From harmony of the spheres to national anthem: Reflections on musical heritage

Abstract

Western classical music was long distinctive among the arts for its universality and catholicity. From Greek antiquity on, music uniquely reflected Orphic, mystic, celestial feeling, And unlike painting, architecture, or literature, the standard musical canon came to be breathtakingly inclusive over time as well as space. Yet in recent centuries music has increasingly celebrated national patriotism and period particularism. This essay traces the histories of these antithetical expressive urges, the one universalistic, transcendental, atemporal, the other chauvinist, parochial, historicist.

Reading and Mapping the Worldviews of Island States through National Anthems: Celebrating Deity, Identity, Landscapes and Unity

“…The contributors to these foci are cultural, social and political geographers, but also scholars in music sociology, politics and culture examining the anthem history in a specific country or in a broader regional context. Examples of music/geography studies in broad contexts include: heritage (Lowenthal 2006;Rice 1994;Waterman 2019); culture and popular culture (Buchanan 1995;ed Norris 1989;Smith 1997); peace education initiatives (Hummel 2017;Odunuga 2013;Rippen 2005); teaching (Risinger 2013), state iconographies (Cerulo 1989(Cerulo , 1993Kyridis et al 2009); nation building, identity and unity (Connell & Gibson 2004;de Souza 2008;Erden 2019;Frolova-Walker 1998;Kong 1995aKong , c, 2006Mu 1994;Scruggs 1999;Thirumalai 2007;Zikmund II 1969); sports and anthems (Slater et al 2018); and musical instruments (Neustadt 2007).…”

Geography and film music: Musicology, gender, and the spatiality of instrumental music

“…As such, this paper builds on those few geographical works that have sought to engage, in detail, with non‐lyrical musical elements and their production of geographical meaning (e.g., Jazeel, 2005; Lowenthal, 2006; Revill, 1995; Smith, 2000; Wood, 2012). Specifically, it is interested in those accounts that have stressed the importance of cross‐disciplinary engagement with musicology (e.g., Jazeel, 2005; Wood, 2012).…”

Musical Geopolitics: Masculinity, Nationhood, and the Scoring of Superman (1978–2006)

“…First, regional accounts, prominent in North American cultural geography, have traced the geographical diffusion of musical styles and of the music industry (Carney 1994;Florida and Jackson 2010;Nash and Carney 1996;Sadler 1997). Second, 'representational' accounts have sought to deconstruct the geographical meaning of music (Bennett 2000;Connell and Gibson 2003;Revill 2000;Smith 1994Smith , 1997Tweed and Watson 2019), primarily focusing on lyrical music with exceptions (Jazeel 2005;Knight 2006;Leyshon, Matless, and Revill 1995;Lowenthal 2006;Smith 2000). Third, 'nonrepresentational' accounts have jettisoned the representationalist notion that music itself possesses extra-musical meaning (Anderson, Morton, and Revill 2005), focusing instead on the practice and performance of music (Kruse 2019;Wood 2012;Woods 2019).…”