Beauty and Innovation in la machine chinoise

During the first decade of the 20th century, Falla, Debussy, Ravel, and Roussel composed works laced with exotic coloration, a type of piece that Debussy termed la machine chinoise . Various historical factors at the time, including two world fairs and the vogue for Japanese prints, brought the rage for musical exoticism to a peak. But interest in Far Eastern forms of music among composers seeking innovative forms of expression coincided with avant-garde tendencies in the treatment of tonality a