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35 - The Dynamics of National Music: Opera and Classical Music in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

from Part III - Intersections: National(ist) Synergies and Tensions with Other Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Categories, Identities, and Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

By
Rutger Helmers
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Lovers of opera and classical music will not find it hard to think of scores strongly associated with their authors’ national identity, such as Chopin’s mazurkas (c. 1825–1849), Wagner’s Die Meistersinger (1868), Smetana’s Vltava (The Moldau, 1874), or Sibelius’s Finlandia (1899). The connections between the traditions of art music and nationalism are manifold, and the nineteenth century, the age of musical Romanticism, in particular produced a substantial output of “national works,” the most successful of which are still in the repertory today. As a result, scholars of music have been debating the theme of “music and the nation” since the nineteenth century itself, when the discipline of music historiography first emerged.

Keywords

nineteenth-century musicclassical musicoperanational identitynationalismbanal nationalism
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 749 - 767
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Applegate, Celia, “How German Is It? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early Nineteenth Century,” 19th-Century Music, 21/3 (1998), 274–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckerman, Michael, “In Search for Czechness in Music,” 19th-Century Music, 10/1 (1986), 61–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).Google Scholar
Bohlman, Philip V., Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2011).Google Scholar
Dahlhaus, Carl, “Nationalism and Music,” in Dahlhaus, Carl, Between Romanticism and Modernism, trans. M. Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 79–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frolova-Walker, Marina, Russian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Helmers, Rutger, Not Russian Enough? Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Opera (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Leerssen, Joep, “Nationalism and the Cultivation of Culture,” Nations and Nationalism, 12/4 (2006), 559–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leerssen, Joep (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018); also available at https://ernie.uva.nl.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riley, Matthew, and Smith, Anthony D., Nation and Classical Music: From Handel to Copland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016).Google Scholar
Taruskin, Richard, “Nationalism,” in Sadie, S. and Tyrell, J. (eds.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. xvii, 2nd edition (London: Macmillan, 2001), 689–706, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.50846.Google Scholar
White, Harry, and Murphy, Michael (eds.), Musical Constructions of Nationalism: Essays on the History and Ideology of European Musical Culture, 1800–1945 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

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