Music Makes the Nation: Nationalist Composers and Nation Building ...

One of the paramount purposes for national art was to forge a national populace. Art, these artists believed, had the power to build the nation culturally, and could thereby make an absolutely vital contribution to the larger nationalist project.

The nationalist artists who undertook this project are a fascinating combination of artist and political activist. Fascinating, because in many cases these are creative geniuses—among them some of the greatest that humanity has ever produced—who dedicated their careers, their hopes, and the very fruits of their incredible artistic inspiration to their country’s nationalist movement. In so doing, these artists were simultaneously creating something besides art, and besides a national culture. Through their engagement with politics, society, and culture, nationalist composers were also helping to fashion the role of a social actor who had never existed previously in history. They were becoming nationalist intellectuals, the activists who deserve most of the credit for launching the movements that would reshape Europe’s, and eventually the world’s, political order.

Nationalist intellectuals operated on many levels and in many areas to promote their country’s nationalist movement. They wrote historical tracts uncovering the supposed history of the lands aspiring to autonomy. They wrote speeches and articles declaring their movement’s demands and protesting oppression by other peoples. They led rebellions, argued in parliaments, and waged wars. They also authored poetry, painted pictures, and composed operas. Nationalist artists were, in fact, often closely involved with other political actors in the nationalist movement, and count as a fundamental subset of nationalist intellectuals more generally. Most nationalist movements depended on this division of labor among the activists, where some dedicated themselves to writing, others to combat, and others to art.

The examples of Wagner, Smetana, and Grieg reveal precisely what the goals were for nationalist artists such as composers—and they also reveal the process by which they sought to realize their goals. This process, the actual practices these men engaged in to bring about their political and artistic goals, is best understood as a process of creation.