ABSTRACT
One of the difficulties associated with attempts to challenge the hegemony of the nation in music historiography is the extent to which constructs of nation, national identity, and national politics have actually shaped the production and reception of Western art music. Models that acknowledge the co-existence of nationalism and cosmopolitanism are particularly useful where the Soviet Bloc is concerned. This reflects the extent to which policies of centralization and nationalization shackled the production of art music to the state. The emphasis on the nation in Soviet policy by no means involved an abandonment of the internationalism implicit in Marxist thought. On the contrary, whereas cosmopolitanism – conceived of in Soviet rhetoric as a state of circumstantial or voluntary nationlessness – was denigrated as one of the great threats to the communist project, nationalism and internationalism were presented as stages on a single continuum. The constellation of nationalism, internationalism, and cosmopolitanism played a particularly important role in the German Democratic Republic.
