence of
the piano (a triumph of Western technology and the respectable instru-

.. John Pridham, The Battle March of Delhi
ment of Western middle-class households), the equal-tempered tuning of

the piano, and the timbre of the piano. These are all of vital importance to
the way this song is received. Indeed, the cultural identity of the Rag Multani is open to question when played on the equal-tempered pitches of the
piano. A native of Kashmir would not recognize this song as anything other
than a Western masquerade, and that is before hearing the rich harmonies
that accompany its verses. There is an old recording of this song made by
Rudolph Valentino,35 and if you are unaware that he is the singer it may be

.. Amy Woodforde-Finden, Kashmiri Song
tempting to describe the performance as poor. However, such a recording

increases the impact of the songs Orientalism, because it adds Valentinos
own persona to the music, thus affecting its reception for those who are familiar with Valentino as a sort of all-purpose exotic Other. Although Western composers take more interest in India in the twentieth century, the ethnic musical practices of the East, as we have had several occasions to observe
earlier, count for little: meter, for example, will normally be organized as in
Western practice rather than in the manner of an Asian tala.
The far east

Finally, we move to the Far East, itself an ethnocentric labelit is far from
us, and therefore the term relies upon a metageography for its meaning.
Again an interchangeability of signifiers is commonplace. For example, the
Japanese music of a late-nineteenth-century drawing-room ballad, The
Mousmee,36 was found by singer Franklin Clive to be eminently suited to
the words of Rudyard Kiplings On the Road to Mandalay, its Oriental
character sufficing for Burma or Japan. In truth, by the end of the songs introduction we have not even left Hungary (see Ex. .). (In the poem,
Kipling reveals his own vague idea of geography, being under the impression
that the sun rises in the west over China across the bay from Mandalay.)
Sidney Jones made the more common move from Japan to China when
he followed up his musical success of , The Geisha, with San Toy of .
Puccini moved just as easily from Japan to China (Madama Butterfly to Turandot). Ping, Pong, and Pang (Turandot) are Chinese stereotypes (whatever
their satiric function): note, especially, their Non v in China toward the
end of act II, scene , with its staccato chords, glittering timbre (harp, celeste,
glockenspiel), pentatonicism, and singing in octaves rather than harmony.
In accordance with the ideological assumption that the lower orders are
more ethnically rooted than the higher, lowly Li is given the pentatonic

.. Walter W. Hedgcock, The Mousmee / On the Road to Mandalay
treatment, but not the Prince: see Signore, ascolta! followed by Non piangere, Li! from act .37 Puccinis augmented triads, gongs, and such (from
Butterfly and Turandot) are inherited by Ketlbey and paraded in his In a
Chinese Temple Garden.
Sir Edwin Arnolds Light of Asia () is the inspiration for Fred
Weatherlys lyric to Nirvana (, music by Stephen Adams). The words
feature the fallen civilization theme of Orientalist writing (The temples
old decay). The songs message is that the Orient has mystic Nirvana; the
Occident has human love that aspires to the divine. Here chinoiserie is con-

.. Stephen Adams, Nirvana
structed by bare fifths, pentatonic melody, and the rhythmic pulse of the
piano accompaniment. The Sheik of Araby38 has a similar pulsation, but
now, quickened in tempo and alla breve, it is associated with the decidedly
unholy fox-trot (see Exx. . and .). Pentatonicism and parallel fourths
are the basic signifiers for chinoiserie; see Ravels characterization of the
China cup in LEnfant et les Sortilges (), especially from figure in the
orchestral score. (That the parallel fourths are played on the celeste is also
significant.)
One of the twentieth centurys most successful Orientalist musicals,
prior to Miss Saigon, was Chu Chin Chow (music by Frederic Norton, ),
loosely based on the tale of Ali Baba. The film version of opens with an
image of an enormous cake in the shape of a domed palace or mosque. The
Orientalist stereotype portrayed here is that of decadence and monstrous
appetite. A little later there is an argument between husband and wife over
who is to wear the jewels. The Orientalist stereotype this time is effeminacy.
The falsetto voice of one male servant or slave is the only hint we are given

.. Ted Snyder, The Sheik of Araby
of the presence of eunuchs (it was obviously a delicate matter in , but

worth a quick laugh for the knowing member of the audience). Chu Chin
Chow is a merchant Mandarin who is to visit Baghdad from China; on the
way, he is robbed and killed together with his entourage by the Forty Thieves.
By such ingenious means, the whole of the East is distilled into one plot.
Zahrat, the treacherous Egyptian slave girl, is played by Anna May
Wong, looking distinctly Chinese. All accents, however, are s received
English (for example, dazzled pronounced as dezzled), with the exception of that of the leader of the thieves, Abu Hassan (whose accent suggests
simply foreign villain). The Orientalism of the music is inconsistent, too.
The chorus We Are the Robbers of the Woods could be a song for Robin
Hood and his Merry Men. A female slave market scene is introduced that is
not in the original Arabian Nights tale.39 It provides another Orientalist
stereotype: They are sex mad. During the musicals first run, the Lord
Chamberlains Office became involved in investigating a complaint of near
nudity and non controlled breast movement.40 The Orient is associated
with sexual promise41: note its chocolate substitute in Frys Turkish Delight, which has long been advertised as full of Eastern promise. Chu Chin
Chow ran in Londons West End for five years () and was seen by
nearly million people. Oscar Asche, the librettist, said that he intended a
vision of the romance, the spendour, the inscrutable mystery of the East.42
In September Miss Saigon (Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schnberg, ) opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, and it went on
to exceed the success and longevity of Chu Chin Chow. Its Orientalism is similarly erratic,43 even though the orchestration makes use of a cor anglais and
an ethnic flute44 (whatever that may be). A few numbers are conspicuous
for their Orientalist treatment: one of these (If You Want to Die in Bed) is
sung, predictably, by the villain of the piece. Ironically, this is the character
who is convinced that the United States is where he should have been born.
The Far Eastern Orientalist style soon passed into dance band music
and film music. An example of the former is Bert Ambroses recording of A
Japanese Dream.45 Roy Prendergast has remarked of the Chinese music in
films of the s and s: The Western listener simply does not understand the symbols of authentic Oriental music as he does those of Western
music; therefore, Oriental music would have little dramatic effect for him.46
An example of more recent pop chinoiserie is David Bowie and Iggy Pops
China Girl ().
Or ientalist music as representat ion

There is a popular misconception to correct: Orientalist music is not poor
imitation of another cultural practice: its purpose is not to imitate but to
represent. Therefore, the Orient can begin in Spain if the intention is simply
to connote a cultural Other.47 However, as I was concerned to emphasize at
the outset of this essay, there is not one Orientalist style: therefore, a chain of
signifiers may be assembled to represent a more defined other culture, in
which case Spain may be connoted in a more specific manner. Even then,
there may be no distinction made between Spain, Mexico, and South American countries. A further refinement would come if such things as the differing musical characters of the Spanish and Argentine tangos were distinguished, but this is about as far as Orientalism can go, because representations
rely upon culturally learned recognition. The peculiar achievement of Orientalism is, of course, that it gives rise to misrecognition. Imitation aims to duplicate; musical Orientalism has little to do with the objective conditions of
non-Western musical practicesrather, it brings something new into being.
Here is a list of Orientalist devices, many of which can be applied indiscriminately as markers of cultural difference48: whole tones; Aeolian,
Dorian, but especially the Phrygian mode; augmented seconds and fourths
(especially with Lydian or Phrygian inflexions); arabesques and ornamented
lines; elaborate Ah! melismas for voice; sliding or sinuous chromaticism
(for example, snaking downward on cor anglais); trills and dissonant grace
notes; rapid scale passages (especially of an irregular fit, e.g., eleven notes to
be played in the time of two crotchets); a melody that suddenly shifts to
notes of shorter value; abrupt juxtapositions of romantic, lyrical tunes and
busy, energetic passages; repetitive rhythms (Ravels Bolro is an extreme case
of rhythmic insistence) and repetitive small-compass melodies; ostinati; ad
libitum sections (colla parte, senza tempo, etc.); use of triplets in duple time;
complex or irregular rhythms; parallel movement in fourths, fifths, and octaves (especially in the woodwinds); bare fifths; drones and pedal points;
magic or mystic chords (which possess uncertainty of duration and/
or harmonic direction49); harp arpeggios and glissandi (Rimsky-Korsakov
changes the connotation of the harp with a mythical past to one of Oriental exoticism50); double reeds (oboe and especially cor anglais); percussion
(especially tambourine, triangle, cymbals, and gong); emphatic rhythmic

figures on unpitched percussion (such as tom-toms, tambourine, and triangle). The register of the melody can be important: for example the cor
anglais connotes the East more emphatically than does the oboe. The use of
a frame is often important: for example, Rimsky-Korsakovs Canto gitano, mentioned earlier, is more than a song arrangement; its full title is
Scena e canto gitano, and the appearances of the song melody are framed
by such things as free cadenza passages and feroce strings, which enclose its
character and meaning within an Orientalist package. Whether or not any
of the musical devices and processes listed in this paragraph exist in any
Eastern ethnic practices is almost irrelevant. As Said explains, In a system
of knowledge about the Orient, the Orient is less a place than a topos, a set
of references.51
Or ientalist music and its meaning s

There have been arguments put forward to emphasize that there can be a
positive as well as a negative side to musical Orientalism.52 There is, for example, the well-known use of the foreign for purposes of social critique;
for example, in Gilbert and Sullivans The Mikado, Ko-Kos list for execution
is comprised wholly of irritating English characters. J. J. Clarke speaks of the
East being used as a mirror in which to scrutinize the assumptions and
prejudices of Western traditions.53 For Orientalism, however, the mirror
metaphor, is too simplistic: it is not a reflected East but a constructed East
that is the issue. Moreover, the use of another culture as critique, no matter
how well intended, can sometimes end up being dehumanizing (as we saw
in the case of the eco-warrior stereotyping of Native Americans in chapter ). A positive side to Orientalism is also found in the potential it offers
for embracing difference (often with an erotic charge54) or for delivering a
Bakhtinian carnivalesque inversion of dominant values.55 Yet there is always
a risk of encouraging notions not simply of ethnic difference but of racial
difference. Singaporean violinist Vanessa Mae, for example, was presented at
age as sexy and sensual. It would have been impossible to market a teenage
white all-American female violinist like this without outrage. There is also
the real danger of Orientalism fixing devil-may-care attitudes of the theyre
all foreign johnnies variety. Amnesty International advertisements that followed a television documentary that concerned sales of torture equipment
by British companies were headed with the quotation: I dont really fill my
mind much with what one set of foreigners is doing to another.56 Said has
described the limitations of Orientalism as those that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people,
or geographical region.57
Orientalism describes the representation of the Eastern Other to the
Western Self; it is not an impartial account of cultural difference, it is alter-
ity understood in terms of fear and desire, terror and lack.58 Notions of
normativity and universality attach to the Western self-image, but when the
Westerner is confronted with difference, strangeness, and a code of behavior
that breaks with Western cultural prohibitions, desire is created (whether as
Lacanian lack, Foucauldian incitement, or Deleuzian production). Since a
transhistorical Western psychology is not being posited here, it is necessary
to examine the changes in the historical, political, and economic determinants of human consciousness that explain the rapid rise of Orientalism in
Western music of the nineteenth century. Its development should not be
thought of simply as part of an evolution of musical style but, rather, must
be located in its sociohistorical context. For the West, experiencing the rapid
social change brought on by industrialization, the Orient must have exerted
a fascination as a place that was conceived of as synonymous with stability
and unchanging eternality.59 In the second half of that century, however,
scientists of ethnology and anthropology were classifying races according
to physical (especially craniological) and cultural characteristics, thereby
breaking with the Enlightenment notion of the universal body. Moreover,
Herbert Spencers theory of the survival of the fittest60 was a useful tool for
determining evidence of weak and superior races. In Victorian Britain
after around , race, rather than social standing, was likely to be the predominant factor in deciding how a person was to be treated.61 In the early
twentieth century, eugenics and anthropometrics were concerned with the
idea of degenerate races (the consequences of which we know all too well).
Orientalism also provided a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient.62 This is already evident at the beginning of Orientalism in music, in
the Turkish Style, which, with its constructed crudities and errors, gave a
sense of cultural superiority over the Turks. The related issue of the Oriental as childlike63 and the theory of Semitic simplicity64 finds a musical illustration in Hassans song There Was Once a Small Street Arab from The
Rose of Persia (Basil Hood and Arthur Sullivan, ) and connects back to
Purcells childlike portrayal of the Indian Boy.
In the eighteenth century, not only is there the cult of the Noble Savage
to consider, but also the cultural elite were still able to regard the peasantry
as a cultural Other. For a while this persisted even after the making of a
working class, as shown by J. E. Ritchies comments in The Night Side of London that the costermonger race is alien and their songs are not ours
(addressing the reader as an assumed class equal).65 Hence, the favored
means of musical representation of a cultural Other prior to Orientalist
music was the pastoral style. Pastoral conventions signify a rural Other in
opposition to the courtly (later urban), in much the same way as Orientalist conventions signify an East in opposition to the West. However, though
pastoral conventions, like Orientalist conventions, carry associations of nature as opposed to art, they do not function as signs of ethnic difference.
Conventions for representing ethnic difference developed alongside the rise
of an aggressive mercantile bourgeoisie and were usually first applied to
neighboring countries over which they held sway. In England, where the
breakup of feudalism came early, racial caricaturesIrish, Scottish, and
Welshappeared in song at the time of Dibdins Table Entertainments toward the end of the eighteenth century.66
The contradictory messages of Orientalist music can be found in its
earliest manifestations, such as the style hongrois. Because of that styles association with Gypsies and because Gypsies were often viewed as untrustworthy, it was often used to suggest dissembling.67 Yet Gypsies could be
identified with as outsiders, which is what Bellman feels Schubert did.68 The
construction of Jewishness in Western music is perhaps the most fraught
with contradictions. The musical Jew is sometimes the ordinary Western
Europeaneven an implied Christian Protestant. In Handels Judas Maccabeus (), the Romans are the villains, suggesting the Roman Catholic
Stuarts of the recently crushed Jacobite Rebellion to the English Protestant
middle class. In other Handel oratorios, the Jews as chosen people again
resonated with middle-class aspirations. A similar ideology is at play in the
twentieth century in MGMs biblical epics (especially evident when Jewish
heroes are played by Gentiles). Here, again, myth relates to myth: Hollywood film composers construct an identity for the Israelites that is more
reminiscent of the Western medieval church than Palestine.69 In its harmonic language and use of Aeolian, Dorian, and Phrygian modes this style
owes more to a work like Vaughan Williamss Tallis Fantasia than any Middle
Eastern culture; and it is found persuasive because the Israelites are regarded
as being to all intents and purposes American Christians. In other words, the
music tells us not about them but about our attitude to them. Set against this
is a tradition that emphasizes difference. The Jew as Other is evident in the
nineteenth century (for example, in Sullivans Ivanhoe) and twentieth century (for example, Jerry Bocks music to the Broadway musical Fiddler on
the Roof, ). Finally, there is the interesting case of Der Juden Tanz by
sixteenth-century composer Hans Neusiedler. It became known to many
from its publication in Archibald T. Davison and Willi Apels Historical Anthology of Music, where it is described as having shrill dissonances, otherwise unheard of before the adventurous experiments of twentieth-century
music, that produce an extremely realistic picture, not lacking a touch of
satire.70 That these remarkable dissonances are now thought to result from
a misreading of lute tablature71 raises the question: Why did it take so long
for anyone to suspect anything was wrong? Had the piece not been titled
The Jews Dance, would this have been accepted so readily as an accurate
transcription?
Returning to more positive thoughts, how much does musical impressionism owe to musical Orientalism? Compare the way some impressionist painters moved away from light and shade, deep perspective, and other
realist techniques to flattened form, bright, fresh colors, and decorative effects (the influence of Japanese prints from ) with the way some composers moved from major/minor tonality to the use of whole-tone scales
(the influence of Java, Bali, etc.), an emphasis on timbre, and use of sequence and repetition rather than Beethovenian motivic development. Debussys piano prelude Voiles is an example of whole-tone impressionism;
does it suggest any connection with the voiles violettes of the ship that, in
Klingsors poem,72 is about to depart for Asia? In the same poem, Klingsor
refers to the seas having un vieux rythme ensorceleur that could have appealed to the composer of La Mer. Prlude laprs-midi dun faune proclaims a new musical cosmos, according to Hugh Macdonald,73 but it is
not a million miles from Orientalism (whole-tone movement, repetition,
arabesques, etc.).
So how far have we traveled along the road of musical Orientalism
since the eighteenth century? Let us return to Turkey and come full circle
with the Pogues, whose mixture of punk and Irish folk is also able to embrace Orientalist musical constructions. In the music to Turkish Song of
the Damned (MacGowan-Finer) of , an augmented second falls between the second and third degrees of the scale and there is a flattened seventh in the upper tetrachord. These signs of cultural difference may not be
identical to those used in eighteenth-century Turkish Style, but we can conclude from the background screams and menacing lyrics of this song that
their connotations are very similar. Thus, our survey would seem to indicate
that, in one sense, we have not moved at all.
Orientalism is never quite a case of anything goes; it is possible to mix
signifiers of difference in a confusing manner: for example, it would be possible to write a calypso using Liszts Hungarian scale. Moreover, Orientalist signs are contextual. For example a mixture of 68 and 43 is not a sign for
Spanish in William Byrds madrigal Though Amaryllis Dance in Green,
but it is in Bernsteins I Want to Be in America (from West Side Story).
Likewise, the similarity between the close of the first movement of Anton
Bruckners Sixth Symphony and the theme tune of Maurice Jarres Lawrence
of Arabia does not create confusion. It is interesting, nonetheless, to wonder
how much more stress on the Phrygian in Bruckners coda would have been
necessary to conjure up Sinbad for Donald F. Tovey, rather than Odysseus.74
However, putting such matters as context aside, the geographical vagueness
of much musical Orientalism remains. I will conclude with a final example,
this time as it occurs in the labeling of exotic instruments: if we consult
Everymans Dictionary of Music75 for a definition of Turkish Crescent we
find see Chinese Pavilion.
8
the impact of african-american
music making on the european
classical tradition in the 1920s
the reasons that European classical composers were attracted to jazz

during the early twentieth century were several and complex. A major social
reason was the desire to put the First World War and prewar values behind
them.1 In Paris, composers were affected by the rage for art ngre and the fascination with Africa shown by artists such as Picasso. There were musical
reasons, too. Jazz offered a way out of the Wagner impassethat is, it provided an answer to the question: Where on earth do you go next after scaling the grand heights of Parsifal? The musical terrain of jazz presented fresh
possibilities that were there for the taking. Jazz also offered a solution to the
impasse caused by the supposed exhaustion of tonal harmony, in that it
was unmistakably of its time yet unrepentantly tonal. Furthermore, it provided a remedy for the malaise of fin de sicle decadence. Ironically, this
sometimes meant jazz features were employed in the construction of a new
kind of decadence (a sort of middle-class slumming). Yet jazz could also
function as a musical resource for replacing decadence with a new earthy
vigor. Not least, jazz could be used to revitalize the classical tradition: jazz
melodic features and syncopations allowed composers to return to writing
something academically commendable, such as a fugue, while still sounding
provocatively modern. It was even possible to take a Bach fugue and give it
a syncopated lift, as did Hindemith in his Ragtime (), which is based
on the C-minor fugue from book of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Another
reason for the appeal of jazz was that it suggested ways of obtaining rhythmic variety without the need for the irregular meters of Le Sacre. Jazz appealed to composers who were conservative in musical style as well as to
those who prized innovative idioms. Some composers looked to jazz as a
lifeline for the survival of the European classical tradition, in the same way
as others looked to types of European music that stood outside classical

practices. An example of the latter would be Bartk and Magyar music.
It is evident, however, that the appropriation of a handful of techniques
associated with African-American music making for use in European concert music came to nothing as part of the modernist project. Ernst Krenek
considered in retrospect that jazz was used in the s as a last-ditch attempt to hide the disintegration of tonality.2 Certainly, by the s most
modernist composers had taken the serial route. Jazz, in fact, challenges one
of the crucial grand narratives of modernism: the end or dissolution of
tonality. For these modernists, the tonal structure of jazz belonged in the
cultural museum; it was not a case of doo-doo-be-doo but of dodo, be
gone! Although jazz was to develop its own modernist wing, it should not
in the early decades of the twentieth century be equated with modernism.
Rather, jazz needs to be understood in relation to modernity, the novel and
characteristic social features of which were cosmopolitanism and the alienated artist. In this context, the Jewish interest in jazz is significant, whether
in bands, popular songs, musical theater, or the concert hall. Darius Milhaud, George Gershwin, and Kurt Weill were, of course, Jewish, as were the
popular songwriters Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern.
One fundamental effect of the jazz invasion of Europe after the First
World War was that it changed the European perception of Africa and Africans. In the s, the continent of Africa would be typically characterized
by African-American jazz and the typical image of an African would be of a
black-skinned person who lived in the hot jungle areas. In the nineteenth
century, it was the northern parts of Africa that sprang to mind first, and as
late as the continent was still being characterized by Orientalist music,
as Saint-Sanss Africa, a fantasy for piano and orchestra shows (see Ex. .).
The appeal of afr ican-amer ican music making
In the s, African-American music making was already beginning to interest the composer Frederick Delius, who as a young man in Florida was
.. Saint-Sans, Africa, op.
the impact of african-american music making
working during that decade as an orange planter. He confided to Eric Fenby

that the urge to be a composer came from the African-American music making he heard there. He was very taken with the singing of African Americans
on the plantation, and he particularly liked to hear his black foreman sing,
often inviting him into the house and accompanying him on the piano.3
Deliuss first orchestral work was the Florida Suite of , and it contains
two black American dances, one in the first movement and the other in the
third. It is significant that both of these dances start with a simple style that
suggests innocence, then introduce disturbing, even threatening, Orientalist
signifiers. Delius thus falls back on the conventional means of suggesting
an ethnic Other. In the context of these brief remarks about Delius, there is
a myth I would like to dispel. It is frequently heard that Duke Ellingtons
sometimes impressionist harmony is the result of his studying the music
of Delius. Ellington, in fact, learned about harmony and arranging from
Will Vodery, who arranged for the Ziegfield Follies. However, there is an
ironic twist, because Edvard Grieg, who influenced Deliuss harmonic style,
has been a strong influence on the harmonic style of Norwegian jazz.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Anglo-African composer
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who had leaped to fame with Hiawathas Wedding
Feast in , was encouraged to take an interest in black American music by
Fred Loudin of the Jubilee Singers.4 Coleridge-Taylor composed an orchestral piece, La Bamboula, and conducted it with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in . A bamboula was originally a type of African tambourine, but the name was adopted for a dance that became popular in New
Orleans in the early nineteenth century. Coleridge-Taylor uses a tune of Creole origin.5 The musical treatment Coleridge-Taylor gives to this tune, however, suggests Tchaikovsky rather than Creole music making (most strikingly in the largamente variation). Coleridge-Taylor did not see himself, nor
was he viewed by contemporary critics, as the creator of a black style. In true
classical fashion, he applies his musical ingenuity to developing and extending his material. Indeed, the Daily Telegraph had remarked in that his
talent drew the hope and expectation of all who wish well to English art.6
The emphasis here is still on the expectations raised by what has become
known as the Second English Musical Renaissance.
Before the s, African-American music making was associated most
strongly with ragtime and the cakewalk. The cakewalk had featured in blackface minstrel shows of the s, but it was its performance by Charles E.
Johnson and Dora Dean in The Creole Show () that was to lead to its
wider popularity. The cakewalk provided a novel dance to ragtime music of
the s: it soon became the rage in the United States, and then in Europe
just after the turn of the twentieth century.7 Lehr included a cakewalk in his
operetta The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) of , though it contains
no syncopation and thus resembles a Sousa march (the well-known Stars
and Stripes Forever of , for instance) more than a ragtime. Ironically,
Sousas band did play arrangements of syncopated dance music as well as
marches. Characteristic ragtime syncopation is found in Debussys Gollywoggs Cake-Walk from his Childrens Corner Suite of , yet there is
also quirky use of a very untypical blue note, the flattened sixth. Moreover,
the crudity of the added-note chords and the mocking tone is difficult to
judge. We cannot be sure, for example, that Debussy is poking fun at Wagner with the Tristan quotation in the middle section; he may be suggesting
that quality music sounds absurd in such a contexta context that, by
implication, is thus revealed as trivial. It is by no means certain, either, that
Debussy has African-American music in mind. It is possible that here, as
in his first book of prludes, he is thinking of blackface minstrelsy. Debussy
may have been given the idea of writing a ragtime piano piece by hearing
his friend Saties Le Picadilly of . Debussys cakewalk bears a more striking rhythmic resemblance, however, to a popular New York ragtime song of
, Hello! Ma Baby (Howard-Emerson).
Ragtime began to have an impact on British popular song after the visit
of the American Ragtime Octette in . Music hall artists responded to the
challenge: even Marie Lloyd recorded a ragtime song, The Piccadilly Trot
(David-Arthurs) in .8 In George Formby seniors song John Willies Ragtime Band of ,9 there is a reference to Hitchy-Koo,10 a nonsense song
(and therefore morally suspect) with which the Octette had scandalized respectable Edwardian society. For the respectable music press,Hitchy-Koo
was the last word in aimless, brainless rottenness.11 The Formby song is
satirical, suggesting that ragtime had become so popular that even a northern brass band is playing it. Jazz, in fact, remained controversial for brass
bands for many years, even to as late as , when Philip Wilby composed
a championship test piece called Jazz.
A few words of historical background need to be added that concern the
blues. A blues idiom is hinted at in A Negro Love-Song, a pentatonic melody
with blue third and seventh in Coleridge-Taylors African Suite of , many
years before the first blues publications. These are often credited to W. C.
Handy, the so-called Father of the Blues, who began a series of blues publications with The Memphis Blues in . However, A. Maggios I Got the
Blues of has many blues features, which included a -bar section with
characteristic chord progressions,12 and Peter van der Merwe has cited an even
earlier extant example of a -bar blues, One o Them Things? of by
James Chapman.13 The blues entered the concert repertoire with the second
movement of Gershwins Piano Concerto of . The second movement of
Ravels Violin Sonata of is also titled Blues, but it is a blues in which any
African-American characteristics have been doused in a heady cocktail of
French art music techniques. The result, lightly tripping, occasionally sulky,
but always clean and never losing sight of decorum, is as remote from the
blues as Paris is from the Mississippi Delta. Ravel described his use of jazz idioms in this sonata as a picturesque adventure, though he had a genuine interest in jazz.14 His interest, however, was in how jazz might serve many of
us as entertainment; he was clear that it has nothing in common with art.15
In Europe, as in the United States, jazz appealed to the young, to bohemian intellectuals, and to those who felt alienated by or who rejected
dominant social values. There was a sense in which this music seemed to
promise greater personal freedom.16 The first jazz recordings were made by
the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, an all-white ensemble, for the U.S. Victor
Company in . The ODJB visited Britain in , making records and performing at various London venues over many months, including at the
opening of the Hammersmith Palais de Dance. They were a quintet, which
consisted of clarinet, cornet, trombone, piano, and drums, and played the
polyphonic small-group jazz of New Orleans that within a few years was obscured by the success of commercial big band jazz and, in particular, the
symphonic jazz of Paul Whiteman, who commissioned Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue (). It was, unsurprisingly, commercial ballroom jazz that
became best known in Europe. However, black musicians were in massive
demand in the s in restaurants, clubs, and hotels throughout Europe according to the black entertainer Tom Fletcher.17 The bands these establishments employed were generally four to six strong.
I now propose to single out particular pieces by composers who worked
in the European classical tradition, in order to demonstrate some of the different ways in which jazz was being used. First, I should explain that here I
am using the term jazz in what some will feel is an unduly broad sense, for
although the s were quickly labeled the jazz age in both the United
States and Europe, definitions of what was and was not jazz were hotly contested even at that time. Charles Hamm has noted that the term was used as
a label for three distinct bodies of music in the s: that of the race
records (understood as being by blacks for blacks), that of blacks who were
performing for whites within a white cultural milieu, and that performed by
whites for whites.18
Jazz and moder nism
Stravinsky said his choice of instruments in LHistoire du soldat (composed
in and published in after revisions in ) was influenced by his
discovery of American jazz, and he calls these instruments jazz legitimates,
the bassoon excepted. He chose that as a substitute for the saxophone, an instrument he thought turbid and penetrating and better used in orchestral
combinations. He also instances the percussion part as a manifestation of
his enthusiasm for jazz,19 though, needless to say, it is not for drum kit. The
clarinet and cornet are not typical, either, since he opts for instruments
pitched in A rather than B . Furthermore, he confesses:
My knowledge of jazz was derived exclusively from copies of sheet
music, and as I had never actually heard any of the music performed,
I borrowed its rhythmic style not as played, but as written. I could
imagine jazz sound, however, or so I liked to think.20
Anyone acquainted with the parody of Elvis Presleys rock n roll in Shostakovichs Cheryomushki, something that composer had never actually heard,
will be aware of the dangers of this line of thought.
In , also, Stravinsky wrote a piece for eleven instruments titled Ragtime, which he arranged for piano in . Roger Scruton has asserted that
jazz bequeathed its rhythms to Stravinsky.21 Yet from the evidence of this
and other jazz-influenced pieces, it seems to me that it would be more accurate to claim that Stravinsky eliminated vital jazz qualities from those
rhythms. It was a consequence of his misunderstanding both jazz swing and
the relation between the polyrhythmic dimension of jazz and the steady
pulse. Olly Wilson has shown how important the legacy of West African
polyrhythm has been to African-American music making.22 Stravinskys
Ragtime is ironically detached, and its satirical gestures assume that the listener finds a such features as tonic-dominant bass movement and Tin Pan
Alley type cadential punctuations ridiculously tritewhich, of course, they
are when found in the refined company of classical techniques (see Ex. .).
Everything that defines ragtime as a style is, from Stravinskys perspective, a clich with which to have fun. Ragtimes are typically in duple meter;
Stravinsky chooses to writes his in common time and makes use of dotted
rhythms and shorter note values that are more reminiscent of a fox-trot. He
takes the typical ragtime introduction and distorts it melodically (note the
.. Stravinsky, Ragime (), piano version of , opening
displaced octaves in bar 3) and tonally. Ragtime is a strongly tonal style, so

