Lexington Books
Pages: 198
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9⅛
978-1-4985-9714-2 • Hardback • November 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-4985-9716-6 • Paperback • June 2021 • $44.99 • (£35.00)
978-1-4985-9715-9 • eBook • November 2019 • $42.50 • (£35.00)
Kiyoshi Tamagawa is professor of music at Southwestern University.
Chapter One: Before Debussy: Musical exoticism in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Europe
Chapter Two: Debussy, the Age of Empire, and Cultural Appropriation
Chapter Three: Early Musical Influences
Chapter Four: Debussy and the Gamelan
Chapter Five: Gamelan Techniques and Evocations in Works of the 1890s
Chapter Six: Piano Works of 1903-1913 and La mer
Chapter Seven: Theater Pieces, 1911-1913 and Final Years, 1914-1917
Chapter Eight: Western Composers and the Gamelan since Debussy, I
Chapter Nine: Western Composers and the Gamelan since Debussy, II
This is an excellent book, seriously researched, beautifully written throughout, and dealing with a subject of enormous interest and relevance.
— Catherine Kautsky, Lawrence University
Kiyoshi Tamagawa’s study of Claude Debussy’s lifelong compositional conversation with the gamelan is a deep appreciation of both the Indonesian ensemble and repertoire and Debussy’s fascination with it, which dates back to his encounter with it at 27 years of age at the Paris Exposition of 1889. Tamagawa neither avoids the difficult questions of musical appropriation nor yields to the thou-shalt-nots of certain critical perspectives; instead, this robust and clear-eyed study reaches into the mid-to-late twentieth century, when Debussy’s compositional influence was still felt in the works of later, transculturally inclined composers. This is one of a growing number of studies in the area of transcultural music, and will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of such repertoire.
— Jonathan D. Bellman, University of Northern Colorado