[Ralph P. Locke]

The most recent issue (dated August 2021) of the distinguished British journal Music & Letters includes my review of an intriguing and wide-ranging book published (in generally good English) in Poland.

I was particularly eager to review the book because it contains the most extensive study to date of Beethoven’s familiarity (or possible familiarity) with musics of the Islamic Middle East, and their (again possible) echoes in his music for the stage pageant “The Ruins of Athens.”

That article is by Feza Tansuğ and deserves to be read and evaluated closely by anybody who is trying to get a grip on the amazing “Chor der Derwische” (Chorus of Dervishes).

The book, edited by Małgorzata Grajter, is entitled The Orient in Music—Music of the Orient (Cambridge Scholars Press)–Other chapters, often on the brief side, discuss broad issues (such as the implications of Edward Said’s writings for an understanding of how Western composers have alluded to “the East”) or look at specific pieces in some detail (e.g., by Doppler, Szymanowski, Rogalski, and Panufnik).

I see there’s a review of the same book in the latest issue of Notes (the journal of the Music Library Association). The book is so varied in content that I suspect it may sound quite different in that review than in my own.

In any case, I’m glad to have drawn attention to Feza Tansuğ’s important contribution to Beethoven scholarship. (He has been best known, until now, for his studies of the traditional musics of various Turkic peoples, not for anything on Western art music!)

Ralph Locke

RLocke@esm.rochester.edu

 

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