Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Patriotic music'

The subject of this thesis is Scandinavian nationalism from the late 18th century to ca 1920. The focus lies on that particular aspect of nationalism that was at the same time the most mundane and the most enigmatic: the ever-present depicting of the nation in words, pictures and music, which in effect created a parallel universe, a patriotic dreamland. This creation was highly gendered, and the media in which it flourished most abundantly was the patriotic song. The study therefore uses song texts as its primary source material and builds upon the theoretical foundations laid by, e.g., Joan Scott and Michael Billig.

Geographically, the investigation centers on Sweden, using Norway and Swedish-speaking Finland as objects of comparison. The main producers of the lyrics and their intended target groups are identified, and an in-depth analysis of a large corpus of songs is made.

The main conclusion is that the patriotic songs, in spite of spreading to an ever increasing proportion of the population, were not an expression of the ‘voice of the people’ or even that of the bourgeoisie as a whole. The texts were chiefly written by male academics, and from their formative years during the Napoleonic wars the songs preserved an obsession with a warlike unmarried manhood. Only in the last decades of the period were civilian virtues and national womanhood slightly more emphasized. It is suggested that the songs, apart from being an expression of what Billig has termed ‘banal nationalism,’ also functioned as a bastion of a ‘banal androcentrism.’

The thesis shows that the patriotic dreamland of the patriotic songs was designed in a way that promoted the interests of its producers and reproducers. The seemingly semi-autonomous quality of the discourse is also discussed, employing meme theory as used by, e.g., Daniel Dennett.

Composer Howard Hanson played a pivotal role in both the development and promotion of American concert music in the twentieth century. Born in Wahoo, Nebraska, to Swedish immigrants, Hanson grew up surrounded by people who followed Swedish customs (including folk song and dance), yet exhibited strong feelings of American patriotism. Hanson's earliest works, left unpublished, display the influence of Swedish folk music traditions in either direct quotation or stylistic imitation.

As the winner of the first American Prix de Rome, Hanson traveled to Italy to study at the American Academy, affording him the opportunity to travel for the first time to Sweden. While in Europe Hanson wrote some of his most important compositions, including the Scandinavian-inspired First Symphony ("Nordic") and the symphonic poem North and West. The former pulls heavily from Swedish folk music, and the latter is autobiographical, representative of the composer's identity struggles as he explored the role his heritage should play in what he increasingly realized was Americanist music.

After he assumed the directorship of the Eastman School of Music, a position he held for forty years, Hanson's music lost explicit programmatic elements inspired by Scandinavia. Hanson wrote hundreds of articles and speeches about the importance of furthering American music, became a community leader in Rochester and on a national level, and transformed Eastman into a vital center for the promotion of American composers. His affinity for Swedish music continued to be an important factor in his compositional process, as evidenced by his Third Symphony and the popular comparison of his music to that of Jan Sibelius. Despite this association Hanson is remembered as a transformative figure in American music.

As a multinational state with a population that spoke eleven different languages, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was considered an anachronism during the age of heightened nationalism leading up to the First World War. This situation has made the search for a single Austro-Hungarian identity so difficult that many historians have declared it impossible. Yet the Dual Monarchy possessed one potentially unifying cultural aspect that has long been critically neglected: the extensive repertoire of marches and patriotic music performed by the military bands of the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army. This Militärmusik actively blended idioms representing the various nationalist musics from around the empire in an attempt to reflect and even celebrate its multinational makeup. Much in the same way that the Army took in recruits from all over the empire, its diverse Militärkapellmeister - many of whom were nationalists themselves - absorbed the local music of their garrison towns and incorporated it into their patriotic compositions. Though it flew in the face of the rampant ethnonationalism of the time, this Austro-Hungarian Militärmusik was an enormous popular success; Eduard Hanslick and Gustav Mahler were drawn to it, Joseph Roth and Stephan Zweig lionized it, and in 1914, hundreds of thousands of young men from every nation of the empire marched headlong to their ultimate deaths on the Eastern Front with the music of an Austro-Hungarian march in their ears. This dissertation explores how military instrumental music reflected a special kind of multinational Austro-Hungarian state identity between 1867 and 1914. In the first part of my dissertation, I examine the complex political backdrop of the era and discuss the role and demographic makeup of the k.u.k. Armee. I then go on to profile the military musicians themselves, describe the idiomatic instrumentation of the military ensembles, and analyze significant surviving works from this repertoire by Julius Fucik and Carl Michel Ziehrer. The results of this study show how Austro-Hungarian Militärmusik synthesized conceptions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism to create a unique musical identity that, to paraphrase Kaiser Franz Joseph, brought together the best elements of each nation for the benefit of all.