# Geography of classical music



## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

For me geography of classical music is very interesting.

First thing that is out of ordinary is that there is no anglo-american domination. While in most cultural spheres anglo-american culture managed to establish dominance over all other national cultures (sometimes rightly so, sometimes without any real advantage in merit, but simply through cultural imperialism), there's no such thing in classical music. I like it. I like this international aspect of classical music in which each national tradition is given an equal chance, more or less, and is judged mainly on its artistic merit, rather than its provenience. So we have fair competition between, say, Italian, French, English, German, American, Russian, Austrian, Eastern European, etc... composers.

Another thing, that I find surprising is quite huge dominance of composers from German speaking countries. I find it surprising because in everyday life and in popular music German speaking countries aren't considered very "musical". When you ask people about "musical" nations, most would mention Italians, French, perhaps Spaniards, and few would mention Germans. Yet, German speaking composers dominate big way in classical music, especially at the very top. I'm quite curious to know why.

Another interesting topic is non-Western classical music traditions. How much do they still survive? Are they being assimilated into Western traditions? How much do we know about them?

So I am opening this thread for a general discussion about geographic and cultural aspects of classical music.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I believe there were 4 Austrian/Germans who were instrumental in the explosion of Western Classical: Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner. Before Bach, it was the Italians who were more dominant. After Mahler, my impression is music diversified into Blues, Jazz, etc. and Classical became less accessible in stretching the limits of tonality.

I know East Asian Classical is still very much alive, even while the younger generation are embracing Asian pop and hip hop more. Here is a famous 20th Century Chinese Classical piece


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I think the answer to your question is pretty simple: the reason that German speaking people dominated music for much of the time is that they got there first. It was Europe which first offered the world a glimpse of what "civilised" means. Cities, laws, courts, schools, churches, and royalty, too. All of this and more, came together and resulted in a standard of living that was unknown elsewhere. So music took off like everything else. Germanic peoples had an extra bit of help in the Reformation. So along comes this guy Bach who demonstrates clearly the power of Equal Temperment which unleashed the full power of our scale systems and harmony. Music got more complex, the symphony, opera, concerto...they defined the genre. Another thing Germany has going for it is a commitment to its heritage and cultural treasures. Germany has over 120 professional quality orchestras in a country smaller than the state of Montana. And the taxpayers fund it. It's their birthright to have live music. The Germans may not be leaders in pop music, but they sure are leaders in classical. Will this continue as the multi-cultural climate changes? Probably, but let's hope they can keep the traditions and their music alive for a long, long time. And be thankful that some of their worst modern composers didn't manage to destroy it all, and I won't mention any names...


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

@Phil loves classical
Which East Asian in particular? Do you mean Western style classical, or their original, native art music tradition?

Anyway, another interesting fact that I just dig (from my good friend, Wikipedia  )

"Western classical music now has a strong presence in Japan and the country is one of the most important markets for this music tradition,with Toru Takemitsu (famous as well for his avant-garde works and movie scoring) being the best known."

then I checked the article on Toru Takemitsu and it says:

"Tōru Takemitsu (武満 徹 Takemitsu Tōru, October 8, 1930 - February 20, 1996) pronounced [takeꜜmitsɯ̥ toːɾɯ] was a Japanese composer and writer on aesthetics and music theory. Largely self-taught, Takemitsu possessed consummate skill in the subtle manipulation of instrumental and orchestral timbre. He is famed for combining elements of oriental and occidental philosophy to create a sound uniquely his own, and for fusing opposites together such as sound with silence and tradition with innovation."

Heh, I am already getting interested in checking his music.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

ZJovicic said:


> @Phil loves classical
> Which East Asian in particular? Do you mean Western style classical, or their original, native art music tradition?
> 
> Anyway, another interesting fact that I just dig (from my good friend, Wikipedia  )
> ...


Takemitsu was heavily influenced with Western Classical, and his famous pieces isn't the traditional Japaness style. But I posted a link for a 20th Century Chinese piece above


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Good stuff this Chinese piece. What a crazy ending!


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

ZJovicic said:


> Another thing, that I find surprising is quite huge dominance of composers from German speaking countries.


Much (not all) of this is part of the "nationalist" dilemma that still haunts classical music. It's a complex and controversial matter. Not everyone accepts that there is a "dilemma" because (for some reason that still perplexes me) it is sometimes perceived as an attack on German music, when really all it is is the story of musicology and its roots in nineteenth century German culture.

To begin with, we should note that the first modern histories of classical music were written by Germans. Of course there was musical scholarship everywhere, but the scholarly work from which today's musicology descends is largely German. Forkel's 1802 biography of Bach is one of the major milestones, as are the writings of Franz Brendel and Philipp Spitta.

Second, when those German histories of classical music were written, they were done so under the sway Hegelian philosophy, according to which history unfolds according to a logical process, and that there is a specific direction in which history "wants" to progress. When applied to music, as it was most notably by Brendel, one of the above-mentioned Romantic musicologists, this means there are some composers who are writing the kind of music that history demands, and there are other composers who do not. The former kind are the ones who represent the "mainstream" of classical music; the latter kind are the "periphery." And since the music of the German-speaking lands was the "default" music for Brendel, it is the music he perceived as the mainstream.

It's worth nothing that very few historians take this seriously today. No one actually believes that history, an abstract concept, has "demands." But it was a very persuasive ideology in the Romantic era, and we are still living with its consequences today. Its main consquence, the one that pertains to your question, is the perception that composers who follow the (imagined) dicatates of history are consequently not seen as following the dicatates of any particular national tradition. The broad, overarching concept of history transcends the specificities of nations and cultures, and so composers who were writing for history were not thought to be writing for nations. In practice, what this means is that even though all of nineteenth century Europe was caught up in the nationalist craze--this is why historians refer to this century as "The Age of Nationalism"--composers who represented the "mainstream" were not perceived as nationalists.

This explains why the great German-born musicologist Willi Apel was able to say, in completely sincerity, that the nationalist movement in music was mostly to be found in Eastern Europe, and that it was almost "non-existent" (that's his word) in Germany. It also explains why it is still possible to find in music appreciation textbooks today--take Michael Kamien's widely used one, for example--sections on "composers" like Schumann, Brahms, Wagner, followed by separate sections on "nationalist composers" like Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Smetana, Dvorak, Grieg, Sibelius, and Albeniz. Schumann, Brahms, and (above all) Wagner were all caught up in nationalist sentiment during their careers, in ways that had direct bearing on their music, but this apparently was not enough to warrant their inclusion in the nationalist section. That is because German composers represented the mainstream while non-German composers represented the periphery. It's a bit like the concept of "ethnic food": technically, any food on earth should qualify as ethnic food since all food derives from some ethnic background, but we all understand that "ethnic food" really means food that comes from some place other than what we've internalized as the "default." Classical music works the same way: German composers are food; non-German composers are ethnic food.

You can see why this would be perceived as an attack on Germans, even though it is not. And to be fair, non-German composers bought into this ideology just as much as German composers did. Many Eastern European composers explicitly "marketed" themselves as nationalists, thus reinforcing the perception that there is a "universal" mainstream and a "nationalist" periphery. Some went to extraordinary lengths to do so: by the time Grieg (who received his musical training in Leipzig!) realized the advantages of being perceived as a composer of Norwegian music (as opposed to being "merely" a composer from Norway), he was already in his twenties, his career was in full swing, and he was almost entirely ignorant of the musical traditions of his native homeland; so he had to learn how to sound Norwegian in quite a hurry. He did so, quite successfully, but like almost every other composer who embraced the nationalist label, he eventually came to regret it. Toward the end of his life he insisted that the influence of Norwegian culture on his music was only half the story; the other half was the good ol' stuff like sonata form, string quartets, and other "non-ethnic" musical traditions.

Another way to view this ideology in action today is to witness the occasional "nationalist" concerts that symphony orchestras like to offer every so often, and to see how rarely a German composer is featured on such a concert. Here's an example: the concert is titled "Romantic Nationalism" and features a Finn, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, a Russian, an American, and a Czech. Here is another one: a "Nationalist Concert" featuring an Italian, a Frenchman, and two Czechs. And here is another: the concert is titled "Patriots" and features an American, a Spaniard, and a Finn. Trying to find a nationalist concert that features a German is like hunting for Bigfoot.

So that, in short (!), is part of the answer your seek. Of course it's not the whole answer, but it's part of it.


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

Very interesting stuff Eschbeg!

I'll comment on one thing:



Eschbeg said:


> Second, when those German histories of classical music were written, they were done so under the sway Hegelian philosophy


I think this might also be related to the fact that Anglo-americans aren't very dominant in classical music. Pragmatic and utilitarian philosophies were more dominant there, unlike idealism in Germany, and these philosophies perhaps don't inspire classical music as much as German classical idealism does. Maybe, in UK and US classical music was/is seen by some as some sort of unnecessary luxury of snobbish European aristocracies which requires a lot of effort, for little practical use.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Phil loves classical said:


> I know East Asian Classical is still very much alive, even while the younger generation are embracing Asian pop and hip hop more. Here is a famous 20th Century Chinese Classical piece


Just an observation that much of this piece sounds like it could have been composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Perhaps a case of the convergent evolution of folkloric musics?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> Just an observation that much of this piece sounds like it could have been composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Perhaps a case of the convergent evolution of folkloric musics?


I can see where you're coming from. You may be right. There is one Chinese piece that is more Western in style, Butterfly Lovers concerto, which is a blatant rip-off of (and much inferior to, although hugely popular to the Chinese) Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

ZJovicic said:


> . . . in most cultural spheres anglo-american culture managed to establish dominance over all other national cultures. . . .


This is not true for the philosophy or the novel or for plastic arts.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> Germany has over 120 professional quality orchestras in a country smaller than the state of Montana.


In fairness, Germany has 82 times as many people as Montana.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

western classical music is quite popular in China, probably more so than in the west. In the west, classical music seems to be slowly dying, while in Asia it is becoming more and more popular
https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/music/classical-music-is-taking-over-the-world-9594034.html


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

It is a mistake to assume classical music either began in or was dominated by Germans. Classical plainchant/monophonic music started with Gregorian chant from the Roman Catholic church during the Medieval 9th and 10th centuries and gradually became polyphonic over time in Western and Central Europe. 

The first great composers during the Renaissance, such as Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin de Prez, were not German. Among the first great composers of the Baroque era were the Dutchman Sweelinck, Frenchman Lully, Italian Antonio Vivaldi and Englishman Henry Purcell who all preceded J.S. Bach. If there was ever German domination, it came after Bach.

Many people think the line of Bach to Haydn to Mozart to Beethoven to Brahms to Mahler to Schoenberg indicates some kind of Germanic domination but this essentially all happened in about 300 years. In the first 500-600 years of music development Germans played little or no role. They also basically disappeared after Richard Strauss. 

Germany -- and more particularly Vienna -- was in all likelihood the most dominant during this period because it first had royalty and later had governments that financially supported musical development better than other nations. The reason Germany has failed to be a beacon of classical music since World War II is in large part because of declining level of government support. To cite just one exemplar Finland has played a much larger role in classical music since World War II than Germany.

Classical music in Asia today is like it used to be in USA. There are thousands of performers, composers and record stores. It is a certainty that in 50 years some of the leading orchestras in the world will be there -- if they are not already.


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## Guest (Mar 31, 2018)

ZJovicic said:


> While in most cultural spheres anglo-american culture managed to establish dominance over all other national cultures (sometimes rightly so, sometimes without any real advantage in merit, but simply through cultural imperialism), there's no such thing in classical music.


Really? Painting, film, drama, novels: none of these could be described as an Anglo-American hegemony. Are you essentially talking about pop culture?



> Another thing, that I find surprising is quite huge dominance of composers from German speaking countries... Yet, German speaking composers dominate big way in classical music, especially at the very top. I'm quite curious to know why.


This dominance, if it ever really occurred, only happened either side of 1800. I suppose it would be legitimate to discuss why a small handful of German composers from that period are played so much. Circumstances conspired to make Vienna the cultural centre of classical music for a while, but in the context of a millenia of classical music this movement has a place at the top table, but I wouldn't agree that Germany is a dominatrix in this respect.



> Another interesting topic is non-Western classical music traditions. How much do they still survive? Are they being assimilated into Western traditions? How much do we know about them?


You could spend a worthwhile lifetime exploring just Indian classical, Gamelan and Japanese to the exclusion of everything else. They certainly should be checked out by everyone who enjoys art music.



> So I am opening this thread for a general discussion about geographic and cultural aspects of classical music.


Classical music is traditionally for the economic elite and it's great female singers were courtesans (to use a polite word).


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

It is a mistake to assume classical music either began in or was dominated by Germans. Classical plainchant/monophonic music started with Gregorian chant from the Roman Catholic church during the Medieval 9th and 10th centuries and gradually became polyphonic over time in Western and Central Europe. 

The first great composers during the Renaissance, such as Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin de Prez, were not German. Among the first great composers of the Baroque era were the Dutchman Sweelinck, Frenchman Lully, Italian Monteverdi and Englishman Henry Purcell who all preceded J.S. Bach. If there was ever German domination, it came after Bach.

Many people think the line of Bach to Haydn to Mozart to Beethoven to Brahms to Mahler to Schoenberg indicates some kind of Germanic domination but this essentially all happened in about 300 years. In the first 500-600 years of music development Germans played little or no role. They also basically disappeared after Richard Strauss. 

Germany -- and more particularly Vienna -- was in all likelihood the most dominant during this period because it first had royalty and later had governments that financially supported musical development better than other nations. The reason Germany has failed to be a beacon of classical music since World War II is in large part because of declining level of government support. To cite just one exemplar Finland has played a much larger role in classical music since World War II than Germany.

Classical music in Asia today is like it used to be in USA. There are thousands of performers, composers and record stores. It is a certainty that in 50 years some of the leading orchestras in the world will be there -- if they are not already.


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## Genoveva (Nov 9, 2010)

I think the OP is simply saying that German (and German speaking) composers are hugely dominant among present day classical music fans. He doesn't appear to be suggesting that German composers have always been dominant throughout the history of western classical music, as some posters seems to believe he may have said and upon which they have based their comments.

It is certainly the case that German composers dominate the current list of favourites as measured by preferences set out in the various composer polls on this Forum. The Germans are way out in front with no other nationality remotely close. The next most popular grouping, but a long way behind, are the Russians and French. Behind these still further is a fairly wide miscellany of nationalities, led by Hungarian, Polish, Italian, Czech. As noted by the OP, Anglo/American composers are way out in the back field by comparison. So too are composers from Spain. Portugal and the Netherlands.


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## Boston Charlie (Dec 6, 2017)

Prior to WW1 and WW2, Germany (or what constituted German-speaking states before the unification) was known as a land of poets, musicians and scientists. This doesn't take a thing away from the contributions made by those outside Germany.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Eschbeg said:


> Much (not all) of this is part of the "nationalist" dilemma that still haunts classical music. It's a complex and controversial matter. Not everyone accepts that there is a "dilemma" because (for some reason that still perplexes me) it is sometimes perceived as an attack on German music, when really all it is is the story of musicology and its roots in nineteenth century German culture.
> 
> To begin with, we should note that the first modern histories of classical music were written by Germans. Of course there was musical scholarship everywhere, but the scholarly work from which today's musicology descends is largely German. Forkel's 1802 biography of Bach is one of the major milestones, as are the writings of Franz Brendel and Philipp Spitta.
> 
> ...


I love this post. This is fantastic!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The idea that German music occupies a special or dominant position in classical music isn't mere cultural bias. As some others have noted, the great period of German music occupied a short period of time, but what happened during that time was remarkable. Austro-German composers from the high Baroque to the early Modern period developed fertile forms of instrumental music which allowed for an exploitation of tonal harmony, motivic development, and narrative structure unparalleled in any other musical tradition, and the examples of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms (to name the most important) were for a time the strongest influence on composers of all nationalities. It was because of this near-universal impact that Germany had no "nationalist" school.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

It may also be that the other large cultural entities (non-German-speaking) of that period between the high baroque and the middle years of the 19th century were in a condition of stasis offering little possibility of musical evolution. In France we had the _ancien régime_, in Italy and Spain the Church ruled supreme, in the east the Autocrat of all the Russias held sway, and in England it was Mammon who reigned--little time for music. But in the polyglot, patchwork Austrian "Empire" and the crazy-quilt of German micro-states, stasis was broken and it was possible for composers of both skill and adventurous spirit to seize the opportunity to create newer ways of doing music, and to observe one another's example. We note that after the French Revolution shattered, for a while anyway, the prevailing stasis not only in France but in other lands--also unlocking the hitherto unrealized dreams of ethnic minorities everywhere--music rapidly gained ground in post-Napoleonic France and over much of the rest of Europe.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> It was because of this near-universal impact that Germany had no "nationalist" school.


German composers must be spinning in their graves right now. Then again, as I mentioned above, it is because of the German idealist philosophies they bought into that German nationalism is never perceived as such, so I guess these composers have partly themselves to blame. (Of course I'm being sarcastic: the Everyone-Has-An-Accent-But-Us Syndrome has in no way been a hindrance to German composers. It's been an enormous boost.)

