ABSTRACT
The histories of the modern European nation-state and the emergence of modern European music run remarkably parallel courses. In this chapter we examine why and how those courses were parallel, and we turn to the multiple points of intersection at which music came to symbolize and articulate European nationalism. From the outset it is important for us to recognize that music does far more than symbolize and articulate nationalism: music actually participates in the formation of nationalism. The modern nation-state most powerfully came into being when its citizens sang together, embodying what a contemporary theorist of nationalism Benedict Anderson called unisonance (2006: 145). Furthermore, music and music-making did not simply embody one nation, or even one kind of nation in Europe; their power to mobilize nationalism was recognized throughout the continent. As Europe became a continent of nations and as European history increasingly formed around distinctively nationalist agendas, European music embarked upon new historical paths that were decidedly nationalist.
