Throughout the history of Western music, composers have been fascinated by the musics of non-Western cultures, including musics from East Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This fascination at times led to representations of non-Western styles in the works of the Western canon. Many of the resulting works have been criticized as engaging in exoticism, an aesthetic that stereotypes and fetishizes one or several non-Western musics or cultures. In other cases, non-Western influences have been incorporated by composers in a more egalitarian fashion, producing intercultural dialogue. Through analysis of twentieth-century works by Debussy, Ravel, Cage, Ligeti, Takemitsu, Reich, Glass, and others, students will examine the history of exoticism and interculturality in Western music and discuss its relevance in today’s musical culture.