Persian perspectives: Chardin, De la Borde, Kaempfer

Abstract

Less well explored than the material supplied by European observers of Ottoman musical practice, that relating to the Safavid realm is nevertheless instructive, both for the glimpses it gives of music as a social activity, especially in Isfahan, of the instruments used, and for what it reveals about the attitudes of the observers. The contributions of two of the most perceptive seventeenth-century European commentators are surveyed here, together with the attempts of an eighteenth-century encyclopaedist to grapple with a Persian theoretical text, reflecting a nascent concern with indigenous theory as Enlightenment thinkers develop an interest in exploring the music of other cultures while at the same time becoming more self-confident in their assumptions of European musical superiority.

Keywords

• persian music
• historical musicology
• ethnomusicology
• orientalism

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