he amusingly suggests a tonic-dominant in bar 4, then begins the first section proper in an unrelated key (the musical joke lies in its unexpectedness).
Moreover, the bass in bar 4 seems to arrive a beat late (the joke underlined
by exaggerating the dynamic level). Once under way, Stravinsky does not
swing; he fidgets. There is absolutely no question of the pianist being allowed to indulge in the common practice of stomping his or her left foot
while playing this rag, nor is there any sense of that relaxation that Andr
Hodeir claims plays an essential role in the production of swing.23 A more
pronounced nervous jerkiness is evident in the ragtime in Soldiers Tale,
where the genres functional roots in the march disappear as early as bar 9,
presumably because they can serve only to distract the listener from regarding the piece as an autonomous object for aesthetic contemplation. Compare Example 8.2 to an excerpt from J. Reginald MacEachrons On Easy
Street (In Rags) of 1901 (see Ex. 8.3).24
In Example . we have two independent voices in the treble, as in
Stravinskys Ragtime, but here the lower voice is employed as a repetitive
motive (or riff), which, in a way characteristic of African-American practice, seems to respond to the other voice. Stravinsky, instead, provides no
clear pattern to his semitonal slithering in either part: these voices seem designed mainly to undermine the tonality implied by the tonic-dominant
movement in the bass. Nowhere in his prose writings or interviews does he
feel the need to explain why he is so careful to avoid the more populist elements of jazz. Henry Pleasants has suggested that serious composers constructed their music like this in order to give it immunity from plebeian
emulation.25 Such a motivation, however, would not be the whole story in
Stravinskys case: he used jazz as an aid in modernist progress, finding
novel directions for his music and achieving compositional coups. He explained that the importance of jazz to his own career was that it meant a
wholly new sound in his music and remarked that Histoire marked his
final break with the Russian orchestral school.26 Nevertheless, Stravinsky
soon tired of jazz features and, by , was under the impression that jazz
itself was a passing fashion and destined to disappear.27
.. J. Reginald MacEachron, On Easy Street (In Rags) (), beginning

of second section
Jazz and afr ica

Most of the carving up of Africa by the great powers of Europe took place
between and : European colonies accounted for barely percent
of the continent in but for percent twenty years later.28 As a consequence of the Treaty of Berlin of , any European power that occupied
fresh African territory was merely called upon to notify the others. Thus, the
scramble for Africa began in earnest. It was during this time that the
French expanded into Tunisia, to the annoyance of Italy. Saint-Sanss Africa
compounds the affront by including a Tunisian melody.
Milhaud, having spent two years in Brazil, had not experienced the introduction to jazz that Cocteau and others had enjoyed at the Casino de
Paris in . He was, instead, fascinated by hearing jazz for the first time in
at Londons Hammersmith Palais, where Billy Arnolds band of white
jazz musicians from New York was playing, and went to this dance hall
often.29 Then, in , Milhaud found an opportunity to visit Harlem. He
described what he heard there as authentic music which had its roots in the
darkest corners of the Negro soul.30 It is not surprising that he should think
such music highly appropriate for a ballet that concerned the creation of
vegetable, animal, and human life by African deities. Lawrence Kramer has
reminded us that French exploitation of its Congo colony formed the backdrop to French fantasies of black Africa as a primitive Eden in the s.
Moreover, Kramer has identified jazz as the chief medium for the fantasy.31
It was ironic that jazz, that music of the city, was to receive one of its most
successful classical incarnations as a representation of a nonurban world. In
this, Milhaud followed in the footsteps of the primitivist movement in art,
which was linked to a critique of technological rationality.32 The concerns
were the ever-increasing impact of the machine, the development of the
chemical industries, and the constant new building and disappearing green
under black asphaltin other words, the anxieties that issued from the experience of modernity. Nowhere was the experience of such change greater
than in the metropolis.33
The term art ngre came to be synonymous with primitive art in
Paris. The label primitive is ethnocentric but was not, as an artistic term,
intended pejoratively. For the avant-garde, the primitive was something of
which they approved, since it allowed them to champion an aesthetic different from that of the official Beaux Arts and salon and to challenge bourgeois
values. In art as in music, Orientalist attitudes persisted for a while (for example, in some early work of the Fauves), but change was effected by Picasso
and the Cubists (beginning, famously, with Les Demoiselles dAvignon of
). Just as jazz was to have little eventual impact on musical modernism,
so African tribal art was to cause no fundamental change in the direction
of modern art, with even Picasso admitting that the African sculptures in
his studios were more witnesses to his works than models.34 Indeed, Czannes painting may have played a greater role in the development of Cub-
ism. Whatever the case may be, there were certainly as many misreadings of
African art by painters and sculptors of this time as there were misconceptions of African-American music by composers.35
The setting of La Cration du monde is Africa, and the use of jazz idioms
reveals the common confusion of African and black American in the European mind. It was performed by the Ballet Sudois in , with dcor and
costumes by Fernand Lger, who would have benefited from seeing the art
ngre exhibition in Paris in . His dcor was originally intended to represent power and darkness through use of African art and divinities, but he
was disappointed at the result, which he never thought terrifying enough.36
The scenario was by Blaise Cendrars, based on African creation myths
drawn from an anthology of African writing he had published in . In the
wider social context, the new birth trope appealed to the desire for renewal
after the First World War. Finally, the choreography was by Jean Brlin, who
involved himself in some ethnographic research. The dancers were, of course,
white; this African ballet was not performed with black dancers until
at the Ballet Theater in New York.37 Milhaud made conflicting statements
about his choice of seventeen solo instruments, claiming to be influenced by
Harlem orchestras (presumably the pit bands of theaters), but also admitting to being inspired by a contemporary musical, Liza by Maceo Pinkard.38
I intend to examine the four-voice jazz fugue that accompanies the opening scene as the gods of creation Nzam, Mdre, and Nkva hold counsel
and circle around a formless mass of intertwined bodies. Milhaud enjoyed
listening to jazz records, and Gunther Schuller has revealed Milhauds indebtedness to the ODJBs Livery Stable Blues39 in this fugue, especially with
respect to anacrusis figures, alternating major and minor thirds, and syncopations.40 The fugue subject is at first bars long (though after the initial statement it becomes ), and shares the use of flattened third and seventh and the
subdominant inclinations that are characteristic of the blues.41 What we have
in the end, however, is classical counterpoint with a jazz flavor (see Ex. .).
Example . shows the fugal exposition, which begins with the entry of
the subject, followed by the answer in the supertonic. At the next entry of the
subject (in the dominant) we become aware that Milhaud is writing a regular countersubject in the best academic practice. When the answer follows in
the tonic, we find that the second countersubject is also designed to be regular. Except for the unusual melodic and rhythmic character of the theme
and the unorthodox key scheme, Milhaud is closer to German Baroque
practice than New Orleans polyphony. As an example of jazz counterpoint,
consider Louis Armstrongs Hot Five recording of Muskrat Ramble
(Ory).42 It demonstrates the characteristic three-part counterpoint of the
clarinet, cornet, and trombone front line heard in New Orleans bands of the
twenties (see Ex. .). On this record, the counterpoint is set against a
rhythm section of banjo and piano. The cornet is the melodic lead instrument, but notice the instances of dialogue between parts in this excerpt: the
cornet and clarinet taking over from the trombone in the second bar, the

example 8.4. Milhaud, La Cration du monde, op. (), fugue
trombone returning with a response in the third bar, and the clarinet imitating the cornets rhythmic figure in the fifth bar. There are also two moments that defy conventional notation: the dirty intonation on trombone
in bar and the cornet downward slide in the last bar (this effect was lost on
European composers, though they were fond of a trombone glissando).
There is, finally, an example of the chance crudity that is inevitable when
players are improvising simultaneously: the momentary textural imbalance
caused by the octave doubling between cornet and trombone in bars and .
Milhaud also departs from jazz practice in the way he treats the percussion during his fugal exposition. He constructs a 4-bar pattern that he then
repeats unchanged five times. Because it cuts across the 5-bar fugal entries,
its character is independent and detached; it does not respond to the entries

.. Muskrat Ramble (Ory, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five,
recorded Chicago, 26 Feb. 1926 9538-A), transcribed by Richard Middleton 43
by engaging in any form of musical dialogue. Thus, as in Stravinskys Ragtime, we find a crucial African-American musical feature willfully cast aside.
Milhaud did not show any further interest in the style he had developed in
La Cration and, his days as a jazz tourist over, was quick to advise others
of his reservations about the value of African-American music making to
the European classical tradition.44 In one sense he was right, because jazz
had begun its own classical tradition with the recordings of King Olivers
Creole Jazz Band in the same year as La Cration, an achievement consolidated and enhanced by the first recordings of Louis Armstrongs Hot Five
in 1926. Milhaud later claimed he had made use of the jazz style to convey
a purely classical feeling.45 Lger, too, had no lasting interest in African art
and in his collected essays (Functions of Painting) barely mentions the African dimension of La Cration; his enduring interests were in dynamism and
spectacle, and the African context of La Cration gave him an opportunity
to develop these.46
Jazz as satir ical weap on

African-American jazz was barely known in Weimar Germany, and what jazz
existed tended to be German imitations of white American dance bands.
Jazz in Berlin, more so than in Paris, often meant simply American popular
music. The reception of jazz had been strongly affected by Germanys postwar isolation and hyperinflation and by the subsequent unwillingness of
foreign companies to reestablish business ties. Performers were also reluctant to tour there, given the countrys economic problems. Jazz was, if anything, an enthusiasm of the middle class. Records of African-American jazz
were extremely difficult to obtain, and radio broadcasts concentrated on
German dance bands, ignoring Armstrong and Ellington.47
American jazz musicians, however, began touring Germany in the later
s, and Paul Whiteman made a big impact with a concert that included
Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue at Berlins Grosses Schauspielhaus in .48
Jazz-influenced works in the Weimar Republic ranged from Hindemiths
suite for piano to Wilhelm Groszs Baby in der Bar (), a musical dance
play comprised mainly of fox-trots that called for an onstage jazz band. Grosz
later wrote popular songs such as Red Sails in the Sunset under the name
of Hugh Williams. Some took to jazz and quickly abandoned it. In explaining the transition from his Zeitoper (opera of the times) Jonny spielt auf ()
with its bilingual jazz talk (Oh, ma bell, nicht so schnell) to the Greekmyth-inspired Das Leben des Orest two years later, Ernst Krenek does not
mention jazz or jazz influence once. He refers to Jonny as a more or less naturalistic contemporary piece.49 However, this opera became a paradigmatic
example of entartete Musik (degenerate music) for the Nazis, who adopted
as a logo for such music an apelike caricature of a black saxophonist in a
tuxedo (with, for good measure, a Star of David on the lapel) called Jonny.50
J. Bradford Robinson cites the rhythmic figure that hails Jonnys first entrance (see Ex. .) as a figure meant to be immediately recognizable as jazz,
though today we listen for it in vain in Morton, Oliver, Armstrong, and even
Whiteman.51 This figure, common in German commercial music of
,52 was closely associated with the idea of jazz and found in much of the
jazz-influenced output of composers during the Weimar period. It appears
often in Weillfor example, in the verse accompaniment to SeeruberJenny (Pirate Jenny) from Die Dreigroschenoper ().
The associations of jazz for most composers working in the European
classical tradition were probably primarily hedonistic, and no doubt its appeal was considerable in the context of a reaction against social formality
that occurred after the First World War, such as the dancing to bands in new
halls built for this purpose and in high-class hotels. This music suggested
fun, decadence, and cocking a snook at outmoded morality. It was not,
however, generally thought of as linked to a political agenda or welcomed as
part of a desire to signal ideological solidarity with oppressed minorities,
whether black or white. Stravinsky, who relished the shock potential of jazz,

example 8.6. The Jonny rhythm
did not relish any implication that he held left-wing sympathies. In the blunt
words of Robert Craft, Stravinsky preferred Mussolinis Fascism to British
and French democracy, and he took issue with the description of his music
as democratic in the Manchester Guardian ( Feb. ).53
For Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, however, jazz was seen as a weapon
of subversion. They first collaborated on the Mahagonny Songspiel in ,
and Brecht next suggested a reworking of John Gays Beggars Opera of .
Weill introduces a European decadence into the jazz sound world that is not
a typical feature of that style. Consider the harmonies of Moon of Alabama
for example; it adds a kind of overripe romanticism to the novelty of jazz,
producing a knowingly maudlin and meretricious effect. This is what enables Weill to incorporate jazz features into satire in a different way from, for
example, William Walton in Faade (). The jazz features are not cheeky
in Weill; the tone is ironic; they are tarty and cheap, but the quotation
marks that encompass those words are an essential part of the effect. Lambert detected in Die Dreigroschenoper a certain Hogarthian quality, a poetic
sordidness,54 and Ernst Bloch remarked that its beggars and rogues are no
longer those of the opera buffa . . . but of subverted society in person.55
In Brechts epic theater, characters are drawn so that they invite comparisons with archetypal persons of a particular society. The aim of the new
epic opera was to narrate and report according to Weill in ; the
music was for interrupting the narrative at slack points rather than trying
to inflate it with great gusts of extra wind and should move from the culture of a social elite in the direction of a new audience brought up on work,
sport and technology.56 Brecht distances the audience from emotional involvement with characters by emphasizing theatrical artificiality. In the
opening scene of Die Dreigroschenoper, a street singer announces to the audience that they are going to hear a street ballad about the robber Macheath,
known as Mackie Messer (Mac the Knife). Macheaths archetype is the violent robber, and Brecht contrasts this socially and culturally produced type
with one of natures killers, the shark:
Und der Haifisch, der hat Zhne
Und die trgt er im Gesicht
Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
Doch das Messer sieht man nicht.
And the shark, he has teeth
And wears them in his face
And Macheath, he has a knife
But the knife is seen by nobody
We find immediately in this well-known first song of the opera (Die

Moritat von Mackie Messer) an example of what Brecht would call gestic
music. Weill does not try to heighten Brechts text emotionally or to interpret it musically; instead he finds a style and form that increases the impact
of the words by contrasting sharply in musical mood (see Ex. .).
Neither Weill nor Brecht ever gave a systematic definition of gestische
Musik (in his plays, Gestus meant for Brecht a stylized presentation of social
behavior).57 In general terms, both were agreed that, as in Example ., the
music should function as a medium for communicating the text without
trying to add psychological insight into the character singing the song or attempting the musical representation of emotions and deeds within the song.
Weills task is to achieve a musical Verfremdungseffekt (a making strange or
distancing effect) equal to those used by Brecht, such as masks, explanatory
posters, and deliberate highlighting of theatrical artificiality by use of an onstage narrator. An alienating effect can be achieved musically by accompanying, for example, harsh words with a sentimental tune. The jarring that results keeps the listener alert, instead of the song becoming a catalyst for
melancholy self-indulgence. A sense of irony can also be conveyed by parodies of different styles. Brecht had experimented along these lines in his
songs (usually to borrowed tunes) before working with Weill.58
In the Moritat, the music functions in some way as a mask, the style
of music contradicting what would be expected from verses about murder,
robbery, arson, and rape. The accompaniment is marked to be played in the
manner of a barrel organ; the prominent added sixths in the harmony funcexample 8.7. Weill, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer ()
Blues-Tempo
tion as a sign of popular music vulgarity (the sixth degreethe note Ais
present during every bar of Ex. .) and the -bar melodic phrasing and
tonic-dominant bass as a sign of banality. The tempo is indicated as that of
a blues, which at this time referred to an American jazz dance style. In the
third verse, Weill changes from harmonium59 to piano and introduces some
mild syncopation in the accompaniment. He also brings in percussion and
banjo and doubles the melody on trombone. Later he adds two saxophones
and trumpet, which completes the jazz band instrumentation. His final
variations to the accompaniment include a parody of Tin Pan Alley sentimental descending chromatics. Weills music underlines Brechts satirical
purpose, since it conceals the violence as Macheath conceals his knife and
covers his bloodstained hands with gloves. The real target of Brechts satire
is, of course, capitalism, and in the larger social context Brecht has in mind
the out of sight tanks and guns of capitalist society.
Sometimes the Verfremdung breaks down: in the kitchen maids bloodthirsty dream of being Pirate Jenny, Weills setting of the refrain (the ship
with eight sails) creates a powerful emotional effect. Of course, this song
has become very well known and has had many interpreters, and this has
taken it far from the original aesthetic intentions. How much colder and
more frightening is Lotte Lenya on her early recording of , where she
sounds like a childish psychopath, than on that of , where she appears
embittered and triumphant crying, Alle! as she demands mass executions
and Hoppla! as the heads roll.60
In contrast to the modernists, Weill declared that he sought a new public, rather than new forms or theories.61 He certainly achieved the rare distinction of having his music adopted by African-American jazz musicians
(for example, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald for Mack the Knife, and
Nina Simone for Pirate Jenny). John Willet contends that Weill was less
easily bored with jazz than Milhaud, because he was less concerned with
new formal conventions than with a shift in the social basis of the arts.62
Other satirical uses of jazz styles abound in the music of European
composers. One of the earliest was Saties Parade of , in which ragtime
(among other popular styles) is co-opted by the avant-gardenot to be
confused with Stravinskys modernism. Saties ballet displays the historic
characteristics of French avant-garde movements in being deliberately confrontational socially (suggesting a mechanized society) as well as aesthetically (with a sweeping away attitude to high art, rather than a building
upon or an evolving of tradition). Jean Cocteau, who famously called for
an everyday music in his pamphlet Le Coq et lArlequin () and devised
the scenario of Parade, commented that at that time Parisians were unacquainted with jazz bands.63 It was, of course, wartime (and Stravinsky had
fled to Switzerland). Poulencs Rapsodie ngre of is still reminiscent of
the pseudo-Asian style. Poulenc had read some poetry by Makoko Kangourou, who was supposed to be a black Liberian writing in French, though
the received opinion now is that this was highly unlikely. Yet the uncertainty
that surrounded Kangourou may have been part of the appeal, since Poulenc
writes his own text for the third movement using an ethnic-nonsense language: Honoloulou, poti lama! Honoloulou, Honoloulou, Kati moko, and
so on. The director of the Paris Conservatoire, unimpressed, described it
tersely as bollocks (un couillonerie). The poem is not unlike those chanted
by Richard Huelsenbeck at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich in , which all
finished with shouts of umba, umba.64 In Poulencs ballet score Les Biches
of , the Rag-Mazurka fails to sound convincing as either a rag or a
mazurka, and unlike Wilfrid Mellers, I fail to hear any reminiscence of a
tango in the B minor episode.65 Poulencs French biographer Henri Hell
speaks of its syncopated rhythms,66 but simply beginning phrases on an offbeat does not produce jazz or ragtime. There is no sense of swing, and the
dotted rhythms are clearly not intended to be played with a triplet feel. The
dry staccato brass chords and treatment of rhythm in the accompaniment
are more typical of Stravinsky. What is more, the avant-garde as represented
by Poulenc and the rest of Les Six is, at this time, turning into a group
whose rebellion is located solely in the aesthetic domain. Jazz was soon to be
found an unsuitable comrade in that rebellion. Poulenc is quoted as saying
of jazz, It amuses me while I listen to records of it while taking my bath, but
it is frankly distasteful to me in the concert hall.67
In the United Kingdom, Waltons use of parody and jazz differed from
that of Weill and came closer to Les Six. Sitwells and Waltons satirical purpose in Faade (a work that gradually expanded in size between and
) was to run deliberately counter to high art trends in order to challenge
them. In other words, it was a form of aesthetic satire rather than social
satire. Walton and Constant Lambert were the most prominent among
British composers attracted to jazz. Lamberts The Rio Grande of was
reviewed in the Guardian with the comment that it transfigures jazz into
poetry.68 This is the familiar classical notion that jazz is in need of a bit of
polish and refinement, which still survives in the writings of Roger Scruton.
The Popular Song (added in ) from Waltons Faade is more reminiscent, however, of the latter stages of blackface minstrelsy than jazz. Compare
it with, for example, Leslie Stuarts Lily of Laguna ().
Sweet jazz and lig ht cl assical

In the second half of the twenties, jazz and jazz-influenced music had become established as the dominant type of popular music. These years witnessed hundreds of thousands of Americans touring Europe. The records
they took with them increased the European interest in jazz, the ground
having been laid already by the growing numbers of touring jazz musicians,
white and black. This alone explains why some composers were abandoning
jazz features, since these now possessed an entertainment value that overrode any shock value. Josephine Baker was among the African-American
musicians who made their home in Paris after the First World War. La Revue
ngre, in which she starred with an all-black troupe, opened in at the
Music-hall des Champs-lyses, having been brought there from New York
by its manager. She became an immediate sensation and was then, as now, regarded as an emblematic figure of the s jazz age in Paris (see Fig. .).69
Her scat singing on Then Ill Be Happy, recorded in Paris in ,70 comes
less than a year after Armstrongs pioneering example on Heebie Jeebies
and nine months before Adelaide Halls famous vocal on Creole Love Call.
The growling vocal sound is also two months in advance of Bubber Mileys
use of a plunger mute to produce a similar effect on trumpet in East St. Louis
Toodle-Oo.
.. Josephine Baker Art Deco photo
The reception accorded to La Revue ngre created an insatiable appetite

for revues noires. One of the most celebrated, Blackbirds, arrived in direct from the Cotton Club, Harlem. It was updated as Blackbirds and
presented at the Moulin Rouge in , starring the aforementioned Adelaide Hall (who was to settle in London). In George Gershwin, an example of a composer who had moved from the popular show to the concert
hall and not the other way round, was in Paris. The time could not have been
more tempting for European composers to try their hand at emulating popular music.
Bohuslav Martinu at first seems an unlikely case, since little of his output resembles jazzhot, sweet, or otherwise. Even La Revue de cuisine
sounds more like Stravinsky. But Le Jazz of does capture something of
the character of a sweet jazz dance orchestra. Martinu was living in Paris
at the time, and among the sweeter jazz bands playing and recording there
in the later twenties were Jazz Oliver and His Boys des Folies Bergres, Jacobs Jazz, and Edmond Mahieux and Le Melodic Jazz du Casino de Paris.
Martinus Le Jazz, which shows the influence of Paul Whitemans symphonic jazz as well as, perhaps, the dance band directed in Paris by Martinus fellow Czech Jaroslav Jezek,71 was a piece that modernist critics found
shocking. The reason, undoubtedly, was because it did not sound like art
music. Paradoxically, they seldom found modernist music shocking, because the shocks were to their taste: it confirmed their expectations of what
genuine art music should sound like. This was a traitorous intervention in
the world of popular music by Martinu, and its vulgar excesses could not
be read as satire. Cocteau himself was opposed to any attempts to create jazz
pastiches.72 Indeed, Bernard Gendron has argued that jazz was co-opted by
Cocteau and his circle to help define and legitimate a new depoliticized
avant-garde; it was a music for artistic slumming and avant-garde play.73
In Austria, the popularity of Viennese light music, especially waltzes
and operetta, was for some time an effective barricade against jazz. However,
in the same year as Die Dreigroschenoper, Viennese operetta openly faced the
challenge of jazz in Emmerich Klmns Die Herzogin von Chicago (The
Duchess of Chicago), in which the culture class between Austro-Hungarian
popular dance music and jazz holds center stage. The reception was enthusiastic, and some songs from the operetta, such as Ein kleiner Slowfox mit
Mary and In Chicago, became popular hits. From here on, jazz influence
was to be found in other Viennese operettas until the Nazi clampdown on
degenerate music that followed the Anschluss in . Needless, to say jazz
was no more welcome in Stalins Russia. Yet before the years of suppression,
jazz was heard and composers showed interest. Shostakovichs Tahiti Trot
() is a skilful and witty arrangement of Vincent Youmans Tea for Two.
Shostakovich heard jazz from visiting musicians in the s. He later wrote
two jazz suites ( and ), the first as part of a move to improve the
quality of caf musical entertainment. Suite no. falls short of jazz by some
distance; the second, for promenade orchestra, is jazz in name only.
Misconceptions of afr ican-amer ican music making

