The Bay Area's Jazz Station to the World
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Nationalism in Music

The music of Mikhail Glinka earned him credit for launching Russian nationalism. His most famous opera, A Life for the Tsar, celebrates the triumph and suffering of a patriotic peasant who protects the Russian tsar from a band of Poles.

But nationalism is full of paradoxes, musicologist Richard Taruskin says. The dances of A Life for the Tsar are kracoviaks and mazurkas -- the music of Poland, not Russia. Taruskin, author of the new Oxford History of Western Music, talks with NPR's Fred Child.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags