ABSTRACT
The art o f music, above all other arts, is the expression o f the soul o f the nation.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
From at least the end o f the eighteenth century a connection was made by theorists and composers o f classical and art musics between music and nationality. It was argued that the ‘sounds’ o f music could literally express the soul, and that the soul had a national character. This national idea o f music reached its high point during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when music became an integral part o f national movements. The work o f Grieg, for instance, was closely linked with the attempt to establish a Norwegian cultural identity as part o f the struggle for independence from Sweden. Similarly the work o f Bartok in Hungary asserted an Hungarian as opposed to an Austro/Germanic identity.