My chapters title draws attention to African-American music making rather
than African-American music, placing an emphasis on African-American
performance practice. It is exactly this matter of practice that the classical
appropriators of jazz at best misconstrue and at worst neglect altogether in
favor of a few melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic mannerisms. In the context
of the classical repertoire, jazz is heard as amusing and irreverent because
many of its features carry connotations of rudeness and vulgaritytrombone glissandi, clichs at cadences and in bass lines (for example, repetitive
tonic to dominant motion). For many French composers, the function of
jazz in a classical context was pater le bourgeois. At the same time, dabbling
in jazz allowed them to demonstrate their imagined superiority in matters
of technique and formal control. Thus, jazz was not to prove aesthetically
disruptive to modernism and was aesthetically shocking only to a particular
social group.
Many of the features a jazz musician would recognize as crucial to jazz
performance are absent in classical appropriations of jazz. I shall discuss
these here, beginning with what many jazz musicians regard first as the
musics most defining characteristic, improvisationwhat Stan Hawkins
has called performance and composition fused into one act.74 Lamberts
prophecy that the next move in the development of jazz will come, almost
inevitably, from the sophisticated or highbrow composer was incorrect75
and showed his misunderstanding of the importance of the improvising
performer in jazz. As a consequence he failed to understand the significance
of Louis Armstrong: It is the greatest mistake to class Louis Armstrong and
Duke Ellington together as similar exponents of Negro musicthe one is a
trumpet player, the other a genuine composer.76 This is Lamberts own
greatest mistake about the nature of jazz, to think it is the creative fruit of
genuine composers, by which he means those who bear comparison with
the canonical figures of the European classical tradition. A conventional
framework is required for jazz improvisation, yet modernist music had
turned in the direction of fewer and fewer conventions, whether structural,
rhythmic, or harmonic. Jazz improvisation relied at its most adventurous on
the chords found in Tin Pan Alley songs. Indeed, the two patterns of chord
changes that were to prove most popular for jazz improvisers were those of
the blues and of Gershwins I Got Rhythm (and the last was usually simplified).
Improvisation, for Lambert, has expressive and formal limitations
that he relates to its need to take place over a simple harmonic and formal
structure in order for a jazz band not to fall into chaos; and though acknowledging that Armstrong is an expert improviser, he believes Armstrong
relies on a restricted circle of ideas.77 Nowhere does Lambert appear to relish the spontaneity of improvisation or suspect for an instant that jazz may
be created primarily by performers. In the s,genuine composers of the
European classical tradition were, in the main, suspicious of spontaneity.

Jack Sullivan has contrasted the painstaking care with which Ravel created
his jazz-influenced works with the spontaneity of jazz (Ravels violin sonata
took four years to compose).78 European composers ignore the crucial importance of improvisation to African-American musical practice and its
function in making every performance vital and new. It is not a supplement
to an inadequate musical score. Portia Maultsby observes that even when
black music genres circulate as scores, as in the case of gospel songs, in interpreting the score performers must demonstrate their knowledge of the
improvisatory devices that characterize black music performances.79 This
points to the problem classical performers have in trying to play jazz from
notation only, since, as Eileen Southern explains, those who would learn to
play it do so by listening to others playing jazz (my emphasis).80
Almost as important as the ability to improvise is the manner in which
the improvisation is played. In particular, European classical composers did
not take on board Duke Ellingtons warning that it dont mean a thing if it
aint got that swing. Swing, as Hodeir has noted, is what even Milhauds La
Cration lacks.81 While examples can be found of composers adopting what
Wilson has called the heterogeneous sound ideal, a musical texture that
combines diverse timbres, they have failed to understand that swing is an essential quality.82 He also notes the tendency of black musicians to create
music in which call-and-response musical structures abound and to incorporate physical body motion as an integral part of the music making
process.83
Samuel A. Floyd, Jr., too, stresses the relationship between black music
and black dance,84 though his writing is best known for its musical application of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.s interpretive insights that concern the relation
of African-American signifying to African-American literature.85 As a frame
for Floyds analysis of black music making, he turns to Sterling Stuckeys formulation of the nineteenth-century ring shout,86 a practice in which Floyd
finds all of the defining elements of black music, such as call and response,
offbeat rhythms, and characteristic vocal production.87 Floyd develops a
theoretical framework based on the black cultural practice of signifying
(which, written as signifyin[g], differentiates it from the words other
meanings). In African-American usage signifyin(g) implies a deliberate
indirectness in communication. Claudia Mitchell-Kernan explains that labeling a particular utterance signifyin(g) involves the recognition and attribution of some implicit content or function which is potentially obscured
by the surface content or function.88 She gives as one among many examples a wife saying to her husband seeing him leave for work in, unusually,
a suit, You didnt tell me you got a promotion. This is, on the one hand an
indirect way of asking why he is wearing a suit, but on the other hand, the
purpose of the signifyin(g) is to let him know she thinks he is not going to
work.89 A satirical element such as this is often present.
Floyd lists among the musical devices that can be used for signifyin(g)
hollers, riffs, licks, and overlapping antiphony. These can all be used to comment on (signify on) performances and different pieces of music, as well as
on genres. Floyd argues that ragtime Signifies on European and early EuroAmerican dance music, including the march; blues on the ballad; the spiritual on the hymn, but also so does jazz on blues and ragtime, and gospel on
the spiritual.90 Signifyin(g) transforms material by troping itusing it as
part of a rhetorical game or figurativelyfor example, showing respect by
some forms of pastiche or poking fun by parody. The device of call and response is, as its name implies, an imitation of dialogue and thus, for Floyd,
a classic example of musical signifyin(g).91 Floyd maintains that it is through
musical troping and Signifyin(g) that the more profound meanings of black
music are expressed and communicated.92 He even explains that elusive quality of swing as a troping of the time line. The trope of tropes he labels CallResponsenot to indicate the device of call and response but rather the musical principle of a dialogical musical rhetoric under which are subsumed all
the music tropological devices, including call-and-response.93 If there is a
criticism of Floyds theory of signifyin(g), it is that it transcends class; there
is no difference, apparently, between the signifyin(g) of working-class musicians such as Armstrong and middle-class musicians such as Ellington.
Floyd notes that black music making is self-criticizing and self-validating,94 which is why there is often commenting on the music itself (for example, Yellen and Agers Crazy Words, Crazy Tune and Ellingtons It
Dont Mean a Thing already quoted). This was something that puzzled
Constant Lambert, who wondered why there were no English folk songs that
announced they were in the Dorian mode or 68 time.95
Missing from classical jazz are the features that are African-derived.
Mellonee Burnim, in a study of the black gospel music tradition, has singled
out African-derived qualities that relate to style of delivery, sound quality, and
mechanics of delivery,96 and Maultsby has discussed the way that these qualities, which she terms Africanisms, have impacted upon African-American
music making. Maultsby stresses the communal approach to music making
by black Americans and gives many examples of how music making is conceptualized as a participatory activity (a legacy, she argues, of African music
making). Performers onstage will encourage audience participationfor example, hand clappingand audiences will encourage performers by shouts
or spontaneous applause. All this is designed to generate a sense of group expression.97
One of the things that most bedeviled the European composer was the
idea that jazz needed to be made respectable. Usually this involves an invocation of the Western musical canon. Hindemith, for example, claimed,
If Bach were alive today, perhaps he would invent the shimmy or at least
take it over into respectable music.98 Lambert had similar ideas: I see no
reason why a composer should not be able to rid himself as much from the
night-club element in jazz as Haydn did from the ballroom element in the
minuet, and produce the modern equivalent of those dance suites of Bach.99
At the same time, Lambert recognized that the modern highbrow composer who writes a foxtrot can hardly hope to go one better than Duke
Ellington.100 It is unclear whether or not Lambert considered Ellington a
highbrow composer, but he remarked that Ellingtons musical skill is hardly
appreciated by any except the highbrow public101 and called him the first
jazz composer of distinction.102 Lambert maintained that nothing more
dexterous was to be found in Ravel than the varied solos in the middle of
Ellingtons Hot and Bothered and nothing in Stravinsky more dynamic
than the final section.103
The fear of jazz

Why is jazz-influenced classical music so toothless compared to the jazz it
supposedly emulates? I would argue that it is because what I believe to be a
politically challenging quality in jazza quality of physicality aligned to
pleasure that offers resistance to ideological normsis caged in by a variety
of devices that reassert the discipline of classical structures and reestablish
the ideological importance of mind over body. If the notion of excess as political threat is doubted, consider the following reactionary and racist statement that concerns jazz, which appeared in the Revue Musicale in :
It is entirely excess, and for that reason more than monotone: the
monkey is left to his own devices, without morals, without discipline, thrown back to all the groves of instinct, showing his meat still
more obscene. These slaves must be subjugated, or there will be no
more master.104
The last sentence is particularly unfortunate, given African-American history. Lawrence Kramer has identified the material character, and especially
the bodily character, of blues or jazz proper as just what one does not hear
in jazz citation.105 Bodily excess is normally held in check in European concert music or constrained by its context: for example, the love duet in Tristan or Salomes dance. Even when constrained within a framing device,
however, bodily excess is still prone to be perceived as vulgar, embarrassing,
or tasteless. This is not to suggest that jazz itself constantly takes on a physically excessive character but rather to recognize that the body is important
to jazz and that this is not something that jazz musicians find uncomfortable or feel a need to apologize about.
There is no doubt that some critics perceived the black body as being
different from the white. A Norwegian journalist writing in of the
Jazzing Devils, one of the first American groups to perform in Oslo, comments that the group consisted of four Negroes and a man.106 And here is
the Austrian scholar Heinrich Eduard Jacob explaining the Origins and Triumphs of Jazz in : The blacks have the secret of innervating their muscles in a different way from the white; Jacobs evidence is unusually com-
pelling: If this were not the case, he argues, they could not carry heavy
weights so untiringly.107 This explains for him the dangling-shambling
dances that lack poise and their musical counterpart, in which the autocratic rule of the beat had been challenged by syncopation. Having relieved
himself of further absurd racist nonsense, he goes on to reassure the reader
that society will not tolerate jazz for long. What Jacob has failed to recognize,
though it is crucially important, is that African-Americans make certain cultural and not racial choices. These musical practices come from living in and
absorbing the cultural experience of African-American communities. They
are not in the blood.African Americans who have white relations or a paler
skin color do not have their capacity for engaging in these practices genetically reduced. In contrast to Jacob, Henry Raynor sees the triumph of jazz as
a reaction against the negative politeness and lack of vitality that had befallen contemporary light music in the s.108
In the United Kingdom, Constant Lambert writes (in ) of
crusty old colonels, the choleric judges and beer-sodden columnists
who imagine they represent the European tradition, murmuring
swamp stuff, jungle rhythms, Negro decadence whenever they
hear the innocent and anodyne strains of the average English jazz
band.109
Lambert was of the opinion, however, that a barbaric and vital Negro element existed and that in symphonic jazz it provided the same stimulus in
the s as Oriental exoticism did in the s. But black American signifiers in European concert music are intriguingly different in effect from Oriental signifiers, because black music making is historically and culturally
much more familiar as a consequence of the African Diaspora. This familiarity is, for many, accompanied by the connotations of pleasure, entertainment, and leisure that spring from their experience of hearing and seeing
black musicians perform. The fear that arose for some during the early days
of jazz reception in Europe was that the perceived physical quality of black
music making would corrupt a refined and disciplined art music tradition.
There was then, for some, a fear of the Other that might be compared with
Orientalist fears. However, for the majority, this fear did not exist, the reason being that jazz was already a fusion of black and white practices, a crossfertilization of European and African musics that took place on a third continent, North America.
otes
introduction
. V. N. Volosinov, The Study of Ideologies and Philosophy of Language, in
Tony Bennett, Graham Martin, Colin Mercer, and Janet Woollacott, eds., Culture,
Ideology and Social Process: A Reader (London: Batsford, ), , .
. If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is
only an illusion and not a reality. It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit
and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention
in short, an aspect unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with
its essential being (Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography [London: Calder and Boyars,
, orig. pub. Gollancz, ], ).
. Evidence of a paradigm shift that occurred between and was noted
by Joseph Kerman in American Musicology in the s, Journal of Musicology
(). However, it was not obvious everywhere and to everyone overnight. For example, in a conference report from Cheong Wai-Ling in Music Analysis , no.
(p. ), assumed confidently that Schenkerian theory was unassailable. Yet at the International Music and Gender Conference in London in the mere mention of
Schenker brought forth derisive groans from delegates. An uncompromising critique of what was actually achieved in the last two decades of the twentieth century
appears in John Shepherd and Peter Wicke, Music and Cultural Theory (Polity Press),
.
. Reception theory had barely made an impact on musicology before ; see
Mark Everist, Reception Theories, Canonic Discourses, and Musical Value, in
Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, eds., Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, ), , . I should, perhaps, note here that my treatment of reception differs from that of Gadamer and Jauss in refusing to idealize the original
cultural artifact.
. See Leo Treitler, On Historical Criticism, Musical Quarterly (),
. For his more recent thoughts on how music embodies its historicity, see The
notes to pages 4 14
Historiography of Music, an essay that includes a critique of hermeneutic as well as

causal models, in Cook and Everist, Rethinking Music, .
. The series includes Adam Krims, ed., Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic
(Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, ).
. Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language (), trans. Margaret Waller
(), excerpted in Toril Moi, ed., The Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, ),
, .
. Kristeva coined the term intertextuality. Graham Allens Intertextuality (London: Routledge, ) is a book-length study of its history and meaning in cultural
theory.
. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Paladin, ,
orig. pub. ).
. Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, ).
. Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western
Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), xxvxxvi.
. Ibid., .
. It is not my wish to become unduly complex in this introduction, but perhaps
I may be pedantic here and explain here that my meaning is shorthand for what
Greimas describes more precisely as meaning effect. See Ronald Schleifer, A. J.
Greimas and the Nature of Meaning: Linguistics, Semiotics and Discourse Theory (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, ), .
. Peter Kivy, Sound and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, , orig. pub. ), , .
. Ibid., , , .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Younger readers may need to know that the Rossini overture was used for the
title credits of the TV series The Lone Ranger.
. Eero Tarasti, A Theory of Musical Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, ), . Tarasti actually prefers, in his own work, to concentrate on Peirces
sign as it relates to an object (icon, index, and symbol); above all, however, his work
is influenced by the structuralist semantics of A. J. Greimas.
. Donald Davidson, Radical Interpretation, in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), , . Orig. pub. in Dialectica, vol.
(), .
. Kofi Agawu, The Challenge of Semiotics, in Cook and Everist, Rethinking
Music, , .
. Gino Stefani, A Theory of Musical Competence, Semiotica , no. / (),
, , excerpted in Derek B. Scott, Music, Culture, and Society: A Reader (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, ), , .
. Susan McClary, Constructions of Subjectivity in Schuberts Music, in Philip
Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, eds., Queering the Pitch: The New Gay
and Lesbian Musicology (New York: Routledge, ), , .
. A vocal critic of close reading is Gary Tomlinson; see especially his Musical
Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: A Response to Lawrence Kramer, Current Musicology (), , . However, a call to refigure rather than abandon the
practice of close reading in order to develop a postmodern critique of musical poetics is made by Adam Krims in Introduction: Postmodern Musical Poetics and the
Problem of Close Reading, in Music/Ideology, .
notes to pages 18 20
chapter 1
. Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, Rock and Sexuality, Screen Education
(), , reprinted in Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, eds., On Record: Rock,
Pop, and the Written Word (London: Routledge, ), , excerpted in Derek B.
Scott, ed., Music, Culture, and Society: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
), .
. John Shepherd, Music and Male Hegemony, in Richard Leppert and Susan
McClary, eds., Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , , reprinted in
John Shepherd, Music as Social Text (Cambridge: Polity Press, ), .
. Roland Bartles, Le Grain de la voix, translated by Stephen Heath as The Grain
of the Voice in Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana, , orig.
pub. in Musique en jeu []), , reprinted in Frith and Goodwin, On Record,
.
. Jenny Taylor and Dave Laing, Disco-Pleasure-Discourse: On Rock and Sexuality, Screen Education (), , , excerpted in Scott, Music, Culture, and
Society, .
. See Martha Mockus, Queer Thoughts on Country Music and k. d. lang, in
Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, eds., Queering the Pitch: The New
Gay and Lesbian Musicology (New York: Routledge, ), , .
. Louis Althusser explains his theory of how ideology interpellates individuals
as subjects in his essay Ideology and the State in Lenin and Philosophy and Other
Essays, trans. B. Brewster (London: New Left Books, ), , .
. In Julie Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller (New
York: Columbia University Press, ), excerpts reprinted in Toril Moi, ed., The
Kristeva Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, , orig. pub. as La Rvolution du langage potique, ), .
. In Barthes, The Grain of the Voice, . Joke Dame has applied Kristevas
concepts of phenotext and genotext to her interpretation of Luciano Berios Sequenza III () in Voices Within the Voice, in Adam Krims, ed., Music/Ideology:
Resisting the Aesthetic (Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, ), .
. Butlers theory of the performativity of sex and gender is expounded in Susan
Cusick, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, ). Butlers idea that biological sex as well as gender is performed has been
the subject of heated debate. In the present context, we might ask: is a bass voice an
option for a woman? However, matters are rarely so straight forward: Joke Dame
reminds us that crafty examples of gender-disguised singing can be found in pop,
classical, and non-Western music (Unveiled Voices: Sexual Difference and the Castrato in Brett, Wood, and Thomas, Queering the Pitch, , ). To move forward to an idea advanced toward the end of this chapter that a new epoch in representations of sexuality began in the s, it may be noted that Sonny and Chers
I Got You, Babe (Bono) of established what became the common pop practice of the woman singing at the same pitch as the man rather than an octave higher.
. Susan Cusick,On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex, in Elaine Barkin
and Lydia Hamessley, eds., Audible Traces: Gender, Identity and Music (Zurich: Carciofoli Verlagshaus, ), , .
. Sheila Whiteley, Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity (London: Routledge, ), .
. Richard Leppert, The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of
the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), xxi.
. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. : An Introduction, trans. Robert
Hurley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, , orig. pub. ), .
. See Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, ), .
. Susan McClary, Constructions of Gender in Monteverdis Dramatic Music,
Cambridge Opera Journal , no. (), , , reprinted in Feminine Endings:
Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ),
, .
. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, , orig. pub. as Bruits: Essai sur
lconomie politique de la musique [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, ]), .
. Susan McClary, Afterword: The Politics of Silence and Sound, in Attali,
Noise, , .
. Carl Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, trans. William Austin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , orig. pub. as Musiksthetik [Cologne: Gerig, ]), .
. Ambroise Par, The Workes of That Famous Chirugian Ambrose Parey, trans.
Thomas Johnson (London: Thomas Cotes, ), , quoted in Stephen Greenblatt,
Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), .
. Margaret Murata, Scylla and Charybdis, or Steering Between Form and Social Context in the Seventeenth Century, in Eugene Narmour and Ruth A. Solie,
eds., Explorations in Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Essays in Honor of Leonard B. Meyer
(Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, ), .
. McClary, Constructions of Gender in Monteverdis Dramatic Music, ,
and in Feminine Endings, .
. Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, .
. Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions (London:
Bloomsbury, ), .
. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. , .
. Ibid., .
. Notably at her words Nur sollst du ihr ein scheues Opfer weihn; mit der Liebe
Gttin schwelge im Verein! (No timid homage shall you offer it [love]; with the
goddess of love wallow in union!) It is employed even earlier by Haydn as a romantic device (slow movement of Symphony no. ).
. Kramer approaches this question by considering amatory relationships of
tutelage; however, I have not seen evidence that these were as common in England
as among the German philologists that are relevant to his scrutiny of Mendelssohns
Lieder. See Lawrence Kramer, The Lied as Cultural Practice: Tutelage, Gender, and
Desire in Mendelssohns Goethe Songs, in Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), .
. See Roy Palmer, The Sound of History: Songs and Social Comment (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, ), .
. Colin and Susan, reprinted in Aline Waites and Robin Hunter, The Illustrated Victorian Songbook (London: Michael Joseph, ), .
. See Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. , .
. Judith Tick, Passed Away Is the Piano Girl: Changes in American Musical
Life, , in Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, eds., Women Making Music: The
Western Art Tradition, (London: Macmillan, ), , .
. Stephen Stratton, Women in Relation to Musical Art, Proceedings of the
Royal Musical Association (), , .
. J. B. Macdonell, Classical Music and British Musical Taste, Macmillans Magazine, (), , .
. Cited by Stratton, Women in Relation to Musical Art, .
. Hugh Haweis, Music and Morals (London: Longmans, Green, , orig. pub.
Statham, ), .
. John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (London: Allen, , orig. pub. ), .
. For Sigmund Freud, repression is a transformation of affect, so that, for example, the fulfillment of unconscious sexual wishful impulses would generate an affect of disgust rather than pleasure. See The Interpretation of Dreams (Harmondsworth: Penguin, , orig. pub. as Die Traumdeutung, [Leipzig and Vienna: Deuticke,
]), . Freud makes repression the main topic of his second lecture in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, in Two Short Accounts of Psycho-Analysis, trans. and ed.
James Strachey (Harmonsworth: Penguin, , orig. pub. as ber Psychoanalyse,
[Vienna: Deuticke, ]), . In challenging Freuds theory, Gilles Deleuze and
Flix Guattari ask: What is real desire, since repression is also desired? How can we
tell them apart? (Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia [London: Athlone
Press, , orig. pub. as LAnti-Oedipe (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, )], ).
. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. , , , .
. For example, using Freuds concept of the libido as a force that ebbs and flows
without a privileged object, Kramer shows Wagners Tristan to be a radical work not
only in its musical procedures but also in its sexual ideology, in that it represents desire as a fluid force. As an illustration of the ability of the libido to shift from one object to another, Kramer argues that the waves of pleasure that overwhelm Isolde in
her Liebestod are narcissistic, the product of her ego-libido rather than her libidinal
investment in Tristan. It is also possible to reject this psychoanalytical model and interpret the ebbing and surging of desire in Tristan through use of the schizoanalytic
theory of Deleuze and Guattari. Their model of desiring-production, too, conceptualizes desire in terms of ebbs and flows; they note that desire proves to have an extraordinary fluidity (Anti-Oedipus, ). That the music of Tristan resonates with
later beliefs and feelings about the real operations of mind and body does have
implications. It means that the music retains its ability to convince as genuine or
authentic. One example must suffice: at the end of Baz Luhrmanns film William
Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet (), which throughout is dominated by a pop
music score, Isoldes Liebestod accompanies Juliets death without showing its age (as
pass romanticism, sentimentality, or whatever) in the way most nineteenth-century
music would.
. Robert Fink, Desire, Repression and Brahmss First Symphony, in Krims,
Music/Ideology, .
. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (Oxford: Blackwell, , orig. pub. as Le Plaisir du texte [Paris: Editions du Seuil, ]), .
. Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, .
. The songs discussed in this section can be heard on Classic Years in Digital
Stereo: Saucy Songs, (BBC ZCF ).
. Marybeth Hamilton, When Im Bad, Im Better: Mae West, Sex and American
Entertainment (Berkeley: University of California Press, , orig. pub. New York:

