On the history of the musical arts in Southeast Asia

Charles Fonton's project echoes Enlightenment approaches to music, music aesthetics, and the double nature of music as both art and science. Fonton starts with an account of the origins and history of oriental music. Music can be used as a clue and as a key that can disclose vital facets of human culture. The debates about music that raged in eighteenth-century France signal that the Enlightenment was dealing with materials and arguments that were too complex to be answered or solved in a satisfactory manner. In the emergence of later discourses of orientalism, the Enlightenment came to produce a bewildering number of simultaneous conversations intrinsic to the cultural and geographic exchange. By examining the different ways world music took shape in French music and musical scholarship in the eighteenth century, this chapter shows how the reflective horizon of Enlightenment authors and composers stretches beyond the West.