Echoes from the East: The Javanese Gamelan and its Influence on the Music of Claude Debussy

198 Pages·2019·4.101 MB·English

by  Kiyoshi Tamagawa

Echoes from the East
Figure 0.1 Javanese dancers and musicians at 1889 Exposition Universelle, Paris.
Illustration from Benedictus, Les musiques bizarres de l’Exposition, 1889.
Echoes from the East
The Javanese Gamelan and
Its Influence on the
Music of Claude Debussy
Kiyoshi Tamagawa
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1 Before Debussy: Musical Exoticism in Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century Europe 1
2 Debussy, the Age of Empire, and Cultural Appropriation 23
3 Early Musical Influences 33
4 Debussy and the Gamelan 45
5 Gamelan Techniques and Evocations in Works of the 1890s 59
6 Piano Works of 1903–1913 and La mer 73
7 Theater Pieces, 1911–1913 and Final Years, 1914–1917 101
8 Western Composers and the Gamelan since Debussy, I 117
9 Western Composers and the Gamelan since Debussy, II 137
Conclusion 159
Bibliography 165
Index 173
About the Author 179
vii

Acknowledgments
This book has its origins in a treatise that I completed some years ago, part of
the requirements to obtain a doctorate of Musical Arts from The University
of Texas at Austin. I would therefore like to acknowledge once more certain
faculty members in the Butler School of Music who were instrumental in
bringing about the completion of that work: Dr. Michael C. Tusa, Professor
of Musicology and the chair of my doctoral committee, and two important
members of that body who are now deceased, Dr. William Race, Professor of
Piano and Dr. Amanda Vick Lethco, Professor of Piano Pedagogy.
Most of my career in academe has been spent as a keyboard performer and
pedagogue. There was no particular requirement that this book come into
existence. Discovering that through the years since its completion my paper
had been cited and used as a resource by others interested in the topic ulti-
mately provided the impetus to improve and expand on what was, however
useful it may have been to some, a student work.
Therefore, the list of acknowledgments I present is not altogether one that
would accompany a standard work of academic scholarship. I would espe-
cially like to thank those who encouraged me to embark upon and see this
somewhat quixotic project through. Chief among them are Ms. Julie Sievers,
Director of Teaching, Learning and Scholarship at Southwestern University,
and my editors at Rowman and Littlefield, Ms. Courtney Morales and Ms.
Shelby Russell. I will always be grateful to Paul Glasheen, Southwestern
class of ‘16, my former piano student and soon-to-be M.D.; Catherine
Kautsky, Professor of Music at Lawrence University, a published author
on Debussy herself; and Serena Benedetti, daughter of a fine musician, an
accomplished musician herself and parent of another promising musician, for
their willingness to read and offer cogent criticism and commentary about the
book at various stages of its development.
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