This morning the local classical station played Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov’s “Procession of the Sardar”, the final movement of his Caucasian Sketches No. 1.  Yes,  for those of you who know it, the piece is a fair example of a “pops” favorite – pleasant to listen to but pretty light, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

As is so often the case when I hear the piece, I found myself wondering, “Just what the heck is a Sardar?”  Well, a quick bit of research reveals that while the term these days is most relevant to Indian Sikhs, way back when it was a description of a feudal lord applicable all over southern Asia, from western Persia to all points east.  The music reflects this exoticism nicely.

I have to confess that I have a weakness for this sort of thing.  Indeed, I readily listen to anything suggestive of the Turk, the Tatar, the Moor, the shadow of the Pyramids or the sands of Araby.  I’m certainly not the only one who feels this way, for composers have been inserting African and Asia themes and ideas into Western Musick for ever. Of course, I understand that this is in some sense simply a form of romanticism, the interest in and idealization of whatever lies over the horizon, but there again, this is a strain of Western Culchah stretching all the way back to Alexander the Great.

I suppose this is the difference explaining the fact that I can sit all the way through the endless repetitions of the theme in Lawrence of Arabia without a murmur and, indeed, even with enjoyment, while I am ready to stab my own eardrums with a pair of scissors after the first two minutes of “Lara’s Theme” from Dr. Zhivago.