Here's an interesting thought experiment: imagine that Smetana contributed to an annual Czech choral music festival with a religiously themed work that on paper should have been met with hostility in the religiously divided Bohemian lands, but with which Smetana nonetheless persisted in the belief that Bohemian audiences would hear the work as a symbol not of religion but of nation, since the religion was inarguably part of Bohemian history and therefore Bohemian identity. And imagine him being so successful in this endeavor that he was elevated to the status of national hero, so much so that when the Czech king decided to transform Prague into a center of Bohemian culture and art, Smetana was the natural choice to head this project; and that Smetana later used his newfound prestige to help found a music school in the city of Brno, the first such Czech institution and still the oldest of the Czech Republic's currently functioning conservatories. And imagine that Smetana's position as preeminent Czech composer was so firmly established that when a new generation of Czech composers arose with very different visions of Czech nationalism, Smetana inevitably became a target, the guy to beat for those looking to be the next great Czech composer. These are exactly the kind of biographical facts that a music history textbook would highlight in order to demonstrate Smetana's nationalist activities. And yet the career I just described was Mendelssohn's (just replace all the Czech references with German ones), who is never depicted as a nationalist.

The Smetana example is doubly ironic because the Czech nationalist movement in the 19th century, like others in Eastern and Northern Europe, was explicitly modeled after the German nationalist movement. It was due to the German example that a nation's essence and identity came to be equated with its folk culture. (Contrast this with French national identity, which in the 19th century was always conceived as a distinctly urban notion.) Johann Gottfried Herder was the main catalyst here; he was almost single-handedly responsible for convincing Germany that its peasants were the repository of its national essence. This view was then adopted in German literature by the Grimm brothers, in poetry by Goethe and Heine, and in music by Wagner of course (with Weber also serving as a precedent). In fact, Wagner's celebration of Germanic myth in the _Ring_ was the immediate model for Smetana's _Ma vlast_, which is a musical depiction of the Czech countryside and important episodes in Czech history. _Die Moldau_ does for the Vltava River what _Das Rheingold_ does for the Rhine. And as usual, there was tremendous irony in Smetana's nationalism, since the Czech countryside was about as far removed as one could get from Smetana's actual urban upbringing. Like most Czechs of his background, Smetana considered himself a citizen of the Hapsburg Empire and thus spoke primarily German. (The most amusing irony of his career: his Festive Symphony, written in anticipation of the opening of the National Theater in Prague, was recycled out of a previous work he wrote entitled Triumphal Symphony Utilizing the Austrian National Anthem.) His parents reserved Czech for home when they used it at all, since middle-class Bohemians considered Czech to be an uneducated bumpkin's language. Throughout his life Smetana never had a more than an adolescent's command of the Czech language.

Another thought experiment: imagine that Wagner, instead of getting his musical education piecemeal from teachers here and there, got a rigorous training at a top-notch Italian conservatory; and that instead devoting his career to opera (not to mention his secondary career writing aesthetic and political treatises), he had the kind of all-around career that could be expected of a conservatory graduate who had mastered all the major "universal" genres, including symphonies, concertos, string quartets, piano music, choral music, ballets, and operas. And imagine that he was so successful in this that his career abroad far eclipsed his career at home, to the point where he was receiving honorary degrees from Cambridge University and invitations to preside over the opening Carnegie Hall. In this scenario, listeners would be even more reluctant to view Wagner through the lens of nationalism than they are now (if certain heated threads here are any indication). And yet the career I just described as that of Tchaikovsky, who got his musical education and the newly opened, Western-European-staffed St. Petersburg Conservatory, and who spent much of his career trying, and failing, to use this technical mastery to achieve the "universal" status of German composers. Despite his best efforts, he was never able to get Western Europeans to see him as a composer first and a nationality second; the latter identity always preceded the former. No one was more conscious of this double standard than him. There is a famous letter among his correspondences in which he relates a visit to Vienna: "If you only knew the insulting tone of condescension with which they address a Russian musician! You can read it in their eyes: 'You're just a Russian, but I am so kind and indulgent that I favor you with my attention'." It's kind of horrifying to think how long this persisted into the 20th century. Here is a quote from David Brown's Tchaikovsky biography from the early 1990s: "His was a Russian mind forced to find its expression through techniques and forms that had been evolved by generations of alien Western creators and, this being so, it would be unreasonable to expect stylistic consistency or uniform quality." Brown was describing Tchaikovksy's deviations from traditional sonata form in his symphonies (as if "traditional sonata form" was still a relevant concept in the 1880s). But as Tchaikovksy knew perfectly well, only some composers' deviations are praised as innovations; others' are faulted for straying from the universal model.

Thankfully, Brown's book has finally be discredited, but as you can see the double standard of musical nationalism runs pretty strong and is not likely to go away any time soon. By this point it is virtually inherent in our perception of classical music.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Are there examples of clearly nationalist music from 19th-century French composers? Only d'Indy's _Symphony on a French Mountain Air_ pops into my empty head. Ditto Italian examples? Beyond the examples of Russia, Bohemia, and maybe Grieg in Norway, nothing particularly striking me as musical nationalism occurs until the turn of the century when everybody gets into the act. It's interesting that some of the 19th-century nationalist composers of Russia were busy mining Spain for musical ideas.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> Are there examples of clearly nationalist music from 19th-century French composers? Only d'Indy's _Symphony on a French Mountain Air_ pops into my empty head.


If by "clearly" you mean explicitly themed works that portray specific features of a nation's history or geography, then yes, "clearly" nationalist works are relatively rare. But evoking the geography of one's nation is not the only way, and not even necessarily the most effective way, for music to be nationalist. It's only the most obvious way. In fact, that's one reason why nationalism is so rarely noticed in German, French, and Italian music: because of the assumption that quoting folk tunes is the primary way for composers to express nationalism in music. It's the way Herder recommended, as I mentioned above, but ultimately there are as many ways for music to be nationalist as there are ways to define nationhood.

