Felicien David – the revealer of musical exoticism in the Romantic Era

Abstract

This paper argues about one of the features which distinguish 19^th-century Romantic art: exoticism. Unknown cultures, distant places, and different peoples, all were considered exotic and fascinated the European public. The Orient was perceived as an exotic world, the study of its cultures became widespread, and works of art representing the East were created – this approach to the East is one of the meanings of the term Orientalism. The magic of the East captured the artists, writers, and musicians, among them Félicien David, the French composer who, after traveling to the Orient and spending two years in Egypt would return to France with the sound of the desert imprinted in his soul and merge the music of the East with the traditional European compositional techniques, creating a new language to express exoticism through music, his masterpiece: „Le Desert”.