HarperCollins, ), .
. It can be heard as track on the CD Take It Off! Striptease Classics, (Rhino
R ).
. Ernst Krause, Notes, trans. Kenneth Howe, that accompany The Orchestral
Music of Richard Strauss, vol. , (HMV SLS ), n.p.
. A eulogy to the sexiness of the waltz is found as late as in Das Walzer ist
des Lebens schnste Melodie in act of Die Herzogin von Chicago by Emmerich
Klmn.
. Philip Larkin, Annus Mirabilis, in High Windows (London: ?, ), .
. Lester Bangs, James Taylor Marked for Death (), in Psychotic Reactions
and Carburetor Dung, ed. Greil Marcus (New York: Vintage Books, ), , .
. Significantly, this was the title Madonna chose for her controversial book of
(London: Secker and Warburg).
. Hamilton, When Im Bad, Im Better, .
. New York Daily Mirror, Dec. , , quoted in ibid., .
. Hamilton, When Im Bad, Im Better, .
. Martha Mockus, Queer Thoughts on Country Music and k. d. lang, in Brett,
Wood, and Thomas, Queering the Pitch, .
. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, The Sexual Masquerade: A Lacanian Theory of Sexual Difference, in Ellie Ragland-Sullivan and Mark Bracher, eds., Lacan and the Subject of Language (London: Routledge, ), , .
. There is an irony, however, in the debt Jaggers stage movements had to Tina
Turner.
. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, ), .
. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, , orig. pub. as De la Grammatologie [Paris:
Les Editions de Minuit, ]), .
chapter 2
. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London:
John Murray, ); see excerpts in Bojan Bujic, Music in European Thought
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , .
. See Victor J. Seidler, Rediscovering Masculinity: Reason, Language and Sexuality (London: Routledge, ), , and Marcia J. Citron, Gender and the Musical
Canon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
. I am rehearsing here arguments that have been widely circulated. For an
overview of discourses of definition, see Sneja Gunew, ed., Feminist Knowledge: Critique and Construct (London: Routledge, ), .
. Sarah Lewis, Womans Mission (London: John Parker, ); see Jane Horowitz
Murray, ed., Strong-Minded Women and Other Lost Voices from Nineteenth-Century
England (Harmondsworth: Penguin, , orig. pub. New York: Pantheon, ),
.
. T. L. Krebs, Women as Musicians, Sewanee Review , [Nov. ], , .
. Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), .
. See Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture (London: Virago, ), .
. George Man Burrows, Commentaries on the Causes, Forms, Symptoms, & Treatment, Moral & Medical, of Insanity (London: Underwood, ); see Vieda Skultans,
Madness and Morals: Ideas on Insanity in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, ), , and Showalter, The Female Malady, .
. Henry Maudsley,Sex in Mind and in Education, Fortnightly Review (),
, .
. Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (Leipzig: Brockhaus,
), trans. E. F. J. Payne as The World as Will and Representation, vols. (Indian
Hills, CO: Falcons Wing Press, ), quoted in Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the
Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, ), .
. See Showalter, The Female Malady, .
. See Daphne Bennett, Emily Davies and the Liberation of Women
(London: Andr Deutsch, ), . Elizabeth Garrett had passed the examination
set by the Society of Apothecaries in and fought successfully to be put on the
Medical Register; therefore, she was able to challenge these ideas as a doctor. Her
friend Emily Davies was a pioneer in the cause of womens education and founded
Girton, Cambridges first college for the higher education of women, in .
. Samuel Smiles, Life and Labour; or, Characteristics of Men of Industry, Culture
and Genius (London: Routledge, , orig. pub. London: John Murray, ), .
. J. F. R., Women as Musical Critics, Monthly Musical Record (), ,
.
. Elizabeth Stirling was for over twenty years the organist at St. Andrew Undershaft, London, a post she won in open competition.
. Taken from a selected extract from Thomas Gisbourne, The Purposes of Ornamental Education (), reproduced in Murray, Strong-Minded Women, .
. John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women () in Three Essays (London:
. Joseph Verey, Women as Musicians, Monthly Musical Record (),
, .
. See Elizabeth Wood, Women in Music, SIGNS, Journal of Women in Culture
and Society, , no. (), .
. Mill, The Subjection of Women, .
. Richard Leppert, Sexual Identity, Death and the Family Piano in the Nineteenth Century, in The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation and the History of the
Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). This book contains much critical discussion of representations of women and music in the visual arts.
. Anon., Musical Gazette , no. ( April ), .
. These problems are discussed in Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, .
. Anon., Musical Gazette , no. ( July ), .
. Anon., Musical Times ( Dec. ), .
. J. F. R., Women as Musical Critics, .
. T. L. Krebs, Women as Musicians, Sewanee Review (Tennessee) (),
, .
. Ibid., .
. Verey, Women as Musicians, .
. See Percy A. Scholes, The Mirror of Music , vol. (London: Novello

and Oxford University Press, ), .
. Richard Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-cultural
Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
).
. Charles Hall, The Religion of Music, Review of Reviews (), .
. See Van Akin Burd, ed., The Winnington Letters (London: Allen and Unwin,
), . This incident was cited by Sara M. Dodd in Ruskin and Womens
Education, an unpublished paper given at the Association of Art Historians Conference (April ).
. Burd, The Winnington Letters, .
. From the late s onward, however, music began to occupy an increasingly
important place in Ruskins aesthetics. See William J. Gatens,John Ruskin and Music,
in Nicholas Temperley, ed., The Lost Chord: Essays on Victorian Music (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, ), .
. Extract from the Queens Journal, July , in George Earle Buckle, ed., The
Letters of Queen Victoria (London: John Murray, ), .
. Evidence (Part ) Before the Commissioners on the Revenues and Management of Certain Colleges and Schools, , in British Parliamentary Papers: Education General (Shannon: Irish University Press, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Aristotle, The Politics, book , trans. Thomas A. Sinclair (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, ), .
. From an interview article on Walter Macfarren in the Musical Times, Jan. ,
quoted in Scholes, The Mirror of Music, vol. , .
. See Anon., The Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, New Penny Magazine
(), .
. Krebs, Women as Musicians, .
. Lawrence Kramer, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), . On the same topic, in relation to the same composer, see also Judith Tick, Charles Ives and Gender Ideology, in Ruth A. Solie, ed.,
Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship (Berkeley:
University of California Press, ), .
. Reproduced in Leppert, The Sight of Sound, . In this work, Leppert spends
much time demonstrating that, for the Victorian music equals woman, particularly
in the section Music and the Crisis of the Phallus in the last chapter, Aspiring to
the Condition of Silence (the Iconicity of Music), .
. Robert Schumann, Schumann on Music and Musicians, trans. Paul Rosenfeld,
ed. Konrad Wolff (New York: Norton, , orig. pub. Pantheon, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Frederick Niecks, Franz Schubert: A Studythe Pianoforte Works, Monthly
Musical Record (), , .
. Several pioneering books on this subject appeared within the space of a year
in the mid-s: Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, eds., Queering
the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (New York: Routledge, ); John
Gill, Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Music
(London: Cassell, ); and Richard Smith, Seduced and Abandoned: Essays on Gay
Men and Popular Music (New York: Continuum, ).
. For evidence of Schuberts sexuality, see Maynard Solomon, Franz Schubert

and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini, th-Century Music , no. (), .
For doubts about this evidence, see Rita Steblin, The Peacocks Tale: Schuberts Sexuality Reconsidered, th Century Music , no. (), .
. Consider, in this connection, the words of Peter Hawker (responsible for the
stage clothes of the pop group Right Said Fred): Its a very masculine campness.
They must never look too feminine, (quoted in Nicola Jeal, All Het Up in the Male
Camp, Observer, Aug. , ).
. See the remarks on this movement in McClary, Feminine Endings, p. : It is
the lovely, feminine tune with which we are encouraged to identify and which is
brutally, tragically quashed in accordance with the destiny predetermined by the
disinterested conventions of the form. For McClarys later thoughts on Schubert
and sexuality, see Constructions of Subjectivity in Schuberts Music, in Brett,
Wood, and Thomas, Queering the Pitch, .
. Maudsley, Sex in Mind and in Education, .
. Niecks, Franz Schubert, .
. Artiste, letter to the Monthly Musical Record (), .
. Ibid.
. Fanny Raymond Ritter,Music, and Woman as a Musician, Victoria Magazine
(), , .
. Ritter, Music, and Woman as a Musician, was originally given as a paper for
the Centennial Congress of the Association for the Advancement of Women (Philadelphia) and brought out as a pamphlet, Woman as a Musician: An Art-Historical
Study, in
. F. Niecks, Excerpts from the Diary of a Musician in Search of the True and
Beautiful, Monthly Musical Record (), .
. The effect that separate spheres ideology had on Victorian men is discussed in
John Tosh, Domesticity and Manliness in the Victorian Middle Class, in Michael
Roper and John Tosh, eds., Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since
(London: Routledge, ), , .
. Stephen S. Stratton, Woman in Relation to Musical Art, Proceedings of the
Musical Association (), , .
. Ibid., .
. Ferdinand Praeger speaking in the discussion that followed Strattons paper;
see ibid., .
. Eustace J. Breakspear, The Works of Chopin in Their Relationship to Art,
Monthly Musical Record (), , .
. James Huneker, Chopin: The Man and His Music (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, , reprinted New York: Dover, ), , cited in Jeffery Kallberg,
Chopin at the Boundaries: Sex, History, and Musical Genre (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, ), .
. See Showalter, The Female Malady, .
. Thomas Carlyle, The Hero as Poet. Dante; Shakespeare (), reprinted in
Edmund D. Jones, ed., English Critical Essays (Nineteenth Century) (London: Oxford
University Press, , orig. pub. London: World Classics, ), , .
. Richard Leppert, The Piano, Misogyny and The Kreuzer Sonata, in The
Sight of Sound, , .
. Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Blackwell, ).
. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sub-
lime and the Beautiful (); see excerpts in Peter le Huray and James Day, eds.,
Music and Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, ), , .
. Ibid., .
. Niecks, Franz Schubert, .
. See William Crotch, Substance of Several Courses of Lectures on Music (London: Longman, ); see excerpts in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics,
, .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid.
. Ibid.
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. E. P. [Ebenezer Prout?], The Beautiful in Music, Monthly Musical Record
(), , .
. William Weber, The History of Musical Canon, in Nicholas Cook and Mark
Everist, eds., Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), , .
This essay gives a brief history of the rise of scholarly, pedagogical, and performing
canons.
. Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, .
. For further information on nineteenth-century women ballad composers, see
Derek Hyde, New Found Voices: Women in Nineteenth Century English Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, d ed. , orig. pub. London: Belvedere Press, ); Derek B. Scott,
The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour (Aldershot:
Ashgate, d ed. , orig. pub. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, ); and
Judith Tick, American Women Composers Before (Rochester, NY: University of
Rochester Press, , orig. pub. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilm Inc. Research
Press, ).
. Virginia Gabriel was to some extent an exception, since she sometimes used
tonic minor for a verse section and tonic major for a refrain.
. Crotch, Substance, in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, .
. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, .
. Ibid., .
. Charlotte Alington Barnard, ne Pye ( ) moved from Louth (Lincolnshire) to London after her marriage, studied for a short time with the piano virtuoso W. H. Holmes, and took singing lessons from some of the finest singers of the
day, such as Charlotte Sainton-Dolby (who helped promote her songs). Barnard was
the most commercially successful of ballad composers in the s. For further information, see Scott, The Singing Bourgeois, .
. Little is known of the private life of Miss M. Lindsay, who sometimes adds her
married name, Mrs J. Worthington Bliss, in parentheses. She was one of the two
most popular composers in the song catalog of Robert Cocks & Co. in the s (the
other was the prolific Franz Abt). See ibid., .
. Ellen Dickson () began to make her reputation as a ballad composer
in the s, about the same time as Miss M. Lindsay. Dicksons songs are often characterized by unusual permutations of broken chord patterns and delicate use of
grace notes. See ibid., .
. Caroline Norton () was a granddaughter of the playwright Richard
Sheridan. She endured a stormy relationship with her politician husband, and her
career as a poet and songwriter was often interrupted by her campaigning (for example, for the Infant Custody Bill in the late s and the Married Womens Property Bill in the s). See Alice Acland, Caroline Norton (London: Constable, ),
and Scott, The Singing Bourgeois, .
. Felicia Hemans was an influential figure with her collection of songs titled
Peninsular Melodies (pub. Goulding & DAlmaine), and it is significant that some of
her songs with music composed by her sister, Harriet Browne, were published by
Willis in about with an accompaniment for the Spanish guitar by C. M. Sola.
. See Scott, The Singing Bourgeois, .
. Helen Blackwood, ne Sheridan ( ) moved to Ireland when her husband succeeded his father as Baron Dufferin in . In songs such as Terences
Farewell (), which make use of traditional airs, she writes words in a quasi-Irish
vernacular. She published anonymously at first, but her identity began to be known
in the s.
. Sons of the Sea (McGlennon, ), A Bandits Life Is the Life for Me
(Harper, ), and Yes! Let Me like a Soldier Fall (Fitzball-Wallace, ).
. Nancy Lee (Weatherly-Adams, ).
. A woman who wrote masculine music invited, of course, the kind of criticism
discussed earlier that was hurled at Alice Mary Smith. She was certain to be labeled
a mere musical male impersonator and accused of being untrue to her nature.
. Virginia Gabriel ( ) studied piano with the distinguished teachers Johann Pixis, Theodor Dhler, and Sigismond Thalberg and studied composition with
Bernhard Molique and Saverio Mercadante.
. Maud Valrie White () studied at the Royal Academy of Music and
in became the first woman to win the Mendelssohn Scholarship. Her output, for
the most part, consisted of drawing-room ballads that are distinguished for their
lyricism, imaginative harmony, and skillfully crafted accompaniments. See Sophie
Fuller, Unearthing a World of Music: Victorian and Edwardian Women Composers, Women: A Cultural Review , no. (), .
. Christian Friedrich Michaelis in the Berlinische musikalische Zeitung, ; see
le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, .
. Richard Wagner, Beethoven, , excerpts trans. Martin Cooper in Bujic,
Music in European Thought, , .
. See E. T. A. Hoffmann, Beethovens Instrumental Music (orig. pub. anonymously in the Zeitung fr die elegante Welt, ), in Oliver Strunk, ed., Source Readings in Music History: From Classical Antiquity to the Romantic Era (London: Faber,
), , .
. The new woman demanded an active participatory role in society and was
prepared to challenge conventional expectations. The Westminster Review noted
with an air of revelation in : Wifehood and motherhood are incidental parts,
which may or may not enter into the life of each woman (January ), .
. See Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, ; le Huray and Day, Music and
Aesthetics, ; and Stratton, Woman in Relation to Musical Art, , .
. On this subject, see Judith Tick, Passed Away Is the Piano Girl: Changes in
American Musical Life, , in Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, eds., Women
Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, (London: Macmillan, ),
, .
. George Upton, Woman in Music: An Essay (London: Paul and Chicago: McClurg, , orig. pub. Boston: Osgood, ), . Uptons book is intended to
show that where women in music are concerned, there is a field in which she has
accomplished great results; namely her influence upon the production of music
(). He demonstrates this by reference to canonic composers. Some may be interested to know that whatever the evidence may be to suggest that Handel had samesex preferences, Upton has no doubts that he was indebted creatively to his loving
mother ().
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Eduard Hanslick, Vom musikalisch-Schnen (Leipzig: Rudolph Weigel, ,
rev. ed. ), excerpts trans. Martin Cooper in Bujic, Music in European Thought,
, .
. Immanuel Kant, Kritic der Urteilskraft (Berlin: ), section , excerpts trans.
the eds. in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, , .
. Hanslick, Vom musikalisch-Schnen, in Bujic, Music in European Thought, .
. Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Fall Wagner (), excerpts trans. Walter Kaufmann
in Bujic, Music in European Thought, , .
. Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, in Two Short Accounts of
Psycho-Analysis, trans. and ed. James Strachey (Harmonsworth: Penguin, , orig.
pub. as ber Psychoanalyse [Vienna: Deuticke, ]), . As ever, Deleuze and
Guattari take issue with Freud; see Anti-Oedipus, .
. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, .
. Reports from Commissioners (Education), , in British Parliamentary Papers: Reports, Commissioners, , vol. (Shannon: Irish University Press, ).
. See M, Upon the Philosophy of Art, Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review
(), reprinted in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, , .
. Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence Between Poetry and Music
(London: ), extracts in le Huray and Day, Music and Aesthetics, , .
. Ethel Smyth was the first British woman composer to achieve the kind of musical status normally reserved for men; the performance of her opera The Wreckers
in Germany in was of particular importance to her career.
. George Bernard Shaw, letter to Ethel Smith, in Richard Terry, On Musics Borders (London: Fisher Unwin, ), .
. Suzanne Raitt speaks of Smyth as being openly bisexual; see The Singers of
Sargent: Mabel Batten, Elsie Swinton, Ethel Smyth, Women: A Cultural Review ,
no. , (), , , . Elizabeth Wood argues that a distinct lesbian voice
can sometimes be heard in Smyths music in Sapphonics, in Brett, Wood, and
Thomas, Queering the Pitch, , .
. Fifty years earlier, Haweis had devoted time to illustrating the theory (not new
even then) that women were artistic not in a creative, but in a receptive sense in
section , Women and Music, of Music and Morals (London: Longmans, Green,
, orig. pub. Straham, ), .
. J. Swinburne, Women and Music, , Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association (), , . See Tick,Passed Away Is the Piano Girl, for a similar double bind: the small feminine forms show inadequate breadth of imagination, but writing in larger forms is a betrayal of sexual identity.
. Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily
Dickinson (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), .
chapter 3
. U.S. citizenship was provided by the Snyder Act. Resistance to the idea of the
assimilated Indian is bound up with the coercive attempts by boarding schools of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to create the English-speaking
Christian Indian with short hair and a tie. Needless to say, what these schools produced was the institutionalized Indian rather than the assimilated Indian.
. Robert F. Berkhofer, White Mans Indian: Images of the American Indian from
Columbus to the Present (New York: Knopf, ), .
. A generation by models of a real without origin (Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton, and Philip Beitchman [New York: Semiotext(e),
, orig. pub. as Simulacres et Simulations Paris: Galile, ], ).
. The inaccuracies of Indian costume and custom in Hollywood films are dealt
with in Ralph E. Friar and Natasha A. Friar, The Only Good Indian . . . : The Hollywood Gospel (New York: Drama Book Specialists, ).
. John E. OConnor, The Hollywood Indian: Stereotypes of Native Americans in
Films (Trenton: New Jersey State Museum, ), .
. Two early American songs, Sarah Wentworth Morton and Hans Grams The
Death Song of an Indian Chief () and Anne Julia Hatton and James Hewitts
Alknomook, the Death Song of the Cherokee Indian from Tammany (), may
be found in William Thomas Marrozo and Harold Gleason, eds., Music in America:
An Anthology from the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers to the Close of the Civil War
(New York: Norton, ), , .
. Miriam K. Whaples, Early Exoticism Revisited, in Jonathan Bellman, ed.,
The Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, ), , ;
Rameaus words jai caracteris le chant et la danse des sauvages are quoted in Roger
Savage, Rameaus American Dancers, Early Music, , no. (), , .
. Stephen Storace, The Cherokee, , an opera in three acts, performed at the
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. Lest it seem very odd to find such subject
matter in an English opera, it should be pointed out that in the eighteenth century
some English settlers (those on the wooded frontiers) were living closer to Native
American villages than to colonial towns on the Atlantic coast. See James Axtell, The
European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (New
York: Oxford University Press, ), .
. See Storace, The Cherokee, Invocation and Chorus, bars .
. The London Stage, Dec. , quotes an announcement on a playbill at
Drury Lane: The Public are respectfully informed that the War-Whoop Chorus,
which was so much honoured with their Approbation, is now removed to the End of
the First Act (cited in Jane Girdham, English Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London: Stephen Storace at Drury Lane [Oxford: Clarendon Press, ], ). The most
popular tune in the opera, however, was A Shepherd Once. It appears as No. of
Beethovens Original Welsh Airs (pub. George Thomson), probably because it is sung
by Winifred the Welsh maid in The Cherokee. It is labeled Air Ecossais when it appears as No. of the Op. variations. All the same, it is most probably Storaces
own composition. See Girdham, English Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London,
, and Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London:
. William B. Wood, Personal Recollections of the Stage (Philadelphia: Baird, ),
quoted in Victor Fell Yellin, Two Early American Musical Plays, in the accompany-
ing booklet to the CD recording John Bray, The Indian Princess, The Federal Music
Society Opera Company conducted by John Baldon, , orig. released (New
World Records ), , .
. When The Indian Princess work was adapted for Drury Lane, London, in Dec.
, it was renamed Pocahontas, the original title becoming a subtitle.
. Bray, The Indian Princess, incidental music to act , scene , Smith brought in
prisoner.
. Larrys song is titled Och! Hubbaboo! Gramachree! Hone!
. Kate is usually comic, too, as in the song Katys Letter by Lady Dufferin.
. Samuel Lover continues this Irish style in songs such as Rory OMore.
. On the recording, Brays The Indian Princess has been restored by Victor Fell
Yellin from a simplified keyboard version that gives occasional indications of instruments.
. Consider, for example, the case of the Prince and Li in Puccinis Turandot discussed in chapter .
. See Roy Harvey Pearce, Savagism and Civilization: A Study of the Indian and
the American Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, rev. ed. , orig. pub.
), , and Berkhofer, White Mans Indian, .
. Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, vols. (London: John Murray, ), vol. ,
, quoted in Nicholas Tawa, A Music for the Million: Antebellum Democratic Attitudes
and the Birth of American Popular Music (New York: Pendragon Press, ), .
. See Trudy Griffin-Pierce, Native Americans: Enduring Cultures and Traditions
(New York: Friedman, ), .
. Jon W. Finson, The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in th-Century American Popular Song (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . An example of the unadaptable Noble Savage is given in the song The Indian Student by Mrs L. L. D. J. ().
. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Algic Researches (New York: Dover, , orig. pub.
Harper and Brothers, ).
. Michael Pisani, Im an Indian, Too: Creating Native American Identities in
Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Music, in Bellman, The Exotic in Western
Music, , . Pisanis informative essay is largely concerned with concert
music. He presents a summary of the standard language for the musical depiction
of Indians on pages .
. Lester S. Levy, Grace Notes in American History: Popular Sheet Music from
to (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, ), . An earlier song, however, The Death Song of the Cherokee Indians, did enjoy much favor in the first
half of the nineteenth century. Its origins are obscure. There was an unlikely claim
that it was a genuine Cherokee air as recollected by a Mr. Turner, from whom it was
taken and adapted by the poet and composer Anne Hunter; see Whaples, Early Exoticism Revisited, .
. See Charles Hamm, Music in the New World (New York: Norton, ), .
. I would like to thank Grahame Shrubsole for bringing this song to my attention and providing me with a copy. He assures me that the two editions held in the
New York Public Library have been misdated ( ), and that Russell wrote the
song on his return to England in the autumn of .
. The image of the buffalo hunter bedecked in eagle feathers and dwelling in a
conical tepee is familiar from old Hollywood films, but this stereotypical image
emerged earlier in paintings and novels and is discussed by John C. Ewers in The
Emergence of the Plains Indian as the Symbol of the North American Indian, An-
nual Report Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.). Moreover, the Indian

Wars of concerned the Plains tribes, and some of these (mainly Sioux) participated in the enormously influential Buffalo Bills Wild West Shows that began in
and continued for over thirty years. In , Buffalo Bill brought his show to
Manchester, England, for the start of a provincial tour and the organizers told the
Manchester Guardian ( April ) that they had done exceedingly well.
. It should be noted that the term tribeis a convenient but not an entirely appropriate way of describing different Native American peoples, since it implies branches
of one homogeneous ethnic group rather than of a diversity of ethnic minority groups.
. See Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York: Norton,
), , and Derek B. Scott, The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian
Drawing Room and Parlour (Aldershot: Ashgate, d ed. , orig. pub. ), .
. Melody line and words given in Levy, Grace Notes in American History, .
Levy seems unaware of this duplication.
. Melody and words given in ibid., .
. Colors of the Wind (Menken-Schwartz), available on CD Pocahontas,
(Walt Disney Records WD).
. Melody and words given in Levy, Grace Notes in American History, .
Other Noble Savage songs of the s were The Indian and His Bride (MorrisBrown), , and The Indians Dream (Farrell-Howard), .
. The myth of Indians always going around attacking forts or wagon trains is
exposed as having little basis in fact by Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn
in The Indian Wars (New York: American Heritage Publishing, ).
. The songs Sioux Indians,Haunted Wood, and Texas Jack can be found in
Austin E. Fife and Alta S. Fife, eds., Cowboy and Western Songs: A Comprehensive Anthology (Ojai, CA: Creative Concepts Publishing, ), , , and .
. See Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York:
Avon Books, ), .
. Henry Clay Work, Songs, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock (New York: Da Capo Press,
), .
. The idea of the vanishing Indian can be traced back to certain songs that followed the forced removal of large numbers of Native Americans in the s and
s, for example, John W. Hutchinsons The Indians Lament (music arranged by
E. L. White, ) and James G. Clarks The Indian Mothers Lullaby (). See
Finson, The Voices That Are Gone, .
. Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and American Indian Policy in the Nineteenth Century (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press,
), .
. Arrah Wanna (Drislane-Morse), .
. See William H. A. Williams, Twas Only an Irishmans Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, ), .
. Quoted in OConnor, The Hollywood Indian, . Navajo (Williams-Van
Alystyne), , is a love song from an African-American man to a Native American
woman. When the song became a hit in France, however, it was adapted to French
colonial interests and rewritten by Paul Briollet and Lo Lelivre () as the serenade of a woman to a man from the Congo.
. Red Wing (Chattaway-Mills), .
. Another innocent song that became popular in the following decade was
By the Waters of Minnetonka An Indian Love Song (Cavanass-Lieurance), .

