The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History By Philip V. Bohlman

Nationalism in Europe resonates through music (from folk song to marches, from operas to anthems) giving voice in this reference resource to the makers of modern history. As the modern European nation-state emerged during the Enlightenment, music provided a fundamental language for nationalist movements. Today, music is no less a force of transformation, whether in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism or in Western European nations, whose identities are being reshaped by immigrants and refugees.
The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History surveys the intersection of music and nationalism by tracing its historical development and documenting its persistence today. Contrasting different types of music reveals how music expresses core ideas of nationalism, for example, folk music in the 19th century and popular music in the 21st.
The book also examines music-making that defies easy classification, but rather cuts across class and ideological divisions: national anthems, military music, and national folk ensembles in Eastern Europe, Music that defines ethnic and cultural groups without being explicitly nationalistic, such as klezmer and Roma (Gypsy) music, is also featured.

'The approach in this book therefore differs from many studies of nationalism because it does not regard nationalism as exceptional: It is not a question of nationalism that exists or does not exist, that one nation turns on and another off. Nationalism is not the marker of some musics while remaining entirely absent from others; it does not simply become extreme at some historical moments but recede at others.
Nationalism has many different shades, and by considering many different genres, repertories, and practices of music we attune ourselves to those shades. We experience and hear nationalism in the many musics that together give Europe a wholeness that has historically been hegemonic and fragmented, that has forged cultural cooperation and fostered competition, and that has struggled for the very unity that appears in one form on the front of its Euro banknotes, and in another form on the back.'
       Philip V. Bohlman, Professor of the Humanities and of Music and chair of Jewish studies at the University of Chicago, a member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies.