Echoes from afar

UNESCO Courier, March, 1991 by Veronique Brindeau

THE Paris Universal Exposition of 1889 revealed to Debussy the music of java and the theatre of the Far East. The musical results of this shock were soon to appear in his work. What concerns us here, however, is the extent to which Debussy's discovery was a sign of the times of which he was a witness. For in his attitude, his willingness to listen to the music of other cultures and assimilate elements of it into his own creative activity, this composer so often cited for his role in the modern movement was anticipating the behaviour of many later musicians.

Debussy's encounter with Asian music did not lead him to borrow phrases, to imitate or adopt the superficial colouring of another style. In a word, it did not lead him to exoticism. What now began to appear in his works, particularly his plano pieces, was in part a new sense of distance but above all a confirmation of styles of composition that were already apparent but now became more pronounced.

Debussy might have reflected the influence of Javanese music in a more direct and literal way. His attraction for what he saw in it tells us something about the kind of person he was, in the sense that he seems to have taken from a world of sounds that was unfamiliar to him something that-with his fascination for timbre and resonance-he already possessed. This was the time when he was writing Pagodes for piano, which recalls the Javanese slendro scale.

Encounters and metamorphoses

One of the many questions this story brings to mind is how the profound changes of the present century, and especially the revolution in communications nd in recording techniques, have affected the impact of similar discoveries on other composers.

Encounters with cultures radically different from their own have marked an important step in the work of many twentleth-century artists, not only musicians but painters who experienced a revelation when they discovered African art or Chinese wash drawings, or even painting in oils and pastel.

What has for the most part been new in this century is that musicians have no longer limited their use of foreign models simply to imitative borrowing. Theirs has been no tourist's glance at an unfamiliar culture. This is not, of course, to deny that many compositions have revelled in the idiom of their models, from Erik Satie's La Tyrolienne to the tearoom chinolserie of Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortileges-Ravel, who so skilfully harmonized his Cinq melodies grecques and composed his Chansons madecasses with far-away Madagascar in mind.

What we have seen is a rapid metamorphosis, in which composers have striven to incorporate as organically as possible in their own music elements that they had discovered in other musiclans work. I say other musicians", because I think that it makes more sense to talk of the process in terms of learning from other individuals and forms of music rather than from styles that are specific to different world regions.

It is worth pointing out at this juncture that the very idea of cultural intermixture implies that traditions are in some curious way "pure", whereas they are, of course, virtually inextricable from a highly complex pattern. To divest them of all the blends and alloys that have gone into them as they have been shaped by the history of peoples, their instruments, and their wanderings is to simplify the picture and introduce notions of frontiers jealously defined and defended.

How important are cross-cultural encounters for composers? Often when the change in their work is closely scrutinized, all it boils down to is the discovery of a particular score-and the study of that score, for without study the initial impression would leave only a passing wave of enthusiasm and not stimulate any real creative power. The role that Asian theatre played in Debussy's creative development could in this respect be compared to works closer to his own tradition that also inspired him, such as Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, or even the writings of the French poet Pierre Louys.

The work of Oliver Messiaen raises the same question. Peruvian folklore plays a part in Harawi, and dect-talas-rhythms borrowed from Indian music-were of crucial importance in his work on intervals; but the influence of India, like that of japanese court music on his Sept hai-kai, was eventually melded into a language that was the composer's own, taking its place along with such other influences as plainsong, bird-calls and the Christian faith.

Recognizing oneself in others

For several contemporary composers, however, contact with non-European music has had a more profound effect, taking them on something other than a mere armchair voyage to the land of their inspiration. Some have visited the country that caught their attention, or even studied under one of its master-musicians.

Look at the work of these musicians more closely, however, and you will find that the payoff, however much it may have deepened the first shock of discovery, invariably only went to confirm the initial effect. Take Steve Reich's fascination with Ghanaian drumming, for example. In fact he only spent three weeks in Ghana studying it. What he learned served to confirm and develop tendencies that were already apparent in his work, notably in his researches into the superimposing and separating of musical units and the signals needed to break a pattern in moving on to the next phase of a composition.