The vocal melody is almost entirely pentatonic throughout and is characterized by
the rhythm familiarly known as the Scotch snap. It was recorded by Nellie Melba
in , rereleased on Loves Old Sweet Song: Great Singers in Popular Ballads,
(ASV Living Era CD AJA ); a jazz version from is on Charlie Barnet, Redskin Romp, (RCA ).
. Woody Guthrie, Union Maid, ; see Mal Collins, Dave Harker, and Geoff
White, The Big Red Songbook, eds. (London: Pluto Press, enlarged ed. ), , .
. Indian Love Call, from Rose Marie (Frimi-Harbach/Hammerstein), .
. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ,
orig. pub. as Mille Plateaux, vol. of Capitalisme et Schizophrnie, [Paris: Les Editions
de Minuit, ]), .
. Pisani points out whole tones in Im an Indian, Too (Berlin) in his essay of
that title cited earlier.
. Indianola, an instrumental novelty and fox trot (Henry-Onivas [real name:
Domenico Savino]), .
. It was not long before a crucial sign for the presence of Indians was found
the drum. In Henry Bishops glee of ,Hark! Tis the Indian Drum (from Cortez,
or The Conquest of Mexico, a historical play, words by I. R. Planche), it found its first
simple representation as four staccato chords per bar. The glee is for four voices, later
arranged for three.
. Massacre Pressbook, Performing Arts Collection, New York Public Library at
Lincoln Center, cited in OConnor, The Hollywood Indian, .
. The musical example is taken from the duet Rose der Prairie, act of Emmerich Klmns Die Herzogin von Chicago (words by Julius Brammer and Alfred
Grnwald), .
. Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra, Cherokee (Noble), recorded Hollywood,
CA, Dec. , Redskin Romp, (RCA ).
. See Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin to Ya (New York: Dover,
, orig. pub. ), .
. The music to the film is available on disc: Steiner: They Died with Their Boots
On, Moscow Symphony Orchestra, cond. Stromberg, (Marco Polo ).
. See Kate Daubney, The View from the Piano: A Critical Examination and Contextualisation of the Film Scores of Max Steiner (University of Leeds., Ph.D.
thesis, ), .
. Despite showing some sympathy for Crazy Horse, the film was much criticized for its portrayal of the Sioux. There was nothing especially new about this: as
early as portrayals of Indians in films were being criticized in articles in Motion
Picture World; see OConnor, The Hollywood Indian, .
. John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Unwin Hyman, ), .
. Hank Williams, Kaw-Liga (Williams-Rose), (MGM ), rereleased
on Hank Williams, Greatest Hits, (MGM Select Double ), and The
Great Hits of Hank Williams Senior, n.d. (Pickwick International CN ).
. Another piece inspired by such figures is Raymond Scotts War Dance for
Wooden Indians. It can be heard performed by the Beau Hunks Sextette on Celebration on Planet Mars: A Tribute to Raymond Scott, (Koch International ).
. Johnny Preston, Running Bear (J. Richardson), (Mercury Records AMT ). Richardson, who wrote the song, was better known as the Big Bopper.
. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act , scene . Elsewhere, Shakespeares

words as patient as the female dove (Hamlet, act , scene ) could not be less suited
to the impetuous White Dove of this song.
. B. Lee Cooper, A Resource Guide to Themes in Contemporary American Song
Lyrics (New York: Greenwood Press, ), , .
. For example, the Fast Sioux War Dance on the CD Authentic Native American Music, (Laserlight ).
. On the subject of the Hollywood Indians grunting and limited linguistic ability, see Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, , and the same authors We Talk, You Listen (), in Frederick W. Turner III, ed., The Portable North American Indian
Reader (New York: Viking Press, ), , .
. Walt Disney, Peter Pan, animated film , (The Walt Disney Company,
Buena Vista Home Video D). The musical score is by Oliver Wallace, the orchestration by Edward Plumb, and the vocal arrangements by Jud Conlon. A general
credit only is given for the songs, so the item in question could have been the work
of any of the following: Sammy Fain, Sammy Cahn, Oliver Wallace, Frank Churchill,
Erdman Penner, Winston Hibler, and Ted Sears.
. La valse chaloupe, (arranged by Charles Dubourg, words added by Lucien
Boyer and Lo Lelivre.
The Shadows, Apache (London), (Columbia DB).
. Consider the well-known theme music to the MGM film Hang Em High
(Frontiere), .
. The Shadows, Geronimo, (Marvin) (Columbia DB).
. Johnny Cash,The Ballad of Ira Hayes (La Farge), Johnny Cashs Greatest Hits,
vol. , (CBS -).
. Alison R. Bernstein, American Indians and World War II: Toward a New Era in
Indian Affairs (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, ), . See
also Barthess discussion of the ideological import of the black soldier saluting the
French flag in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Paladin, , orig. pub.
Paris: Editions de Seuil, ), .
. Cashs once-vaunted Cherokee roots now appear to be fictional; see Colin
Larkin, ed., The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (New York: MUZE, d ed. ),
vol. , .
. See Turner, The Portable North American Indian Reader, .
. See Joann W. Kealiinohomoku,The Would-be Indian, in Charlotte J. Frisbie,
ed., Explorations in Ethnomusicology: Essays in Honor of David P. McAllester, Detroit
Monographs in Musicology (Detroit: Information Coordinators, ), .
Concern about preserving Native American culture becomes problematic when, for
example, the Makah (of Washington State) decide to return to whaling () or the
Lakota reintroduce bison () and kill them for food.
. Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (London: Barrie and Jenkins,
), xvii.
. Vine Deloria, Jr., God Is Red (Golden, Col: North American Press, , orig.
pub. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, ).
. City of Dreams (Byrne), Talking Heads, True Stories, (Fame, EMI TCFA ).
. Iron Maidens Run to the Hills was released as a single in June (EMI
); it is on the album The Number of the Beast, (EMI CDEMS), and on
the two-CD collection Best of the Beast, (CDEMDS). A live performance is
featured on Live after Death, (EMI CDP ). Black Elk Speaks is on

Hawkwinds album Space Bandits, (GWR GWCD), rereleased by Castle
Communications, (CLACD).
. A study of the Native American in relation to film music may be found in
Claudia Gorbman, Scoring the Indian: Music in the Liberal Western, in Georgina
Born and David Hesmondhalgh, eds., Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music (Berkeley: University of California Press,
), .
. Dan Georgakas, review of Dances with Wolves, Cineaste , no. (), .
. Its best-known theme is for John Dunbar, and the opening gestures made
around an E triad have been employed as a heroic sign ever since Beethovens Third
Symphony. The original soundtrack is available on Dances with Wolves (Epic
).
. Cited on the back of the soundtrack CD, Geronimo: An American Legend
(Columbia CK).
. Sacred Spirit: Chants and Dances of the Native Americans, (Virgin Records
CDVX ).
. The photograph is of someone not recognizably Native American in physiognomy and appeals to the Western admiration for youth rather than the Native American admiration for wisdom and age. Regrettably, this is all too reminiscent of the
Hollywood practice of using white actors for their important Indian roles because
they looked better; see OConnor, The Hollywood Indian, .
. The arranging, mixing, and production of all tracks are credited to The Fearsome Brave.
. Culture Clash: Sacred Spirit , (Virgin Records CDV ).
. Raindance, Polygram TV, ( ).
. As revealed on Secret History: Natural Born Americans, produced and directed
by David Upshal for Channel Television (UK), Sept. .
. ITV Yorkshire, late evening, June .
. Tim McGraw, Indian Outlaw (Barnes-Simmons-Loudermilk), .
. Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian) was
also a hit for the Raiders in .
. J. Kay Dowell, quoted by P. Cronin, Indian Outlaw Stirs Up a Controversy:
McGraw, Curb Respond to Native Americans Objections, Billboard ( March
), .
. In the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed, allowing the establishment of casinos provided that they play a role in the economic regeneration of reservations.
. This music has come to be known as waila and can be heard played by the Native American band Southern Scratch on their album Em-we-hejed (For all of you)
(Canyon Records CR-).
. An example of Joanne Shenandoahs art is the album Matriarch: Iroquois
Womens Songs (Silver Wave Records SD).
. Buffy Sainte-Marie, Up Where We Belong, (EMI Music Canada
) CD booklet, n.p.
. However, Saint-Maries rerecording of Soldier Blue on Up Where We Belong
includes a powwow sample.
. Sainte-Marie, Up Where We Belong, n.p.
. Luther Standing Bear comments on the beat of the tom-tom: They are heart-
beats, and once all men danced to its rhythm. Land of the Spotted Eagle in Turner,
The Portable North American Indian Reader, , . See also Tara Browner,
Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Pow-wow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming).
. We need the public at large to drop the myths in which it has clothed us for
so long (Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins, ).
. I suspect it is as a consequence of the embarrassment now felt at the treatment
of Native Americans in pop music that David Marsh excluded huge hits such as
Kaw-Liga and Running Bear from The Heart of Rock & Soul: The Greatest
Singles Ever Made (New York: New American Library, ).
. On the subversive challenge of carnivalesque inversions of norms, for example, see Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century
Art Forms (New York: Methuen, ), .
chapter 4
. For example, Stuart Robertsons singing on Ronnie Munro and His Dance Orchestra, Hello, Aloha, How Are You? (Gilbert-Baer), ? Aug. ( ).
. Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra, Its a Sin to Tell a Lie (Mayhew),
Sept. (matrix unknown). Henry Hall () led the re-formed BBC
Dance Orchestra from to .
. The BBC asked singers not to adopt American accents and originally tried to
ban crooning; see Paddy Scanell and David Cardiff, Serving the Nation: Public Service Broadcasting Before the War, in Bernard Waites, Tony Bennett, and Graham
Martin, eds., Popular Culture: Past and Present (London: Croom Helm, ), p. .
Scat singing, too, was frowned upon, yet even the mild-natured Bud Flanagan scats
on Underneath the Arches (Flanagan-Allen), Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra, vocal: Flanagan and Allen, July (matrix unknown).
. Gracie Fieldss recording of Ave Maria (Bach-Gounod), Oct. (EA
) was a best-seller.
. Charles Hamm, Putting Popular Music in Its Place (Cambridge: Cambridge
. In more recent times, Danny Thompsons album Whatever, (Hannibal
HNCD) comes to mind.
. For details of which musicians were playing with which bands, addresses of
venues, and other information for which there is no space here, see Sid Colin, And
the Bands Played On (London: Elm Tree, ); Jim Godbolt, A History of Jazz in
Britain (London: Quartet Books, ); Albert McCarthy, The Dance Band
Era (London: November Books, ); and Brian Rust, The Dance Bands (London:
Ian Allan, ).
. Gino Stefani, A Theory of Musical Competence, Semiotica, , no. / (),
, excerpted in Derek B. Scott, ed., Music, Culture, and Society: A Reader (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, ), , .
. The Squadronaires, a Royal Air Force band formed during the Second World
War, contained several ex-members of Ambroses band who had been called up. It
was the most admired of the services bands and was the closest the United Kingdom
got to emulating Glenn Millers wartime band.
. American Patrol (Meacham), which dates from , was turned into a song
titled We Must Be Vigilant, by E. Leslie in .
. Several notable jazz musicians, however, had a regimental background; one such
was Leslie Thompson (trumpet and trombone), who studied music at Kneller Hall
() and played with the West India Regiment before leaving Jamaica in .
. Ted Heath () had a reputation as a trombonist and songwriter before forming his own band in . This was widely acknowledged to be the United
Kingdoms finest swing band.
. Jack Hylton and His Orchestra, vocal: trio, Happy Days Are Here Again
(Yellen-Ager) Jan. (Bb ). Jack Hylton () led a band from
to . He enjoyed great popularity, which was helped by European tours (in the
s), broadcasts to the United States (in the s), and the large number of records he made.
. Lew Stone and His Band, vocal: trio, Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart
(Hanly), May (CAR -). Lew Stone () was a pianist and admired
arranger who led his own band (partly inherited from Roy Fox) at the Monseigneur
Restaurant, London, from .
. The Savoy Orpheans, vocal: duet, Baby Face (Davis-Akst), Oct. (matrix unknown). The Savoy Orpheans were associated with Londons Savoy Hotel in
the s.
. Peter Wicke, Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics and Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
. Bert Ambrose (), though English-born, had the enviable experience
of having been a bandleader in New York before he took over the band at the Embassy Club in London. In eyebrows were raised when he was offered the enormous salary of , a year to lead the band at the Mayfair Club. In the s, Ambroses band was the most highly rated of all dance bands in the United Kingdom.
. Richard Caroll Gibbons ( ), an American, took over the Savoy Orpheans in . Soon after, he was appointed head of light music at HMV Records.
. Jack Smith and Ambroses Whispering Orchestra,My Blue Heaven (WhitingDonaldson), Jan. (Bb ).
. Billy Cotton and His Band, vocal: Alan Breeze, Ive Got Sixpence (Box-CoxHall), April (-). Billy Cotton () led a band from . He was
in great demand at major dance halls and nightclubs, but in the second half of the
s he turned his band into a show band for variety theater work. He later became
a radio and TV celebrity.
. Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra, vocal: ?, Rusty and Dusty
(Kennedy-Carr), Nov. (matrix unknown).
. Ken Barry, for example, covered a range of hits in the s and s, which
included songs as disparate as Roy Orbisons In Dreams and Bob Dylans Subterranean Homesick Blues, for Woolworths Embassy label.
. Ambrose and His Orchestra at the Mayfair Hotel, vocal: Elsie Carlisle, The
Clouds Will Soon Roll By (Woods-Dixon), July (OY--).
. See Paul Oliver, (ed., Black Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open University Press, ).
. The Versatile Four, After Youve Gone (Creamer-Layton), ? Sept. ().
. See Michael Pickering, White Skin, Black Masks, in Jacqueline Bratton, (ed.,
Music Hall: Performance and Style (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open University Press, ), and Derek B. Scott, The Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian
Drawing Room and Parlour (Aldershot: Ashgate, d ed. , orig. pub. ), .
. David Brackett, Interpreting Popular Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .

. Rose Rosengard Subotnik Towards a Deconstruction of Structural Listening, in E. Narmour and Ruth Solie, ed., Explorations in Music, the Arts, and Ideas
(New York: Pendragon Press, ), .
. In this connection such enthusiasts might cite the jazz attractions of Nat
Gonellas improvised trumpet obbligato in Ray Noble and His Orchestra, vocal:
Dorothy Carless, Oh, You Nasty Man (Yellen-Caesar-Henderson), June
(OB--), or Bert Reads piano in Ambrose and His Orchestra, vocal: Sam Browne,
Bye Bye Blues (Hamm-Bennett-Lown-Gray), Oct. (Bb--). Ray Noble
() succeeded Caroll Gibbons as head of light music at HMV Records. Noble
made a string of successful records with the New Mayfair Orchestra (HMVs house
band) that featured Al Bowlly as vocalist before moving to the United States in .
. For a fuller discussion of the reception of jazz in the United Kingdom than
that given here, see Derek B. Scott, The Jazz Age, in The Blackwell History of Music
in Britain vol. : The Twentieth Century, ed. Stephen Banfield (Oxford: Blackwell,
), .
. Godbolt, A History of Jazz in Britain, .
. Bert Firman and the Rhythmic Eight, Painting the Clouds with Sunshine
(Dubin-Burke), Nov. (matrix unknown).
. Since there is little room here for detail concerning personnel on records, the
reader is referred to Rust, The Dance Bands, and Brian Rust and Sandy Forbes,
British Dance Bands on Record (Harrow: General Gramophone Publications, , orig. pub. ).
. Andr Hodeir, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, trans. David Noakes (New York:
Grove Press, ), .
. Fred Elizalde and His Music, vocal: Al Bowlly, Misery Farm (Wallis), ? Dec.
(BB -).
. Colin, And the Bands Played On, .
. Spike Hughes and His Decca-Dents, vocal: Val Rosing, Its Unanimous Now
(Stept-Green), March (De F-); it has Sylvester Ahola on trumpet.
. Melody Maker, May , .
. Jack Hylton, Jazz! The Music of the People, in The Jack Hylton Song Book,
supplement to Womans World, Oct. , ii.
. Constant Lambert, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline (London: Faber,
, orig. pub. ), .
. Fred Elizalde,JazzWhat of the Future? Gramophone, Feb. , , .
. Victor Silvester was first driven to making records as a consequence of the unsuitability of many existing records for dance practice. He coined the expression
strict tempo for his dance records.
. See Ian Whitcomb, After the Ball (New York: Limelight Editions, , orig.
pub. ), .
. Jack Payne () led the BBC Dance Orchestra from to and
took the band with him when he left to play the variety theaters.
. Show bands could, for example, perform numbers in flexible tempo, such as
My Old Dutch (Chevalier-Ingle).
. Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra, vocal: George Pizzey, The Teddy
Bears Picnic (Kennedy-Bratton), (matrix unknown), and Henry Hall and the
BBC Dance Orchestra, vocal: Dan Donovan, I Like Bananas (Because They Have
No Bones) (Yacich), June (matrix unknown).
. Jack Hylton and His Orchestra, vocal: Eve Becke, Its the Talk of the Town
(Symes-Neiburg-Levinson), Oct. (matrix unknown), and Roy Fox and His
Band, vocal: Denny Dennis, Ive Got an Invitation to a Dance (Symes-NeiburgLevinson), Jan. (matrix unknown).
. Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra, vocal: Les Allen, In a Little Second
Hand Store (Pease-Dreyer-Nelson), July (matrix unknown).
. Jack Harris and His Orchestra, vocal: Sam Browne, On Linger Longer Island
(Kennedy-Carr), Jan. (OEA -).
. The Moonlight Revellers, Misty Islands of the Highlands (Kennedy-Carr),
Nov. (CAR -).
. Billy Cotton and His Band, vocal: Alan Breeze, Did Your Mother Come from
Ireland? (Kennedy-Carr), Oct. (CAR -).
. For example, Kathleen Mavourneen (Crawford-Crouch, c. ), The Rose
of Tralee (Spencer-Glover, ), and Come Back to Erin (Claribel, ).
. Henry Hall and the BBC Dance Orchestra, vocal: Flanagan and Allen, Thats
Another Scottish Story (Flanagan), Nov. (matrix unknown).
. Joe Loss and His Band, vocal: Chick Henderson, The Generals Fast Asleep
(Kennedy-Carr), Oct. (OEA -), and Jack Hylton and His Orchestra,
vocal: George Baker? And Doreen Stephens, The Handsome Territorial (KennedyCarr), May (OEA -).
. Henry Hall and His Orchestra, vocal: Bob Malin, South of the Border
(Kennedy-Carr), May (CA -).
. Ambrose and His Orchestra, The Sunset Trail (Kennedy-Carr), ? April
(matrix unknown), and Jack Jackson and His Orchestra, vocal: Fred Latham, Ole
Faithful (Kennedy-Carr), Oct. (matrix unknown).
. Roland Barthes Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Paladin, ,
orig. pub. ), .
. Ambrose and His Orchestra, vocal: Sam Browne,Ho Hum (Suesse-Heyman),
June (OB- ).
. See also Charles Hamms discussion of the use of this tune in Irving Berlins
That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune (), in Putting Popular Music in Its Place,
.
. A classic account of subcultural bricolage can be found in Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, ), .
. Jack Hylton and His Orchestra, vocal: Jack Hylton, Meadow Lark (Fiorito),
Jan. (Bb ).
. Jack Hylton and His Orchestra, vocal: trio, Speaking of Kentucky Days
(Gilbert), Jan. (Bb ).
. Lew Stone and His Band, vocal: Nat Gonella, My Old Dog (Sarony), Feb.
(CAR ).
. Roy Fox and His Band, vocal: Bobby Joy, Calling Me Home (Wilfred),
June (matrix unknown). Roy Fox ( ), having made a reputation as a
cornetist and bandleader in Hollywood, was invited to play at the Caf de Paris, in
London with a small American band. He formed a British band in , which was
largely taken over by Lew Stone when Fox fell ill later that year. In he formed
another band, and he played in clubs and theaters until ill health struck again in .
. Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia:
Open University Press, ), .
. Philip Tagg, Kojak Seconds of Television Music: Towards the Analysis of
Affekt in Popular Music (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, ), .
. Jack Hylton and His Orchestra, vocal: Jack Hylton, Yes Sir, Thats My Baby
(Kahn-Donaldson), June (matrix unknown).
. The Savoy Orpheans, Charleston (Mack-Johnson), July (matrix unknown).
. This rhythm is featured, for example, in the introduction and elsewhere in
Peg o My Heart (Bryan-Fisher) of .
. See Gunther Schuller, Early Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, ),
.
. Cf. Jack Hylton and His Orchestra, vocal: Jack Hylton and Chappie dAmato,
Under the Ukelele [sic] Tree (Henderson), June (Bb ).
. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band,Im Forever Blowing Bubbles (KenbrovinKellette), Jan. (), and Alice Blue Gown (Tierney), May ().
. See Leonard Feather, The Jazz Years: Earwitness to an Era (; London: Pan,
). He has also written a Twelve Tone Blues.
. Lew Stone and His Band, Garden of Weed (Foresyth), April (TB-).
. Ambrose and His Orchestra, vocal: Elsie Carlisle, Sam Browne, Lets Put Out
the Lights (Hupfeld), Oct. (OB--).
. The Savoy Havana Band, vocal: Cyril Ramon Newton, Valencia (ValentinePadilla), Feb. (Bb- ).
. Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, ,
orig. pub. ), .
. There is no homogeneous classical style, of course, but this was not widely recognized in the s and s.
. Adorno refers to this book in a footnote to his article On Popular Music
Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, vol. (), . See Antony Easthope
and Kate McGowan, A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader (Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, ), .
chapter 5
. Received opinion is summed up by Paul Drivers remark, It is perfectly abstract music, in Master Builders of Symphonic Form, Sunday Times, The Culture, section , April , .
. See Benjamin M. Korstvedt, Return to the Pure Sources: The Ideology and
Text-Critical Legacy of the First Bruckner Gesamtausgabe, in Timothy L. Jackson
and Paul Hawkshaw, eds., Bruckner Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, ), , especially , and Morten Solvik, The International Bruckner Society and the N.S.D.A.P.: A Case Study of Robert Haas and the Critical Edition, Musical Quarterly , no. (), .
. Max Auers phrase used when addressing the International Bruckner Society
in ; see Bryan Gilliam, The Annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi Revisionism
and the Politics of Appropriation, in Jackson and Hawkshaw, Bruckner Studies,

, especially and . Gilliam also scrutinizes the portrayal of Bruckner
as victim of Jewish criticism (). The politicizing of Bruckners life and music is
dealt with extensively in Christa Brstles book-length study Anton Bruckner und die
Nachwelt. Zur Rezeptions-geschichte des Komponisten in der ersten Hlfte des .
Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, ).
. Constantin Floros, Brahms und Bruckner. Studien zur musikalischen Exegetik
(Wiesbaden: Breitkopf and Hrtel, ), part .
. Dika Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg (London: Marion Boyars, rev. ed.,
, orig. pub. ), .
. Derek Watson, Bruckner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, rev. ed. , orig.
pub. London: Dent, ), .
. Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg, .
. Ibid., . For more information on Bruckners formative social and musical
experiences, see A. Crawford Howie, Traditional and Novel Elements in Bruckners
Sacred Music, Musical Quarterly (), , .
. Hans Hubert Schnzeler, Bruckner (London: Calder and Boyars, ), ; the
exceptions were a book on the Mexican war and one on an Austrian expedition to
the North Pole. Bruckners lack of intellectual curiosity is attested to by his ex-pupil
Friedrich Klose in Meine Lehrjahre bei Bruckner (Regensburg: ), , excerpted in Stephen Johnson, Bruckner Remembered (London: Faber, ), .
. Robert Simpson, The Essence of Bruckner (London: Victor Gollancz, rev. ed.,
, orig. pub. ), .
. Deryck Cooke,Bruckner, in The New Grove Late Romantic Masters (London:
Macmillan, ), .
. On the influence of Haydn, Beethoven, and Schuberts Masses, see Howie,
Traditional and Novel Elements in Bruckners Sacred Music, ; on the influence of earlier sacred music, see .
. Schnzeler, Bruckner, .
. Cooke, Bruckner, . Cooke cites as examples the chorale in the Finale of the
Fifth and the second theme of the second group in the Adagio of the Eighth.
. The choir of angels was a very common image in eighteenth-century writings about church music (Alexander H. Shapiro, Drama of an Infinitely Superior
Nature: Handels Early English Oratorios and the Religious Sublime, Music and
Letters , no. [], , ).
. Howie, Traditional and Novel Elements in Bruckners Sacred Music, .
. Cooke, Bruckner, .
. Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg, . On the sacred character of Bruckners music, see R. W. S. Mendl, The Divine Quest in Music (London: Rockliff, ),
.
. In Bruckner studied Tannhuser with Otto Kitzler, who gave its first performance in Linz that year.
. Ernst Kurth describes the sleep motive from Walkre as symbolizing a
dreamlike suspension of the senses (Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners Tristan [Berne: Haupt, ], , in Ernst Kurth: Selected Writings, ed. and
trans. Lee A. Rothfarb [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ], ; this work
contains extracts from Kurths Bruckner, vols. [Berlin: Hesse, ]).
. Theodor Adorno uses the term phantasmagoria in his Wagner criticism to
describe what he sees as a magic delusion related to commodity fetishism. He interprets the last bars of Walkre as a trope for magic fire (for him, the dominant
phantasmagoria of the Ring). See Theodor W. Adorno, In Search of Wagner, trans.
Rodney Livingstone (London: Verso, , orig. pub. as Versuch ber Wagner [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, ]), . The ending of Bruckners Seventh has
certain resemblances to these bars from Walkre, such as the almost-added sixth to
the E-major triad; but notice how here, too, Bruckner has no interest in Wagners six
harps, glockenspiel, and two piccolos.
. See Hans F. Redlich Foreword, Bruckner Symphony No. (London: Eulenburg,
), ixxiii, xviiixx.
. Walter Wiora argues that the religious element in Bruckners symphonies is
greater than that in those of any other composer; see Walter Wiora, ed., Religise
Musik in nicht-liturgischen Werken von Beethoven bis Reger (Regensburg: Bosse,
), .
. Deryck Cooke, The Language of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ),
.
. Vulgate, St. John :.
. Psalms :.
. Jude .
. St. John :.
. See Watson, Bruckner, .
. Here it is interesting to note the connection in Bruckners mind between dissonance and the unclean. Alma Mahler records an incident (probably recounted by
Gustav Mahler) in which Bruckner took out a dirty handkerchief in front of his
pupils and exclaimed, Thats disgusting, eh? Thats a dirty chorda discord (Gustave Mahler: Erinnerungen und Briefe [Amsterdam: Allert de Lange, ]), excerpted
in Johnson, Bruckner Remembered, .
. St. John :.
. Job :: The land of darkness and the shadow of death; Isaiah :: The
people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of
the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined; and St. Luke :: To give
light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into
the way of peace.
. Simpson, The Essence of Bruckner, .
. Quoted in Schnzeler, Bruckner, . The whole Adagio was written in anticipation of Wagners death; see Edwin Doernberg, The Life and Symphonies of Anton
Bruckner (London: Barrie and Rockliff, ), .
. Timothy Jackson refers to C major as traditionally a symbol for divine glory
in Reply to Parkany Nineteenth Century Music (), , . Bruckners
Te Deum and Psalm offer further confirmation of this convention.
. Genesis :, :.
. Max Auer, Anton Bruckner, sein Leben und Werk (d ed., Vienna: Brnn, ),
, quoted in Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg, .
. August Halm, Die Symphonie Anton Bruckners (Munich: ), , quoted in
Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg, .
. Watson, Bruckner, .
. Auer, Anton Bruckner, sein Leben und Werk, , quoted in Newlin, BrucknerMahler-Schoenberg, .
. Simpson, The Essence of Bruckner, , discussing the coda to Symphony no. .
. That the pairing of themes originated in Bruckners reaction to a body lying

