Persian perspectives: Chardin, De la Borde, Kaempfer

Abstract

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