# Does modern classical music still display nationalistic identity?



## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Everywhere from Renaissance to the Late Romantic eras of classical music it seems there are clear nationalistic identities in the music that stemmed from particular countries. By this I mean the sound of German music has a certain sound, and as does French, British, Spanish, Russian, etc...

Are there still certain "sounds" from composers from different geographical regions, or has the world become sufficiently international and multicultural that these kinds of differences have evaporated? If not evaporated, have they lessened? To what degree have they lessened? Just a little, almost entirely, or somewhere in between? Is it (as I must suspect) different depending on which region we're talking about? If so, which regions have retained the more of their musical identity and which have become more integrated into a more general and international identity?

This is just something I was pondering about. I'd love to hear what people's opinion of this are.


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

It's also something to do with the composers. The one I most strongly feel has a nationalistic identity is Peter Maxwell Davies but that is an adopted Orcadian one - much as the Salford folk singer James Miller also adopted a Scottish persona (Ewan Macoll).

I know little of Penderecki but he seems to try to include Polish motifs in his work.

Interesting that some of the older music of a particular nationalist style was also written by foreigners - Lully in France, Scarlatti in Spain, Handel in England.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

National anthems were often composed art music. Some of the famous ones were by great composers.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Wolfgang Rihm's music is clearly a continuation of the Germanic music tradition inherited from Mahler and Berg.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

John Adams often appeals to more or less distinctly American traditions in his music.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Moderrn classical...Sounds like...Oxymoron!


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

I think so, yes.

For example, I feel there's an American sensibility that somehow comes through in Carter and Wuorinen as well as Copland and the minimalists, though I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it is.

Boulez, Dutilleux and Murail sound obviously French.

I started a slightly different but related thread a while ago... http://www.talkclassical.com/38786-persistence-national-character-music.html


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Blancrocher said:


> John Adams often appeals to more or less distinctly American traditions in his music.


Similarly Copland.


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## Guest (Jan 1, 2016)

Abso-freakin-lutely.


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## LHB (Nov 1, 2015)

I think, in general, it has actually strengthened, especially with the more 'political' composers (Nono, Shostakovich, Rzewski, ect.).


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

There is no 'American nation' like there is no 'Spanish nation'.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

I recently posted, maybe in Current Listening, about a work that sounds American to me, but by an English composer. Now I can't remember who or what it is. This would have been a 20th century work and its American flavor was likely my imagination alone, but I do think with the world becoming a smaller and smaller place in the digital age, territorial trends will eventually merge and disappear.

It is too soon to tell.

[Edit: Found the piece I was thinking of. It is the William Walton Piano Quartet in D minor composed in 1921. So i suppose it's not really an indicator.]


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Weston said:


> I recently posted, maybe in Current Listening, about a work that sounds American to me, but by an English composer. Now I can't remember who or what it is. This would have been a 20th century work and its American flavor was likely my imagination alone, but I do think with the world becoming a smaller and smaller place in the digital age, territorial trends will eventually merge and disappear.
> 
> It is too soon to tell.
> 
> [Edit: Found the piece I was thinking of. It is the William Walton Piano Quartet in D minor composed in 1921. So i suppose it's not really an indicator.]


This is pretty much what I was thinking of when I posed these questions. The world got smaller and smaller through various inventions. Starting all the way back with maybe the printing press, mail systems, newspapers covering international issues, faster travel via sea and eventually air, telephones, and ultimately culminating with the ultimate world shrinker: the internet. It seems to me that the things that separate one country from another become less and less relevant, and what happens in any part of the world is noticeable and reacted to by people anywhere else in the world. Basically I see the world transitioning into a global community rather than a smorgasbord of distinct and discrete communities and entities. I do not think this transition has fully taken place, and different regions are at different points in this transition. For example the western world is pretty far along, though not completely there still I think, while places in Africa and the Middle east are much further behind in the progression toward a global community. But it seems to me that it's something that's inevitable. Who knows how long it will take, a generation or a thousand years, but it seems inevitable to me barring some world shattering event in which we kill ourselves or knock ourselves into some kind of dark age. It may also perhaps asymptotically get ever closer to a point of absolute global community and homogeneity while never quite reaching it. Anyway, it's this line of thinking that begged my original questions.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Most of the examples given are half a century old (except for Adams and maybe some others). We may have a tendency to confuse an individual style with a national style: "Oh, Schnittke, definitely sounds Russian because after all he _is _Russian."

