Abstract:
Exoticism was a reflection of European societies' increasing interest in foreign places and cultures. Better access to the outside world allowed for increased exploration, colonization, travel, and exposure to different cultures. In music, composers' interests in the "other" prompted them to capture foreign sounds. One of the most prominent subcategories within musical exoticism was Orientalism, but exoticism involved other features, including indigenous folk traditions, particularly those of Native Americans and Africans. Interest in the music of these groups often prompted composers to travel to the United States to experience their music first hand. During his travel to the United States, English composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934) grew fond of the Negro melodies he heard, and he frequently utilized musical features of the African American folk tradition in his compositions, in particular his opera Koanga. Although his work is powerful in many ways, particularly for its use of African American characters, Koanga reflects the sometimes exploitative nature of exoticism by using foreign subjects to entertain privileged Western audiences and to embellish overused plots, such as love stories. This document examines Delius' deviations from the original plot of the novel on which Koanga was based (George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes) and details the ways in which this impacted perceptions of the opera. Likewise, it focuses on societal and cultural influences that impacted compositional choices and investigates possible reasoning behind his choices. Because of Delius' deviations from Cable's novel, the manner in which he set certain musical material, and certain performance choices in initial stagings, this document, while acknowledging this was not Delius' intent, will draw the conclusion that the opera promotes stereotypical racial tropes that Cable was challenging in his novel.
