Keynote speakers
 

Celia Applebaum (Wednesday 21 May, 12–13)

AFFEKTENLEHRE: JOHANN MATTHESON AND THE ORIGINS OF MUSICAL GERMANY

This talk focuses the first decades of the eighteenth century as a turning point in the ways that Germans wrote about music and musicians and thought about Germany as a musical place. The difficulties that the Hamburg civic opera faced in these years became a point of departure for debating a more general crisis in German musical life and proposing ways to remedy it. Johann Mattheson saw himself as a modernizer and a reformer, as well as a moralist and German language patriot. He failed to save the Hamburg civic opera but he succeeded in defining a cultural space through varied practices of writing in which a self-consciously German musical culture emerged over the course of the eighteenth century.  Particularly through the medium of periodical literature, he cultivated a lively interaction among performance, practical pedagogy, criticism, learning, and a nationalizing ethics.

 

Philip V. Bohlman (Thursday 22 May, 12–13)

INDIAN MUSIC BEFORE INDIA

The longue durée of Indian nationalisms has historically been modern, and its modernity has always arisen through the agency of music. When Indian nationalisms formed around linguistic and literary canons – Sanskrit in the Vedic hymns at the beginning of the first millennium before the Common Era, or Bengali in the repertory of rabindrasangeet in fin-de-siècle Bengal – music proved to be transformative, connecting the past to the present, the lands of the subcontinent to the land of the nation-state. Through the intertextuality of its representational properties, Indian music engendered narratives that connected myth to place, deś in the grand sweep of epic cycles such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, no less than in the philosophical treatises such as the Nāṭyaśāstra.

The narratives of music and nationalism in such canonic works reveal the nation to emerge through both monogenesis and polygenesis, always in consort, always contested. Throughout the history of the subcontinent, new national narratives have emerged, charged by religious and political encounter, and marked by music. This was no less the case in the wake of the Harappan civilization some three and a half millennia ago than in the 2014 conflict over nationalist hegemony evident in the removal of Wendy Doniger's The Hindus from the Indian book market. The nationalist call for the past is realized through and against the moments that music's narrativity reconfigures as modern because they are Indian.

In the course of my keynote address in Helsinki I examine a cluster of nationalist moments in which Indian music realizes the historical longue durée of India as modern. Indian music – aesthetically, ontologically, theologically – will have multiple meanings at each of these moments. My goal, however, is not simply to account for these differences, but rather to examine the ways in which their similarities afford images of the nation, whether in early myth, the formation of musical structure and genre during renaissance, or in the Indian musical modernity that followed Indian enlightenments at the end of the eighteenth century. The case for music and Indian nationalisms that I make in this address raises potential challenges to many theories of nationalism, which take the European Enlightenment and the colonial spread of nationalism in the nineteenth century as their points of departure. Similarly, I argue that music contains different forms of agency that illumine histories of the nation in the past, even before there was a nation in the present.

 

Tomi Mäkelä (Friday 23 May, 12–13)

TEACHING MUSIC NATIONALLY: ON THE CONFIGURATION OF SCANDINAVIAN, NORDIC, AND LOCAL IMAGES IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC AND MUSIC EDUCATION

Expressively national music shapes our children's minds. This happens despite the widely known categorical criticisms. Ernest Renan wrote in the early 1880s (as cited by Eric Hobsbawm 1990): ‘Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation.' Renan was well known in the late 19th-century Scandinavia for his controversial work on Jesus Christ – a Figure, for Renan, transcending the National. According to Renan, national narratives are sequences of misinterpretations. He argued that thinking about a Nation is about ‘forgetting [...] many things'. But is this also true of music history? Or is it true of all complex narratives? As we memorize things, we never simply recollect but always reorganize even if we don't notice how and why. Perception goes with apperception, as Leibniz argued in 1714.

The applications of national narratives are widely used in education and will remain essential for our tradition. Nationally and regionally defined styles and topics are negotiated as musical meanings in our ‘Lifeworld' (Habermas). Intentionally and intuitively regional features belong to the most common images that educators use as they make the children aware of musical expressivity. This has an ethical dimension as well. Both the need for self-affirmation (regional and ethnical, or in Renan's terminology ‘nations', ‘peoples' and ‘races') and wider anthropological interests with a regionalist approach guide the selection. Particularly the central role of the Local needs to be questioned; in the 1910s, Walter Niemann observed that education in music, contrary to how the matter had been conceived earlier, tends towards ‘internationalisation' – more so than in the other arts. But of course: the Local can be functionalised globally.

No matter if we see Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker as an introduction to a youthful beaux-art experience, or if we look at the piano teachers using universalist collections like the Russian Piano School or Russian School of Piano Playing, or Europäische Klavierschule, or even Michael Aaron's Piano Course, we see the children confronted with the National and Local. The re-arrangement of Aaron's Piano Course by Matti Rautio with some profound changes to the North American original – many of which were due to Rautio's professional identity as a composer and professor of folk music – was used a lot in Finland. In some other cases such as Bartók's Mikrokosmos,  a set of educational pieces, composed by himself, utilize an abstract title but apply regionalist musical features. The same can be seen in the duets he composed for Erich Doflein's Geigen-Schulwerk. Bartók, of course, was famous for Nationalism as a composer.

The prehistory of the nationalist repertory in music education goes back to the early 18th century but we don't find much of it in Bach's pedagogical material. Even in popular music education, e.g. in Manfred Schmitz's Jazz Parnass, national styles and topics are the base of learning expression and form. However, a historian sees significant differences to be analysed.

As a prominent example I look at Grieg's Lyrische Stücke. Jean Sibelius is another case in point here. His adaptations of national images are not used in music education, but he has been crucial in modelling the Finns' general understanding of the meaning of national characters. So, in a debate on public musical appreciation courses and the National in media, Sibelius is worth a critical scrutiny. In this keynote, I argue that – beside the multicultural, four-language situation between highly profiled cultures (what could be more different from Russia than Scandinavia!?) – Sibelius' complex ‘nationalism' has contributed to the theoretical interest in questioning simple national characters and configuring the National effectively.

Presentations in alphabetical order
 

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y

ALONSO GONZÁLEZ, Celsa / University of Oviedo, Spain

Zarzuelas, revues, operettas and musical comedy: new national discourses and paradigms of modernity in Spain (1920–1950)

In XXth Century, Spanish musical historiography has constructed a hegemonic discourse on our national music based on some ideas never questioned: an essentialist vision ignoring constructivist nationalism, the ontological relationship between national authenticity and aesthetic renewal, the invisibility of the new popular culture and contempt for new forms of popular entertainment, especially the lyrical theater and popular song. The European scholars and their vision of our country and music (naturally picturesque) also favored a narrative about the Spanish "national" music rooted in: the concept of a "New and National School" pointed out by Felipe Pedrell (Albéniz, Granados and Falla), the exoticism of Spain, and modernity of Falla and young composers linked to the republicanism. Facing a concept of modernity conceived only in terms of avant-garde and elitism, in my research I propose a new narrative: a concept of modernity practiced by other musicians associated with lyric theatre and music hall, not in conflict with "the national" as a part of an international popular culture and new media (recording industries, radio, film, popular song). Musicians such as Francisco Alonso, Pablo Sorozábal or Jacinto Guerrero wrote hundreds of works, under the influence of Parisian cabaret, the music of Broadway and American cinema, in which native music, jazz music and Latin American dances coexisted without problems. These musicians, very popular in Spain, created some original, hybrid, commercial and everyday life music that contributed to build a national culture in the roaring Twenties, during the Spanish republic and, after the civil war, in the toughest years of the Franco regime. Far from any essentialism, I try to demonstrate that it's necessary to assume that the debate between tradition and modernity is meaningless, and that the social agents (media, public or industry) are more important than scholars in granting national patents, if they exist.

 

ANDEAN, James / Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts, Finland

Of Nations, Studios, and Other Electroacoustic Myths: Deconstructing the National Grand Narrative(s) of Electroacoustic Music

Histories of electroacoustic music tend to converge around a limited set of grand narratives, which tend to construct an outline of electroacoustic history organized around a combination of three themes:

1) Contrast and conflict between 'Great Nations' – primarily France and Germany, but also Italy, USA, etc.;
2) A select constellation of 'Great Studios': RTF/GRM in Paris, WDR in Cologne, Studio di Fonologia, Columbia/Princeton Electronic Music Centre, Institute of Sonology;
3) The strengths and personalities of a small handful of Great Composers: Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaeffer, Luciano Berio, John Cage...

While there can be no doubt that all of the above played significant roles in the development of the genre, these narratives can at best be described as misleading, and at worst be accused of rather sinister undercurrents. As with all such historical narratives, the attempt to consolidate an enormous outpouring of human creativity into a more easily comprehended collection of grand themes and 'major players' serves to circumscribe and belittle the work of a great many historical contributors whose work or background don't happen to fuel the narrative at hand.

More importantly, the dominant narratives regularly reinforce a number of dubious and occasionally unsavoury stereotypes. A key case in point here is the tendency to reduce electroacoustic history to a single, towering conflict between two men (Schaeffer and Stockhausen), two studios (the RTF/GRM and WDR), and, most importantly, between two countries: France and Germany. Electroacoustic music is absurdly simplified into a single dichotomy between recorded and electronic sound, which are then tied to France and Germany respectively, tapping into national stereotypes: the poetic soul of the French, and the cold, clinical Germans...

Not only is this simplification incredibly reductive, and at times demonstrably false, it also supports a form of broad national caricature that demands a thorough and critical rethinking. Where composers of this period of post-war Modernism were desperate to ensure that the nationalist romantic mistakes of the past would not be repeated, the retrospective narratives of electroacoustic history have re-imposed this same narrative once again, by emphasizing post-war animosity as the key factor in the birth of a new musical genre. This despite the fact that evidence regularly demonstrates the opposite – perhaps as the primary example, Stockhausen's first electronic work – the Konkrete Etüde – was created at Schaeffer's 'Club d'Essai' in Paris.

The absurdity of imposing such a broadly nationalist and political agenda onto what should be a purely musical and intellectual narrative is far from innocent, and has significant consequences. Not only does it support and strengthen negative and damaging national narratives, it also attempts to shoehorn the musical to meet the demands of the national-political, with far-reaching consequences. Electroacoustic music from around the world for the next several decades are forced into this same limited worldview, as works by composers as diverse as Jonathan Harvey and Michael McNabb are defined retroactively as 'bridging the divide' between musique concrète and elektronische Musik, by which the Americans and the British are imagined as 'making peace' between the French and the Germans, as late as the 1980s.

This narrative unnecessarily shifts the focus away from the ideas and individual thinkers, to an imagined conflict of nations or clash of national cultures. A more appropriate contemporary approach to making sense of electroacoustic history might instead be found through a focus on the resources at play, and, very importantly, to the question of access to those resources. This allows a somewhat different narrative to emerge, no longer obscured by obsession with the polarizing forces of Great Nations/Cities/Studios/Composers, and focused instead on the complex web of musical thought which is more fully deserving of our passion and attention.

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BROMAN-KANANEN, Ulla-Britta / Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts, Finland

Constructing Differences and Defining Boundaries: French Grand Opera in Finnish and Swedish in Late 1870s Helsinki

In 1876–1878 the Swedish and Finnish theatres competed with each other by staging some of the most famous French Grand Operas: Wilhelm Tell, La Muette de Portici and Robert le Diable at the Swedish Theatre, and Les Huguenots, La Juive and Robert le Diable at the Finnish Theatre. Robert le Diable was performed within the same month and even within the same week at both theatres. This Grand Opera boom was without doubt primarily aimed at impressing and overwhelming the Helsinki audience, although it was surely no co-incidence that the operas were performed close to the Diet's meetings in spring 1877, meetings at which the opera's future in Helsinki and its performing language was debated. Although the Diet tried to look for a peaceful bilingual solution between the two theatres, the public debate focussed more on constructing differences and defining boundaries based on ethnicity, language and ‘light' or ‘serious' repertoire choices.

The political dimensions of the French Grand Operas were well known to the contemporaries, although not openly discussed, at least not in relation to the political agendas at the Diet. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to assume that the choice of operas with obvious religious, nationalist and revolutionary messages was carefully planned and intentional. In my presentation I will focus on two French Grand Operas, Les Huguenots (Meyerbeer) and La Muette de Portici (Auber), which both were performed several times close to the Diet's meetings in spring 1877. I shall discuss especially the symbolic meaning of performing these two particular operas during a politically tense period in Helsinki.

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CASCUDO, Teresa / Universidad de La Rioja, Spain

Territory as a Key-Concept to Confront the National in the Musical Past

The call for papers of this conference clearly signalizes a space of conceptualization that still remains empty in the study of the relations between nationalism and music. The bibliography devoted to this subject is of course immense. In the last two decades, we can detect an evident – and also valuable – trend in musicology that examines nationalist cultural or musical topics as elements of process of nationalization "represented" in cultural items or defining "identities" (see among others Applegate 1990, White and Murphy 2001). Nevertheless, the distinct elements that could define nationalism are not always taken into consideration. At this point, a sort of "transdisciplinarity" is needed. My point of departure will be the recent work of Ramón Máiz. He points out the importance of territory as a key-concept for the understanding of nationalism. As he demonstrates, territorial political unity corresponds with the territorial distribution of one homogeneous group in a small per cent of contemporary nation-states. Heterogeneity is the rule. That is the reason why, as Philip Bohlman underlines, "above all, nationalist music may contribute to the struggle over contested territory such as border regions. Possessing music becomes like possessing land." (Bohlman 2004, 119) This struggle is present in the contest for "border regions" (may I add colonialized or crypto-colonialized regions?), but at the heart of the composition of every nation-state. In that sense, to conceptualize territory and the related process of territorialization (any "discursive appropriation of space", following Marisa Moyano 2008) could be one appropriate basis for deconstructing what the organizers of that conference have called the National Grand Narrative in Music. The aim of that communication is to analize the consequences of adopting a concrete concept of territory, inspired by the reading of Máiz's work, and applying it to Nineteenth Century music. I will focus my communication on the Spanish case, but I will also try to show that my work could likely be useful for other cases.

 

CH'NG, Xin Ying / University of Southampton, UK

What is an ‘English Voice'?: Alfred Deller and the English Musical Renaissance
[part of the panel "Reinventing National Musical Identities in the Twentieth Century"]

The term an ‘English' voice reveals strong need for the fabrication of distinct musical and national identity frequently found in mid-twentieth century musical writing, including both promotional literature and reviews.

The voice of the countertenor in particular led to claims for a strong ‘English' quality. Such assertions made towards the nationalising of the voice aimed to secure a strong choral tradition built on the former glories of the English Golden Age, and contributed to the notion of an English Musical Renaissance beginning in the late nineteenth century.The reinvention of the solo countertenor voice of Alfred Deller formed part of a huge revival of interest and performances in songs by English composers from the Renaissance period. Deller's role ‘gives voice' for the reinterpretation of historical performativity and vocality in the course of British musical history. This shift of focus closes the gap in British music historiography that previously concentrates mostly on canonic masterworks and their composers. This paper involves understanding Deller's influence and contribution to notions of a national voice, drawing on sources such as personal papers, correspondence of artists,concert reviews, newspaper cuttings and feature articles. Through the performativity of Deller's voice, I aim to investigate the ‘purported authenticities' that underpin historical assertions of the ‘English voice' and the efforts to reclaim a British musical past that has been undermined. By studying the elusive quality of the voice and its attachment of a wide range of cultural concepts and constructions, I aim to reconceptualise ideals of nationhood through identifications of a‘ national voice'.

 

CRAVINHO, Pedro / University of Aveiro, Portugal

Jazz and Politics in Portugal during the Revolutionary Biennium (1974–1976)
[part of the panel "Constructing the narratives of jazz in totalitarian regimes"]

In 25th April 1974, a bloodless military takeover overthrew the Portuguese Dictatorial right-wing Estado Novo regime (New State) that lead the way to democracy as well as to the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. The transitory process to democracy (1974–1976) known as Processo Revolucionário em Curso (Revolutionary Process in Progress), was characterized by social turmoil, power disputes between left- and right-wing political forces, and a fertile ground for radicalism. In this turbulent social period, took place the fourth and fifth editions of the Festival International de Jazz de Cascais (International Jazz Festival of Cascais), FIJC (1974–1975).

