Introduction

Abstract

One cannot write the history of national identities or nationalism without referring to national symbols, fundamental elements in the historical progress of the human communities we call nations, which have also played leading roles in a good part of the political and cultural history of the modern era. Within the ample range of national symbols, songs and anthems have acquired an undeniable significance. This book brings together contributions by a variety of specialists on nationalist movements and the construction of national identities, political historians, philologists, educationalists and musicologists, in a shared reflection on the history, fundamental features, evolution, and effects in terms of national feeling of national anthems in different parts of the world, primarily in Europe and the Americas but also in Asia. We seek to bring to the discussion a very wide range of perspectives, some previously little visited, all of which converge around what one could call the cultural history of nationalisms, and take into account comparative and transnational approaches in order to reach significant conclusions.

Take national anthems, for example, sung on national holidays. No matter how banal the words and mediocre the tunes, there is in this singing an experience of simultaneity.

—Benedict Anderson (1983 [2006], 145)