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Celticism And American Musical Nationalism, 1889-1904, Daniel Weaver

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, American composers turned with increasing frequency to Irish and Scottish sources of inspiration, a trend that manifested not only in songs but also in large-scale instrumental works such as sonatas and symphonies. Though many of these works have been discussed individually, this Celtic turn has yet to be investigated as a response to questions about national musical identity, an issue that had come to dominate musical discourse in America by the end of the century—particularly in the wake of Czech composer Antonin Dvořák’s challenge to American composers in 1893 to forge a …