During the last years of the Estado Novo regime (1971–1972), the FIJCʼ became a space of contestation mobilizing thousands of young people into an independence / colonial war and regime oppositional movements, where jazz was taken as a symbol of freedom and used by musicians and public (Cravinho 2012).

But in 1974, through the transitory process – The Revolutionary Biennium – the inclusion of right-wing political propaganda on Festival concert programs generated a contestation to the event, accusing the organizers of fascists. Several left-wing journalists threaten the organization through initiatives that attempt to promote a boycott of the festival, by trying to raise awareness of some foreign musicians not to play in the festival because right-wing parties connected with fascism were organized it. Paradoxically the same festival, and the same music in a lapse of two, three years, generated pro-left- and pro-right-wing discourses. How and Why Jazz allowed this ambivalence is the starting point of this research. This paper seeks to understand the processes of manipulation by the social and political forces in the context Festival Internacional de Jazz de Cascais, in particularly during the revolutionary years (1974–1976).

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FRANKEL, Lauren / Yale University, U.S.A

National Music After the National Romantics: Finnish Institutions as Agents of Cultural Construction

The narrative of the rise of Finnish music, centered around the National Romantic works of Jean Sibelius, is well known. This nationalistic conception of Finnish composition had a continuing influence on the political and cultural significance of contemporary art music in Finland throughout the twentieth century. After World War II, contemporary music became a prominent cultural export, and thus a highly prized symbol of Finnishness. In order to understand how this ideology has affected the production of music in Finland, it is necessary to investigate not only the roles of far-reaching forces, such as the government and the media, but also the roles of the musical institutions that have directly supported contemporary composition and the experiences of the individuals working within them. By examining such institutions from both historical and ethnographic perspectives, we can gain new insights into the way that the enduring ideological relationship between Finnishness and Finnish music has been received, interpreted, and continuously reinvented within musical practice.

In this paper, I use the Finnish National Opera and the Tapiola Choir as case studies to elucidate some of the ways in which nationalism has affected the production of new music, drawing on archival materials and interviews with Finnish composers, administrators, and musicians. Both institutions achieved their greatest success in the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly through their extensive travels abroad during the 1970s and 1980s. Their tours led them to be seen as ambassadors of Finnish music and also as icons of the international recognition of Finnish culture – recognition that was highly valuable for a small nation during the Cold War. Both the FNO and the Tapiola Choir used their positions as representatives of Finland to further their own artistic goals, both perpetuating and exploiting the national narrative of Finnish music.

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GLIGORIJEVIĆ, Jelena / University of Turku, Finland

Confronting the Dominant National Identity Narrative on ‘Two Serbias' in Post-Milošević Era: A Case Study of Serbia's Exit and Guča Trumpet Festivals

The present paper aims to illustrate the ways in which the nation branding talk has challenged and undermined the supremacy of the national identity narrative in post-communist Serbia (and Eastern Europe in general) resting on the underlying assumptions of the West/East split and all familiar dichotomies stemming from it (e.g. modern/traditional, urban/rural, etc.). To achieve this objective, I use two major Serbian music festivals as a case study, seeing that their conceptual, organizational and music-stylistic differences continue to fuel public debates on two diametrically opposed value orientations (embodied in the widely exploited concept of ‘two Serbias') and, thus, cultural models at work in post-Milošević Serbian society: namely, a pro-Western and a populist one. I would like to argue, however, that the re-conceptualization of the nation as brand, which has begun to invade Serbian public space since 2006, has opened up another venue for alternative interpretations of the music festivals in question and their role in the ongoing national identity debates. More specifically, the festivals' gradual integration into the transnational music industry and cultural tourism market respectively, as well as the moderate consolidation of Serbia's national political scene through the disintegration and marginalization of the most hard-core nationalist political parties (specially from 2008), contributed to the simplified but more unified view of both festivals as national brands having much in common, above all, the promotion of the positive image of the country. The ultimate goal of the paper is, thus, to show that, despite all criticism that the very nation branding rationale, strategies and outcomes necessitate, in the Serbian case the joint-ideological platform that the two festivals have accomplished may serve as a solid starting point for expanding on the dominant national identity discourse through analysis of each festival's transnational implications and internal controversies in turn.

 

GUTHRIE, Kate / King's College, London, UK

The Sleeping Beauty and National Ballet in Britain

On 20 February 1946, London's Royal Opera House re-opened its doors to the public with a new production of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty. Sponsored by the recently established Arts Council of Great Britain, the event marked the Sadler's Wells Ballet's inaugural performance as Britain's first national ballet company. Historians usually view this occasion as a significant step in the Art Council's move away from a populist agenda towards an elitist one – a move reflected in a growing preoccupation with the performance of European art music, rather than on the development of a national aesthetic. However, a closer look at the reception of Sleeping Beauty suggests that the ballet's Russian roots had a more complicated relationship with the idea of national culture than scholars have suggested.

I begin by considering how the Ballets Russes's popularity in Britain during the 1910s and 1920s not only established Russian ballet as the benchmark of quality, but also inspired cultural entrepreneurs to pursue a British school of ballet. Turning next to Sleeping Beauty, I explore how producers and critics sought to anglicize this classic without undermining its prestigious Russian heritage. While Oliver Messel's new décor was praised for blending eighteenth-century Italian and British traditions, defining what made the dancing 'British' – or indeed Russian – proved more difficult. Critics frequently resorted to essentializing discourse, even as they argued against the idea of innate national expression. This attempt to appropriate a purportedly 'international' heritage to nationalist ends thus suggests that the European cultural tradition played a crucial role in imaginings of British national culture. 

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HAAPOJA, Heidi / University of Helsinki, Finland

The New Kalevalaic Rune Singing and the Language of Methodological Nationalism in the Finnish Media

Kalevalaic rune singing has had a great symbolic value as a form of cultural heritage in Finnish nationalistic discussions for over a hundred years. A primary reason for this is the national epic, Elias Lönnrot's Kalevala, developed directly from collected oral Kalevalaic poetry. During the last thirty years, the sung poem has been re-vitalized partly by musicians and ethnomusicologists, and partly by Finnish state and its educational politics. Rune singing has ended up in music institutions and concert stages, and it has become a visible part of the professional new folk music field.

The musicians within this field very strongly emphasize that the Kalevalaic poems are an inspiring channel of creativity for a modern performer. The folk poetry is seen as a source and tool to embody an old tradition for the present day in a new way. The new rune singing is not seen as a politically nationalistic act, but rather as a globally orientated unique way to make music that respects Finnish cultural roots. However, the idea of Finnishness of the rune song is often relatively unconsciously inherent in the public and private speech despite the fact that most of the rune songs were collected in the 19th century from the Russian Karelia. This methodologically nationalistic approach is combined with the transnational ways of seeing the Baltic-Finnish Fenno-Ugric area as a culturally shared territory.

In this paper I shall examine how the idea of Finnishness of rune singing is constructed in media texts. I concentrate especially on the album and concert reviews that are published in the biggest newspapers (e.g. Helsingin Sanomat, Aamulehti, Turun Sanomat) and magazines (Suomen kuvalehti, Voima etc.) during the last ten years.

 

HAMBRIDGE, Katherine / University of Warwick, UK

‘Sounds that waft over us from the days of our ancestors': Italian Opera and Nostalgia in Berlin, 1800–1815

The dawn of the nineteenth century saw Berliners facing multiple challenges to Prussia's collective identity, not least the French Revolution and the Napoleonic threat. The need to define and re‐assert their ‘imagined communities' dominated the local press, whether to preserve the stability of the Prussian state or to foster a sense of German cultural unity.

Music was strongly implicated in this process, in particular through the presentation of musical works as heritage objects, used to return imaginatively to a pre-­‐revolutionary past, or styled as a memorial to that past. The construction of German music heritage in these early years has been well-documented by Celia Applegate, Matthew Head, Alexander Rehding and others. However, I argue that in Berlin, the construction of a specifically Prussian musical past was equally prominent, and this sometimes conflicted with the more familiar discourse of the ‘German'. It was through German language performances of eighteenth-­century Italian opera at the Berlin Nationaltheater, for example, that nostalgia for the ancien régime, and particularly for the mythologized Frederick the Great, manifested itself most strongly; parts of the original Italian libretto were even performed alongside its translation, to offer a glimpse of a work ‘as Frederick had heard it'. Cosmopolitan art music of the sort that for the rest of the century would be cast as the antithesis of German values temporarily became a symbol for an urban Prussian identity. After 1815, the rhetoric of German opera took centre stage in Berlin, once the ancien régime had lost its nostalgic pull, and Italian opera became embodied by the music of Rossini.

But rather than sketching a ‘pre-­history' of national narratives, my paper addresses both the pressing question of how art music articulated alternative political identities in this period, and the potential for non-­German music to participate in this process.

HELMERS, Rutger / University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Musical Travels and Cosmopolitanism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Western Musicians in St Petersburg (1835–1870)

Throughout the nineteenth century, great numbers of Western European musicians travelled to Russia to perform or conduct, making considerable investments in terms of time, money, and even their health. Between 1835 and 1870, St Petersburg received many eminent performers and composers such as Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, Hector Berlioz, and Richard Wagner. The visits in the 1840s still relied on old, established modes of musical travel, characterized by exhausting journeys by coach and sledge in the midst of winter, and a strong dependence on aristocratic mediation and patronage. The many political, institutional, and infrastructural developments of the early reign of Alexander II, such as the development of the railways, and the establishment of the Russian Musical Society and St Petersburg Conservatory, provided important steps towards a modern, institutionalized international musical life, which one expects to have affected the experiences and practices of musicians visiting Russia in a fundamental way.

In this paper, I shall examine how the patterns of musical travels to Russia developed during this turbulent phase of Russian musical life, and ask in particular how travels affected their place in the musical world. I will study the social practice of musicians abroad by investigating the sort of contacts they established, the communities they participated in, and the extent to which they engaged meaningfully with local culture. This paper will be part of a larger project, the purpose of which is to study how professional and national identities of nineteenth-century musicians informed, and were informed by, their activities and relations abroad.

 

HINTIKKA, Anna-Elina / University of Turku, Finland

Deconstructing "the people" of national popular music history
[part of the panel "Music history for the nation, the people and the shareholders: metahistorical inquiries into the uses and purposes of music historiography"]

"The people" can simultaneously refer to citizens of a nation, an ethnic group, and/or a lower societal class. In the presentation, I examine the ways in which notions of the people have been used and constructed in the grand narrative of Finnish national rock music and how they relate to the idea of people in rock's general aesthetic ideals. With reference to various historiographical sources, I scrutinise the construction of the people within Finnish rock in relation to the juxtaposition between backward, yokel-like "stigmatised Finnish-ness" and the idea of a "rock elite" that serves the nation through creative labour. I will also discuss the ways in which ideas about ethnic Finnish-ness have been reconceptualised in the context of Finnish rock music.

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KALLIO, Kati / The Finnish Literature Society, Finland

Speech communities and early Finnish hymns

The written history of Finnish music begins with the medieval Catholic Liturgical music and continues with the first vernacular Lutheran songs in the 16th century. The first one has not been highlighted in national historiography, as the Latin material is laborious to interpret in national context. In contrast, the language of the Finnish Lutheran hymns makes it easy to see these songs via the interpretive frame of a modern nation-state. These poems may be seen as the birth of Finnish rhymed poetry. Here, it is only too easy to confuse the language with the nation, which did not exist at the time the songs were made.

In my interpretation, based on linguistic anthropology, folkloristics and ethnomusicology, the forms of music and language carry their meanings and interpretive ties through the conventional or stereotypic ways of use shared by particular speech communities (or interpretive communities).

From this point of view, it is essential to analyse the speech (or song) communities these song makers did relate to. Here, the picture becomes fragmented. They knew Finnish and Swedish as maternal or second languages, Latin as the first literate language, German as another literate language, and some other occasional languages. They were not Finnish, but clergymen of the diocese of Abo in Sweden. They related in various ways to Catholic Latin singing traditions, new Lutheran vernacular song cultures, secular literate poetry and vernacular song traditions of Northern Europe, including the vernacular oral idiom in Finnish. There were not linguistic romantics in their attempt to create new forms of Finnish song, but, instead, followed a Reformed ideal of the use of the vernacular in liturgical contexts. Thus, the linguistic, musical and poetic choices they made should be placed in relation to the conventions of different song genres in various speech communities they belonged to, not in relation to poetic ideals of modern scholars.

 

KELLY, Elaine / University of Edinburgh, UK

Golden Ages and Cautionary Tales: Music History and National Identity in the German Democratic Republic

Modes of national history tend to dominate the public imagination in times of political crisis. This is particularly the case where infant nation states are concerned. Modern nations, as Benedict Anderson has remarked, are wont to celebrate their "hoariness" rather than their "astonishing youth."  They seek their legitimation in constructs of history that portray them as being both inevitable and exceptional. Such histories are formative as well as normative; conceived in an image of the utopian state, they offer an idealized version of nationhood from which a more concrete sense of national identity can be negotiated.

Music history was invoked repeatedly in this context in the German-speaking lands of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With borders in constant flux, the musical heritage served as an important lens through which the German nation could be imagined and reimagined to reflect the changing political landscape. This paper will examine one such example of this, exploring how the history of music that was constructed in the early German Democratic Republic functioned as a form of national history, replete with romance emplotments, heroic protagonists, and mythical struggles between good and evil. This interpretation of the past, which was formulated by scholars such as Georg Knepler, E.H. Meyer, and Harry Goldschmidt, had its crux in the nineteenth century. Templates for the socialist self and capitalist other were located in classicism and romanticism respectively, while the emerging state was legitimized through an overarching historical trajectory of ascent and decline. Specifically, while the early decades of the nineteenth century were highlighted as a golden age to which the GDR might aspire, the years following 1848 were pinpointed as the nation's dark age, the post-revolutionary descent into resignation and decadence serving to illuminate the need for a patriarchal socialist state.

 

KAITAJÄRVI-TIEKSO, Juho / University of Tampere, Finland

The National History of Music and International Music Industry: the Case of "The History of Finnish Music" website
[part of the panel "Music history for the nation, the people and the shareholders: metahistorical inquiries into the uses and purposes of music historiography"]

In 2013 a website entitled Suomalaisen musiikin historia ("The History of Finnish Music") was released by Warner Music Finland. The site includes links to recorded songs available through Spotify. In my paper, I explore how the website constructs a history of "Finnish music" from the specific viewpoint of WMF. Importantly, the viewpoint narrows the history of Finnish music down to only those instances of recorded popular music whose rights are owned by the record label, thus creating a link between historical knowledge and economic interests. The case also clearly demonstrates how music history of a nation is constructed – not necessarily even aiming at describing its subject objectively or extensively – and what kind of motivations may lie behind the constructions.

 

KALLIO, Kati / Finnish Literature Society, Finland

Speech communities and early Finnish hymns

To be uploaded later

 

KUDIŅŠ, Jānis / Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music, Latvia

The national music history in the global context and vice versa. Some still topical local problems in the Latvian music history writing

The question of how to characterize the professional music history in Latvia, balancing the national and global contextual perceptions, remains is topical. The complex study, which describes the music culture of Latvia in the past, still has not been written. At the same time in the Latvian music history studies nowadays is very actual issue of how to explain local musical culture process and specific examples in the past.

One of the methodological problems is the question of how to contextualize in the global perception those local traditions which developed in Latvian territory of past, including a variety of local peculiarities. Analyzing this issue, the presentation will offer view the following aspects:

• the problem fix the starting point of the professional musical culture in Latvian music historiography – Baltic German's cultural space, which were created until 19th century, on the one hand, and the Latvian nation formation in the 19th century end and 20th century early, on the other hand – how interpret past facts and processes not only local (national), but also in common European music history context?;
• the local (national) and global process interactions in the 20th century Latvian music history and research (in relation also to researches about national music history of Soviet occupation period with specific political mythology);
• the past music culture's perception in connection with national identity concept creation in Latvia 21st century early.

Based on the music history writing problems in Latvia, as a specific example, it might be a good basis for discussions on various issues, which will be characterized in this presentation.

 

KÄRJÄ, Antti-Ville / Finnish Jazz & Pop Archive JAPA, Finland

The prepositional politics of music historiography
[part of the panel "Music history for the nation, the people and the shareholders: metahistorical inquiries into the uses and purposes of music historiography"]

By juxtaposing music performed and mediated in Finland against the tomes that constitute "The History of Music of Finland" (Suomen musiikin historia 1–8, 1994–2006), I aim at questioning methodological nationalism in music historiography by distinguishing between an emphasis on ‘national character', on ‘national significance' and on ‘national existence'. This distinction points to what one might call ‘prepositional politics of historiography', involving an interrogation of interpretive pre-positions that condition the endeavour of making sense of the past.

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LINSENMEYER, Christina / Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.A.

French Nationalism, Nineteenth-­Century Historicism, and the Cult of Stradivari

The history of the violin and violin‐making aesthetics and practices are founded on methodological nationalism. The literature on the history of the violin and violin making has been plagued with historicism and universalism.

Violin-­making's  discursive formations, including its canonical triumvirate – Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri (Cremona) – were substantiated by early nineteenth-­ century historicist and commercial demands. Following the Revolution, French policy makers promoted a ‘good taste' aesthetic for economic recovery. This French agenda instigated a universalist history of the ‘Great Men–Great Works' type and promoted violin-­making practices based on imitation of ‘Italian' models, particularly the early eighteenth-­century violins of Antonio Stradivari. Since the mid-­nineteenth century, the Classical Cremonese School has remained, internationally, the central inspiration for violin makers. Current historians and violin makers have not adequately questioned the influence of  problematic nineteenth-­century historiography.

This  paper will demonstrate how nineteenth-­century ‘methodological nationalism' established a biased view of violin and violin-­making history, and argue the need for a 21st-century-­appropriate interpretation. Using cultural-­historical contextualization, this paper will (re)consider the nineteenth-century historiography established during the building of post-­ Revolutionary French nationalism. This paper will consider French source documents (1800-­1850), and question their content and authors' motivations. It will explore the relationships between:

• French nationalism and the violin's international historical narrative;
• Violin historiography and aesthetic beliefs and practices; and
• Historicist and ‘suprahistorical' fallacies of these beliefs and practices.

Despite the emergence of ‘new' histories in many fields, current scholarship has failed to overcome the violin's outdated history and its fetishized canon. A lack of critical questioning continues to distort our understanding of violin and violin-­making history; inhibit current violin-­making practice; sway the sentiments of performers and audiences; and inflate the commercial market for old violins.

 

LOYA, Shay / City University London, UK

Liszt's transcultural composition in the year of the Franco-Prussian conflict

How do we avert the musicological gaze from the national to the transcultural in the case of Romantic nationalist styles?  The question seems easy enough in the case of Hungary and the verbunkos idiom, given the idiom's multi-ethnic origins and generic porousness. And yet discursive habits have made such a shift of perspective very difficult. Ethnic labels are the norm, and there is no separation between style and what it purports to represent. ‘Verbunkos idiom' therefore is a necessary generic neologism (Loya, 2008; 2011). Furthermore, separating the musical materiality of the idiom from its representational role reveals three distinct and realistic possibilities: (1) non-representational (non-national/exotic) use of the idiom; (2) non-idiomatic representation of the national; (3) a merger of these binary opposites, within which types of idiomatic representations can be further subcategorized. Can such categories help with a transcultural interpretation of music history, even where nationalism played a major role?

Some of Liszt's compositions around the fateful years of the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) provide an interesting test case, especially in light of the composer's fluid cultural identity and conflicting political interests. The second Beethoven-Kantate sends a complex message about German nationalism despite being apparently free of national styles. Conversely, the verbunkos idiom emerges clearly in sound but without an obvious meaning during Gaudeamus Igitur, a ‘Humoresque' set to Latin, celebrating students in the University Jena at the time of growing nationalistic fervour. The second version of Praeludium und Fuge über den Namen B-A-C-H is a tribute to Bach and Weimar but uses the (Hungarian?) verbunkos idiom in both abstract and concrete ways. Finally, the modernist distortion of traditional idiomatic material in Magyar gyors induló (‘Hungarian Fast March') raises questions of generic boundaries and, therefore, of national identity too.

 

LÜCKE, Martin / Macromedia Hochschule für Medien und Kommunikation, Germany

Jazz in Nazi Germany: German vs. American Jazz – a narrative construction
[part of the panel "Constructing the narratives of jazz in totalitarian regimes"]

During the Weimar Republic, jazz was present everywhere in Germany. In these years especially Berlin was the European Mecca of this genre. However, during the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945 jazz music has been massively suppressed by the political system – bud did not forbidden at all! On the one hand Jewish and black musicians were banned from stage and on radio this music was prohibited since 1935 and both British and American records were difficult to buy at least since 1939. On the other hand there were a few areas in which jazz was present until the fall of Regime. For example, with the "Deutsche Tanz- und Unterhaltungsorchester" (DTU) the regime formed an official "Jazz Orchestra", in order to perform a German kind of jazz, not the so-called American one.
In my paper I will focus how the "German Jazz" was ‘constructed' by the regime, musically and personally, how newspapers or magazines wrote about this genre and how the broadcast and the film used this controlled kind of music.

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MAZZEO, Jacopo / University of Southampton, UK

Shaping ‘Italian Music': Cosmopolitan Nationalism in Alfredo Casella
[part of the panel "Reinventing National Musical Identities in the Twentieth Century"]  

The so-­called ‘1880s Generation' played a central role in shaping the Italian musical landscape during the early 20th century. This period witnessed not only a new turn in music composition, but also the growth of the newly born discipline of musicology, and the rediscovery of a valuable musical legacy. The composer and musicologist Alfredo Casella represents one
of the main figures that helped to structure a definite national musical identity at the beginning of the 1900s, which promoted a shift towards mainly instrumental music. His search for a rebirth of Italian instrumental music, taking inspiration from masters of the past such as Corelli and Vivaldi, can only be understood in the political and social context of his time. Despite this, his musical and literary production remarkably shows various cosmopolitan and heterogeneous traits. He brought Arnold Schönberg for the first time to the peninsula, and was in touch with world-­class composers, such as Debussy, Mahler, Ravel, and De Falla. His cosmopolitan character was widely acknowledged, for he worked in his homeland as well as elsewhere in Europe and in the U.S.
Therefore, although he considered himself genuinely nationalist, his activities went beyond the limits of his own country. His music itself can only be understood if studied in the light of all the diverse musical influences that spread around Europe between the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. In my paper I will discuss Casellas's attempt to give new life to a once-­lost Italian musical style, contextualising his international background, and how the political environment of the early 20th century influenced his life and his production.

 

MILIN, Melita / Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Serbia

Music Historiography, Nationalism, and Politics: Uneasy Relations

The aim of this paper will be to examine the strategies used by music historians during the lifetime of Yugoslavia (1918–1992) for presenting the musical heritage of their own peoples living within that common state. I will attempt to gain insight into how the ideological contexts of the 'first' (a monarchy) and 'second' (communist) Yugoslavia influenced the writing of national and supranational (Yugoslav) histories of music, themselves ideologically frieghted. Although both states officially promoted a highest degree of internal national integration and achieving a common Yugoslav identity, both failed in their projects with tragic consequences.

The music histories written by authors belonging to different Yugoslav nations (Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, etc.) offer a lot of material for the study of self-representations of the Yugoslav peoples / now independent nations / who constantly competed for preserving their national identity, autonomous status and wider recognition as sufficiently europeanized. The difficulties of writing both mono-national and multi-national (Yugoslav) music histories can be seen as mirroring some basic problems that had been constantly facing also the political leaders of that state, concerning mainly the possibilities of harmonizing highly disparate cultural heritages and political interests. It is a telling fact that no satisfactory history of Yugoslav music appeared which was not an encyclopedia-like sum of separate surveys of musical cultures created by different Yugoslav peoples: a work was needed instead that would put their musical heritages into perspective by observing these by what connected them rather than as separate developments.

