Lessons in Musical Geography: Imagining Eastern Europe in the United States during World War II

World War II was not only a global military conflict: it was also a globally-fought cultural war in which music played an important role in positioning friendly or enemy nations in relation each to the other. Music from Eastern Europe provided a particularly rich cultural field for the construction of cultural and national identities. Not only did American engagement with this part of the world map local immigrant geographies onto transatlantic battlefields (and vice versa); it also needed to contend with complex geopolitical situations as they unfolded between 1939 and 1945. A third dimension to this multifaceted cultural matrix was the strong presence in American concert life since the nineteenth century of performers and repertoire from Eastern Europe. Last but not least in the constellation of musicians with Eastern European ties were such second-generation Americans as Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and Yehudi Menuhin. This essay first addresses the imaginary geographies of Eastern-European folksong in American concert halls before exploring the symbolic representation of Allied nations – in particular with respect to Polish, Czech, and Russian music – during the war. A brief epilogue discusses the construction of national identity of such second-generation Americans as Aaron Copland and his contemporaries.