Led Zeppelin and Carlo Domeniconi: Truth Without Authenticity?
by Danielle Cumming
Doctoral Paper, McGill University,
2005
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Complete Paper pdf
Is it possible to truly capture the essence of another culture’s music? Must a composer formally study the other’s music in order to assimilate it? Or can a composer assimilate another’s music without even having experienced that culture first hand? Does theoretical understanding determine musical quality? Many composers, performers and musicologists have struggled with these questions throughout the twentieth century. It is not the intention of this study to review the scholarship concerned with these questions, but rather to apply it specifically to the music of classical composer Carlo Domeniconi and the rock band Led Zeppelin. The works selected for study are Domeniconi’s Koyunbaba: Suite für Gitarre op.19, and movements from Sindbad: Ein Märchen für Gitarre (Sindbad: A Fairytale for Guitar) , and “White Summer/Black Mountain Side” by Led Zeppelin.
Domeniconi has composed almost exclusively for the guitar. His works display his interest in other musics, from Turkey, Iraq, India, Japan and Brazil, as well as other musical styles, as indicated in the titles “Hommage à Jimi Hendrix” and “Bossa Triste” from Quaderno Brasiliano . In addition to being a composer, Domeniconi is also a respected performer and improviser.
The principal creative force behind Led Zeppelin was the band’s guitarist, composer and producer Jimmy Page. Before forming Led Zeppelin, Page was a successful studio musician in London, performing on many recordings and displaying great stylistic versatility. He was also, for a short time, a member of the Yardbirds, a band known for their experimental approach to rock music. This combination of versatility and openness to musical experimentation contributed to Page’s stature among rock guitarists of the 1960s and 1970s.
Page and Domeniconi are composers from different musical genres, yet both have looked beyond their Western European musical traditions for their inspiration. As guitarists, both have explored the mutability of the instrument, and its proximity in technique and sound to non-Western plucked-string instruments. In addition to exploring non-Western music melodically, harmonically and rhythmically, both Page and Domeniconi have extended the playing techniques of the instrument to further the imitation.
In classical music the guitar, long marginalized by composers, is still strongly associated with Spain, Europe’s exotic Other. Historically, composers more commonly attempted to imitate the character of the instrument in their piano or orchestral writing, than write for the guitar itself. Claude Debussy’s “La soirée dans Grenade,” one of the Estampes (1903) is an example. Debussy, considered the first Western composer to both assimilate and be sensitive to non-Western music and its values beyond the potential for novel decoration, encountered not only the Javanese gamelan at the 1889 Paris Exposition, but performances by Spanish gypsies from Granada.1 While Debussy described Spanish folk music as ‘one of the richest in the world,’ he also stated that folk music should be used not for its themes, but for its colour, rhythm, evocation and freedom.2
After Debussy’s death, Manuel de Falla wrote of “La soirée dans Grenade,” “ Here we are actually given Andalusia, the truth without the authenticity, as it were, for although not a single measure is taken from Spanish folklore, the whole piece, down to its smallest details, brings us to Spain.”3 Parakilas suggests Debussy himself, whose primary aim was to create atmosphere, would have been surprised by this generous compliment. While Parakilas’ discussion of Falla’s “auto-exoticism” as a possible motivation for promoting Debussy’s Spain is fascinating reading, this study will focus on issues that arise in the quote itself. Is it possible to have truth without authenticity?
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the history of exoticism, the principal composers who borrowed from the Other, and the writings most relevant to the discussion of these composers. Chapter 2 focuses on the music of Led Zeppelin, specifically the band’s non-Western borrowings. The song “White Summer/Black Mountain Side” is analyzed to determine how Page evoked the exotic atmosphere. Chapter 3 is a discussion and analysis of the selected works by Carlo Domeniconi. Chapter 4 is an examination of the issues that surround this music.
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If quotes are taken from the above text, please maintain the context, and cite the source.
Danielle Cumming may be contacted at dmcumming [at] salisbury.edu
1 Parakilas, James. “How Spain Got a Soul”, in Jonathan Bellman (ed.) The Exotic in Western Music. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 172. Parakilas argues that Spain was exoticized primarily by the French, after the Napoleonic wars: “The exoticizing of Spain…was part of a larger process by which…French artists turned the rest of the continent into an exotic cultural margin, or borderland, between themselves and the utterly alien cultures beyond Europe.” Parakilas suggests that the French may have detached themselves from their less progressive Latin neighbours in an effort to keep up with the more powerful cultures of Germany and England.
2 Lesure, Francois. ‘Debussy,’ Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy, (Accessed 27 June 2005), <http://www.grovemusic.com>
3 de Falla, Manuel, “Claude Debussy and Spain” (1920), reprinted in Falla, On Music and Musicians, ed. Federico Sopeña, trans. David Urman and J.M. Thomson (London: Marion Boyars, 1979), 42. It is fitting that Falla submitted a guitar piece, the only work he would write for the instrument, “Hommage: Le Tombeau à Claude Debussy” to the Revue Musicale for the 1920 tribute edition .