Talk:Musical nationalism

Move to "Musical nationalism"
I think that this article would make more sense under the heading "Musical nationalism", since the qualifier of "(music)" is generally only used to disambiguate pieces of music from other articles with similar or identical titles. Since this is more of a technical question than a substantive one (see the policy page on naming conventions), I'll give it a few days and if no opposition exists, I'll move it then. -- Todeswalzer | Talk 01:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes: I also think this move is a good idea.  Antandrus  (talk) 02:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. -- Todeswalzer | Talk 18:36, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

German Musical Nationalism
Perhaps someone ought to mention Wagner and Der Ring des Nibelungen, and how that was influential and contributory to the general European musical nationalist trend. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.181.239.134 (talk) 02:15, 22 October 2008 --69.121.19.29 (talk) 22:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC) Template:UnsignedIP !Autosigned by SineBot-->

Polish Musical Nationalism and others
I think it is impossible to speak of nationalism in music without referring to Chopin's Polonaises, Mazurkas and the Revolutionary etude. The same goes for Listz as far as Hungarian nationalism is concerned (hungarian rhapsodies). In the Spanish section, don't forget Manuel De Falla's Night in the garden of Spain, 7 popular spanish songs, among others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.18.170.199 (talk) 12:29, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

"German" Music?
As a Ph.D. in musicology, I find at least the opening section of this article to be deeply flawed. For one thing, it is a gross overstatement to equate "German" music with the European classical music canon. Did France and Italy not contribute substantially to the formation of the canon? Aside from this point, why are we using "Czechoslovakia" as a nation here? Only one of the composers cited was alive when the country existed. "Bohemia" or other such regional labels would be far more appropriate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.222.57.70 (talk) 14:43, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Congratulations on having received your Ph.D. Since you have the chops to do this, why not correct the article text (with appropriate sources, of course) instead of just complaining about its defects here? Plenty of people without your training feel free to do so on a daily basis, so why let them get away with making a bad job of it? Speaking as a person of Czech descent myself, I should just caution you about confusing countries with nationalities.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:43, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Guoyue in this List?
The study of "Guoyue" in China, Taiwan, Hong kong, of Singapore, is often categorized in the subject of ethnomusicology; it's a musical style deprived from the ancient traditional music with modern adjustments. Either by era or by musical instruments, it's definitely not in the musical nationalism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Percus (talk • contribs) 23:06, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Copland to America
Shouldn't Copland be part of American music? Huge influence. Justin Tokke (talk) 23:53, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Good point! Don't be shy, and wait around for someone else to add Copland—it may never get done. Please at least make a start. Other editors will be quick enough to join in if they think you've gotten something wrong!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:01, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Béla Bartók
Does anyone agree that Bartók should be included in the list as well? He didn't explicitly speak out for nationalism, and it certainly wasn't his only focus, but like the Five he was influential in using traditional indigenous music to shape the voice of his country. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.98.143.173 (talk) 01:30, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Seemingly the same would be true of Zoltán Kodály as well. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:53, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The term
Please indicate - who uses the term "Musical nationalism". On what source the current difinition is based? --A1 (talk) 18:16, 14 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Richard Taruskin's article in the NG certainly uses the term. The article is under "nationalism" (as you'd expect, it being a music encyclopedia), but the last sentence of his introduction uses exactly that term. Antandrus  (talk) 18:53, 14 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Furthermore, there are seven sources cited in this article to support the contents. Demanding a citation for the very title of the article is not the appropriate way to challenge the legitimacy of the term.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:45, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It is interesting that quite a few things in the article already had been challenged, as long ago as January 2010. These have now been removed, many more unsupported claims have been noted, and a few things referenced. Oh, yes, just for fun, I added to the "Further reading" section about fifteen new items with the expression "musical nationalism" as part of their titles. Many of these will presumably come in handy for finding verifying sources for those uncited claims.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:50, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * But whose defenition of the term is used? It is not clear but it is very important. --A1 (talk) 07:23, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed that definitions are very important. However, the place for such a definition (missing from this article) is in the body of the text, not in the first two boldfaced words. Taruskin's definition in New Grove is (not surprisingly) diffuse and exceedingly cautious, beginning with a long discussion of what "nation" means. Further, he is very clear that "musical nationalism" has been defined differently by different people, and attitudes toward it have shifted over time. The usual thing on Wikipedia is to include all reasonably current senses of a term, and then to proceed to elaborate on each of these senses (where sharp conflicts exist). This is not currently done, and urgently needs doing. Without such a definition, every name in the list requires a source specifying in so many words "this person is a musical nationalist", but even then an explanation ought to be given (if possible) of what that source believes the term to mean.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:20, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed that "musical nationalism" has been defined differently by different people. That's why if you write about "musical ideas or motifs that are identified with a specific country, region, or ethnicity..." it must be clear who defined the term in such way. Now it looks like your original research, as far as it is impossible to define, on what sources did you base. --A1 (talk) 13:15, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Er, sorry, what? I think I see what you are saying, and I hope that my change of location to your "citation needed" flag addresses this issue. Where it was (after the word "refers"), it appeared to demand a source for the idea that the term refers to anything at all. While this may be a valid criticism of many terms flung recklessly about in the field of aesthetics, I don't think we may seriously doubt that "nationalism" does actually refer to something, even if different people use it to refer to different things.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:48, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Reverting entire removal would be a good idea.
A very skilled and very knowledgeable wikipedian recently removed large portions of this article for lack of references. I am restoring those sections, but do not have time to restore all of them.