in state amid the sounds of a grand ball from an adjacent mansion is well known;
see, for example, Doernberg, The Life and Symphonies of Anton Bruckner, ;
Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg , ; Simpson, The Essence of Bruckner, ; and
Watson, Bruckner, . The anecdote is from August Gllerichs biography Anton
Bruckner, ed. Max Auer, vols. (Regensburg: Bosse, ).
. Media vita morte sumus is from an antiphon circa a.d. attributed to
Saint Notker Balbulus of the monastery of St. Gall, Switzerland, and appears in the
Book of Common Prayer (Burial of the Dead) as in the midst of life we are in
death.
. St. John :.
. In the same way as writing is understood as an absence of the voice, but the
voice is not an absence of writing; see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, , orig. pub.
as De la Grammatologie, [Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, ]), , .
. Derrida, Of Grammatology, and Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: RKP, ).
. See H. T. Andrews, Apocalyptic Literature, in A Commentary on the Bible, ed.
Arthur S. Peake (London: T. C. and E. C. Jack, ), .
. Simpson, The Essence of Bruckner, . The metaphor of the cathedral was
common in the critical reception of Bruckner in the s.
. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, , orig. pub. Oxford University Press, ).
. Simpson, The Essence of Bruckner, ; a reference to the Eighth Symphony follows.
. Ernst Bloch, Essays on the Philosophy of Music, trans. Peter Palmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , orig. pub. as Zur Philosophie der Musik
[Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, ]), .
. Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western
Music (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), . She is explaining ideas
from Adorno based on her own translation of passages from his Einleitung in der
Musiksoziologie (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt ), , , and Moments
Musicaux (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag ), , and from Anne G. Mitchell
and Wesley G. Blomsters translation of Adornos Philosophy of Modern Music (London: Sheen and Ward, orig. pub. as Philosophie der Neuen Musik Tbingen: Mohr
), .
. Bloch, Essays on the Philosophy of Music, .
. Ibid., ; however, Bloch thinks it does stem from a composer such as
Beethovens ultimate experience.
. Ibid., ; this, Bloch claims, is a goal rarely achieved and more wont to occur
in the adagio than in the finale with its fancifully epic structure.
. Consider Christopher Norriss words: Any analysis of musical form based on
notions of organic unity or self-contained thematic development will be closed to
whatever potential the work possesses for renewing our perceptions through repeated acts of creative listening (Utopian Deconstruction: Ernst Bloch, Paul de
Man and the Politics of Music, in Norris, ed., Music and the Politics of Culture [London: Lawrence and Wishart, ], , ). For more recent accounts of the
challenges to ideas of deep structure and organicism in music, see Robert Fink,
Going Flat: Post-Hierarchical Music Theory and the Musical Surface, in Nicholas
Cook and Mark Everist, eds., Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
), , especially , and Alan Street, Superior Myths, Dogmatic Allegories: The Resistance to Musical Unity, in Adam Krims, ed., Music/Ideology: Resisting the Aesthetic (Amsterdam: GB Arts, ), , especially . See also
Steve Sweeney-Turner, The Sonorous Body: Music, Enlightenment & Deconstruction
(Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, ).
. Subotnik, Developing Variations, . The reference is to Adornos Einleitung, .
. Subotnik, Developing Variations, . The reference this time is to Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, .
. See Subotnik, Developing Variations, , which refers to Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, , , .
. See Watson, Bruckner, .
. Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), .
. Ibid., .
. See Max von Oberleithner, Meine Erinnerungen an Anton Bruckner (Regensburg: Bosse, ), excerpted in Johnson, Bruckner Remembered, , .
. Constantin Floros, Bruckner Propositions (II), Bruckner Journal , no.
(), , . Floross Propositions were originally published in Heinz-Klaus
Metzger and Rainer Riehn, eds., Musik-Konzepte /: Anton Bruckner (Munich:
Text und Kritik, ).
. See Derrick Puffett, Bruckners Way: The Adagio of the Ninth Symphony,
Music Analysis , no. (), , .
. Howie, Traditional and Novel Elements in Bruckners Sacred Music, .
. Doernberg, The Life and Symphonies of Anton Bruckner, .
. In Karl Grunsky, ed., Bruckners Sinfonien, Meisterfhrer (Berlin: Lienau,
), , cited in Korstvedt, Bruckner Symphony No. , .
. This is not the only way in which Bruckner changes his motives, but it is the
way that is relevant to my argument. Another type of change to motives has been interpreted as mutation by Werner Korte in Bruckner und Brahms: Die sptromantische
Lsung der autonomen Konzeption (Tutzing: Schneider, ).
. Beethovens minor Egmont Overture ends triumphantly in the major, but with
a new theme (not an option in a Beethoven minor symphonic movement).
. This would not be the only occasion on which Bruckner was influenced by Der
Fliegende Hollnder. Constantin Floros maintains that Bruckners inspiration for the
first movement of the Eighth Symphony was the Flying Dutchmans C-minor aria
from Act (Bruckner Propositions [III], Bruckner Journal , no. [], , ).
. Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press, , orig. pub. as Die Musik des . Jahrhunderts
[Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, ]), .
. Ibid.
. Ibid., .
. Ibid.
. St. Matthew :.
. Linda Murray, The High Renaissance and Mannerism: Italy, the North and
Spain (London: Thames and Hudson, , orig. pub. as vols., ),
, monochrome illustration, . For a color illustration, see Marco Albertario,

Raphael (Milan: Electa, ), .
. I am indebted to Stan and Carmen Hawkins for providing me with this information.
. This figure reappears prominently in Psalm .
. Hugo Wolf, letter to Emil Kauffmann, Dec. , quoted in Leopold Nowak,
Preface, Anton Bruckner, Smtliche Werke, VIII Symphonie C-Moll, Fassung von
(Vienna: Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag, ), n.p. The performance referred to
was given under Hans Richter, Grosser Musikvereinssaal, Vienna, Dec. .
. Bruckners own description; see Redlich, Foreword, xv.
. A. E. Brooke, John, in Peake, A Commentary on the Bible, .
. Martin Kettle, The Bumpkin Who Became a Holy Fool, Guardian, Saturday,
Jan. , .
. Ibid., .
. For example, the Adagio of the Eighth, version, bars .
. Eero Tarasti, Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in
Music (The Hague: Mouton, ), .
. Note, incidentally, that Mendelssohn was content to begin a symphony in the
major and end in the minor (the Italian).
. Tarasti, Myth and Music, .
. See ibid., .
. Martin Pulbrook, Death, Release and Resolve: An Analysis of Anton Bruckners Seventh Symphony, Maynooth Review (), , footnote .
. Seeking evidence in performance for the ideas presented here, I would cite
Sergiu Celibidaches later interpretations of Bruckner with the Mnchner Philharmoniker.
. Ibid., .
. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine, ), .
. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ,
orig. pub. as Mille Plateaux, vol. of Capitalisme et Shizophrnie [Paris: Les Editions
de Minuit, ]), .
. Ibid.
. Evidence for this claim is provided by the work of German critical scholarship
in the nineteenth century; see Rowland Williams, Bunsens Biblical Researches, in
Frederick Temple, Rowland Williams, Benjamin Jowett, et al., Essays and Reviews
(London: Parker, ).
. Quoted in Benjamin Korstvedt, Bruckner Symphony No. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), . This statement originally appeared in Anton
Bruckner, Die Zeit (), and is reprinted in Heinrich Schenker als Essayist und
Kritiker: Gesammelte Aufstze Rezensionen und kleinere Berichte aus den Jahren
, ed. Hellmut Federhofer (Hildesheim: Olms, ), .
. Puffett, Bruckners Way, , . Furthermore, it is a reversed recapitulation

(the second theme arriving first).
. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, ; a rhizome is an underground
stem with a mixture of roots and shoots.
. Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg , .
. Ibid., .
. Kurth, Ernst Kurth: Selected Writings, .
. Bryan Gilliam, The Two Versions of Bruckners Eighth Symphony, Nineteenth Century Music (), , .
. Ibid.
. Ibid., footnote .
. The original coda of this work was revised; see Arthur D. Walker, Foreword,
Overture in G Minor by Anton Bruckner (London: Eulenburg, ), iiiiv.
. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, .
. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, .
. Robert S. Hatten provides an informative study of disjunction in The Expressive Role of Disjunction: A Semiotic Approach to Form and Meaning in the
Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, in Crawford Howie, Paul Hawkshaw, and Timothy
Jackson, eds., Perspectives on Anton Bruckner (Aldershot: Ashgate, ), .
. Floros, Bruckner Propositions (II), .
. Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg , .
. Ludwig Finscher, Zur Stellung der Nullten Symphonie in Bruckners Werk,
in Anton Bruckner: Studien zu Werk und Wirkung:Walter Wiora zum . Dezember
/ herausgegeben von Christoph-Helmut Mahling, Mainzer Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, vol. (Tutzing: Schneider, ), , . I am grateful to John
Williamson for bringing this to my attention.
. Cited by Peter Palmer in Ludwig Wittgensteins Remarks on Bruckner, Perspectives on Anton Bruckner, , ; the remarks are in Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Vermischte Bemerkungen, ed. Georg Henrik von Wright (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag, ).
. Reproduced in Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, .
. Carl Hruby, Meine Erinnerungen an Anton Bruckner (Vienna: ), in Johnson, Bruckner Remembered, .
. See Elisabeth Maier, A Hidden Personality: Access to an Inner Biography of
Anton Bruckner, in Jackson and Hawkshaw, Bruckner Studies, , .
. Newlin, Bruckner-Mahler-Schoenberg, .
chapter 6
. Franz Liszt and Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, Berlioz and His Harold
Symphony, orig. pub. as Berlioz und seine Haroldsymphonie, in Neue Zeitschrift
fr Musik (), excerpted and trans. Oliver Strunk in Ruth Solie, ed., Strunks
Source Readings in Music History, vol. : The Nineteenth Century (New York: Norton,
rev. ed., Leo Treitler, general ed., , orig. pub. ), , .
. Liszt and Sayn-Wittgenstein, Berlioz and his Harold Symphony, .

. Letter to Carolyn von Sayn-Wittgenstein dated Jan. in Franz Liszt, Correspondance, lettres choisies, prsentes et annotes par Pierre-Antoine Hur et Claude
Knepper (Paris: ditions Jean-Claude Latts, ), . Liszt may have been influenced in this view by Goethes Faust, to which Berlioz had introduced him.
. See Robert Donington, The Interpretation of Early Music (London: Faber, rev.
ed. , orig. pub. ), , .
. Franz Liszt, letter of Oct. to Emilie Merian-Genast, cited in Serge Gut,
Franz Liszt: Les lements du Language Musical (Saverdun: ditions Klincksieck,
), .
. Gut, Franz Liszt, . See also W. A. Everett, Chernomor, the Astrologer, and
Associtates: Aspects of Shadow and Evil in Ruslan and Lyndmila and The Golden
Cockerel, Opera Quarterly 12 (199596), 2334.
. See pages of the Eulenburg score.
. Played by Bukkene Bruse on an album of the same name, (Grappa GRCD
).
. Alan Walker, Franz Liszt, vol. : The Weimar Years (London: Faber,
), , footnote .
. See Walkers discussion of the Raff case in particular, in ibid., and, more
generally, Peter Raabe, Franz Liszt: Leben und Schaffen, vols. (Tutzing: Schneider,
rev. ed. , orig. pub. Stuttgart: Cotta, ), .
. Hector Berlioz, Treatise on Instrumentation (New York: Kalmus, , orig.
pub. as Grand trait dinstrumentation et dorchestration modernes, Paris: Schonenberger, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Diese ganze stelle als ein lsterndes Hohngelchter aufgefat, sehr scharf
markirt in den beiden Clarinetten und den Violen.
. Berlioz, Treatise, .
. Liszt took the first part of his title,Aprs une lecture du Dante: Fantaisie quasi
Sonata ( ) from a poem in Victor Hugos Les Voix intrieures, after the work
was complete. See Sharon Winklhofer, Liszt, Marie dAgoult, and the Dante
Sonata, th Century Music , no. (), , .
. Translation by John D. Sinclair in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno
(London: Oxford University Press, , orig. pub. Oxford: Bodley Head, ),
, .
. See Alan Walker, Franz Liszt, vol. : The Virtuoso Years, (London:
Faber, rev. ed. , orig. pub. ), .
. Karl Tausenau, Feb. , in Dezs Legny, ed., Franz Liszt: Unbekannte
Presse und Briefe aus Wien (Budapest: Corvina Kiad, ), . The piece
was titled Fragment nach Dante at the time.
. Walker, Franz Liszt, vol. , .
. Ibid., .
. Franz Schubert, no. of Songs by Schubert, . For its reception, see
Walker, Franz Liszt, vol. , .
. Leonard B. Meyer, Style and Music: Theory, History, and Ideology (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, , orig. pub. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, ), .
. Humphrey Searle, The Music of Liszt (New York: Dover, d ed. , orig. pub.
London: Williams and Northgate, ), .
. Sacheverell Sitwell, Liszt (New York: Dover, , orig. pub. London: Cassell,
), xi.
. For a study of medieval iconography in relation to the devil in music, see Reinhold Hammerstein, Diabolus in Musica (Bern: Francke Verlag, ).
. See James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art (London: John Murray, ), .
. See John White, Art and Architecture in Italy: (New Haven: Yale
University Press, , orig. pub. Harmondsworth: Penguin, ), ; an illustration of the fresco (almost entirely destroyed by a bomb in ) is given on
page .
. See Winklhofer, Liszt, Marie dAgoult, and the Dante Sonata, . Holbeins
woodcuts are discussed in Siglind Bruhn, Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding
to Poetry and Painting (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, ), .
. Robert Samuels, Mahlers Sixth Symphony: A Study in Musical Semiotics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), ; the dance of death is discussed on
pages .
. Liszt transcribed Berliozs Symphonie fantastique for piano in .
. Ben Arnold, Liszt and the Music of Revolution and War, in Michael Saffle
and James Deaville eds., New Light on Liszt and His Music: Essays in Honor of Alan
Walkers th Birthday (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, ), , .
. Sitwell, Liszt, .
. Adrian Williams, Portrait of Liszt by Himself and His Contemporaries (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, ), , footnote.
. See Humphrey Searle, The Orchestral Works, in Alan Walker, ed., Franz
Liszt: The Man and His Music (London: Barrie and Jenkins, ), , .
. Lawrence Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice, (Berkeley: University
of California Press, ), .
. Amy Fay, letter of May , excerpted in Adrian Williams, Portrait of Liszt
by Himself and His Contemporaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), , .
. Sitwell, Liszt, .
. See Eric Frederick Jensen, Liszt, Nerval, and Faust, th Century Music ,
no. (), , .
. Gut, Franz Liszt, .
. Walter Beckett, Liszt (London: Dent, rev. ed. , orig. pub. ), .
. Quoted in Humphrey Searle, Franz Liszt, in Stanley Sadie, ed., The New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. (London: Macmillan, ), .
. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust: Eine Tragdie, erste Teil (Leipzig: Mnster
Presse, ), (Vor dem Tor).
. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust, part , trans. Philip Wayne (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, ), .
. Faust: Eine Tragdie, .
. Alan P. Cottrell, Goethes View of Evil and the Search for a New Image of Man in
Our Time (Edinburgh: Floros Books, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Sren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, d ed. , orig. pub. as Begrebet Angest by Vigilius Haufniensis [pseud.], ed. S. Kierkegaard, []), . See Gregor Malantschuk, Kierkegaards Thought, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, , orig. pub. as Dialektik og Elksistens hos Sren Kierkegaard [Copenhagen: Reitzel, ], .
. George Pattison, Kierkegaard: The Aesthetic and the Religious: From the Magic
Theatre to the Crucifixion of the Image (London: Macmillan, ), .
. See Eudo C. Mason, Goethes Faust Its Genesis and Purport (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), .
. See John Douglas Mullen, Kierkegaards Philosophy: Self-Deception and Cowardice in the Present Age (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, ), .
. Sren Kierkegaard, Enten-Eller (Copenhagen: Bianco Luno Press, ); it was
originally advertised as edited by Victor Eremita [pseud.].
. Sren Kierkegaard, The Immediate Stage of the Erotic, or The Musical
Erotic, in Either/Or, vol. , trans. David F. Swenson and Lillian M. Swenson (London: Oxford University Press, ), , .
. See Malantschuk, Kierkegaards Thought, , .
. See Pattison, Kierkegaard, .
. Sren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, part , ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna
H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), .
. Sren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, vol. : AE, ed. and trans. Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ), .
. See Sren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, , orig. pub. as Fryg og
Bven: Dialektist Lyrik by Johannes de Silentio [pseud.] [Copenhagen: Bianco Luno
Press, ]), .
. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, .
. See Malantschuk, Kierkegaards Thought, .
. Note that the love scenes in Liszts symphonies resemble one another in this
restlessness: that between Faust and Gretchen (Affettuoso, poco andante, two bars
after Letter Dd, first movement) is an alternating 43 and 44; the love scene between
Paulo and Francesca (Andante amoroso) is 47 (but divided 43 , 44).
. See James Collins, The Mind of Kierkegaard (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, , orig. pub. ), . For a feminist reading of Kierkegaards ideas of the
demonic, see Birgit Bertung, Yes, a Woman Can Exist, in Cline Lon and Sylvia
Walsh, eds., Feminist Interpretations of Sren Kierkegaard (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, ), , especially . A study of the female demoniac in opera might begin with the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflte and her
absorption in the idea of revenge.
. Geoffrey Clive, The Demonic in Mozart, Music and Letters , no. (),
, , reprinted in Lewis A. Lawson, ed., Kierkegaards Presence in Contemporary
American Life: Essays from Various Disciplines (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, ),
.
. Ronald Taylor, Franz Liszt: The Man and the Musician (London: Grafton
Books, ), .
. John D. White, Liszt and Schenker, in Michael Saffle, ed., Liszt and His World
(Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, ), , .
. Sitwell, Liszt, .
. Lawrence Kramer, Liszt, Goethe, and the Discourse of Gender, in Music as
Cultural Practice, , , .
. Paul Merrick, Revolution and Religion in the Music of Liszt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Tibor Szsz, Liszts Symbols for the Divine and Diabolical: Their Revelation
of a Programme in the B Minor Sonata, Journal of the American Liszt Society
(), .
. See Kenneth Hamilton, Liszt: Sonata in B Minor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
. Vera Micznik, The Absolute Limitations of Programme Music: The Case of
Liszts Die Ideale, Music and Letters (), , .
. David Wilde, Liszts Sonata: Some Jungian Reflections, in Saffle and Deaville, New Light on Liszt and His Music, , .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Louis Kentner, Solo Piano Music ( ), in Walker, Franz Liszt: The Man
and His Music, .
. See Hamilton, Liszt, .
. Bence Szabolcsi, The Twilight of Ferenc Liszt, trans. Andrs Dek (Budapest:
Hungarian Academy of Sciences, , orig. pub. as Liszt Ferenc Estje, [Zenemkiad Vllalat Budapest, ]), .
. Szabolcsi, The Twilight of Ferenc Liszt, .
. Hur and Knepper suggest it may be a reference to the comet in the sky at
Liszts birth; if so, the piece would seem to indicate profound depression about his
lifes achievement on Liszts part. See Liszt, Correspondance, , footnote .
. Allan Forte, Liszts Experimental Idiom and Music of the Early Twentieth
Century, th Century Music , no. (), , .
. Ibid., .
. Searle, Franz Liszt, .
. Forte, Liszts Experimental Idiom, .
. Liszt and Sayn-Wittgenstein, Berlioz and His Harold Symphony, .
. See Klara Hamburger, Franz Liszt, trans. into German by herself (Budapest:
Corvina Verlag, , orig. pub. as Liszt Ferenc [Gondolat Kiad, ]), .
. Szabolcsi, The Twilight of Ferenc Liszt, .
. Cited by Gerald Abraham in his foreword to the Eulenburg score (n.d.), ii.
. Samples can be heard on tracks and of Horror!, Westminster Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Kenneth Alwyn, (Silva Screen Records FILMCD ).
Night of the Demon (Columbia, dir. Jacques Tourneur) and The Devil Rides Out
(Hammer, dir. Terence Fisher) were released in the United States as Curse of the
Demon and The Devils Bride, respectively.
chapter 7
. A myth derives its significance not from contemporary or archaic institutions
of which it is a reflection, but from its relation to other myths within a transforma-
tion group (Claude Lvi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science
of Mythology, trans. John and Doreen Weightman [Harmondsworth: Penguin, ,
orig. pub. as Le Cru et le cuit, Paris: Plon, ], , footnote ).
. Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (Harmondsworth: Penguin, , orig. pub. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, ), . It
would be wrong to give the impression that this book represents Saids final
thoughts on this subject; for the further development of his arguments, see Culture
and Imperialism (London: Chatto and Windus, ).
. J. A. Westrup, Purcell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, , orig. pub. London: Dent, ), .
. Carolyn Abbate, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth
Cenutry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), .
. Jonathan Bellman, The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe (Boston:
Northeastern University Press, ), ; see also . Bence Szabolcsi, in Exoticisms in Mozart, Music and Letters (), , is concerned with tracing
ethnographic sources for Mozarts exoticisms and rebutting the accusation of lighthearted toying on Mozarts part. To rescue Mozart from this charge, Szabolcsi attempts to convey a sense of Mozart dignifying folk music by raising it to the level of
art. The question What are the ideological implications of revoicing these foreign
elements through the Viennese style? is not asked. His theoretical model is not of
Self and Other but of Art and Folk; he thinks, therefore, in terms of elevation rather
than mediation.
. Ibid., .
. For fuller discussion, see Miriam Karpilow Whaples, Exoticism in Dramatic
Music, (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, ; Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, ); Thomas Bauman, W. A. Mozart: Die Entfhrung
aus dem Serail (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); and Bellman, The
Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe, .
. Alfred Einstein, Essays on Music (London: Faber, rev. ed., , orig. pub. ), .
. Bellman, The Style Hongrois in the Music of Western Europe, .
. Franz Liszt, The Gipsy in Music, trans. Edwin Evans (London: William Reeves,
, orig. pub. as Des Bohmiens et de leur Musique en Hongrie, []), .
. Ralph P. Locke, Constructing the Oriental Other: Saint-Sanss Samson et
Dalila, Cambridge Opera Journal , no. (), . The work cited is Francis Affergan, Exotisme et altrit: Essai sur les fondements dune critique de lanthropologie
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, ), .
. Ill Sing Thee Songs of Araby(Wills-Clay), (from the cantata Lalla Rookh).
. A Son of the Desert Am I (Wilson-Phillips), (published in New York).
. The Arabs Farewell to His Favourite Steed (Norton-Blockley), c. .
. No. of Caroline Nortons Sabbath Lays of . The words of this song reflect
upon a biblical text, Revelation :, . For details of this tunes dissemination in
France, see Ralph P. Locke,Cutthroats and Casbah Dancers, Muezzins and Timeless
Sands: Musical Images of the Middle East, in Jonathan Bellman, ed., The Exotic in
Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, ), , .
. Supposedly composed by New York congressman Sol Bloom for an Egyptian
dance at the Chicago Worlds Columbian Exposition in ; see Derek B. Scott, The
Singing Bourgeois: Songs of the Victorian Drawing Room and Parlour (Aldershot: Ashgate, d ed. , orig. pub. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, ), .
. Whole-tone scales on trombones accompany the act chorus of followers of

the evil magician.
. See Said, Orientalism, .
. Richard Taruskin, Entoiling the Falconet: Russian Musical Orientalism in
Context, Cambridge Opera Journal , no. (), , , republished in Bellman, The Exotic in Western Music, ).
. Alexander Korda, The Thief of Bagdad, London Films, UK, .
. Roy M. Prendergast, Film Music: A Neglected Art (New York: Norton, d ed.,
, orig. pub. ), .
. Ibid., .
. Pius Alexander Wolff s play Preciosa was based on Cervantess tale La Gitanella.
. See Bellman, The Style Hongrois, . John Warrack refers to a Dresden librarians recollection of Webers studying a collection of Spanish national tunes and
even turning up examples of genuine Gipsy music but adds that Webers own
knowledge of Spain was negligible, being based chiefly on his overhearing of a few
Spanish songs in the company of Spohr from Spanish soldiers garrisoned near
Gotha (Carl Maria von Weber [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, d ed.,
, orig. pub. London: Hamish Hamilton, ]), .
. Mother, O! Sing Me to Rest (words by Felicia Hemans, music anon.), .
. The Bandolero (Stuart), .
. It has often been remarked that Bizet was influenced by Spanish music in Carmen: for example, that his Habaera is based on Sebastin Yradiers El Arreglito and
the entracte to act on an arrangement by Manuel Garca of a Spanish polo and that
other tunes are taken from a Paris edition of Spanish songs. For a discussion of
Spanish music in Carmen, the extent to which it was already mediated before Bizet
appropriated it, and how far he altered it to suit his own purpose, see Susan McClary,
Georges Bizet: Carmen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), . Bizets
Orientalism, however, is evident in this musics treatment (especially in his harmony
and orchestration) and the decisions he makes as to who sings in this stylefor example, Don Jos is Spanish, but musically he is French (on this subject, see James
Parakilas,The Soldier and the Exotic: Operatic Variations on a Theme of Racial Encounter, Opera Quarterly , no. , and no. [], ).
. Interestingly, Italians almost become the cultural Other in Tchaikovskys
Capriccio Italien (), so that some people find the piece suggests Spain rather than
Italy.
. Sullivan treats Scottish music in a similar way in Haddon Hall (at the same
time showing informed knowledge of Highland bagpipe ornamentation).
. However, Abdulmajid from Glasss Heroes Symphony does adopt an Orientalist manner.
. Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera (New York: Columbia University
Press, d ed., , orig. pub. ), , . For the influence of Flicien Davids
Oriental works, see ibid., , and Locke, Constructing the Oriental Other,
.
. This change suggests that Berlioz was not merely trying to be ancient by
using modal melody in the previous section (although to some extent, of course,
Berlioz wished the whole of LEnfance du Christ to sound ancient). An unmistakable exotic moment, earlier in the work, is the cabalistic dance of the soothsayers.
. Said, Orientalism, .
. Kashmiri Song from Four Indian Love Lyrics (HopeWoodforde-Finden),
.
. Rudolph Valentino, Kashmiri Song, n.d., The Great Screen Lovers Collection,
(Deja Vu Records DVMC ), item , side .
. The Mousmee; Or, His Sweetheart in Japan (Sladen-Hedgcock), .
. As a further illustration of this ideology at work, note how in Les Troyens
Berlioz characterizes oJi polloi with drone fifths, exotic percussion (antique cymbals), and clashing grace notes but not, say, Aeneas or Cassandra.
. The Sheik of Araby (Smith and WheelerSnyder), .
. See The Story of Ali Baba, and the Forty Thieves Destroyed by a Slave, in
Robert L. Mack, ed., Arabian Nights Entertainments (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, ), .
. Rexton S. Bunnett, Chu Chin Chow, CD booklet, (EMI ), .
. Said, Orientalism, , . When, for example, a seedy nightclub advertises Exotic Dancers, the meaning is clear. As Said says, The association between
the Orient and sex is remarkably persistent (Orientalism, ). Russians, too, associated the Orient with sex; see Taruskin, Entoiling the Falconet, .
. Oscar Asche, Foreword to Chu Chin Chow, reprinted in CD booklet; see note .
. Here I am, of course, referring to the music and not to the shows book or to
such things as casting policy.
. Program, Miss Saigon, Theatre Royal, London, , n.p.
. Ambrose (Fields-McHugh), A Japanese Dream (Bb--), .
. Prendergast, Film Music: A Neglected Art, .
. Victor Hugo, in the preface to his volume of verse Les Orientales of , states:
Spain is still the Orient; Spain is half African, Africa is half Asian (quoted in
McClary, Georges Bizet ).
. It is not my contention that such devices are employed in an utterly indiscriminate manner: for example, pentatonic melody and gongs are not likely to be
used to evoke Spain.
. For example, Rimsky-Korsakovs Scheherazade, bars .
. Eero Tarasti, Myth and Music: A Semiotic Approach to the Aesthetics of Myth in
Music (The Hague: Mouton, ). See Tarasti, p. ; Scheherazade, d movement,
bars provides an example.
. For a well-balanced account of these positive and negative factors, see Locke,
Cutthroats and Casbah Dancers, especially .
. J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western
Thought (London: Routledge, ), .
. In this case, musical Orientalism operates as a sort of musical fancy dress.
Consider the following comment on Oriental masquerade: Stereotypical and inaccurate though they often were, exotic costumes marked out a kind of symbolic interpenetration with differencean almost erotic commingling with the alien
(Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilisation: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century
English Culture and Fiction [London: Methuen, ], ). I am grateful to Marian Gilbert Read for drawing my attention to this point and the passage quoted.
Sometimes Oriental fancy dress moves to the mainstream: Leon Baksts Oriental
designs for the Ballet Russes transformed Paris fashions in the second decade of the
twentieth century; see Colin McDowell, Choreographer of Change, Sunday Times,

