Nationalism in Western art music: a reassessment.

Nationalism in Western art music has long been a source of intense controversy. Scholars have struggled to provide an adequate definition of the phenomenon with varying degrees of success; principally because it has always been assumed that the national in music must include purely musical elements in its definition. This assumption has led to often grossly inadequate ideas about how nationalism in music is created by a composer and perceived by a listener. A brief review and reassessment of traditional attempts to define nationalism in music may shed new light on the aesthetic realties of the national in music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]