The edit in question is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Musical_nationalism&oldid=565143980

In the field of musicology, which I studied in college as a passing interest, most of the statements made in this article are not controversial. This not being my primary field or interest, and I not having much time at all to devote to wikipedia, I will not be re-editing the intro section. I am, however, restoring the UK section, as the focus of my musicology education was British Musical Nationalism. I'm pulling some books off of my bookshelf and fixing this.

One of the difficulties with musicology articles is that the online resources for music history are unfortunately scarce. So the only way you're going to get references is if some busy person with a library, like me, steps in.

I would argue for leniency in music history and musicology articles regarding references. I will continue to update and somewhat expand the UK section.

I still believe that the other removals should also be reverted.

Ollie Garkey (talk) 13:43, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Edit: I would like to add that I am extremely confused by the other wikipedian's actions. I have added references to this article. Those references are now the only references in this article. Yet, the easily referenced portions of this article which I restored were deleted. The sections of this article which were also not referenced (I.e, the rest of the article) were left alone. I hope the editor who made the recent revision will explain his action, because it truly baffles me.

Why cherry-pick un-sourced sections to remove from an article, and leave the rest of the article alone? It's very confusing. Ollie Garkey (talk) 13:57, 18 October 2013 (UTC)


 * It appears that I was the "very skilled and very knowledgeable wikipedian" (thank you for the kind words!) who deleted a number of passages that had been challenged for over a year. As I explained on my Talk page: "If I left any passages that had been flagged as needing citations for over a year, I will be happy to remove them now. That was the basis of my edit. As a rule, when I see unsourced material that needs a citation, I put a  flag on it, in order to offer the opportunity for the editor who inserted that claim to justify it with a reliable source. I only delete the material after the tag has been in place after several weeks or months. Naturally I also try to find sources that either verify or falsify the claim, but often this proves impossible." I have not examined the restorations you have made, but if any of them still lack citations, I shall remove them again forthwith. I think you may have overlooked a number of citations that were already present in the article, since you seem to believe your edit added references for the first time. There were indeed only five of them, and many more are needed. I shall also fix the nonconforming ref formats which you introduced and which, I suspect, are the reason you overlooked the inline citations already present in the article. FWIW, I too have access to a fairly useful library (about 8 million volumes held, plus online materials), and do not find that online resources for music history are at all scarce, if you know where to look for them.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:06, 18 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I can understand the consternation aroused by the (rightly) revered wikipedian's edit in this case. The inclusion of Smetana, Dvorkak and Janecek in a Czech nationalist school is hardly controversial, while I'm not quite used to thinking of Elgar and VW as belonging together in one 'UK nationalist' boat. The gutted article now seems to call for an "under construction" banner at the least. Sparafucil (talk) 19:41, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing the ref formats. I appreciate it. I haven't edited Wikipedia in a while, and I only jump in when I see something clearly wrong. I was looking for some information earlier in this article, and noticed that a lot of things had been cut. I agree with Sparafucil's suggestion that an under construction tag be added to this article. It needs a lot of work.
