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

The remainder of this chapter offers a biographical overview of Wagner, Smetana, and Grieg for readers who may be unfamiliar with these composers’ lives and works. The second chapter outlines the key concepts of nationalism that the book is grounded upon. I propose a reconsideration of two theoretical traditions: first, of the relationship between nationalism and culture, and second, of the relationship between nationalism and music. I argue that art and politics are fused in nationalism as in few other social phenomena, such that culture becomes an essential political tool for building nations. Second, I show how previous understandings of nationalist music as music need to be refined to take into account the fact that nations and nationalism are social constructions consciously manipulated by activist artists. Nationality in music is therefore similarly a construction and a political tool, the result of concrete social and artistic aims on the part of those activist artists. Readers who are well versed in theories of nationalism may wish to skim the first half of this chapter to focus instead on my discussion of nationalist music.

The third chapter answers the question of exactly how Wagner, Smetana, and Grieg sought to make their music national. Their approach­es were a combination of inherited ideas representative of broader intellectual trends of the time, and innovations that nationalist composers themselves pioneered. All three composers reacted against what they perceived as a decline in artistic standards and taste that prevented the public from recognizing its own true national art. So, building upon the contemporary conception of art’s power to edify and educate, these men determined to apply that power toward educating the populace into the values of the new national culture. These composers also each engaged in institution building—establishing orchestras or opera houses in order to realize their educational goals and simultaneously to inculcate audiences with the national culture. Finally, I analyze how Wagner, Smetana, and Grieg all brought their own artistic genius to bear on these goals by actually creating artworks that would establish the new national style and serve as pillars of the national culture.