Take France, for example. Throughout most of the century, French composers were often the target of German ridicule. The common perception, stated most famously in Wagner's essay _German Art and German Politics_, was that the French musical style was all spectacle and no substance (think Meyerbeer and Offenbach) while the German style was serious and/or had substantive things to express. For the most part, the French had little reason to care what the Germans were saying about them, but that changed when political tensions between the French and German empires culminated in war in 1870-71, which the French lost in humiliating fashion. After that, French composers had some incentive to address German criticisms directly. Immediately after the war, a group of French composers (Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Franck, Massenet, among others; Debussy and Ravel joined later) formed an organization, the Société Nationale de Musique, whose aim was to create a new national style that the French nation could be proud of and which successfully countered German criticisms. In practice, this meant composing in the kinds of "serious" genres that the French were not usually known for in order to show that they were just as capable as anybody at writing serious music.

So while there is nothing "clearly" nationalist about the sudden burst of solo piano and chamber music that Saint-Saëns produced in 1871, with none of the works making any specific reference to French culture, the very fact that they were abstract, instrumental works is exactly what made them nationalist. The lack of programmatic content and the focus on pure form was meant to demonstrate the viability of French music.

Another possible path for French musical nationalism to take was to resurrect French Renaissance and Baroque music, in order to prove that the French had their own musical heritage independent of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven. Toward the end of the century, Debussy, d'Indy, and others collaborated on editing and publishing the complete works of Rameau, for example. It's also at this time that references to early music start popping up with increasing frequency in French composer's works: Castillon's _Five Pieces in Ancient Style_ (performed at the inaugural concert of the Société Nationale de Musique); Saint-Saëns's Gavotte in C Major; Debussy's _Pour le piano_ with its prelude, sarabande, and toccata; etc. Even Satie's Sarabandes could be put in this category.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Being distanced from a lot of 19th century music, I feel there is a particular "German" sound: a certain heaviness and dark hued orchestral colour, a bit grim and serious-sounding, just as many Russians are brass-heavy, and have a certain flavour. Beethoven, Weber, late Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms all share it. some other non-German composers as Berlioz and Franck also adopted the style. I believe this is why Mendelssohn's Scottish Synphony doesn't sound British, as I've read many critics also don't hear. I admit Wagner, Liszt, Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler have a noticeably different sound. Maybe they have the "alternate German" sound.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I think that "nationalist" is perhaps being used in such a way by Eschbeg and Phil above as to drain it of common understanding (understanding by me anyway). I think most understand nationalism in music to be expressed by references to either real or made-up elements of folk song or dance; a certain exoticism; nods toward folktale, myth, legend--again real or made-up. To redefine it as taking up again the older music of one's long-deceased countrymen I think is to vitiate the term, as is also using the term to discuss "heaviness and dark-hued orchestral colour", "brass-heavy" Russian music, etc.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> To redefine it as taking up again the older music of one's long-deceased countrymen I think is to vitiate the term


If that was the whole of the definition, I would definitely agree. But the act of returning to older music is not in itself nationalist. The reason for doing so--_that's_ nationalist. There are lots of reasons why one might want to resurrect past music, and the French composers in the above example were pretty clear what their reasons were. Many of them would have been mortified if their turning to older music were _not_ perceived as an expression of French pride.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Tulse said:


> Really? Painting, film, drama, novels: none of these could be described as an Anglo-American hegemony. Are you essentially talking about pop culture?


No, I understood him to be speaking of how awesome my country is in the general sense. You know, how we ride in like the cavalry and win the war and then rebuild everything back better than it ever was with a McDonalds on the corner and blue jeans in your new brand new shopping malls.

...that sort cultural dominance


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> I think that "nationalist" is perhaps being used in such a way by Eschbeg and Phil above as to drain it of common understanding (understanding by me anyway). I think most understand nationalism in music to be expressed by references to either real or made-up elements of folk song or dance; a certain exoticism; nods toward folktale, myth, legend--again real or made-up. To redefine it as taking up again the older music of one's long-deceased countrymen I think is to vitiate the term, as is also using the term to discuss "heaviness and dark-hued orchestral colour", "brass-heavy" Russian music, etc.


nationalistic music was common in the true "classical" period, though. So you have to accept that people wrote nationalistic music in the past. I can understand where in Europe "nationalism" is probably taken a lot like "racism" is taken here in the states. But as an American, I take pride in playing our national anthem, or God Blass America, or My Country tis of Thee....doesn't make me a slave trader, or a white supremacist, or a bigot in any way

I'm mostly saying this because I'm presently playing 3 different sets of pieces based on nationalistic themes


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Eschbeg said:


> If that was the whole of the definition, I would definitely agree. But the act of returning to older music is not in itself nationalist. The reason for doing so--_that's_ nationalist. There are lots of reasons why one might want to resurrect past music, and the French composers in the above example were pretty clear what their reasons were. Many of them would have been mortified if their turning to older music were _not_ perceived as an expression of French pride.


Again, this sort of usage of the term musical "nationalism", "nationalist" does not clarify; instead it obfuscates. When we must, when listening to a piece of music, consider--not the music itself--but rather the intent of the composer as being an expression of nationalism, then I think we've drained away much of the common understanding of the term. But perhaps a brief list of well known pieces that are clearly not nationalist would help our (my) understanding.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Strange Magic said:


> I think that "nationalist" is perhaps being used in such a way by Eschbeg and Phil above as to drain it of common understanding (understanding by me anyway). I think most understand nationalism in music to be expressed by references to either real or made-up elements of folk song or dance; a certain exoticism; nods toward folktale, myth, legend--again real or made-up. To redefine it as taking up again the older music of one's long-deceased countrymen I think is to vitiate the term, as is also using the term to discuss "heaviness and dark-hued orchestral colour", "brass-heavy" Russian music, etc.


No, I'm not saying that music is German nationalist music. Just that it has a certain characteristic sound.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> Again, this sort of usage of the term musical "nationalism", "nationalist" does not clarify; instead it obfuscates. When we must, when listening to a piece of music, consider--not the music itself--but rather the intent of the composer as being an expression of nationalism, then I think we've drained away much of the common understanding of the term. But perhaps a brief list of well known pieces that are clearly not nationalist would help our (my) understanding.


If nationalism is pride in one's nation, I don't see how we can avoid discussing the intentions of a person. (Doens't have to be just the composer; history is littered with examples of cultural artifacts that became nationalist symbols because of how they were received by audiences, not by how they were intended by their makers.) Can we ascribe pride to objects or sounds? Unless you are using "nationalism" to mean simply depicting a nation or some aspect of it... but _that_ would really be draining the term of its meaning. Nationalist movements, above all those of nineteenth century Europe, were about advocacy, not just depiction.

Besides, if we restrict nationalism only to what is in the notes[*], I don't see how even folk tunes and depictions of snowy mountains qualify. Is folk-ness in the music itself? Is a mountaintop? It seems to me that the only way to make Smetana's _Die Moldau_ an example of nationalism is to take the composer at his word that the music represents the title, in which case it is about intention after all. And allowing intention in some cases but not others is seems rather arbitrary.

[*Not that I'm attributing the "music itself" approach to you only. It has been a longstanding tradition of classical music to restrict what music is to just the notes. But it is an anachronistic view to just about any composer before the 20th century.]


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I'm catching on now: Musical nationalism means is whatever I think it means, for me. It means whatever you think it means, for you. Etc. But I could be persuaded otherwise by some examples of clearly non-nationalist 19th-century music.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

this might come as a shock, but the entire era of the late 18th/early 19th centuries that we call "classical" was all about nationalism.

you cannot apply modern politically correct attitudes to times in the past. When Beethoven was writing the great music he wrote, people sold other humans as slaves, women not only didn't vote but most countries were still ruled by kings, and getting a case of small pox was actually good news. 

so I honestly don't see what the issue with nationalistic music is. Were people surprised to find military marches being composed during the Napoleonic Era?


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> I'm catching on now: Musical nationalism means is whatever I think it means, for me. It means whatever you think it means, for you. Etc. But I could be persuaded otherwise by some examples of clearly non-nationalist 19th-century music.


Sure--I'm game. Since you note that we are operating from different definitions of nationalism, I'll state mine, which strikes me as fairly uncontroversial: nationalism is advocacy of one's nation. I have yet to encounter a dictionary that didn't give some version of this as the definition of nationalism. Musical nationalism, by extension, is music used for the advocacy of one's nation. I'd be curious to hear what your definition is.

As for clearly non-nationalist music in the 19th century, examples abound. (It's not like every piece of music, even music by composers who in other situations were nationalists, is used for the advocacy of one's nation. Music is written for lots of reasons.) So here's one: Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_. The opera is a lot of things, including a musical essay in Schopenhauerian metaphysics, but I'm not seeing much in it that is nationalist (even though Wagner was obviously nationalist and wrote _other_ operas that are clearly nationalist). Granted, I'm no Wagner scholar so if someone unearths historical information demonstrating some nationalist intention behind _Tristan,_ I would of course think otherwise.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^OK, here's a question for both of us: Are _Capriccio Espagnol_ or _Brazilian Impressions_ nationalistic by your definition? Nate says the entire late 18th/early 19th centuries was all about nationalism. I don't agree with that notion either, but I still believe that "most people" (music lovers) find nationalism in music to be the evocation of folkish musical or literary or other overtly ethnic/cultural references in one's music, whether it is in advocacy of one's one country or not, as in my examples. _Peer Gynt_, yes. Grieg concerto, no.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Good posts by Eschbeg and Strange Magic.

I would define musical nationalism as those works written during the time of a nation's "national awakening" that invoke a "universal" sense of nationhood throughout the people of that nation. For example, "everyone" in Finland recognizes Finlandia and Karelia Suite by Sibelius as "our music", although many Finns may not even recognize his 5th symphony. Similarly, "everyone's" national pride in Estonia is aroused when hearing Koit or Kodumaine viis by Heino Eller.

I would say that, for instance, Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man doesn't work because it's debatable whether the US independence fight was a "national awakening" in the same sense and because it wasn't written at the time.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^OK, here's a question for both of us: Are _Capriccio Espagnol_ or _Brazilian Impressions_ nationalistic by your definition? Nate says the entire late 18th/early 19th centuries was all about nationalism. I don't agree with that notion either, but I still believe that "most people" (music lovers) find nationalism in music to be the evocation of folkish musical or literary or other overtly ethnic/cultural references in one's music, whether it is in advocacy of one's one country or not, as in my examples. _Peer Gynt_, yes. Grieg concerto, no.


easy there..."all about" is a figure of speech. But look at the other arts and things going on in the world at that time, too. You had Frederick the Great, the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic wars...all sorts of things that made nationalism a popular theme.

And by "nationalism" I mean music that speaks to the identity of a society.

but there were a lot of other musical works that were exploring other romantic themes

so when I say "all about" I mean the times were right for a lot of nationalistic music to get published and performed


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Kivimees said:


> I would say that, for instance, Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man doesn't work because it's debatable whether the US independence fight was a "national awakening".


no, we woke up and threw the English out

when Europe was still ruled by kings and princes, we were the first men to stand up and rule ourselves as free men and make it stick

and when George Washington stepped down and John Adams took over it was the first time anything like that happened in western civilization without anybody firing a shot, and that is what makes America a great country

so the American revolution was really an awakening, and it continued on to France, too


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

larold said:


> Germany -- and more particularly Vienna -- was in all likelihood the most dominant during this period because it first had royalty and later had governments that financially supported musical development better than other nations. The reason Germany has failed to be a beacon of classical music since World War II is in large part because of declining level of government support. To cite just one exemplar Finland has played a much larger role in classical music since World War II than Germany.


It's interesting to follow the money in tracing nationalist associations with music, possibly including compositions that do not explicitly signal nationalist aims. In general, I can see how musical nationalism could be the consequence of not only individual composers' intentions but also the contexts in which they worked. Much Soviet-era music, for example, was complexly associated with the state through a variety of ties, political and financial, and may therefore be seen to have (or to have had) a national character whether individual composers wanted there to be or not.

Things become complicated in the present time insofar as the nation state has less socioeconomic importance than the global networks fostered by institutions like international festivals, universities, foundations, etc.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

I think in the past I have used the term nationalism in music in two different ways. There are example of composers who wanted to make specific nationalist statements - music with a slightly political purpose - and a good example of this is Sibelius (or early Sibelius, anyway). This seems to involve a nation that was feeling dominated by another. But I have also used the term, perhaps wrongly, more generally to merely note a departure or difference with the once dominant Austro-Germanic tradition. I find this sense of the term useful when I am trying to understand what happened towards the end of the 19th Century, when it became much more difficult to think of great music as following"the great tradition" in a linear way. Perhaps French music - already diverging from The Tradition with Berlioz - can be thought of in this way.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Nate Miller said:


> no, we woke up and threw the English out
> 
> when Europe was still ruled by kings and princes, we were the first men to stand up and rule ourselves as free men and make it stick
> 
> ...


I understand your sentiment, Nate, and I would do nothing to belittle your homeland's founding or the inspiration it has served for the rest of world. But you ended my quote without "in the same sense", so if I could explain: in the "country" I was born in there was a distinction between "nationality" and "citizenship". I was a "citizen" of the USSR, but I was granted an Estonian "nationality". So it was during the time of "national awakening" in much of Europe. "Nations" of people began to rise up against other "nations". I put it to you that Americans seeking to throw the English out were not a "nation" in the same sense, but rather a group of liberty-seeking "citizens". Does that make sense?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^Well-put. The American rebellion was one of Englishmen(people) feeling that their rights as Englishmen(people) were being trampled upon by an out-of-touch English monarch and his stooges.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Kivimees said:


> I understand your sentiment, Nate, and I would do nothing to belittle your homeland's founding or the inspiration it has served for the rest of world. But you ended my quote without "in the same sense", so if I could explain: in the "country" I was born in there was a distinction between "nationality" and "citizenship". I was a "citizen" of the USSR, but I was granted an Estonian "nationality". So it was during the time of "national awakening" in much of Europe. "Nations" of people began to rise up against other "nations". I put it to you that Americans seeking to throw the English out were not a "nation" in the same sense, but rather a group of liberty-seeking "citizens". Does that make sense?


that really does make sense. In America we don't have that same sense of citizenship being separate from nation. A lot of Americans that have lived in a state for generations have a sense of "statehood" that is separate from "citizenship" in the United States. Texas, which actually used to be a Republic and nation of its own, has a very strong sense of "dual-citizenship"

but none of those loyalties to our home state and then our country are like your situation with the soviets

so I see how that period of national awakening you were talking about really is different than our revolution.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

On the subject of the Revolutionary War, I feel that the complexity of musical nationalism is well illustrated by a tune like Yankee Doodle Dandy:



> "Yankee" was a derogatory term attached to New Englanders - and in those days, macaroni wasn't a noodle, but a foppish or effeminate hair style. In the tune, Shuckburg was basically calling the colonists unmanly and stupid. Yet, the colonists loved the song so much that they adopted it as one of their most patriotic songs, and would make captured British prisoners dance to it at the end of the Revolutionary War.


The original aims of the composer are not always decisive.

https://www.constitutionfacts.com/founders-library/music-of-the-american-revolution/


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^Well-put. The American rebellion was one of Englishmen(people) feeling that their rights as Englishmen(people) were being trampled upon by an out-of-touch English monarch and his stooges.


for the record, we had to board their soldiers in our own houses

that's pretty much having your rights trampled on

this wasn't a teacher's strike. We weren't a bunch of teenagers crying about wanting a nicer car, we were getting screwed long and hard. A lot of their other colonies rebelled, too. They even got Mr Gandhi angry with them


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

and our national anthem is an English fiddle tune and an old drinking song

they printed words to songs and then wrote (to the tune of ......) so people could sing it.

standing around getting completely crocked singing old songs was apparently a popular thing to do before the advent of video games


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> On the subject of the Revolutionary War, I feel that the complexity of musical nationalism is well illustrated by a tune like Yankee Doodle Dandy:
> 
> The original aims of the composer are not always decisive.
> 
> https://www.constitutionfacts.com/founders-library/music-of-the-american-revolution/


Thank you! This song never made any sense to me. :lol:


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Nate Miller said:


> for the record, we had to board their soldiers in our own houses


We had to concede to the enemy our entire country. :tiphat:


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

Kivimees said:


> We had to concede to the enemy our entire country. :tiphat:


at the end of WWII, they just took over like your country was the spoils of war, didn't they?


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Nate Miller said:


> at the end of WWII, they just took over like your country was the spoils of war, didn't they?


That's right - but let's get back to the happier topic which is "Geography of classical music".


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

Strange Magic said:


> ^^^^OK, here's a question for both of us: Are _Capriccio Espagnol_ or _Brazilian Impressions_ nationalistic by your definition?


By my definition, no, because to my knowledge neither work was intended as or received in a spirit of nationalist advocacy.



Strange Magic said:


> I still believe that "most people" (music lovers) find nationalism in music to be the evocation of folkish musical or literary or other overtly ethnic/cultural references in one's music, whether it is in advocacy of one's one country or not, as in my examples.