Now that Yugoslavia does not exist any more, a non-nationalistic history of music in Yugoslavia from its beginning to its end might be possible, that would be able to provide something one expects to find in such books – observations critical of all ideologies and open to discussions of aesthetical evaluation, mutual influences and cooperation that were not enforced. The author of such a volume will probably be somebody who was born after the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

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NELSON, John / University of Helsinki, Finland

Rimsky-Korsakov: a significant commentator on Russian national identity

In music research there is a tendency when considering ‘national identity' to attempt to define it in strict musical terms. However, the musical characteristics of a country or region are, in general, more related to an inter-action between indigenous music and language, tradition and socio-political aspects. In this respect it is an interesting factor when considering the ‘national' in music that there still exists a Western and Slavic divide! Whereas the struggles of the central European countries for recognition in the 19th century receive major attention, Russia does not register in these terms irrespective of the related public debate which went on in that country for over half a century.

Rimsky-Korsakov's view of the three pillars of Nicholas 1st's "Official Nationality" decree of 1833, ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality' was that it had little bearing on the life of the changing society of Russia and increasingly oppressive measures could not enforce it. In his operas he not only asserted the importance of the Ukraine and Poland within a Russian culture but also criticized the Russian treatment of these countries. Already his first opera The Maid of Pskov questioned the Tsar's autocracy whilst his last The Golden Cockerel ridiculed Nicholas 2nd.  It was the abolition of the Imperial Theatre monopoly that opened the door to Rimsky-Korsakov's cultural and political views being aired to a more representative Russian multi-cultural, intellectual- and middle-class audience.

The question of what constituted Russianness in the arts raged throughout the 19th century in that country. Rimsky-Korsakov, although generally considered a conservative, was a dominant public figure, and an examination of his life philosophy, operas and actions give a totally opposite picture. He can be considered as politically orientated and influential as, for instance, Verdi, Beethoven or Smetana.

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ORZECH, Rachel / University of Melbourne, Australia, and University of Rouen, France

"A Universal Art, an Art for All": The Reception of Richard Wagner in Paris, 1933

If there is one 19th-century composer who we would today associate with Germany and German nationalism, it is Richard Wagner. The idea of Wagner as symbol of Germany began during the composer's lifetime, and Adolf Hitler's use and promotion of Wagner's music in the 1930s and 40s consolidated this perception. In 19th- and early 20th-century France, battles over Wagner in the musical press had always centred around anti-German sentiment, and anti-Wagner attitudes tended to peak during political crises such as the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and World War I. Each time a new Wagner crisis or scandal erupted in France, the composer was depicted by parts of the French musical world as German, and thus undesirable and even dangerous. However, when Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 and began to cement the idea of Wagner as a symbol of German chauvinism, writers in the French press began challenging this idea and rejecting depictions of the composer as fundamentally or essentially German. Contrary to the established pattern of French Wagner reception, increasing anti-German hostility in France did not lead to an outpouring of anti-Wagner sentiment. Instead, French critics attempted to lay claim to Wagner by depicting him as either French or universal, rejecting the long-established practice of viewing him as part of German musical tradition. In doing this, they both relied on and challenged nationalist understandings of Wagner. This paper will examine press coverage of Wagner in 1933—the year that Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and, coincidentally, the 50th anniversary of Wagner's death—as a snapshot of French discourse on Wagner in the years preceding WWII.

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REIMANN, Heli / University of Helsinki, Finland

End with jazz: Public narratives of jazz in Estonia during late-Stalinism
[part of the panel "Constructing the narratives of jazz in totalitarian regimes"]

This study on the history of Soviet Estonian jazz explores the dynamic of the processes temporarily extinguishing jazz from public arena during late-Stalinism. The micro-history inflected study relaying on the conception of rupture at the micro level and applying the methodologies of close reading focuses on the way jazz was constructed in the official narratives in public talk of Estonian cultural newspaper Sirp ja Vasar. While jazz in Estonia experienced no rupture during the first post-war years then the three Stalinist´ campaigns with gradually decreasing tolerance towards jazz led finally to temporary rupture of the music in 1950. The strategies enforced in late 1940s such as anti-jazz orchestra reform, dance reform banning foxtrot and the other modern dances, eradication the word jazz from public discourse deserved the purpose of silencing the ´formalistic´ musical form with inappropriate connotations and of ´upbringing´ the taste of the masses according the Soviet ideological paradigms.

 

ROSENBERG, Jonathan / City University of New York, U.S.A

Border Crossings: Leonard Bernstein in Berlin
[part of the panel "Crossing European Borders from the East and the West: Boris Asafiev, Leonard Bernstein and Twentieth-Century Cultural Transfer"]

In 1960, Leonard Bernstein brought the New York Philharmonic to Berlin to play two concerts; they would also tape a program for American television. Sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, the trip was of considerable political significance. Berlin was one of the world's most contested places, having long been a focal point of Cold War tensions. Thus, the orchestra's journey to Berlin must be seen as part of the fabric of Cold-War history, which was understood by those who arranged the trip. As a Ford executive observed, "All of the people in Washington... are excited about the idea because of what Mr. Bernstein and the Philharmonic will be able to do for this country" by "strengthening and warming German-American relations."

Consistent with two conference themes, "cultural transfer" and "globalization vs. competition," the paper will consider the 1960 Berlin trip. The paper will look closely at the performance before German students, in which the orchestra taped Beethoven's First Piano Concerto with Bernstein as conductor and soloist, a lecture-concert that would be shown on U.S. television. This event provided a brilliant showcase for Bernstein.

Among the matters Bernstein discussed (and rejected) was the idea that musicians of particular nationalities were uniquely suited to play music from the land of their birth. The American also explored what he described as the universal character of German music. According to Bernstein, German music transcended ethnic and national categories, though he argued the idea of musical development lent German music its unique quality. Next, Bernstein explained why his musicians had crossed the ocean: "We have come to take one more step through this kind of cultural exchange along the paths of international understanding that lead to peace." Before playing the Beethoven concerto, Bernstein intoned a Hebrew prayer, noting the Philharmonic was dedicating its performance to peace, "on this sacred day of Rosh Hashana." Thus, while U.S. policy makers believed music could advance America's diplomatic objectives, Bernstein conceptualized music's role differently, believing it could be a force for peace and cooperation.

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SAITO, Kei / Sibelius Academy

Japanese Music Historiography as Conflict within Tradition

This presentation aims to show to what extent the history of Japanese music was written with a different logic from that of national history. I will discuss the historiography of Shigeno Yasutsugu (1827–1910), who was one of the most influential kangaku (Chinese studies) historians in the early Meiji period.

Kangaku and kokugaku (nativism) had been the two dominant intellectual systems since the early modern period. However, after the Meiji restoration in 1867, these two systems were integrated into a new academic discipline, which derived from Western Europe. The process was conflictual. Historiography, especially, was a hotly contested field for these three competing visions.

Kangaku historiography, which Shigeno employed, stood out by its positivism. In particular, Shigeno did not acknowledge the historic value of legends and myths, for they could show no ‘evidence' of truth. However, when Shigeno published the first writings of comprehensive Japanese music history Fuzoku Kabu Genryu-Ko (The Origin of Music and Dance) in 1881–1883, he started his book from a legend, insisting that Japanese music and dance had their origins in ancient times.

This presentation attempts to identify the reason for this double standard, which manifested both in Shigeno's work and life, and illustrates how it prepared the sublation of kangaku and kokugaku in the history of music.

 

SCHEDING, Florian / University of Bristol, UK

Strategies of Migration: Between Nationalist Nostalgia and Internationalist Heterotopia

Few 20th-century musicians were affected by outbursts of nationalist politics as directly as those displaced by the century's extremist regimes, among them the refugees from Hitler Germany. As they embarked on their journeys as migrants, their commitment to their Austro-German musical heritage became increasingly destabilized. In my paper, I discuss the creative responses of two refugees from Nazi Germany, Hanns Eisler and Mátyás Seiber. I discuss how shifts in their compositional approaches reveal a musical turning away from nationalism in search of more internationalist idioms on the one hand, and a recourse to traditional Austro-German forms on the other. I argue that the dialectics between internationalist outlook and nationalist memory marks several works of migrants like Eisler and Seiber, a strategy Lydia Goehr has termed the ‘doubleness of exile'. As migrants, both composers re-focused their employment of certain compositional avant-garde idioms, notably that of the Schoenberg School. In the tense political climate of World War II and under the circumstances of exile from Nazi Germany, such artistic strategies cannot be seen solely as manifestos of convicted avant-gardists—they also bear the early imprints of nostalgia. They are nods to interwar serialism, which was being expulsed around them, just as they are references from the heterotopia of migration to a place of nostalgia. As their national cultural heritage was fast disappearing under the onslaught of fascist cultural politics, perceived aesthetic stabilities turned into personal uncertainties and political battlegrounds. At the same time, the insertion of well-rehearsed, more traditional compositional principles renders their works internationally recognizable, and therefore elevates them beyond nationalist memorialization and nostalgia. In observing the compositional strategies of Eisler and Seiber, I highlight how, paradoxically, migration acted as a catalyst for a dialectic engagement with nationalism and also undermines nationalist historiographical approaches to understanding their musics.

