A Broader View of Musical Exoticism

Most previous writings on musical exoticism reflect the unspoken assumption that a work is perceived by the listener as exotic only if it incorporates distinctively foreign or otherwise highly unusual elements of musical style. This “Exotic Style Only” Paradigm often proves revelatory, especially for purely instrumental works. In operas and other musicodramatic works set in exotic locales, by contrast, music is heard within a narrative “frame” that shapes the listener’s response. Yet the existing literature on “the exotic in music” tends to restrict its attention to those few scenes or passages (in such works) that “sound non-Western.” It also tends to leave unmentioned the many Baroque-era operas and dramatic oratorios that focus on despicable Eastern tyrants. The present article proposes an “All the Music in Full Context” Paradigm to help make sense of a variety of exotic portrayals that are strikingly diverse in message and means: 1) Les Indes galantes (Rameau’s application of standard musico-rhetorical devices to manipulative and anti-colonialist speeches by the Peruvian leader Huascar); 2) Belshazzar (Handel’s vivid musical setting of the passage in which the cruel, cowardly Eastern despot seeks oblivion in drink); 3) Bizet’s Carmen (the Card Scene, which is notably free of Hispanic or other local color yet, through rigidly recurring devices in voice and orchestra, indelibly limns Carmen’s Gypsy fatalism); and 4) three prominent dramatic moments, two of them rarely discussed, in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. In each case, the full range of artistic components—including musical devices that lie within or outside the traditional exotic vocabulary—enriches our understanding of how diversely, powerfully, sometimes disturbingly the exoticizing process can function in genres that combine music with dramatic representation

Beyond the exotic: How

Commentators often express disappointment that the music for the main characters in _Aida_ is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work's ceremonial scenes and ballets. It has also been argued that exotic style-elements here are mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Such commentaries often draw on a limited selection of data and observations: the exotic style of those few ceremonial numbers, two moments for solo oboe, the opera's plot, and the circumstances of the work's commissioning (by the Khedive of Egypt). In fact, though, various aspects of words and music that are not in themselves markers of exoticism or Orientalism manifestly announce traits of this or that character (or group). Those verbal and musical elements thereby communicate indelible impressions of what Egyptians and Ethiopians supposedly are like (or were like in an earlier era). For example, the music of the priests is mostly not, as commentators regularly claim, marked by imitative counterpoint; rather, it engages in several distinct archaicizing tendencies, some of which characterize the priestly caste (and hence the Egyptian government within the opera) as rigid and menacing. New evidence for how we might understand the opera is presented here, from sources as diverse as costume designs, specific details of the sung text, stage directions in the _disposizione scenica_ for the opera's first Italian production, relevant remarks by Verdi (a late interview in which he expresses forceful opposition to European imperialism), little-known remarks by early commentators (including two Egyptians writing in 1901), early sound recordings, and Western fears/knowledge of the Wahhabist strain of Islam that was then expanding across the Middle East

'Aida' and Nine Readings of Empire

This paper assesses nine prominent readings of the imperial context/content of Verdi’s 'Aida' and offers a new perspective more adequate to basic tensions in the work. Readings have ranged from the literal (imperial Europe here stages an archaeological “ancient Egypt”) to the metaphorical (“Egypt” here is any repressive government). Or--somewhere between those extremes--the Egyptian enslavement of Ethiopia represents Austrian tyranny over Italy in the 1820s-50s. The vitality of 'Aida' derives from a productive tension between (1) the scenario, drafted at the Pasha’s request (emphasizing the greatness of ancient and, by implication, modern Egypt), and (2) Verdi’s lingering sympathy with any country yearning for self-determination. Some moments in the work resonate more with one of these goals, some with the other. Two stylistically and dramatically contrasting passages—'Gloria all’Egitto' and Amonasro’s 'Ma tu Re'—occur in close juxtaposition and thus challenge or shade each other in powerful, troubling ways. The continuum that is offered here--nine readings of empire--can inform our understanding of the ways in which other exotically or ethnically tinted operas of the long 19th century, from Mozart and Weber to Massenet and Puccini, relate to real-world power struggles between nations, social classes, and ethnic groups other than the ones that they outwardly portray

Uma ampla visão do exotismo musical

A maioria dos estudos anteriores sobre o exotismo musical reflete a suposição tácita de que uma obra é entendida pelo ouvinte como exótica somente se incorpora elementos distintivamente exógenos ou altamente incomuns quanto ao estilo musical. Esse Paradigma “Apenas Estilo Exótico” mostra-se muitas vezes elucidativo, particularmente quando aplicado a obras puramente instrumentais. Em óperas e outras obras dramático-musicais ambientadas em locais exóticos, pelo contrário, a música é ouvida dentro de um “quadro” narrativo que induz a resposta do ouvinte. No entanto, a bibliografia existente sobre o “exótico na música” tende a concentrar sua atenção em poucas cenas ou passagens que “soam não-ocidentais”. E também tende a omitir as muitas óperas e oratórios dramáticos da era barroca que focam em tiranos orientais desprezíveis. Este artigo propõe o Paradigma “Todas as Músicas em Pleno Contexto”, visando contribuir para dar sentido a uma variedade de retratos musicais do exótico, bastante diversificados na mensagem e nos meios. Trechos das seguintes obras são analisados para discutir os diversos aspectos do problema: Les Indes galantes, de Rameau; Belshazzar de Handel; Carmen, de Bizet; e Madama Butterfly, de Puccini. Cada caso guarda uma gama completa de componentes artísticos, inclusive dispositivos musicais pertencentes ou alheios ao vocabulário exótico tradicional, que enriquecem nossa compreensão de quão diverso, poderoso e, às vezes, perturbador pode ser o processo de exotização em gêneros que combinam a música e a representação dramática

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

The genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes

The genetic architecture of common traits, including the number, frequency, and effect sizes of inherited variants that contribute to individual risk, has been long debated. Genome-wide association studies have identified scores of common variants associated with type 2 diabetes, but in aggregate, these explain only a fraction of heritability. To test the hypothesis that lower-frequency variants explain much of the remainder, the GoT2D and T2D-GENES consortia performed whole genome sequencing in 2,657 Europeans with and without diabetes, and exome sequencing in a total of 12,940 subjects from five ancestral groups. To increase statistical power, we expanded sample size via genotyping and imputation in a further 111,548 subjects. Variants associated with type 2 diabetes after sequencing were overwhelmingly common and most fell within regions previously identified by genome-wide association studies. Comprehensive enumeration of sequence variation is necessary to identify functional alleles that provide important clues to disease pathophysiology, but large-scale sequencing does not support a major role for lower-frequency variants in predisposition to type 2 diabetes