Inauthentic Authenticity in Nationalism
The 19th century was an era of open nationalism. Driven by the nationalist, many scholars studied folk music and tried to interpret/present music works in a way that projects their own national values. In particular, they strived to claim “authenticity” or “purity” in their national music, and by claiming “authentic” or “pure” they legitimate their claims to better serve national interest. However, I shall argue here, what really matters in these claims is how people frame their words and represent their works as national. Specifically, in this paper I will focus on how German nationalism is perceived by comparing and contrasting two short excerpts, one from Richard Wagner, the other from Eduard Hanslick. I will proceed by relating some analysis based on more recent folklorists and musicologists, such as Philip Bohlman, Regina Bendix, Richard Taruskin, and Sanna Pederson, to further conceptualize the idea of nationalism inherent in German values or vice versa.
In 1821 Weber’s opera Der Freischutz achieved great success both at home and abroad. It was deemed as the first model of German national opera because of its focus on folks. However, as argued by Taruskin, the opera’s national significance was in part due to its premiere as inaugural musical offering at the newly rebuilt Nationaltheater in Berlin. Thus, it was “the role of reception, alongside or even before the composer's intentions, as a determinant of nationalist significance. It was the nation, not the composer, who made Der Freischutz a national opera” (8). The reception at Nationaltheater presupposed national character of Der Freischutz with or without the composer’s intention of associating it with German nationalism. This prior acceptance by the nation created a supportive environment for more aggressive nationalists to fill the opera with national values. Richard Wagner was among one of them.
Although inspired by Weber artistic approach to “the restoration of the primal strains of the Folk-song,” Richard Wagner did not fully praise Weber’s treatment of folk melody. In 1851 he wrote in Opera and Drama: “… with one last breath of its own sweet scent, the flower sighs to the master: ‘I die but – since thou pluck’dst me!’ – And with the bloom the master died” (52). Wagner used a metaphor, flower as authentic folk music, to criticize that Weber destroyed purity of folk music by plotting it on national stage where folk was made to entertain the mass. Although it did bring success “with the bloom,” “the master died” because he could no longer preserve the pure nature of folk melody. This paradoxical character of authentic folk music is further explained by Bohlman: "The moment folk music enters the national sphere, which it does with great frequency, it too loses the luster of authenticity... it loses its natural beauty and starts sounding all the same, while accruing the ugly messages of national ideologies." When folk music is twisted to fit for national stage and to appeal to the mass, it loses its natural form and becomes a tool that delivers national ideology. This inauthentic nature of national folk music was addressed again by Wagner:
The Folk having been robbed of its Melody, at last the Folk itself has been dragged upon the stage, ... yet this naturally could not be that Folk which had invented the tune, but the well-schooled Mass, ... It was not the Folk, that was wanted, but the Mass: i.e. the material leavings of the Folk, from which the living spirit had been sucked dry. (62-63)
As suggested by Wagner, whatever is shown on the stage as folk is just superficial thing (“material leavings”) because the true value (“the living spirit”) of the Folk is robbed away. The well-educated people make the folk music rather than the real folk.
Wagner did not completely recognize Weber’s opera as great national music partly because he wanted to promote himself as great composer who could make true “purely-human” music dramas. But this did not stop him from making nationalist claim about Weber. When comparing Weber with Rossini, he said: “Weber here was nothing other than Rossini there, excepting that this man was noble and senseful whereas that was frivolous and sensual” (53). Despite Wagner thought both Weber and Rossini did not handle folk music well enough, he favored Weber over Rossini simply because Weber was “noble and senseful” German and Rossini was “frivolous and sensual” Italian. A composer’s nationality plays an important role as a source of national pride. Here I would like to suggest that while making German nationality a significant factor of deciding good or bad, Wagner at the same time was making himself a national value.
For German nationalists in the nineteenth century, everyone seemed to have folk music but only German inherited universal values. German nationalism was inherent in the theory of absolute music. The key aesthetic theory that helped to form this theory of absolute music was Kant’s Critique of Judgment, which emphasizes the aesthetic object as “purposeless” and the subject as “disinterested.” The idea of absolute music sprouts out of the correlation of two differences, one of function, the other of nation (Pederson, 87-89). This can be shown by looking at the ways in which German music critics expressed their nationalist claims in the nineteenth century. In his The Beautiful in Music from 1854, Edward Hanslick argued that music should be about itself as a purposeless object and be treated as an end rather than a means to deliver something else. He refuted any association of music with ideas and emotional feelings. Thus national music to him was not accepted because it was a tool to deliver national ideas. He also criticized Wager for using the music as a means to deliver dramatic expression (63). Then absolute music and only German absolute music appealed to him as a true aesthetic object for its own sake as opposed to other kinds of music. Hanslick seemed to have no interest in national music, but his absolute favor on German absolute music revealed his nationalist stance:
Every musician, on hearing the first few opening bars of Beethoven’s Overture to “Leonore” or Mendelssohn’s Overture to “The Hebrides,” though he may be totally unaware of the subsequent development of the theme, must recognize at once the treasure that lies before him; whereas the music of a theme from Donizetti’s “Fausta” Overture or Verdi’s Overture to “Louisa Miller” will, without the need of further examination, convince us that the music is fit only for low music halls. (171)

Hanslick favorably equates overtures by German composers with “treasure” that demand listeners’ recognition whereas overtures by Italian composers demand no attention and are only for inferior music halls. According to Hanslick, German absolute music functions differently from that of other countries because it is capable of “organic growth” and is for its own sake. German absolute music distinguishes itself by being what it is not, not Italian virtuosic opera, not program music. If Hanslick was right about listening to the music without any association, then he would contradict himself by saying German absolute music is intrinsically better than that of other countries because he already unconsciously associated himself with his nationality.
Another German music critic Adolf Bernhard Marx also worked tirelessly to make German absolute music as the most universally valuable music among other nations’. He attacked on Italian music as being sensual, no depth, and French and English music with no independent character by borrowing from foreigners (Pederson, 92). While promoting the symphony as “exclusive property of the Germans,” he also urged the German people to listen to the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven “not only for the music itself but also for themselves as a nation” (qtd. in Pederson 96). Composer’s nationality again forms a source of national pride. As these symphonies gradually became the national property and concert-going became a norm, the symphony and concert-going then symbolize German nationalism.
From Wagner, Hanslick, and Marx, German music was being claimed as high art by categorizing other foreign music as frivolous, unsubstantial, and unworthy. Claiming authentic aesthetic value in German music as national inevitably has to undermine others as inauthentic/inferior. As stated by Bendix, "because of the insistence on national purity or authenticity inherent in the idea of a unique nation, the notion of authenticity ultimately undermines the liberating and humanitarian tendencies from which it grew," national purity/authenticity loses its very meaning once it is planted on national ideology. Authenticity is subject to people who represent it. Likewise finding national value in a music piece is subject to people who interpret it. Nationalism, too, involves too much subjectivity and tampering.

Works Cited
Eduard Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music (1854), trans. Gustav Cohen
Philip V. Bohlman, Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Regina Bendix, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
Richard Taruskin, “Nationalism.” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Richard Wagner, Opera and Drama (1851), trans. William Ashton Ellis
Sanna Pederson, “A.B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National Identity.” 19th-Century Music 18/2 (1994), 87-107.