Argentine Art Music and the Search for National Identity Mediated through a Symbolic Native Heritage: The "tradicion gauchesca" and Felipe Boero's "El Matrero" (1929)

This article deals with Stevan Mokranjac?s fifthteen garlands (rukoveti), which are commonly regarded as the national project in Serbian art music that was accomplished through the producing of the tradition of the Serbian folk song. The garlands are examined by employing the concept of ethno-symbolism, theoretically associated with Anthony Smith. The elements of ethno-symbolism, and especially those aspects of this theory through which the articulation of a national identity activates connections with pre-modern myths, recollections and collective symbols, have proven useful in contextualization of folk material and its ethnological environment, with which the art work establishes intertextual connections. With his project Mokranjac created a rich network of ethno-symbols associated with the themes and motives of both rural and semi-urban communities that were characterized by their preservation of the model of patriarchal culture. Their strong attachment to ?ethno-history? as well as ?symbolic geography? produced various ?ethno-scapes?, which established an increasingly symbiotic context of a ?naturalized? community and ?historicized? nature and territory. Mokranjac presented them as a representative sample in the process of legitimizing national consolidation and homogenization through the folk song. These aspects are observed in both textual and musical dimensions of Mokranjac?s garlands. The connection between his fieldwork and his compositions is also problematized. Mokranjac?s garlands are distinguished by their inclusiveness and a constant blending of older and newer ethno-historical elements, with an aim of constructing a unique tradition of national song, as an integral time-and-space image of the nation. Through this dimension of collectivism we can observe Mokranjac?s close connection to the patriarchal culture, as it remained an important ethno-symbolist element in both the politics and the poetics of his artistic project. At the same time, it provided a platform for free invention when it came to the more advanced stages of composition, when the patriarchal culture would be subjected to transfiguration by his individual creative imperatives. Mokranjac?s Garlands were the first works in Serbian music to emerge as results of an aesthetically rounded and ideologically grounded compositional project, which facilitated their canonization within the framework of Serbian art music.

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Modalities of National Identity: Sibelius Builds a First Symphony

The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195341867.013.0019 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 451-483

Author(s):

James Hepokoski

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

National Identity ◽

Golden Age ◽

Art Music ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Jean Sibelius ◽

Twentieth Century Music

This article discusses Jean Sibelius, a Finn composer who emerged during the golden age of Finnish nationalist art. It first studies the gap between the elite-urban European art and Finnish-revered originary culture. Preserved literary and musical collections, the concept of strategic triangulation, and the construction of Sibelius' first symphony are discussed. The article also proposes a methodological model that is generalizable to the study of other art-music inflections of nationalism in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music.

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Like Tereshkova in the Cosmos

10.5406/illinois/9780252039539.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Tanya Merchant

Keyword(s):

National Identity ◽

Classical Music ◽

Art Music ◽

Soviet Period ◽

Historical Overview ◽

Musical Style ◽

Western Art ◽

Western Art Music ◽

Female Director ◽

Soviet Nationalism

This chapter examines how women perform post-Soviet nationalism using the canon of European classical music by focusing on a project designed to produce Uzbek Western art music, one that retains prominence in independent Uzbekistan. The project has involved getting composers engaged in the creation of a sense of Uzbek style in composition. In Uzbekistan, from remarkably early in the Soviet period, women have been important figures in the performance and promulgation of Uzbek compositions. The chapter first provides a historical overview of Western art music in Soviet Uzbekistan and compares it with Western art music in independent Uzbekistan. It then considers how women's performances support a construction of national identity that began in the Soviet era and continues today. The chapter features interviews with Dilbara Abdurahmanova, the first female director of the Alisher Navoiy State Opera, and prominent pianist and former conservatory director Ofeliya Yusupova. By far the most pervasive musical style heard in Tashkent, popular music, known as estrada, provides audiences with a glamorous construction of Uzbek femininity.

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