My impression is that nationalism in music is on the decline. Pretty soon we'll be like a crossroads in any city in the US: A Starbuck's one on corner, McDonald's on another, and so forth.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Most of the examples given are half a century old (except for Adams and maybe some others). We may have a tendency to confuse an individual style with a national style: "Oh, Schnittke, definitely sounds Russian because after all he _is _Russian."
> 
> My impression is that nationalism in music is on the decline. Pretty soon we'll be like a crossroads in any city in the US: A Starbuck's one on corner, McDonald's on another, and so forth.


Schnittke definitely sounds Russian. Unmistakably. Could be nothing else.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

But his name sounds german!


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## Stirling (Nov 18, 2015)

The Modern Period is almost over, was are in a new period - it turns on economics, not warfare. The most likely term is "Contemporary". The most marked is cycles, rather than compression.


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Stirling said:


> The Modern Period is almost over, was are in a new period - it turns on economics, not warfare. The most likely term is "Contemporary". The most marked is cycles, rather than compression.


Yeah, I'll concede that "modern classical music" might not have been the best way of putting it. I really just meant music being made now and relatively recently.


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## ganio (Dec 25, 2015)

Musical nationalism is mostly a 19th-century phenomenon responding to the nation-building processes and corresponding political changes of that era.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

I dont think nationalism and with it the nationalistic music will ever cease to exist, for better or worse...We can see today a new star rise on the global powers skies, Chine, she is yet to show its muscles and cultural influence...


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Flamme said:


> But his name sounds german!


His name _is_ German!

ganio: True, nationalism as a conscious force in musical culture was mostly a 19thc phenomenon. I took the OP to mean, perhaps mistakenly: Can you still tell where composers are from by how they sound?


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2016)

I really love this piece.


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

EdwardBast said:


> His name _is_ German!
> 
> ganio: True, nationalism as a conscious force in musical culture was mostly a 19thc phenomenon. I took the OP to mean, perhaps mistakenly: Can you still tell where composers are from by how they sound?


This is basically what I meant.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit (Oct 20, 2014)

I think I can often tell European composers from American composers from Asian Composers, etc.,


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Based on the works I am familiar with the answer is yes.

I listen to a lot of contemporary concert band works. Most of them are American and it seems to my ears that there is a unique American sound with many of the composers, _i. e._: Donald Grantham, Frank Ticheli, Mark Camphouse, David Gillingham and David Maslanka.


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## Dedalus (Jun 27, 2014)

Just to broaden the conversation a bit, what about conductors, orchestras, and musicians? I was just reminded of this youtube video in which Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the beginning about the symphony, but also about the orchestra he's conducting. He describes it in terms of regional "sounds" in the way that I think is similar to what I mean. Is there really such differing sounds depending on the regional makeup of the orchestra, or is he just trying to make his orchestra sound special using pretty poetic language? Here's the link:


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## ganio (Dec 25, 2015)

EdwardBast said:


> His name _is_ German!
> 
> ganio: True, nationalism as a conscious force in musical culture was mostly a 19thc phenomenon. I took the OP to mean, perhaps mistakenly: Can you still tell where composers are from by how they sound?


I see, my bad.

But how can we have a serious discussion on this subject without having identified the distinctive features of the different national styles? What exactly makes music sound French? Do transhistorical French characteristics in music exist? I mean, it's easy to say that X sounds French and Y American, but why is it so?


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

ganio said:


> I see, my bad.
> 
> But how can we have a serious discussion on this subject without having identified the distinctive features of the different national styles? What exactly makes music sound French? Do transhistorical French characteristics in music exist? I mean, it's easy to say that X sounds French and Y American, but why is it so?


It is certainly interesting to ask why it is (if it is) that there are distinctive features of national styles, and those with theoretical training might be able to come up with good answers. But the question the OP asks does not require that we do this, it only seeks to establish whether listeners in this community (think they) can sort the nation of origin of modern works by sound. The question you are interested in is a complex and worthy one but probably too big for any single thread unless one took a single country at a time(?)


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

But in general i think modern classical is pretty liberal and doesnt want to have nothing in common with ''out dated'' categories like nationalism, centrism


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Flamme said:


> But in general i think modern classical is pretty liberal and doesnt want to have nothing in common with ''out dated'' categories like nationalism, centrism


Perfectly true, but beside the point. All the OP is asking is, in my unauthorized paraphrase: Does Russian music of today and the recent past have a Russian accent? Does Finnish music [still] have a Finnish accent? Etc. Well, does it?


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