'Exoticism' in the opera Gilgamesh by Rudolf Brucci in Ralph Locke's 'All the music in the full context' paradigm

Abstract

In this text, Rudolf Brucci's opera Gilgamesh is viewed in the light of Ralph Locke's 'All the Music in the Full Context' Paradigm which promotes the approach that one should search for the exotic elements in musical works first in the discursive components (title, program, accompanying notes), visual representations (costume, scenery) and a 'horizon of expectations' of a particular culture, and only then to observe exoticism as the aspect of a musical style. In the light of this Paradigm, 'exoticism' of the opera Gilgamesh is detected at the level of the music material and compositional procedures, but not in the dramaturgical profiling of characters, narrative adaptation of the Sumerian epic, costumes and scenery. The plot, costumes and the scenery of the opera do not construct the Orient with either positive or negative projections attributed to it by the Western European Orientalist discourse, but portray Gilgamesh and Enkidu as ancient mythic protagonists on the margin of the (not-always) exoticist once/now binarism. The musical language of the opera, which abounds in the usage of oriental musical scales and citations, indicates that oriental/exotic was one of the author's 'target levels' when conceiving and composing Gilgamesh. Brucci, however, did not build the 'ethnological model' in his opera, but gave oriental scales and 'exotic' musical citations their meaning within the Western musical tradition, which is why his approach can be compared with the 'veiled exoticism' of the French composers of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. In the light of the self/other binarism, reaching for the exotic in Gilgamesh can be presented as an auto-exotic creative behavior of Brucci as a composer who perceives his 'minority identity' in a relation to an imaginary referential system of the Center. However, I am more inclined to see Brucci's identificational intention in his advocacy of the Yugoslav NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) project, and his dealing with the 'exotic' as part of his strategy to support cultural achievements of the Third World which predominantly participated in that project.

Problem 'egzotičnog' jeste jedan od potencijalnih okvira tumačenja u kojem Bručijeva opera Gilgameš može biti posmatrana, a studija Musical Exoticism Ralfa Loka (Ralphe Locke), u kojoj su reprezentacije/konstrukcije Drugog u zapadnoevropskoj muzičkoj tradiciji razmotrene iz ugla postkolonijalnog kriticizma, biće metodološki oslonac za ovo posmatranje. Pitanje na koje ću nastojati da odgovorim jeste da li je Bruči operu Gilgameš zamislio na pozadini zapadnoevropskog orijentalističkog diskursa, ili je 'Orijent' tematizovao u specifičnom kontekstu društvenih prilika u Jugoslaviji tokom osamdesetih godina XX veka. Lokova paradigma 'muzika u celokupnom kontekstu' ('all the music in the full context'), odnosno binarne opozicije nekad/sad, blizu/daleko, stvarno/fikcionalno i ja/drugi poslužiće kao 'mreža' u kojoj je elemente egzotističkog diskursa najlakše locirati.