 

SIVUOJA-KAUPPALA, Anne / Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts, Finland

Wäinö Sola's artistic and cultural agendas in creating La Juive in the Finnish National Opera (1925)

The last time Fromental Halévy's La Juive was created in Finland was in the 1920's, given by the Finnish National Opera. The central figure for the production was the Finnish tenor Wäinö Sola (1883–1961) who was responsible for staging, planning the sets, translation (into Finnish) besides singing the role of Eleazar, the male title role. What makes Wäinö Sola's position even more extraordinary is that his personal views on Jews and Jewishness as well as foreigners was full of dislike; for instance he considered resigning from the Opera in 1925 because the opera director Karl Fazer had hired a Jewish conductor A. Rosenstein (and a German director Kurt Daum). Later, in 1939 he criticized the then opera director Aino Ackté for hiring Moses Pergament, a Jewish orchestral conductor.

Sola had seen La Juive in the Metropolitan Opera in 1920 and considered in his memoirs it as one of the best performances he had seen. Particularly Caruso in the role of Eleazar had made an unforgettable impact, "full of emotional suppressed vigour in his voice, impossible to explain and even more difficult to imitate". It is probable that without this experience Sola would not have taken all the trouble in staging La Juive.

The paper explores Wäinö Sola's double-edged agency in creating the role of Eleazar on the basis of the scarce performance material archived in the Finnish National Opera (e.g. photographs, posters, score and libretto), Sola's published memoirs, and his personal archive housed in the National Library of Finland.

 

SPANU, Michael / Université de Lorraine, France

A short history of English-singing popular music in France

As in many countries, the French popular music market was not able to resist the tremendous UK-US influence after the Second World War. Even if some musical influences can be traced before this period, we will here focus on how the young bands and artists of the time dealt with the use of English. Indeed, language is often seen as a symbol of a nation, especially in France where the imposition of French has been a major issue for the republican movement. During the 50s and 60s, the music industry mainly produced French-singing bands or artists, even if they were only translating original English songs into French. Many young bands started playing cover songs in English and would have continued to use this language had they been allowed to do so. So on the one hand, translating was an easy source of income for the young French music industry.  And on the other hand, there was the idea that a French band singing in English would not sell enough to survive. This is why there was an explosion of English singing bands during the 70s, when the underground scenes appeared in France (punk, then hard rock and metal). Using English had a more authentic connotation compared to the mainstream music sung in French. Nevertheless, it was also around the same period that some French-speaking artists reached success singing in English (Patrick Juvet, Patrick Hernandez). Thus, they started a new dance music trend based on electronic beats that has led to what has been called the French Touch (Daft Punk, etc.). In this presentation we shall analyse those expressions in the light of their cultural meaning, and more specifically in relation to the body.

 

STRAUVEN, Peter / Catholic University of Louvain & Royal Conservatory Antwerp, Belgium

Nationalizing the Music: The 18th Century "Belgian Keyboard School" in Music Historiography

The scant literature devoted to the keyboard music of the 'Southern Netherlands' was and is, from a music historiographical point of view, dominated by two preponderant historical narratives. From the moment that Xavier Van Elewyck (an important pioneer (mid 19th c.), who gathered a wealth of source materials) issued a series of articles, monographs and editions devoted to this subject, researchers seem(ed) to take for granted their underlying  (or sometimes openly) angles of incidence.

To start with, this lecture describes these two main narratives:

1. The 'invention' of an (anachronistic) 'Belgian' or 'Flemish' keyboard school, dictated by both nationalistic nostalgia (the former greatness of the Burgundian music, the Flemish Primitives...) as by 'contemporary' nationalistic tendencies, seeking to legitimate the 'new' country of Belgium (independent from 1830);
2. The canonization of the repertoire legitimating the inclusion of works as part of this canon, mainly by the notoriety of their composers and their, again, anachronistic adherence to the 'Belgian' kingdom.

Evidently, these narratives are far from limited to this specific topic and their theoretical, critical re-evaluation will reveal analogies to other repertoires over place and time.
However, the historiography on 18th century keyboard music in the Southern Netherlands is not only to be characterized by and criticized for its nationalistic gaze which pervades so many music histories.

Hence, this lecture aims at demonstrating how the confrontation of the musical and the national, not only excerted influences on historical narratives but on (our knowledge of) the repertoire itself. We will illustrate the large extent of impoverishment caused by this (forced) confrontation and exemplify how, for this repertoire, a paradigm shift from a nationalistic, individualistically and composer-based 'iron' corpus, can lead to an inclusive, comparative view, taking into account not only the many unknown manuscript sources and anonymous composers (in other words: music without 'nationality') but also the evident, however hitherto neglected reciprocal transcultural influences on musical styles and idioms – without country borders.

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TYRVÄINEN, Helena / University of Helsinki, Finland
Journalist and diplomat Wentzel Hagelstam — cosmopolitan builder of independent Finland's musical life and agent of France's artistic expansion

Many musicologists consider today that after 19th-Century nationalism, cosmopolitanism will be a new centre of interest of historical musicology. But then, the tension between nationalism and cosmopolitanism is worth a special attention. Due to the emergence of modern musicology at a moment of heightened nationalism, in cosmopolitanism, negatively, a lack of national commitment has widely been perceived. More recently, it has been asked "whether music might actively have shaped cosmopolitan culture and ensured its resilience in the face of nationalism" (Cruz, Minor & Pasler in Programme and Abstracts, IMS 19th Congress 2012, p. 140).

By the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries the political and populist sides of an aggressive form of nationalism started increasingly to function as independent discourses in international musical life, while nationalist and aesthetic appreciations became more and more intimately entangled. This happened even in France whose capital, earlier, had hosted an eclectic cosmopolitan culture. The continuing Franco-German rivalry, the downfall of empires, and the emergence of a multitude of nation-states following World War I brought along a new challenge to the welcoming attitudes of 19th-Century cosmopolitanism. Focusing on Finnish-French musical relations and the social history of music, this paper proposes to analyse how the power relations between established musical centres and newly emerged nation-states shaped the European musical life during the inter-world-war era.

In the aftermath of WWI in France, under the protection of the ministries of Foreign affairs and of Public education, l'Association Française d'Expansion et d'Échanges Artistiques (AFEEA, French Alliance of Artistic Expansion and Exchange) was founded in 1922 with the purpose of promoting France's cultural authority outside its borders. It was thought that these aims were best advanced by showing reciprocal interest in the work of foreign artists and cultural persons. The activities of the alliance reached even Finland, where the versatile Wentzel Hagelstam (1863–1932), together with other contact persons, correspondents and collaborators, contributed to its objectives. Journalist, writer and diplomat, since 1913 in his fourth marriage with the soprano Anna Hagelstam, Wentzel Hagelstam had dwelled in Paris for twenty years first, as a politically active emigrant expelled from his native country by Governor general Bobrikov and later, as the press attaché of independent Finland. In 1922 he returned to Helsinki to continue his work in the service of the Finnish foreign ministry.

Developing the idea of local cosmopolitanisms and basing on letters Hagelstam wrote in 1922–1928 to the head of AFEEA Robert Brussel, the paper inquires how the objectives of the AFEEA (from 1934, Association Française d'Action Artistique, the French alliance of artistic action) were carried into effect in the musical life of Finland in a time when the authority of Germany over the republic was growing. Hagelstam's identity ties and aims will be placed in the context of the nationalist climate of ideas of the inter-war era.

