Round Table: A ‘Musical League of Nations’? Music Institutions and the Politics of Internationalism between the Wars

This round table grew out of two gatherings in 2018–19 that endeavoured to bring musicologists into dialogue with recent revisions in the history of international relations.¹ Our specific focus was the interwar period, more often discussed in terms of nationalism – or perhaps at best transnationalism – than within the context of internationalism, a principle that lay behind the foundation of elite governmental organizations such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and others. As the historians Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin have shown, the construction of objects of global governance by these organizations ran alongside a broader sweep of non-governmental groupings that forwarded the interests of indigenous, working-class, anti-colonialist, anti-slavery and feminist causes.² What role or roles did music play in these contexts? The case studies that follow illustrate the far-reaching implications of internationalist policies for musical institutions, groups and individuals.

A few general observations might be made to frame the discussion. There are challenges of definition, and it is important to be alert to how interwar internationalism and the concept of ‘international society’ (as well as its manifestation in new intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations) are distinct in many ways from the related notions of cosmopolitanism, transnationalism and the global – a point that is discussed by a number of the contributors to this round table. It is also important to recognize the basis of internationalism in an ongoing commitment to national self-determination and national sovereignty. Equally, as is so often the case when using music as a lens through which to consider political movements, the aesthetic implications of internationalism across liberal, socialist, communist and fascist ideologies are inconsistent. It is erroneous to assume, for example, that conservative politics is by necessity linked with conservative stylistic outcomes in music, or progressive politics to progressive aesthetics. Finally, it is important to make a distinction between discursive and institutional internationalisms in music, not least because of the tensions between the political function of international music institutions, on the one hand, and claims about the apolitical nature of music (namely the idea that a shared sense of ‘feeling’ transcends political concerns), on the other.

Many of the musical institutions discussed in the round table were formed in the aftermath of the Great War to promote international musical exchange after the strictures and relative cultural isolation of the war period. The jazz pianist and composer Jean Wiéner described his thirst for ‘musical salad’, while for Ravel, openness to music from other traditions was essential for the health of national traditions. ³ This type of relationship between the international and the national was reflected at an institutional level by the close alignment between international and national musical societies. In the case of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), for example, a desire to participate on the international stage was a motivating factor for individual nations, such as Britain and France.

However, there was often a highly selective understanding of what internationalism meant during the interwar period. It was uncritically Eurocentric by our current standards, and even within a European context, there were fundamental tensions over what was meant by the idea of the ‘international’, as this round table shows. Guido Adler’s view of the natural dominance of Austro-German musical traditions was challenged by persisting wartime anti-German biases. This tension is evident in the diplomatic activities of figures like Edward Dent, Edwin Evans, Henry Prunières and others, who saw the military defeat of Germany as a cultural opportunity to redefine and challenge engrained hierarchies. The process of redefinition included not only institutional but also rhetorical shifts, such as in interwar debates about the nature and scope of ‘contemporary music’. ⁴ The increasingly important place of the USA within various institutions and repertoires was another factor in the evolving conceptualization of the international during the interwar period. These changes were manifest at the level of institutional policy, but it is important also to recognize the role of personal friendships and affinities in shaping the agenda and scope of international musical organizations; the actors involved were often interconnected through multiple musical networks, as several of the round-table contributions illustrate.

While the focus of this round table is primarily historical and scholarly, it may be relevant to mention that the discussions from which it emerged took place under the shadow of two upheavals of 2016 that were widely perceived to represent direct threats to the future of international cooperation, namely the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum and the election of Donald Trump as president of the USA. These political events loomed large over many academic gatherings in ensuing years regardless of subject area, with logistical challenges surrounding visas to attend conferences in the UK, employment implications for EU nationals working in UK Higher Educations institutions, and the future of access to EU research funding and partnerships all joining a broader sense of uncertainty and concern over the tendencies of populist movements globally. While it would be too much to claim that the following round-table contributions were devised in response to these two events, their shadow gave a new meaning and urgency to many of the themes raised in these discussions. Subsequent political upheavals, from the reassertion of Taliban rule in Afghanistan to the war in Ukraine, have only intensified that sense of history repeating itself, with many seeking refuge, and long-standing research cooperations having been interrupted, if not dismantled altogether. How best to support academics at risk remains a major concern of organizations such as the International Musicological Society (IMS) and the RMA.

Masters’s examination of the performance of international diplomacy in the General Assemblies of the ISCM; Boyd-Bennett’s spotlight on the relationship between localism and internationalism in the working-class experience through proletariat song in Italy; Guerpin’s study of the international standardization of the notion of European jazz in the interwar period; Pace’s study of fascist international cooperation in the musical sphere between Nazi Germany and Italy, Bulgaria, Japan, Romania and elsewhere; and Bowan’s revelations about the role of personal relationships in shaping transatlantic relations within the ISCM – these case studies all speak to an intensified scholarly desire to recover a more fine-grained account of the conflicted agendum at play in internationalisms historically.

The timing of the initial discussions surrounding this round table with respect to global political shifts, and its alignment with recent revisions in the field of the history of international relations, means that questions associated with the UK, EU and USA are more prominent in what follows than an engagement with parallel disciplinary concerns associated with the problematic legacy of internationalism. These disciplinary concerns include what Tamara Levitz has called the ‘nationally-oriented model of internationalism’ that shaped the origins of the discipline of musicology, and call for the interrogation of this model at a deeper structural level rather than imagining that the act of diversifying repertoire and curriculum alone will address it. ⁵ The round-table contributions use the assumptions and problems that have come to be associated with interwar internationalism – including its problematic link with colonial activities and with strategic consolidations of geopolitical power – as a starting point for their case studies; in other words, internationalism is their subject rather than their method.