I'm comfortable using the definition that jibes more with the way nationalist composers used the term than the way today's audiences do. (Yesterday's audiences were very much in conformance with the way composers used it.) What you're describing as the common understanding of nationalism is really just a subcategory of "program music." And if that really is how audiences today understand musical nationalism, it is largely because of the "music itself" listening strategies we've inherited from modernism, and those strategies are anachronistic for just about any music before, say, the 1930s. In fact, protecting the listening experience from messy ideological stuff like nationalism is exactly what formalism was invented for.

If we accept the "common" understanding of nationalism, then a work that a composer entitles "On the Banks of the Dordogne" purely on a whim would be considered more nationalist than a symphony composed concurrently with a 300-page manifesto explaining why the symphony is a tribute to the Ukraine (or whatever), which seems wildly counter-intuitive to me, and jars with what has actually happened, historically speaking, during nationalist movements. Since nationalism is a historical and ideological phenomenon, any attempt to understand it from a purely formalist standpoint is going to lead to some serious distortions of history (even if it leads to more pleasurable listening experiences).



Strange Magic said:


> _Peer Gynt_, yes. Grieg concerto, no.


I'm pretty sure Grieg would be baffled by that notion considering the evocations of folk dance in the last movement of the concerto. They are unadvertised as such, but that would not have been a "problem" to Grieg.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^I am content that we have two differing usages for the term "nationalist music". Yours pleases you, and that's good. I think my usage remains, rightly or more likely wrongly in your view, more easily understood by more people than yours, though it is perhaps less inclusive than yours. I think there is going to be be some head-scratching as people sort through the works of the German-speaking and many of the French-speaking composers and attempt to place them into nationalist and non-nationalist piles.


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## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

> And if that really is how audiences today understand musical nationalism, it is largely because of the "music itself" listening strategies we've inherited from modernism


Incidentally, what I wrote above brings us full circle back to the OP, so I hope I may be forgiven for this long digression on nationalism. Ultimately, it wasn't really a digression at all. I think the formalist listening habits I described above play a big role in the answer to the OP's question about German dominance.

It is partly because of our privileging of the "music itself" that composers and listeners separate music's features into what is "in" the music and what is "outside" it. As I mentioned, the concept of formalism was invented specifically to make sure the outside stuff keeps clear not only of the music but of the listening experience too. That outside stuff includes things like ideology, politics, psychology, opinion; as we all know, some even consider basic stuff like emotion to be outside the music as well. In short, this outside stuff consists of all the things that make us the flawed and imperfect beings we are. Consequently, focusing on the music itself is a way of escaping the imperfections of human behavior. The most famous formulation of this is Schopenhauer: "Intellectual life floats ethereally... above the reality of the worldly activities which make up the lives of the peoples... [A]longside world history there goes, guiltless and not stained with blood, the history of philosophy, science, and the arts." Schopenhauer extends this to all of the arts, but music was the supreme art form for him and therefore the art most capable of escaping the tumult of everyday life. It's not a coincidence that Schopenhauer is saying this at exactly the same time that the term "classical" started to take hold. To call music "classical" is to call it timeless, having permanent value that is not tied to any specific time or place. And to say that much is to say that music is independent of the subjective tastes of those times or places.

All of this philosophizing originated in Germany, so it is there that the culture of classical music as we know it today was born. It is in Germany that public concerts became a central part of the "music business," and it is toward the middle of the century, concurrent with the notion of "classical" music, that these concerts started favoring old music over new music. (My source for this are books by William Weber and J. Peter Burckholder, among others.) This is where the "canon" was born and composers thought of themselves as writing music in the shadow of the past. That's where we get all that stuff about Brahms not being able to shake his Beethovenian demons and taking forty years to write his first symphony; it's where we get the myth of the line of succession between the "three Bs" (even though, historically speaking, there was no direct line between the first B and the second B)' and so on.

Even in the 19th century, everyone was perfectly aware that there were several competing musical traditions: in addition to the tradition of Germanic instrumental music, there was the tradition of French and Italian grand opera, the tradition of sacred choral music, and so on. Composers could of course contribute to more than one tradition (Berlioz, Bruckner, Brahms, etc.), but only one of those traditions, the Germanic instrumental one, was propagated by elaborate philosophies of transcendence, classicism, historical progress, and the rest. (That's why composers who contributed to several traditions are known today primarily for their instrumental works. One of the best kept secrets of classical music is that two-thirds of Brahms's output is vocal music, or that Liszt wrote oratorios, or that Bruckner was primarily a composer of sacred music.)

It's a self-sustaining system: the more that composers view themselves as part of a tradition, the more their music perpetuates that tradition. So it's only to be expected that this tradition seems like the "dominant" one, even today.


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## Agamemnon (May 1, 2017)

ZJovicic said:


> For me geography of classical music is very interesting.
> 
> Another thing, that I find surprising is quite huge dominance of composers from German speaking countries.


I think it has to do with Marx' observation: France gave the world a political revolution, England an industrial/economic revolution and Germany, well, Germany only produced a philosophical revolution. Marx intended this as a mockery: the French and British actually changed the world while the Germans only thought about things without changing anything.

There seems to be truth in Marx' observation: the British (and Americans) are practical people, concerned with economy and technology, the French are political people, concerned with (power) relations, and the Germans are 'deep' thinkers, concerned with mysticism and philosophy. While others act, Germans reflect on what's happening (and Heine seemed to foresaw WO II in his remark that finally the Germans will act though and it will be horrendous).

And I think the German dominance in modern philosophy and the mystical tradition simply extends into the arts, especially music: the German deep thinking brings about very very serious and deep art. And not only is German music typically very serious music, the Germans took music very seriously as well: I have been told that in the 19th century almost all German children took piano or violin lessons and they played Bach and Beethoven as frequently as our kids today play video games. So obviously this brought about a great lot of capable musicians and composers in Germany.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

ZJovicic said:


> For me geography of classical music is very interesting.


you do have a right to be interested.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Agamemnon said:


> the Germans only thought about things without changing anything.


yeah?.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_Germany


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