Racialized Ornament in the Exotic Musical Imagination: Reflections on Framing and Decoloniality

Abstract: This essay uses the idea of ornament to work towards re-imagining long standing biases in music teaching and scholarship. Focusing on issues of race and gender, Bhogal explores how Western philosophy has tended to marginalize ornamentation or decoration through negative descriptions that invoke an objectified exotic other. Drawing on both sonic and visual examples from Western classical music and Indian classical music, this essay challenges decorative gestures traditionally viewed as superficial and meaningless. The range of examples includes rare sound recordings by Ustad Imdad Khan, Coimbatore Thayi, and M. S. Subbulakshmi, as well as compositions by George Frideric Handel, Maurice Delage, and Maurice Ravel. Ornament serves as a catalyst for de-colonizing approaches where inter-cultural and inter-epistemological dynamics are privileged as models for teaching and research.

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Wagner on Conducting: The Aesthetics of Anti-Semitism in Performance

Abstract: Starting in high school, I became obsessed with such classical performers as Jacqueline du Pré and Glenn Gould, whose recordings I desperately collected. But whenever I tried to discuss these musicians in class or with professors, my passion for their interpretations was dismissed or even mocked as a superficial fetish. To them, only composers, their intentions, and the notes in the score mattered. Later, in graduate school, I studied with Philip Bohlman, whose groundbreaking article “Musicology as a Political Act” argued that to choose to ignore the social and political nature of music and focus only on “the music itself” was, itself, a political act.1 To deny the social nature of music only served to reinforce existing values that have long marginalized populations. Bohlman’s argument resonated with me, as it shed light on how and why musical disciplines and criticism have historically ignored performers and focused, instead, only on composers. In my research and teaching, I have sought to push back at the aesthetic values and descriptive/analytic language that we often use to describe music. Page 162 →This language has served to dismiss performers and their bodies as merely re-creative conduits between the composer and listener, rather than to celebrate them as the creative and embodied representations of music that they are.

And yet, so determined was I to promote historical recognition of performers that I initially remained closed off to how the political language described by Bohlman pertained to the critical language describing performers. I bought Wagner’s “On Conducting” early in my career, excited by the insight he could provide on performers in the 19th century and also delighted to learn different ways musicians of note talked about interpretation, the subject I was most interested in. I spent most of my time focused on the early parts of the book, the discussion of interpretation and the history of conductors. I may have noticed the anti-Semitism at the end and knew of Wagner’s anti-Semitism, but was more interested in the ways the author analyzed performance. Moreover, many discussions online, at conferences, and within certain professional organizations, allowed me to sweep the bigotry under the rug and focus on “just the music itself” or, rather, just the performances themselves.

This essay is a result of what happened when I took a step back and was pushed to reflect on how easy it was for musical obsessions and passions to obscure the implicit politics and bigotry that pervade the criticism and discussion of performers. I became increasingly aware of how my own analyses of individual performers uncritically drew upon the problematic language of nationalism or identity. This essay is an attempt to grapple with this issue, to offer some historical context, and to challenge us all to think more critically about how our descriptive language, even when celebratory, carries deeply rooted associations.

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Sixteenth-Century Polyphony and the Modal Paradigm

Abstract: We often assume that Renaissance music is shaped by the system of "modes"--the set of scales that functioned something like tonality for music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But Renaissance-era music theorists and composers didn't always agree on what the modes were, how they worked, and how they ought to be applied to composition. This essay explores whether mode is "real," when mode is meaningful (and interesting) for understanding Renaissance music, and what other kinds of tools we can use to explain why Renaissance music sounds the way it sounds.

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Musical Salons of the Enlightenment: Platforms for Women’s Musical Agency

Abstract: Musical institutions changed dramatically in eighteenth-century Europe, as well as in the British colonies and the early United States. With increased social fluidity came the widespread emergence of amateur music lessons, public concerts by professional musicians, musical encyclopedias, and journals featuring musical scholarship and criticism. While most of these institutions persist today, others have waned, and, as a result, their roles in eighteenth-century society and musical life are little understood. One among these is the musical salon—a regular gathering of artists, intellectuals, professional and amateur musicians, and listeners, usually presided over by a woman who acted as hostess, or salonnière, who was often also a musician herself. This essay considers three women who hosted salons with music at their center: Anne-Louise Boyvin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy (1744–1824) in Paris, Marianna Martines (1744–1812) in Vienna, and Sara Levy (1761–1854) in Berlin. These cases show how individual salons reflected the artistic and social priorities of the women at their center. Through their musical salons, these three women found space for their own creativity and had profound impacts on the musical culture of the late eighteenth century. 

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Reimagining the Representation of Ethnographic Knowledge: The Philosophy and Methodology of a Digital Humanities Project

Abstract: In this essay, the authors--a faculty-student team--ask how ethnographers might harness the power of digital tools affiliated with the Digital Humanities to explore new ways to share ethnographic knowledge. Using the project, Song in the Sumatran Highlands, as a model, we help readers think through the possibilities of the digital, including the digital affordances that offer exciting and novel possibilities to re-envision the shape of ethnographic stories and expand potential audiences for them. For example, digital platforms let ethnographers move away from logocentrism and to play with the presentation of stories by exploring non-linear formats. They offer visualization tools that enable new ways of conceptualizing and seeing the data. They provide a series of interactive tools, like maps and timelines, that allow users to make discoveries for themselves. They enable the integration and annotation of multimedia, bringing users as close as possible to seeing, hearing and sensing the place, people, and sounds. They also allow for collaboration and polyvocality, addressing the issue of authority and voice. In short, using a digital platform offers a different way of hearing, seeing, experiencing, and ultimately understanding ethnographic research and offers one modality for ethical engagement in and dissemination of scholarship. 

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Latin America and the Decolonization of Classical Music

Abstract: This essay explores three related stories of classical music in Latin America that reveal the complexities, failures, and successes of decolonizing projects: the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM), the Cursos Latinoamericanos de Música Contemporánea (CLAMC), and the Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos (OEIN). The essay prompts critical reflection, questioning if projects that emerge from strictly modernizing ethos can become a space of resistance against coloniality. As a provocation, this chapter suggests that decolonizing projects, while prone to frequent failure, remain productive and worth pursuing. It concludes by urging readers to form their interpretation from the evidence, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and individual research in shaping historical narratives and fostering a deeper understanding of complex issues.

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