Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book proposes a meta-regional approach to cultural history in an effort to avoid the parochialism of such national narratives and to find instead a richer and more compelling context for elaborating some of the themes associated with music and place. It highlights ecumenes, dense concentrations of ethnicities and their cultures that jostle together within circumscribed spaces. Transitional spaces are by definition peripheral and as such they are liable to marginalisation. The book suggests that invocations of Europe on the part of the several easts of the Black Sea region involved a step change from pre-modern cultures to the oxymoronic ‘known new’ of European modernity.