 * It's an awkward article. Parry should probably be in a separate Welsh nationalist section, with Elgar in an Irish section and possibly MacKenzie in a Scottish section. Ollie Garkey (talk) 20:11, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Describing this as "awkward" is putting it mildly. However, I believe that the "under construction banner is intended as a warning to other editors that someone is currently working on the article with diligence. Wikipedia's counter tells me that I have more than 2,500 articles on my Watchlist, and this alleged article (it comes closer to being a shopping list) has not up until now drawn sufficient attention to itself. I think to start with that the discussion of just what constitutes nationalism needs expansion. At present it consists of one short paragraph, but surely this is a subject that has meant different things at different times and in different places. There ought to be sources somewhere that also could provide some depth about motivations (how politicians have attempted to use music to further their aims, the psychology of patriotic fervour and its power to shape musical thinking, anti-nationalistic sentiments amidst waves of nationalism, that sort of thing). Once this groundwork is done, then the current catalogue needs to be worked into a better narrative structure that explains the relationships amongst, say, Catalan, Basque, and Spanish nationalism in music (not to mention Wales and the rest of the UK).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:47, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * As a modest example of what I mean by "depth about motivations", I have added a short paragraph on the rise of Mexican nationalism in the wake of the Revolution of 1910. This needs to be expanded to include the many other important composers who received commissions as well as other, less direct stimulation from the government programmes in the 1920s and 1930s. Also needed is a discussion of the diverse manifestations of nationalism in the works of these composers (e.g., Revueltas's motivations and stylistic preferences were very different from those of Chávez).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:37, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Citation style
I notice that, shortly after footnote citations were adde to this article, User:Daranz added a banner template questioning the clarity and/or appropriateness of the citation style used in this article. I do not find the usual explanation on this talk page, however. If this was in response to the conflict with the established parenthetical referencing style, this has now been corrected, per WP:CITEVAR. If there is some other issue, then a clarification would be welcome.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:58, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * That was the issue I found. I originally looked at converting the footnotes to endnotes myself, but found the style inconsistent, so I tagged it instead, lest I mess it up. For example, in the "Joseph Parry: Bachgen Bach o Ferthyr. Dulais Rhys." citation, Rhys is apparently the name of the author, yet in other citations the author seemed to come first. I apologize for not including this explanation with the tag. I have removed it now (as the citation style is consistent now), although User:Ollie Garkey (who added the references in the first place) may still wish to look over it.  — daranz [ t ] 17:43, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed, I see. From to form of the citation, I assumed that Parry was the author, and Dulais Rhys the publisher. Some of the other newly added items look a little iffy to me, as well (for example, I had never heard of a book on nationalism written by Ralph Vaughan Williams, though I can well imagine he may have written a short article on the subject). I shall try to check on these items, but Ollie Garkey may be able to deal with this more quickly than I can.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:52, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Russian Musical nationalists
It is ironic that this article does not yet list any Russian Musical nationalist composers - or were all 19th century Russian composers nationalists by default? (ie. had included Russian folk melodies in all their music). --BrianJ34 (talk) 09:41, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Almost a list
This article is taken up predominantly by a list of examples of musical nationalism, with very little discussion on what musical nationalism constitutes. I'm not sure of the best way to resolve this; it might be good to separate the nation-by-nation sections into a separate list article, or it might be good to rewrite those sections to be about the characteristics of musical nationalism in that place rather than just a list of examples of it. Wondering if others feel the same and have ideas about where to take this article. Someone the Person (talk) 03:56, 8 August 2020 (UTC)