Russian orientalism: from ethnography to art song in nineteenth-century music

Russia's ambivalent geo-political and socio-cultural position, as a self-avowed intermediary between the East and the West, shaped its double identity and played an important role in the creation of Russia's own Oriental Other. This dissertation examines the political and cultural resonance of nineteenth-century Russian art songs with oriental or Asian subjects, both within and outside of Edward Said's theoretical construct of "Orientalism." It also addresses how Russian art song composers adapted, transformed and assimilated music drawn from ethnographic sources published during the century. By contextualizing nineteenth-century Russian Orientalism through an analysis of folksong collections, ethnographies, and art songs this study addresses the very formation of the Russian image of Otherness in conjunction with the construction of a specifically Russian national and musical identity. Drawing on an extensive yet under-analyzed and under-theorized repertoire of Russian folk and art songs with oriental subjects, as well as a host of writings by Russian literati, travelers, ethnographers, and ordinary individuals about the music and culture of Russian oriental minorities, this dissertation reveals the changing nature of the theory, practice, and creation of nineteenth-century Russian music with oriental subjects, as well as the diverse and often contradictory representations of oriental Others and the extraordinary complexity of the colonizer-colonized relationship in Russia.