Ryan Weber, "Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Music and Literature" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018)

Musicologists have long tried to understand how cosmopolitanism and nationalism affected classical music. Ryan Weber takes on this task in his book, Cosmopolitanism and Transatlantic Circles in Music and Literature (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). Using the music and ideas of Edvard Grieg, Edward MacDowell, and Percy Grainger as his lens, Weber finds unexpected connections between these two concepts, which are often presented as being at odds with one another, and in the process complicates overly simplistic analyses of the nationalism of these composers. He contextualizes his discussion further by examining the close connections between music and literature at the turn of the twentieth century, and how notions of cosmopolitanism, nationalism, universalism, and hybridity explored by writers during this period deeply influenced Grieg, MacDowell, and Grainger. While he keeps his discussion primarily focused on the past, Weber also speaks to the challenges we continue to face around these issues.

Ryan Weber is the chair of the Department of Fine Arts at Misericordia University in Pennsylvania. He specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American music with research interests in critical disability studies, transatlanticism, cosmopolitanism, and eugenics.

Kristen M. Turner, Ph.D. is a lecturer at North Carolina State University in the music department. Her work centers on American musical culture at the turn of the twentieth century and has been published in several journals and essay collections.

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