The concept of World Music is important for the explanation of various twentieth-century musical phenomena but its application to virtually every genre of music creates an inevitable confusion. In the 1980s, World Music was a term useful for describing popular music in fusion with ethnic music. That fact has lead many to an association of the term exclusively with that new genre. In this study I define World Music in Western art-music---from an historical perspective as well as with regard to musical style, ideology, and aesthetics and give examples of various composers' approaches. In the ideological discussion, the debate over "exotic" music and musical borrowings turns out to have many points of contact with the notions of modernism and postmodernism. I exemplify and test my ideas by using the stylistic development of Swedish-Canadian composer Bengt Hambraeus as a case study and discuss ideological and musical applications to the concept of World Music in relation to Hambraeus's piece Nocturnals for Chamber Ensemble (1990).

No description available.