Journal Article

Spanish Music as Perceived in Western Music Historiography: A Case of the Black Legend?

Etzion, Judith

1998

Overview

This study postulates that the marginal position of Spanish music in Western music historiography cannot be attributed unilaterally to Spain, but is the consequence of the political and cultural factors that underlay the Western attitude toward Spain. It was not merely the inaccessibility of Spanish music sources in the West that relegated Spain to the periphery, but, even more so, the lack of sufficient interest in a country that did not live up to the expectations of Western aesthetic precepts. Spanish national identity as an Other was so deeply entrenched in Western perception since the seventeenth century, that it was reduced to a series of negative topoi, known today collectively as the 'Black Legend'. (This term encompasses all the falsifications and misinformation that accumulated against Spain for centuries, as well as the consequent omission of what counted in Spain's favor and the exaggeration of what counted against it.) The extent to which the Black Legend infiltrated into Western music historiography is examined through major sources from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.

• Publisher: Department for Music and Musicology of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Croatian Musicological Society, Music Academy of the University of Zagreb,Hrvatsko Muzikolosko Drustvo,Zagreb Academy of Music, Institute of Musicology
• Subject: 17th century / 18th century / 19th century / 20th century / Aesthetics / Church music / Composers / Cultural Influences / Guitars / Historical musicology / History / Music / Music composition / Music criticism / Musical aesthetics / Musicians / Original Scientific Papers/Izvorni Znanstveni Članci / Political Attitudes / Popular music / Spanish Music