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VAN DER HOVEN, Lena / Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

Constructing musical representations of Prussia: The Royal Opera House and Royal National Theatre in Berlin (1740-–1797)

Frederick the Great's (1712-1786) ambitions to make Prussia a great power were not established through war and ceremonial alone. Like Louis XIV, he shaped perceptions of Prussia through his patronage of the sciences and arts, including music. Alongside chamber music and opera buffa, opera seria was central to his creation of a Prussian musical profile. By establishing at the Royal Opera House a fixed repertoire of almost exclusively opera seria in an Italian manner by Carl Heinrich Graun and Johann Adolph Hasse, Frederick II promoted the "ächte, große Oper" of the Germans – and the efficacy of this policy can be seen in the nostalgia for Italian opera in Berlin between 1787 and 1797. However, upon his accession to the throne, Frederick William II (1744-1797) was confronted with the competing desires for Italian opera seria on the one hand and for "german" musical representation on the other. He attempted to satisfy these antithetical requirements of the nobility and the Bürgertum by a double strategy: he subsidized the Royal National Theatre, and divided the position of the Kapellmeister at the Royal Opera House between an Italian and a German. Nevertheless the debates about nationality, national genre and national identity continued, as expressed some critics in their preference for the operas of "our" "German" composer, Johann Friedrich Reichardt, over those of Felice Alessandri. At the same time, hopes of a "große deutsche Oper" were not fulfilled at the National Theatre by the dominance of "Singspiele" translated from opéras comiques.

My paper aims to bring our narratives of nineteenth-century German musical identity into dialogue with earlier musical nation-building attempts in eighteenth-century Prussia. Such a dialogue does not merely rely on the ambiguity of the terms ‘nation' and ‘fatherland' in the German-speaking context. In contrast to existing accounts focussing on public discourse, I examine the role that the royal courts played in constructing the musical identity of the wider population, arguing that, particularly in the case of the musical policy of Frederick William II, there are significant continuities as well as conflicts between the emerging ideas of Prussian and German musical identity.

 

VILJANEN, Elina / Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland

From East to West and from West to East: Developing Soviet Music though Western Models
[part of the panel "Crossing European Borders from the East and the West: Boris Asafiev, Leonard Bernstein and Twentieth-Century Cultural Transfer"]

Foreign musicians visited the Soviet Union in 1920s through VOKS, which was given the goal of creating the international relations of Soviet institutions, scholars, and cultural workers. The goal was to address intellectuals who were susceptible to becoming Soviet ‘conduits of influence' (Stern 2007).

The Soviet musicologist Boris Asafiev (1882–1949), who argued in his famous Intonation theory that music had the power to connect people, was invited to host the guests. He corresponded with foreign musicians and wrote about international concerts. Asafiev's own trip to Europe as the representative of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra and the consultant of the Soviet State Theatres took place in 1928. Asafiev's adventurous trip had its official and unofficial sides. Hosted by such famous figures as Adler, Prokofiev, and Kreutzer, Asafiev made plans with Diagilev in Paris, saw Rachmaninov perform in Berlin, and enquired as to how Europeans had organized their musical life.

The paper will consider Asafiev's dream of an international career in 1920s, when many Soviet intellectuals continued to believe that open international collaboration could serve to develop one's native culture. Asafiev's goal of creating modern portraits of music influenced the later generations of musicologists. He is seen as the proponent of the newest Western music in the Soviet Union, who before Stalinism, aimed to move Soviet musical life in an international direction. What is less well known is the contradictory content of Asafiev's endeavors, his patriotic, philosophical vision of the future of Soviet music and its challenge to Western musicology. The awakening of Russian scholarship towards critical revaluation of a national historiography of music beyond Stalinism has been slow and Asafiev's philosophical style of writing is complex. As the paper will argue, Asafiev not only continues a Russian nationalist discourse and a competition with Western cultures, but he also reinterprets. For Asafiev, the West provided new methods to develop the ‘unique spiritual content of Russianness,' which was now ‘discovering' its Eastern origins. However, soon after his trip Asafiev was bound to add to his travel report: "With respect to methodology, the West did not give me anything fundamentally new."

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WESTERN, Tom / University of Edinburgh, UK

Fragmentation to Dissemination: Technology and Nation-Building in Postwar Europe

1955: Columbia Records releases the first fourteen volumes of the World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, a project edited from Europe by American recordist Alan Lomax. Each volume has been assembled from field recordings, defining a nation's music, but as part of an international network of cultural production. The record sleeves promise access to national musics, to anyone willing to pay the admission.

This paper focuses on the production and dissemination of the World Library: situating it in a history of postwar reconstruction, with a mid-­century purpose of fostering tolerance and peace between nations; looking at why and how nations were included or excluded; examining it as a form of material and institutional labour made possible by the newly available recording technology of magnetic tape; and listening to it as a project made for the then-­new Long-­Playing record. These technologies combined with the effect that the music on the World Library was presented as a set of fragmentations and recombinations. Confronting the national in the musical past involves hearing nations as tape music, spooling out tradition, memory, identity.

The World Library shows how what is problematically called folk music—still held up as a kind of wellspring for national styles of composition—circulated in the postwar period thanks to a complex and variegated mess of technologies, cultural politics, institutions, copyright laws, mediality, aesthetics, and commercial interests. And it affords this paper's conclusion: that, redolent of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities, nations emerge and are constructed from fragments by anthologists in temporary, yet monumental, aural configurations.

 

WOLOSHYN, Alexa / College of Musical Arts, Bowling Green State University, U.S.A.

Il y a un problème? Musique Acousmatique and Soundscape Composition within a Canadian Musical Historiography

Colleen Renihan insists that "[for] over a hundred years, in fact, with primarily nationalist and certainly also colonialist interests, historians created versions of [Canada's] past that emulated the grand European traditions of historicism" (2011, 32). As a relatively young country, Canada continues to debate and re-write our narrative of nationhood and identity. Insecurity over this national narrative arises whenever attention is drawn to Canada's colonial mindset and external cultural dominance.

The quest for a dominant (and triumphant!) narrative by which to establish a Canadian identity is undermined by three important and persistent sociological, cultural, and ultimately historical debates: Canada's immigrant population, First Nations peoples, and the French-English divide (the "two solitudes"). These debates were seemingly resolved by celebrating (and legalizing) juxtaposed cultures in Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's multicultural mosaic, a "solution" that sought to enable a clear and strong Canadian historical narrative and cultural identity (Bashevkin 1991).

My paper contextualizes Canada's nationalist and multicultural narratives within the broader historiography of the French-English divide in Canada and seeks to negotiate regional and cultural connections and trends while ultimately refusing to reinforce entrenched oppositional narratives of the musique acousmatique/soundscape composition dichotomy. Existing narratives often echo the socio-cultural, ethnic, and linguistic divides long established in Canada since the first battles between the English and French for power in Canada.

Musique acousmatique is an electroacoustic genre associated with Quebec composers, many of whom studied in France because of the common language; its French-ness earns outsider status, while soundscape composition's connection to the Canadian landscape affirms its place within the Canadian historio-cultural narrative (Manning 2003). However, while these two genres have often been emphasized as aesthetically, socially, politically, and ethically opposed, their shared "[emphasis on] the sonic connectivity between interior identity and external lived experience" (Sherry Lee, 2010) problematizes this easy division.

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YOUNG, Steven / Bridgewater State University, U.S.A.

The French Organ Symphony: A Paradigm of anti-French Nationalism?

While French composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries disagreed about the place of the orchestral symphony in their national heritage, a decisively French genre emerged in the organ symphonies of Louis Vierne and his successors.  Now understood as a quintessential element of the internationally renowned French organ tradition, the organ symphony reflected the new French style of organ construction, won the praise of Claude Debussy, and earned both national pride and international respect.  The debussyistes and franckistes who debated the relevance of the orchestral symphony found common ground in their admiration for the freshness and originality of the organ symphony, especially in its use of the cyclic style, satisfying the desire of many contemporary French composers for a particularly nationalist music.  This presentation traces the development of the organ symphony that began in the works of César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, connects the genre to the modern "symphonic" style of organ building fashioned by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, and traces the genre's reception history in France and beyond.

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