Asian Influence on Classical Music

Clare Goodman

AAA 201-A

Final Paper

Asia’s influence on Classical Music

In America’s early history, society’s fascination of Asia began and many Americans started incorporating aspects of Asian culture into American culture, and music was no exception. I will examine how Asia has influenced American and Western classical music through the incorporation of gamelan music, pentatonic scales, and story lines. I argue that through music, it can be seen how America treats Asia with orientalism and panethnicity. As more Asian musical aspects were incorporated in American classical music, tension developed between incorporating Asian musical aspects in music because of true appreciation or exploitation to make compositions more exotic and appealing.  

        The first musical aspect that has been adopted in Western and American classical music that I will discuss is gamelan which comes from Indonesia. Gamelan means “musical ensemble” and more specifically, a percussion ensemble in this case. These ensembles are made up of percussion instruments and especially bronze instruments such as the gong or metallophone which gives the music a very metallic sound (DeArment). Just one of the many examples of gamelan influence in American classical music is from the American composer, Lou Harrison, who used the gamelan musical style in his composition “Concerto for Organ with Percussion Orchestra”. One of the big influences in bringing gamelan music to American classical music was Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison was one of his protégés. Cowell was exposed to music from the East for most of his life as he grew up in San Francisco near Chinatown and lived in Asia for several years (Platt). He truly understood music from Asia and the cultural implications behind it. As more American composers stared incorporating musical aspects from Asian music, he warned them “against acquiring a superficial knowledge of non-Western music and pretending to have mastered it” (Gann).

Another one of the more common musical aspects that America started incorporating in classical music came from China and is the pentatonic scale. Typically, in Western and American classical music, two main scales are used: the major and minor scale. In Chinese classical music, they have 73 different scales that are used and the pentatonic scale is prominent in a majority of Chinese classical music. A pentatonic scale has five notes per octave in contrast to major and minor scales which have seven notes per octave. In addition, pentatonic scales are composed of only the black keys on a piano while major and minor scales use a combination of both white and black keys (Estrella). One example of pentatonic scales used in Western classical music is from the famous composer Claude Debussy in his “Estampes Suite”. Throughout this piece, Debussy highlights the pentatonic chords to evoke images of East Asia. In American classical music, Asia is commonly represented by the use of pentatonic scales which sound exotic and foreign to the American ear. Through the use of pentatonic chords, Asia is characterized as the “Other” since these pentatonic chords sound very different from the traditional major and minor scales used in the classical music Americans are used to.

Another way that Asia has influenced American classical music is by the stories that are told through music. These stories are accurate representations of how American society views Asia. Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly is one example of how Asia has influenced the stories told in Western classical music. Puccini was fascinated by the Japanese and took time to study their music and culture in order to create an authentic representation of Japan in this opera. In opera, one of the main ways that people are characterized is by the music that is played when the character is on stage. In Madame Butterfly, two of the main characters are depicted as polar opposites. One is a U.S. naval officer and he is depicted as being a strong, good man. As he is introduced, the “Star Spangled Banner” is played and is representative of the strength of the West. In comparison, the other main character is a young Japanese girl who is depicted as a delicate and fragile. When she is introduced, a soft melody is played which was inspired by the Japanese melody “Cherry Blossom Song”, which is representative of Japan being a young country that is delicate and fragile (New York City Opera). The way these two characters were represented in Madame Butterfly was not by accident, it was a true representation of the orientalism that existed in America and Western Society. As Okihiro states “the assumptions of Orientalism were not merely abstractions and figments of the European imagination, but composed of a system of thought that supported a ‘Western style for domination, restructuring, and having authority over’ Asia” (Okihiro, p. 7). These characterizations are a classic example of American views and orientalism through music and how it creates the “Other” as the polar opposite and less superior to the West