| Donald J. Grout and Claude V. Palisca, authors of the well-known and widely-used A History of Western Music, Fifth Edition, write that "Nationalism in nineteenth-century music was marked by an emphasis on literary and linguistic traditions, an interest in folklore, a large dose of patriotism, and a craving for independence and identity." However, the authors claim that this phenomenon of nationalism--"not really an issue" in the music of canonically sanctioned, prominent, primarily Austro-Germanic composers--was keenest amongst those threatened by and unequal to German musical dominance. In this, as in traditional music histories overall, German music alone is presented as neither affected by nor an exponent of musical nationalism.;This essay argues precisely the opposite. A deconstructive reading of relevant sections of the Grout-Palisca text identifies the concept of nationalism in music history as a historiographical "othering" device. According to the text's definitional criteria, German music, like every other nineteenth-century music, could be considered nationalistic. That it is not indicates the extent to which German musical nationalism is both grounded in and justified by the Romantic aesthetic of "absolute music." This unequivocally Germanocentric aesthetic discourse not only positions non-German music as nationalistic and, therefore, Other; it also serves as a fundamental historiographical norm for the institutionalized discipline of Western music history. |
