Molina, María José de la Torre. “‘After the Fashion of Spain’: Music, Dance, and Identity in the Work of Francis Carter (1772-1773).”

Molina, María José de la Torre. “‘After the Fashion of Spain’: Music, Dance, and Identity in the Work of Francis Carter (1772-1773).” Music & Letters 99, no. 3 (August 2018): 323–351.


Abstract
The English author Francis Carter travelled throughout the south of the Iberian Peninsula between September 1772 and July 1773. The experiences and reflections that emerged from this journey and other previous stays in the area were collected in his travel journal A Journey from Gibraltar to Malaga, published in 1777. This article examines the descriptions and analyses of the sound world that Carter encountered, focusing on four areas: Carter’s conceptualization of music; the important function of sound as a strategy for legitimizing the account and its author; the concept of a ‘Spanish tradition’ and the construction of the Spanish ‘Other’ as a historicized and musical entity; and the omissions that Carter made in relation to certain musical and choreographic expressions, which can be interpreted as symptoms of the difficulties he experienced in constructing and negotiating his English identity in relation to the Spanish ‘Other’.