ABSTRACT
As Estelle Joubert observes from a survey of 18th-century German periodicals, enlightenment writers endeavoured to understand the otherness of Chinese, Maori, and Iroquois music on the basis of travel reports and analytical essays such as Jean-Joseph-Marie Amiot’s Mémoire of Chinese music, recognising their potential as a strand of musical criticism and a valuable contribution to ethnomusicology. These texts illustrate the role of nature in Chinese musico-scientific knowledge, the perceived exceptionalism of counterpoint, the potential of comparative organology and the fascination of indigenous communal rituals for European readers, uncovering the hybridity of European musical values forged during that century.