The Culture, Jan. , p. .
. For Bakhtins theory of the carnivalesque, see Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and
His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, ).
For a study that links Mozarts Turkish music and the carnivalesque, see Matthew
Head, Orientalism, Masquerade and Mozarts Turkish Music, Royal Musical Association Monographs (London: Royal Musical Association, ), espec. , .
. Remark attributed to Alan Clark, former British government minister for defence, in an Amnesty International advertisement (Guardian, Saturday, March
, p. ).
. See Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds., The Post-Colonial
Studies Reader (London: Routledge, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology (London: Williams and Norgate, ),
part , chapter , section .
. See Christine Bolt, Race and the Victorians, in C. C. Eldridge, ed., British Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan, ), , . Bolt
cites D. A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians (Leicester: Leicester University
Press, ), chapter .
. Said, Orientalim, .
. See ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. J. E. Ritchie, The Night Side of London (London: William Tweedie, d ed., ),
. The term costermonger originally described a person who sold fruit from a
market barrow (a costard was a type of large apple), but about this time it began
to be used for any street seller and tended to conjure up the image of a typical
working-class Cockney.
. See Scott, The Singing Bourgeois, and .
. See Bellman, The Style Hongrois, , .
. Ibid., .
. Consider Ernest Golds music for Exodus (), Miklos Rozsas music for King
of Kings (), or Alfred Newmans score for The Greatest Story Ever Told ().
. Archibald T. Davison and Willi Apel, Historical Anthology of Music, vol. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), . The piece may be found on page .
. Denis Stevens pointed out that it becomes intelligible when the upper string
of the lute is tuned a semitone higher according to instructions (Musicology: A Practical Guide [London: Macdonald, ], ). The instruction to tune the chanterelle
a semitone higher is given above the tablature.
. Klingors poem Asie, mentioned earlier during the discussion of Ravels
Shhrazade of .
. Hugh Macdonald, Something Borrowed, Something New, in Pellas & Mlisande, Opera Guide (London: John Calder, ), p. .
. Donald F. Tovey is reminded of the Homeric seas in the coda to this movement; see Essays in Musical Analysis, vol. : Symphonies (ii) (London: Oxford University Press, , orig. pub. ), .
. Eric Blom, comp., Everymans Dictionary of Music, ed. Jack Westrup (London:
Dent, th ed., ), .
chapter 8
. This is given as the reason the French looked to jazz and things American in
Edmund Wilson, The Aesthetic Upheaval in France: The Influence of Jazz in Paris
and Americanization of French Literature and Art, Vanity Fair (Feb. ), ,
cited in Nancy Perloff, Art and the Everyday: Popular Entertainment and the Circle of
Erik Satie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), .
. Kreneks opinion is cited without source in Ronald Taylor, Kurt Weill: Composer in a Divided World (London: Simon and Schuster, ), .
. Lionel Carley, Delius: A Life in Letters, vol. , (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), .
. For information on the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University, Nashville, and their
tours, see J. B. T. Marsh, The Story of the Jubilee Singers (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, new ed. ).
. See Geoffrey Self, The Hiawatha Man: The Life and Work of Samuel ColeridgeTaylor (Aldershot: Scolar Press, ), . The same tune was used by Louis Moreau
Gottschalk in his piano piece Bamboula, op. ( ).
. Daily Telegraph, , reporting on The Death of Minnehaha, a cantata produced at the North Staffordshire Music Festival on Oct. . The report is quoted
at length on the back cover of Novellos contemporaneous publication of Hubert
Parrys choral setting of Blest Pair of Sirens (Milton).
. For the impact of the cakewalk in Paris, , see Perloff, Art and the
Everyday, .
. Marie Lloyd,The Piccadilly Trot (David-Arthurs) (Zonophone ye),
Nov. .
. George Formby, John Willies Ragtime Band (Murphy) (AKe), .
. Hitchy-Koo, (GilbertAbrahams and Muir), .
. See Ronald Pearsall, Edwardian Popular Music (Newton Abbot: David and
Charles, ), .
. I Got the Blues was published in New Orleans and is reprinted in Trebor Jay
Tichenor, Ragtime Rediscoveries: Works from the Golden Age of Rag (New York:
Dover, ), .
. Peter van der Merwe, The Italian Blue Third, in Tarja Hautamki and Tarja
Rautiainen, eds., Popular Music Studies in Seven Acts (Tampere, Finland: University
of Tampere, ), , .
. Arbie Orenstein, A Ravel Reader (New York: Columbia University Press,
), .
. Ravel in , quoted in Orenstein, A Ravel Reader, .
. See Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: AfroAmerican Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University
Press, ), .
. Tom Fletcher, Years of the Negro in Show Business (New York: Da Capo,
, reprint of ed. orig. pub. Burdge, ), .
. Charles Hamm, Putting Popular Music in Its Place (Cambridge: Cambridge
. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (London:
Faber, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), .
. Olly Wilson, The Significance of the Relationship Between Afro-American

Music and West African Music, Black Perspective on Music (), .
. Andr Hodeir, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, trans. David Noakes (New York:
Grove, , a rev. and expanded version of Hommes et Problmes du Jazz), . It is
only fair to note, however, that Hodeir has suggested charitably that, in places, this
Ragtime contains formulas of a rhythmic flexibility that makes them resemble the
riffs of jazzmen (). Surprisingly, perhaps, Hodeir is not inclined to be so kind
about Milhaud.
. J. Reginald MacEachron, On Easy Street (In Rags) (), reprinted in Tichenor, Ragtime Rediscoveries, .
. Henry Pleasants, Serious Musicand All That Jazz! An Adventure in Music
Criticism (London: Gollancz, ), .
. Stravinsky and Craft, Expositions and Developments, .
. Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (New
York: Simon and Schuster, ), .
. David Thomson, Europe since Napoleon (London: Longmans Green, ), .
. Darius Milhaud, Ma Vie heureuse (Paris: Belfond, ), .
. Darius Milhaud, Notes Without Music, trans. Donald Evans (New York: Knopf,
), .
. Lawrence Kramer, Powers of Blackness: Africanist Discourse in Modern
Concert Music, Black Music Research Journal , no. (), , .
. Michael Newman, Primitivism and Modern Art, Art Monthly (May
), , .
. As Georg Simmel detailed in Die Grosstdte und das Geistesleben (The Metropolis and mental life, ); see Kurt H. Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel
(London: Macmillan, ).
. William Rubin, ed., Primitivism in th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and
the Modern, vols. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, ), .
. For a discussion of misreadings, see ibid., . For example, the sometimes
rigid, frontal, symmetrical, and often awkward poses of many African figures were
often misread as examples of Expressionism, as indicating the psychological angst of
people living in a fearful environment (). A frontal pose that signifies community in Africa could be read as signifying social anxiety in Europe.
. James Harding, The Ox on the Roof: Scenes from Musical Life in Paris in the
Twenties (London: Macdonald, ), .
. Deborah Mawer, Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the s
(Aldershot: Scolar Press, ), .
. See ibid., .
. Livery Stable Blues (Lopez-Nunez-Lee) was the first jazz record by the
ODJB, made on Feb. (B). It can be heard on Finest Vintage Jazz
(ASV Living Era, AJA ), , track .
. Gunther Schuller, Jazz and Musical Exoticism, in Jonathan Bellman, ed., The
Exotic in Western Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, ), , .
Schuller also points to the influence elsewhere in the piece of Aunt Hagars Blues
by W. C. Handys Orchestra.
. Hodeir praises Milhaud for understanding the importance of tonic-subdominant interplay to the blues (Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, ).
. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, Muskrat Ramble (Ory) recorded Chicago, Feb. (-A). The musicians on this recording are Louis Armstrong
(cornet), Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Lil Armstrong (piano), and
Johnny St. Cyr (banjo). As a jazz classic, it has been rereleased many times and may
be found (as well as elsewhere) on Louis Armstrong: The Greatest Hot Fives & Hot
Sevens, (ASV Living Era, CD AJA ).
. Richard Middleton, Scores , The Rise of Modernism in Music (Milton Keynes: Open University, Course A), .
. Darius Milhaud, Lvolution du jazz-band et la musique des ngres de
lAmrique du Nord, Le Courrier musical , no. (), .
. Milhaud, Notes Without Music, .
. Laura Rosenstock, Lger: The Creation of the World, in Rubin, Primitivism in th Century Art, vol. , , . Lgers contribution to La Cration is
covered in detail in this essay.
. For a detailed discussion of jazz reception in Weimar Germany, upon which
this paragraph leans heavily, see J. Bradford Robinson, Jazz Reception in Weimar
Germany: In Search of a Shimmy Figure, in Bryan Gilliam, ed., Music and Performance During the Weimar Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ),
, .
. Ronald Taylor, Kurt Weill: Composer in a Divided World (London: Simon and
Schuster, ), .
. Ernst Krenek, From Jonny to Orest, in Exploring Music: Essays by Ernst
Krenek, trans. Margaret Shenfeld and Geoffrey Skelton (London: Calder and Boyars,
, orig. pub. in Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, Jan. ), , .
. He appears on the cover of the brochure of an Entartete Musik exhibition reproduced in Jack Sullivan, New World Symphonies: How American Culture Changed
European Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), ; it is not clear whether
this is the Munich exhibition or the Dsseldorf exhibition.
. Robinson, Jazz Reception in Weimar Germany, .
. Ibid., .
. Igor Stravinsky, Selected Correspondence, vol. , ed. Robert Craft (London:
Faber, ), , footnote .
. Music Ho! Constant Lambert, A Study of Music in Decline (Hammondsworth:
Penguin, , orig. pub. London: Faber, ), .
. Ernst Bloch, The Threepenny Opera (), trans. by the editor in Stephen
Hinton, ed., Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, ), , .
. Cited without source in John Willet, The New Sobriety : Art and Politics in the Weimar Period (London: Thames and Hudson, ), .
. See Michael Morley, Suiting the Action to the Word: Some Observations on
Gestus and gestische Musik, in Kim H. Kowalke, ed., A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt
Weill (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), .
. For example, Erinnerung an die Marie A. (c. ). It can be heard in English
on Robyn Archer Sings Brecht, vol. , (EMI Records, EL ), track .
. The harmonium is not generally thought of as a jazz instrument, but it does
appear (played by Fred Longshaw) on the famous Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong
recording of St. Louis Blues of Jan. ().
. Aus der -Groschen-Oper, Dec. (Telefunken Gesellschaft A),
rereleased on CD by Teldec Classics International, ( ), and Die
Dreigroschenoper conducted by Wilhelm Brckner-Rggeberg, (CBS Records
MK , rereleased on CD in ).
. Ich suche weder neue Formen noch neue Theorien, ich suche ein neues Publikum (quoted without source in Michel Prez, Die Dreigroschenoper, CD booklet essay that accompanies CBS recording MK , , rereleased on CD in ,
, .
. Willet, The New Sobriety , .
. According to Jacques-Charles, the revue Laisse-les tomber at the Casino de
Paris in intoduced Parisians to jazz (the music was played by an American band
directed by black drummer Louis Mitchell) (Cent ans de music-hall: Histoire gnrale
du music-hall de ses origines nos jours [Geneva: ditions Jeheber, ], , cited in
Perloff, Art and the Everyday, ).
. See Rosenstock, Lger, .
. Wilfrid Mellers, Francis Poulenc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), .
. Henri Hell, Francis Poulenc: Musicien Franais (Paris: Fayard, , orig. pub.
), .
. Sullivan, New World Symphonies (), ; a footnote explains that this remark is cited in Keith W. Daniel, Francis Poulenc (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research
Press, ), .
. Attributed to Neville Cardus in Trevor Holds CD notes to Walton-LambertBliss-Warlock-Berners, (Symposium Records ).
. See Elaine Brody, Paris: The Musical Kaleidoscope (London: Robson
Books, ), .
. Josephine Baker with Jacobs Jazz,Then Ill Be Happy (Friend-Clare-Brown),
recorded Jan. (matrix unknown), rereleased on Josphine Baker, Star of Les
Folies-Bergres: Twenty-Four Hits , (ASV Living Era CD AJA ).
. See Brian Large, Martinu (London: Duckworth, ), .
. Jean Cocteau, Jazz-Band, Le Rappel lordre (Paris: Delamain, ), .
. Bernard Gendron, Jamming at Le Boeuf: Jazz and the Paris Avant-Garde,
Discourse , no. (FallWinter ), , .
. Stan Hawkins, Eurogrooves, paper delivered at the Black American Music
Conference, University of Utrecht, May .
. Lambert, Music Ho!, .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Sullivan, New World Symphonies, .
. Portia Maultsby, Africanisms in African-American Music, in Joseph E. Holloway, ed., Africanisms in American Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
), .
. Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York: Norton,
d ed. , orig. pub. ), .
. Hodeir, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence, . Elsewhere, Hodeir explains that
swing is not simply a question of time values; the succession of attacks and intensities is also an important part of it (, footnote ).
. Olly Wilson,The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal in African-American Music, in
Gena Dagel Caponi, ed., Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin, and Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ,
orig. pub. in New Perspectives on Music: Essays in Honor of Eileen Southern, Jessie
Ann Owens and Anthony M. Cummings, eds., [Warren, MI: Harmonie Park Press,
], ), , .
. Wilson, The Heterogeneous Sound Ideal, .
. Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.,Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black
Music Inquiry, in Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin and Slam Dunking (reprinted
from Black Music Research Journal , no. [], ), , , .
. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American
Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, ). Gates sees the Signifying Monkey (familiar from his exploits with the lion) as an African-American incarnation of a pan-African mythological figure (known as Esu-Elegbara in Nigeria),
a master of rhetoric and trickery.
. Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black
America (New York: Oxford University Press, ).
. Floyd, Ring Shout!, .
. Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, Signifying, Loud-Talking and Marking (), in
Caponi, Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin, and Slam Dunking, , .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., . An example of how Floyds ideas may inform the analysis of black
performance can be found in David Brackett, Interpreting Popular Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), .
. Mellonee Burim, The Black Gospel Music Tradition: A Complex of Ideology,
Aesthetic, and Behaviour, in Irene V. Jackson, ed., More than Dancing (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, ), .
. Maultsby,Africanisms in African-American Music, ; also in Derek B. Scott,
Music, Culture, and Society: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), .
. Quoted in Sullivan, New World Symphonies, .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Revue Musicale, , quoted in Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli, Free
Jazz et Black Power (Paris: Champ Libre, ), , and in Jacques Attali, Noise:
The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, , orig. pub. as Bruits: Essai sur lconomie politique de la musique [Paris: Presses universitaires de France, ]), .
. Kramer, Powers of Blackness, .
. Dandin, Dagbladet, Jan. , cited in James Dickenson, Green Landscape
Tinted Blue: A Study of the Effects of Norwegian Folk Music on Norwegian Jazz,
(unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of Salford).
. Heinrich Eduard Jacob, Johann Strauss: A Century of Light Music, trans. Marguerite Wolff (London: Hutchinson, ), .
. Henry Raynor, Music and Society since (London: Barrie and Jenkins,
), .
ndex
Abbate, Carolyn,
Adams, Stephen (real name: Michael
Maybrick)
The Holy City,
Nirvana,
Adorno, Theodor W., , ,
n.
Affergan, Francis,
Africa, , , , ,
and jazz, ,
African-American music making,
,
its appeal,
misconceptions of,
Agawu, Kofi,
Alison, Archibald,
Allitsen, Frances, England, My
England,
Althusser, Louis,
Ambrose, Bert, , , , n.
The Clouds Will Soon Roll By,
Ho Hum,
A Japanese Dream,
Lets Put Out the Lights,
American Patrol,
American Ragtime Octette,
Hitchy-Koo,
Apel, Willi,
Arabs Farewell To His Favourite Steed,

The,
Argentina,
Aristotle,
Arizona, ,
Armstrong, Louis, , , , , ,
Heebie Jeebies,
Mack the Knife,
Muskrat Ramble,
St. Louis Blues, n.
Arnold, Billy,
Arnold, Edwin,
Arrah Wanna,
art ngre, ,
Asian Subcontinent,
Attali, Jacques,
Auer, Max,
Australia,
avant-garde, ,
Bach, J. S.,
Peasant Cantata,
The Well-Tempered Clavier, , ,
Bache, Walter,
Baker, Josephine,
La Revue ngre,
Then Ill Be Happy,
index
Bakhtin, Mikhail, , , n.
Bakst, Leon, n.
Balakirev, Mily, ,
Tamara,
Bali, ,
Bandits Life Is the Life for Me, A,
Bangs, Lester,
Barnet, Charles, Cherokee,
Barry, John,
Barry, Ken, n.
Barthes, Roland, , , , ,
n.
Bartk, Bla, Allegro barbaro,
and Magyar music,
Bassey, Shirley,
Bateson, Gregory,
Bausch, Andy,
Baudrillard, Jean, ,
Beatles, The, ,
Beckett, Walter,
Beethoven, Ludwig van, , , , ,
, , , , ,
Alla Ingharese,
Eroica Symphony,
Fidelio, , ,
Leonora Overture no. ,
Missa Solemnis,
Original Welsh Airs, n.
Piano Sonata in E, op. ,
String Quartet in E-flat Major, op. ,
Fifth Symphony, ,
Ninth Symphony, , , ,
,
Bellman, Jonathan, ,
Bellow, Saul,
Benson, Ivy,
Berkhofer, Robert F.,
Berlin,
Berlin, Irving,
Alexanders Ragtime Band,
Puttin on the Ritz,
Berlioz, Hector, ,
La Damnation de Faust, ,
LEnfance du Christ, ,
Grande traite dinstrumentation et
dorchestration modernes,
Romo et Juliette,
Symphonie fantastique, , , ,
Les Troyens,
Bernard, James, The Devil Rides Out,
Bernstein, Leonard, West Side Story, ,
Bertung, Birgit, n.
Big Chief Swing It,
binary oppositions, , ,
Bishop, Henry, Hark! Tis the Indian
Drum, n.
Bizet, Georges, Carmen,
Black, Ben, Moonlight and Roses,
Blackbirds,
Blackbirds ,
blackface minstrelsy, , , , ,
,
Blackwood, Helen (Lady Dufferin),
n.
The Charming Woman,
Bloch, Ernst, , , ,
bluegrass,
blues, , ,
Bock, Jerry, Fiddler on the Roof,
Brlin, Jean,
Borodin, Alexander, Prince Igor,
bossa nova,
Boston,
Boubil, Alain,
Bowie, David, China Girl,
Bowlly, Al,
Misery Farm,
Brackett, David,
Brahms, Johannes, , ,
brass band, ,
Bray, John, The Indian Princess,
Breakspear, Eustace J.,
Brecht, Bertholt,
British national anthem,
Brooke, A. E.,
Brooks, Shirley,
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,
Brown, Dee,
Browning, Robert,
Bruce, Robert,
Bruckner, Anton, ,
apocalyptic vision,
index
Masses, , , , ,
Mein Herz und deine Stimme,
Missa Solemnis, ,
motets,
G-minor Overture, ,
plateaus of intensity,
Psalm , , ,
Requiem,
sacred character of compositions,
signifiers for darkness and light,

Steiermrker,
structure and meaning,
First Symphony, ,
Second Symphony, ,
Die Nullte, ,
Third Symphony, , ,
, ,
Fourth Symphony, , ,
Fifth Symphony, ,
Sixth Symphony, , , ,
Seventh Symphony, , ,
, , , , ,
n.
Eighth Symphony, , , ,
, ,
Ninth Symphony, , , ,
, ,
Te Deum, , ,
transfiguration of themes,
Brussells,
Brstle, Christa, n.
Buffalo Bill, n.
Burch, Sharon,
Burke, Edmund, ,
Burma,
Burnim, Mellonee,
Burning Sky,
Bush, Kate, Wuthering Heights,
Butler, Josephine, , n.
Butt, Clara,
Byrd, William
Mass for four voices,
Though Amaryllis Dance in Green,
Byrne, David, City of Dreams,
Caddo,
Cage, John, ,
Cajun,
cakewalk,
California,
California Ramblers,
camp, , ,
Canada,
canon, musical, , ,
Cantor, Eddie,
Caribbean, ,
Carlyle, Thomas,
Carr, Michael, (see also Kennedy,
Jimmy)
Did Your Mother Come from
Ireland?,
The Generals Fast Asleep,
The Handsome Territorial,
Misty Islands of the Highlands,
Ole Faithful,
On Linger Longer Island,
South of the Border,
Sunset Trail,
Cash, Johnny, The Ballad of Ira
Hayes,
Castle, Terry, n.
Celibidache, Sergiu, n.
Cendrars, Blaise,
Czanne, Paul,
Chapman, James, One o Them
Things,
Cherokee, , ,
Cheyenne,
Chief Thundercloud,
China,
Chopin, Fryderyk,
Citron, Marcia, ,
Claribel (Charlotte Alington Barnard),
n.
Childrens Voices,
Come Back to Erin,
Wont You Tell Me Why, Robin?
,
Clarke, Edward,
Clarke, J. J.,
class, , ,
Clayton, Ellen,
Clive, Franklin, The Mousmee,
index
Clive, Geoffrey,
Cocteau, Jean, ,
Le Coq et lArlequin,
Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel
African Suite,
La Bamboula,
The Death of Minnehaha, n.
Hiawathas Wedding Feast,
Colin and Susan,
Come into the Garden, Maud,
Conradi, Johann,
Cooder, Ry, Geronimo: An American
Legend,
Cook, Eliza,
Cooke, Deryck, , ,
Cooper, James Fenimore,
Cooper, Lee,
Cornelius, Peter,
Cotton, Billy, , n.
Did Your Mother Come from
Ireland?,
Ive Got Sixpence,
Cottrell, Alan P.,
Craft, Robert,
Crazy Horse,
Crazy Words, Crazy Tune,
Cree, ,
Creole music making,
Crimean War,
critical musicology, ,
crooning,
Crosby, Bing,
Crotch, William,
Cusick, Susan,
Custer, General, ,
Dahlhaus, Carl, ,
Dame, Joke, n.
dance bands
incongruous mix of styles,
predictability,
sociocultural context,
Dances with Wolves (film), ,
Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia,
,
Darwin, Charles,
David, Flicien, La Perle du Brsil,
Davidson, Donald,
Davies, Emily, , n.
Davison, Archibald T.,

Dearly, Max,
Dean, Dora,
Debussy, Claude
Childrens Corner Suite,
Clair de Lune,
La Mer,
Pellas et Mlisande,
Prlude laprs-midi dun faune,
Prludes,
La Soire dans Grenade,
Voiles,
deconstruction, , , , , ,
Deleuze, Gilles, , , , , ,
n.
Delibes, Lo, Lakm,
Delius, Frederick,
Florida Suite,
Deloria Jr., Vine, ,
Derrida, Jacques, , , , ,
diffrance, ,
diabolus in musica, ,
dialogism,
Dibdin, Charles,
Dietrich, Marlene,
Dippie, Brian W.,
Disney, Walt
Peter Pan,
Pocohontas, ,
Dodd, Sara M., n.
Doernberg, Edwin, , ,
Dolores (Ellen Dickson), n.
Clear and Cool,
Dowell, Jo Kay,
Dvork, Ann,
Dvork, Antonin, ,
The Noonday Witch,
The Water Goblin,
Eagleton, Terry, ,
Edwards, Cliff, Come Up and See Me
Sometime, ,
Egypt,
Einstein, Alfred,
Elgar, Edward,
Land of Hope and Glory,
Eliot, George,
Elizalde, Fred,
Misery Farm,
index
Ellington, Edward Kennedy Duke, ,

