Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Nationalism, 1848–1914

Pasler discusses nationalist composer Camille Saint-Saens' own appropriations of African music for his representation of a colonized Mediterranean, a cultural unit to which, as a cosmopolitan, he transiently belonged. Preston investigates the role of Italian opera as both a marker of cosmopolitan belonging and national pride at a time--from around 1870 to 1890--of postcolonial cultural anxiety in the US. Minor raises the potential danger of re-presenting composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn as cosmopolitan heroes while he questions the idea of cosmopolitanism and nationalism as mutually exclusive, and as the only two possible forces in opposition. He also draws people's attention to the more modest and nonconfrontational ambitus of musical audiences. All three of them respond to Gooley's nuanced exploration of 19th-century cosmopolitanism as a research field, one which, though devoid of a consideration of politics and power, proposes many rich angles of inquiry, informed by contemporary critical theory.