, , , , , ,
Black and Tan Fantasy,
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo,
Hot and Bothered, ,
It Dont Mean a Thing If It Aint
Got That Swing,
Elliot, G. H.,
entartete Musik, ,
epic opera,
eroticism,
in the baroque era,
in the th century,
in the th century,
Eton,
Everist, Mark, n.
Ewers, John C., n.
Exodus (film),
fandango,
Fardon, Don, Indian Reservation,
Fascinating Rhythm,
Fay, Amy,
Feather, Leonard,
Bass Reflex,
Fenby, Eric,
Fields, Gracie,
Sing as We Go,
Fink, Robert, , n.
Finscher, Ludwig,
Finson, Jon W.,
Firman, Bert, Painting the Clouds with
Sunshine,
First World War, , , , ,
Fiske, John,
Fitzgerald, Ella, Mack the Knife,
Flanagan and Allen, Thats Another
Scottish Story,
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe,
Fletcher, Tom,
Floros, Constantin, , , ,
n.
Floyd, Jr., Samuel A.,
Foresyth, Reginald, Garden of Weed,
Formby, Sr., George, John Willies

Ragtime Band,
Forte, Allen,
Foster, Stephen, My Old Kentucky
Home,
Foucault, Michel, , ,
Fox, Roy, n.; Calling Me
Home,
Franck, Csar, ;
Le Chasseur maudit,
Freud, Sigmund, , , , nn.,
Friml, Rudolf, Rose Marie,

Frith, Simon,
Fuller, Sophie, n.
Gabriel, Virginia, n.
Only,
When Sparrows Build,
Garci, Manuel, n.
Garrett, Elizabeth, , n.
Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, , n.
Gatty, Alfred Scott, Plantation Songs,
Gay, John, The Beggars Opera,
gay/lesbian, , , , , , ,
n.
gender, , , ,
music and femininity,
women and composition,
women as musicians,
Gendron, Bernard,
Genelli, Bonaventura,
genosong and phenosong,
genotext and phenotext,
Georgakas, Dan,
Geronimo (film, ),
Gershwin, George, , ,
I Got Rhythm,
Piano Concerto,
Rhapsody in Blue, ,
gestische Musik,
Gibbons, Richard Caroll, , n.
Gilbert, William S. (see Sullivan,
Arthur)
Gilliam, Bryan, , n.
Gisbourne, Thomas,
Glass, Philip
Akhnaten,
Heroes Symphony, n.
Glinka, Mikhail, Ruslan and Lyudmila,
,
index
Gluck, Christoph
Alceste,
Don Juan, ,
Iphignie en Tauride,
Orfeo ed Euridice,
Godard, Susan,
Goddard, Arabella,
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, ,
Gonella, Nat, , n.
Gorbman, Claudia, n.
gospel,
Gottschalk, Louis Morea, n.
Greenblatt, Stephen,
Gregorovius, Ferdinand,
Greimas, A. J., n.
Grey, Zane,
Grieg, Edvard,
Pier Gynt,
Griffith, Nanci,
Grosz, Wilhelm, Baby in der Bar;
(see also Williams, Hugh)
Guattari, Flix, , , , ,
n.
guitar,
Gut, Serge, , ,
Guthrie, Woody,
Hague, Sam,
Hall, Adelaide,
Creole Love Call,
Hall, Henry,
I Like Bananas,
Its a Sin To Tell a Lie,
Rusty and Dusty, ,
The Teddy Bears Picnic,
Hall, Charles,
Halm, August,
Hamilton, Marybeth, ,
Hamm, Charles, ,
Handel, George F.
Giulio Cesare in Egitto,
Israel in Egypt, ,
Judas Maccabeus,
Messiah,
Samson,
Handy, W. C., The Memphis Blues,
Hanslick, Eduard, , ,
Harper, E., A Bandits Life Is the Life
for Me!, ,
Harris, Jack, On Linger Longer Island,
Harrow,
Hatten, Robert S., n.
Haunted Wood,
Haweis, Hugh, , n.
Hawkins, Stan,
and Carmen Hawkins, n.
Hawkwind, Black Elk Speaks,
Hawtrey, Stephen,
Haydn, Joseph, , ,
The Creation, ,
folksong arrangements,
Nelson Mass,
Piano Trio in G Major, Hob. XV: ,
Seven Last Words,

Hayes, Ira,
Heath, Ted, , n.
Head, Matthew, n.
Hebrides, ,
Hegel, Georg W. F., , , ,
hegemony,
Hell, Henri,
Hello! Ma Baby,
Hemans, Felicia, n.
Mother, O! Sing Me to Rest,
Henley, William,
hermeneutics, ,
Hindemith, Paul,
Suite,
Ragtime,
Hodeir, Andr, , , , nn.,
,
Holbein, Hans, Der Todtentanz,
Holiday, Billie, Dont Explain,
Holst, Gustav,
Hood, Basil,
Hootchy-Kootchy Dance,
Howie, A. Crawford, ,
Hruby, Carl,
Huelsenbeck, Richard,
Hughes, Patrick, Its Unanimous Now,
Hugo, Victor, n.
Humperdinck, Englebert, Hnsel und
Gretel,
Hutcheon, Linda, , n.
index
Hylton, Jack, , n.
Happy Days Are Here Again,
He Played His Ukulele As the Ship
Went Down,
Meadow Lark,
Speaking of Kentucky Days,
Yes Sir, Thats My Baby,
I Am the Bandolero,
ideology, , , , , ,
If You Want To Touch an Irish Heart,
Ill Sing Thee Songs of Araby,

impressionism, ,
improvisation, ,
In a Little Second Hand Store,
Indianola,
Ingelow, Jean,
intertextuality,
Iron Maiden, Run to the Hills,
Iroquois,
Its the Talk of the Town,
Ive Got an Invitation to a Dance,
Ives, Charles,
Iwo Jima,
Jackson, Edgar,
Jackson, Timothy, n.
Jacob, Heinrich Eduard,
Jagger, Mick,
Lets Spend the Night Together,
Japan, , ,
Jarre, Maurice, Lawrence of Arabia,
Java,
jazz, , , , , , , ,
and Africa,
fear of,
and modernism,
as satirical weapon,
sweet,
Jessel, Lon, The Parade of the Tin
Soldiers,
Jews
interest in jazz,
represented in music,
Jezek, Jaroslav,
Joachim, Joseph,
Johnson, Charles E., The Creole Show,
Johnson, William,
Jolson, Al,
The Jazz Singer,
Jones, Sidney
The Geisha,
San Toy,
jouissance,
Jung, Carl G.,
Khler, Willibald,
Kalevala,
Kallberg, Jeffrey,
Klmn, Emmerich, Die Herzogin von
Chicago, ,
Kane, Helen, Is There Anything Wrong
in That?,
Kangourou, Makoko,
Kant, Immanuel, ,
Kern, Jerome,
Kettle, Martin,
Kennedy, Jimmy, (see also Carr,
Michael)
Kennedy-Fraser, Marjory, Songs of the
Hebrides, ,
Kentner, Louis,
Kern, Jerome, Show Boat,
Ketlbey, Albert, In a Chinese Temple
Garden,
Kierkegaard, Sren, ,
King, Bertie,
Kingsley, Charles,
Kipling, Rudyard,
Kivy, Peter,
Klingsor, Tristan (real name: Lon
Leclre), ,
Korstvedt, Benjamin M., n.
Korte, Werner, n.
Kotzwara, Franz, The Battle of Prague,
Kramer, Lawrence, , , , , ,
, , , n.,
n.
Krause, Ernst,
Krebs, T. L., ,
Krenek, Ernst,
Jonny spielt auf,
Das Leben des Orest,
index
Krim, Adam, n.
Kristeva, Julia, , , , n.
Kurth, Ernst,
Lacan, Jacques, ,
Laing, Dave,
Lambert, Constant, , , ,
The Rio Grande,
lang, k. d.,
Larkin, Philip, Annus Mirabilis,
Leave Abie Alone,
Lger, Fernand, ,
Legion of Decency,
Lehr, Franz, Die lustige Witwe,
Leighton, Frederick,
Lemare, Edwin H., Andantino,
Lennox, Annie, I Need a Man,
Lenau, Nikolaus,
Lenya, Lotte, Seeruberjenny,
Leppert, Richard, , , , , ,
n., n.
Lvi-Strauss, Claude, , n.
Lewis, Sarah,
Lindsay, Miss M., n.
Queen Marys Prayer,
When Sparrows Build,
Liszt, Franz
Bagatelle ohne Tonart, ,
Chasse-Neige,
Csrds macabre, ,
and the demonic in Mozart and
Weber,
Gypsy Scale, ,
Dante Sonata, ,
Dante Symphony, , ,
, ,
demonic genres,
demonic legacy,
demonic negation,
demonic typology,
tudes dexcution transcendante,

Faust Symphony, , , , ,
,
Hungaria,
Hunnenschlacht, ,
interpreting the demonic,
Les Prludes,
Maldiction Concerto, , ,
Mazeppa,
Mephisto Polka,
First Mephisto Waltz, ,
Second Mephisto Waltz,
Third Mephisto Waltz, ,
Fourth Mephisto Waltz, ,
Missa Solemnis,
Pense des morts,
Sonata in B minor, , ,
St. Elizabeth,
Tasso, ,
Totentanz, , ,
Der Traurige Mnch,
Two Episodes from Lenaus Faust,
Unstern! , , , ,
Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe,
Zwei Konzertetden,
Little Big Man (film),
Lloyd, Marie,
The Piccadilly Trot,
Locke, Ralph P., , n.
London, ,
Hammersmith Palais,
Hanover Square Rooms,
Hippodrome,
London Academy,
Mayfair Hotel,
St. Andrew Undershaft (EC),
n.
Longfellow, Henry W., , ,
Longinus,
Loudin, Fred,
Luhrmann, Baz, William Shakespeares
Romeo and Juliet, n.
Luigini, Alexandre, Ballet gyptien,

Macdonald, Hugh,
MacDowell, Edward,
Maceachron, J. Reginald, On Easy
Street (In Rags),
Madonna, , n.
Mae, Vanessa,
Maggio, A., I Got the Blues,
Mahler, Alma, n.
index
Mahler, Gustav,
First Symphony, ,
Second, Fifth, and Seventh
Symphonies,
Sixth Symphony, ,
Ninth Symphony,
Mankiller, Wilma,
Mardrus, J. C.,
Martenot, Maurice,
Martinu, Bohuslav
Le Jazz,
La Revue de cuisine,
Marxism, ,
Mason, Jack,
Massacre (film),
Maudsley, Henry, ,
Maultsby, Portia,
McClary, Susan, , , , ,
, , n., n.
McGraw, Tim, Indian Outlaw,
McRobbie, Angela,
Means, Russell,
Mellers, Wilfrid,
Melody Maker,
Mendelssohn, Felix,
Sommernachtstraum,
Spring Song,
Third Symphony (Scottish),
Fourth Symphony (Italian), n.
Merrick, Paul,
Merwe, Peter van der,
Messiaen, Olivier, Turangallasymphonie,
Meyer, Leonard B.,
Meyerbeer, Giacomo
LAfricaine,
Les Huguenots,
Robert le Diable,
Mexico, , , n.
Michaelis, Christian F.,
Micznik, Vera,
Middle East,
Middleton, Richard,
Miley, Bubber, ,
East St. Louis Toodle-Oo,
Milhaud, Darius, , ,
La Cration du monde, , ,
n.
military bands,
Military School of Music,
Mill, John Stuart,
Miller, Bill,
Milton, John,
Mistinguett, danse apache,
Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia,
Mockus, Martha,
modernism, , , ,
modernity, , ,
Monteverdi, Claudio
Lincoronazione di Poppea,
Orfeo, ,
Mooney, James,
Mort, Neil, Moonlight and Roses,
Morison, Duncan, Ceol Mara,
Morris, George Pope,
Morton, Ferdinand Jelly Roll,
Mozart, Wolfgang A., , , , , ,
,
Die Entfhrung aus dem Serail,
Don Giovanni, , ,
The Marriage of Figaro,
Violin Concerto in A Major, K. ,
Die Zauberflte,
Murata, Margaret,
Murray, Linda,
Musical Association (later, Royal), ,
Mussolini, Benito, ,
Mussorgsky, Modest, ,
A Night on the Bare Mountain,

Nakai, R. Carlos,
Nancy Lee,
Nanton, Joe,
Nashville,
Navajo, n.
Nazis, , , ,
negotiation,
Nelson, Stanley,
Nruda, Wilhelmine,
Netherlands motet,
Neusiedler, Hans, Der Juden Tanz,
new musicology, ,
New Orleans, , , , ,
index
New York, , ,
Ballet Theater,
Cotton Club, Harlem, , , ,
Newlin, Dika, , ,
Nicholls, Horatio (real name: Lawrence
Wright), Were All Good Pals at
Last,
Niecks, Frederick, ,
Nietzsche, Friedrich, ,
Noble, Ray, , n.
Noble Savage,
Norris, Christopher, n.
Norton, Caroline, n.
Juanita, ,
No More Sea,
The Officers Funeral,
Norton, Frederic, Chu Chin Chow,

Norway
Fanitullen,
and jazz, ,
Offenbach, Jacques, Le Papillon,
Oklahoma, ,
Oliver, Joe King, ,
On the Road to Mandalay, ,
Orcagna, Andrea,
Orientalism, , , ,
and ethnicity,
and its meanings,
as representation,
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, ,
Alice Blue Gown,
Im Forever Blowing Bubbles,
Livery Stable Blues,
Paganini, Nicol, ,
Paglia, Camille,
Parakilas, James, n.
Par, Ambroise,
Paris, , , , , ,
Casino de Paris, , n.
Conservatoire,
Moulin Rouge, ,
Music-hall des Champs-lyses,
Notre Dame,
Parker, Charlie,
Parker, Clifton, Night of the Demon,
Pater, Walter,
Patti, Adelina,
Pattison, George,
Paul, Walter,
Pawnee,
Payne, Jack, n.
Choo Choo,
Peirce, Charles,
Perloff, Nancy, n.
Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca),
Phillips, Sid,
piano, ,
Picasso, Pablo,
Les Demoiselles dAvignon,
Pima,
Pinkard, Maceo, Liza,
Pisa,
Pisani, Michael V., , , n.
Pleasants, Henry,
Pogues, The, Turkish Song of the
Damned,
Poor Robin,
Pop, Iggy,
Porter, Cole, True Love,
postdisciplinarity,
postmodernism, , , ,
poststructuralism, , , , ,
Potter, Dennis, Pennies from Heaven,
Poulenc, Francis
Les Biches,
Rapsodie ngre,
Prendergast, Roy,
Presley, Elvis,
Preston, Johnny, Running Bear,
,
Previn, Charles,
Price, Uvedale,
Pridham, John, The Battle March of
Delhi,
Primo Scala,
Prout, Ebenezer,
psychiatry,
psychoanalysis, ,
Public Schools Commission (),

Puccini, Giacomo
La Fanciulla del West,
Madama Butterfly,
Turandot,
index
Puffett, Derrick,
Pulbrook, Martin,
Purcell, Henry
Dido and Aeneas,
The Fairy Queen,
The Indian Queen, , ,
Quinn, Anthony,
Raabe, Peter,
race, ,
Raff, Joachim,
Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie,
ragtime, ,
Raindance (album),
Raitt, Suzanne, n.
Rameau, Jean-Philippe
Les Indes Galantes,
Nouvelles Suites de Pices de Clavecin,
Les Sauvages,
Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Transfiguration,
Ravel, Maurice,
Bolro, ,
LEnfant et les Sortilges,
Rapsodie espagnole,
Shhrazade Overture, ,
Shhrazade songs,
Violin Sonata, ,
Raynor, Henry,
Red Nichols and His Five Pennies,
Red Wing,
Redbone,
repression,
Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolay, , ,
Capriccio espagnol, , ,
Scheherazade,
Ritchie, J. E.,
Ritter, Fanny Raymond,
Robinson, Bradford J., , n.
Rolling Stones,
Rose, David, The Stripper, ,
Rossini, Gioachino, William Tell
Overture,
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques,
Rowlandson, Charles,
Roy, Harry,
Royal Academy of Music, ,
Royal College of Music,

Rozsa, Miklos
Ben-Hur,
The Thief of Bagdad,
Rubin, William, n.
Ruskin, John, ,
Russell, Henry
The Chieftains Daughter,
The Indian Hunter, ,
A Life on the Ocean Wave,
Woodman, Spare That Tree!
Russia, ,
Sacred Spirit (album),
Said, Edward W., , , , n.,
n.
Saint-Sans, Camille, ,
Africa, ,
Danse macabre,
Samson et Dalila,
Sainte-Marie, Buffy,
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,
Darling Dont Cry,

Now That the Buffalos Gone,
Soldier Blue,
Starwalker,
Sainton-Dolby, Charlotte, n.
Salford, Greater Manchester,
Salter, Hans J.,
Samuels, Robert,
San Francisco,
Satie, Erik
Parade,
Le Picadilly,
Saussure, Ferdinand de,
Savoy Orpheans, n.
Baby Face,
Charleston,
Valencia,
Sayn-Wittgenstein, Carolyne von, ,
Schenker, Heinrich, , ,
n.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe,
Schnberg, Claude-Michel, Miss
Saigon,
Schnzeler, Hans-Hubert,
Schopenhauer, Arthur, ,
index
Schubert, Franz, , , , , ,
n.
Der Doppelgnger,
Erlknig,
Mass in A-flat,
Unfinished Symphony,
Schuller, Gunther, , n.
Schumann, Clara,
Schumann, Robert,
Ich grolle nicht,
Scenes from Faust,
scientia sexualis, , ,
Scott, Raymond, War Dance for
Wooden Indians, n.
Scruton, Roger, ,
Searle, Humphrey, ,
Second World War, ,
semantics, , , n.
semiotics, , , , , , ,
, , , , ,
, , ,
separate spheres, , ,
sexuality, , , , ,
Shadows, The
Apache,
Geronimo,
Shakespeare, William, ,
Shapiro, Alexander H., n.
Shaw, Bernard,
Shenandoah, Joanne,
Shepherd, John, , n.
Shinner, Emily,
Shostakovich, Dmitry
Cheryomushki,
jazz suites,
Tahiti Trot,
Showalter, Elaine,
Shrubsole, Grahame, n.
Simone, Nina, Pirate Jenny,
Sibelius, Johan (Jean)
Lemminkinen in Tuonela,
Tapiola,
signifiance,
signifyin[g],
Silver, Abner,
Silvester, Victor, n.
Simpson, Robert, , , , ,
,
simulacra, , ,
Sinatra, Frank,
Sioux, , , n.
Sioux Indians, ,
Sitwell, Edith,
Sitwell, Sacheverel, ,
Skinner, Frank,
Smiles, Samuel,
Smith, Alice, The Passions, ,
Smith, Bessie,
St. Louis Blues, n.
Smith, Jack, My Blue Heaven, ,
Smyth, Ethel, , n.
Snyder, Ted, The Sheik of Araby,

Son of the Desert Am I, A,
Sonny and Cher, I Got You, Babe,
n.
Sons of the Sea,
Sousa, John P.,
The Stars and Stripes Forever,
South America, ,
Southern, Eileen,
Spain, , ,
Spencer, Herbert,
Springsteen, Bruce, Born in the
USA,
Squadronaires, , n.
Stalin, Josef,
standardization, ,
Standing Bear, Luther, n.
Stefani, Gino, ,
Steiner, Max, They Died with Their
Boots On,
stereotypes, , , , , , ,
Stevens, Denis, n.
stile rappresentativo,
Stirling, Elizabeth, , n.
Stone, Lew, , n.
Garden of Weed,
My Old Dog,
Zing! Went the Strings of My
Heart,
Storace, Stephen, The Cherokee, ,
n.
Stratton, Stephen S.,
Strauss II, Johann
Lucifer,
Mephistos Hllenrufe,
index
Strauss, Richard, Dance of the Seven

Veils (Salome), , ,
Stravinsky, Igor, , , ,
The Firebird,
LHistoire du soldat, ,
Ragtime, ,
Le Sacre du printemps,
Street, Alan, n.
Stuart, Leslie, Lily of Laguna,
Stuckey, Sterling,
style hongrois, , , ,
sublime and the beautiful, , ,
Subotnik, Rose Rosengard, , , ,
Sullivan, Arthur
The Gondoliers,
Haddon Hall, n.
If Doughty Deeds My Lady Please,
Ivanhoe,
The Mikado,
The Rose of Persia,
and W. S. Gilbert,
Sullivan, Jack,
Suter, Ann, Pu-leeze! Mister Hemingway,
Sweden,
Ballet Sudois,
Szabolsci, Bence, , , n.
Szsz, Tibor,
Tagg, Philip,
Tarasti, Eero, , , n.
Tartini, Giuseppe, Devils Trill Sonata,
Taruskin, Richard, , n.
Taylor, Jenny,
Taylor, Ronald,
Tchaikovsky, Pyotr, ,
Capriccio Italien, n.
Fifth Symphony,
Te Kanawa, Kiri,
Texas Jack,
Thalberg, Sigismond, variations on
Home, Sweet Home,
Thompson, Leslie, n.
Tick, Judith, , n.
Tiki music,
To Anthea,
Tohono Oodham,
Tomlinson, Gary, n.
topoi, , ,
Tosh, John, n.
Tovey, Donald F.,
Traini, Francesco, Trionfo della morte,
Treitler, Leo, n.
Troggs, Wild Thing,
Tuke, Daniel Hack,
Tunisia,
Turkish Style, , , ,
University of Cambridge,
University of Oxford, ,
Upton, George, , n.
Valentino, Rudolph,
Vallee, Rudy,
Vaughan, H. Halford,
Vaughan Williams, Ralph,
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas
Tallis,
Job,
Partita,
Verdi, Giuseppe
Aida, ,
Un Ballo in Maschera,
Nabucco,
Verfremdungseffekt,
Versatile Four, After Youve Gone,
Victoria, Queen,
Vienna, , , , ,
Vietnam, ,
violinists, female,
Vodery, Will, Ziegfeld Follies,
Volosinov, V. N.,
Vonholf, Madame,
Wagner, Richard, , , ,
Faust Ouvertre,
Der Fliegende Hollnder,
Parsifal,
Tannhuser, ,
Tristan und Isolde, , , ,
n.
Die Walkre, , n.
waila, n.
Walela,
index
Walker, Alan,
Waller, Fats, Honeysuckle Rose,
Walton, William, Faade, ,
Warrack, John, n.
Waters, Ethel, You Brought a New
Kind of Love to Me,
Watson, Derek, ,
Weatherly, Frederic E.,
Webb, Daniel,
Webber, Andrew Lloyd,
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat,
Weber, Carl Maria von,
Der Freischutz,
Preciosa,
Weber, William,
Weill, Kurt,
Die Dreigroschenoper, ,
Mahagonny Songspiel,
Weiss, Johann Baptist,
West, Mae, ,
I Like a Guy What Takes His Time,
Im No Angel,
SEX,
Westrup, J. A.,
Whaples, Miriam K.,
When Day Is Done,
White, John D.,
White, Maude Valrie, n.
King Charles, ,
Whiteley, Sheila,
Whiteman, Paul, ,
Wicke, Peter, , n.
Wilby, Philip, Jazz,
Wilde, David,
Wilkins, Dave,
Willet, John,
Williams, Hank, Kaw-Liga, , ,
Williams, Hugh, Red Sails in the

Sunset, (see also Grosz,
Wilhelm)
Williams, Raymond,
Williamson, John, n.
Wilson, Edmund, n.
Wilson, Olly, ,
Windsor Castle,
Winklhofer, Sharon,
Wiora, Walter, n.
Wisconsin,
WithOut Rezervation,
Wittgenstein, Ludwig,
Wolf, Hugo,
Wolf Robe,
Wood, Elizabeth, n.
Woodforde-Finden, Amy, Kashmiri
Song,
Work, Henry Clay, The Song of the
Redman,
Wynette, Tammy, Stand by Your Man,
Ye Olde English Swynge Band,

Yes! Let Me Like a Soldier Fall,
Yes Sir, Thats My Baby,
Youman, Vincent, Tea for Two,
Yradier, Sebastin, El Arreglito, n.
Zukunftsmusik (music of the future),
Zurich, Cabaret Voltaire,

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Sexuality, gender, and musical style

Erotic Representation from Monteverdi

The Sexual Politics of Victorian Musical Aesthetics

Ideology and the popular

The sacred and the profane

Lux in Tenebris: Bruckner and the Dialectic of Darkness

Diabolus in Musica: Liszt and the Demonic

Ideology and cultural otherness

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from the erotic to the demonic

necessary for musicologists to contest the binary divide between classical

choanalytical, and aesthetic discourses. There may be no intention or need,

from the erotic to the demonic

by no means innocent expression, aesthetics, intention, etc. yet I

from the erotic to the demonic

tribute inevitably and fundamentally to the structural definition of human

Music and representat ion

. He is not shy of making an appeal at the level of common sense or

from the erotic to the demonic

In recent years, topical analysis has appealed to many musicians whose

from the erotic to the demonic

from the erotic to the demonic

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sexuality, gender, and musical style

erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west

sexuality, gender, and musical style

text, this is still likely to be in a dialogic relationship with a performance of

Sexual discourse in the baro que er a

erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west

s, when it was considered dramatically unacceptable for a woman to

Since this duet is now thought not to be by Monteverdi, though it was

sexuality, gender, and musical style

Scientia sexualis and the nineteenth century

Wont You Tell Me Why, Robin? by Claribel () (Ex. .) is as close

erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west

Colin and Susan, published as A Famous New Smutty Song in an erotic

sexuality, gender, and musical style

It is obvious from the style of Only by Virginia Gabriel () that a

erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west

The reception of Virginia Gabriels Only, however, would have been

sexuality, gender, and musical style

erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west

Psychoanalysis and the t wentieth century

sexuality, gender, and musical style

erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west

importance to the development of an instrumental erotic code in dance

sexuality, gender, and musical style

erotic representation from monteverdi to mae west

certainly ambiguous, allowing her ironic detachment to be read as parody.

When Mick Jagger was thought to reflect an unbridled male sexuality,

sexuality, gender, and musical style

sexuality, gender, and musical style

the sexual politics of victorian musical aesthetics