Conference Agenda

At the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and again at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, Russian athletes taking home Olympic gold heard Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 23 in place of their national anthem. The prohibition of Russia’s anthem, along with the nation’s flag and other symbols at international sporting events, was the result of an investigation into its state-sponsored doping program. Although the ban was heavily debated on social media outlets during the Games, the choice of Tchaikovsky’s beloved concerto was widely accepted as a musical symbol of the Russian state.

The “Russianness” of Tchaikovsky’s concerto, however, is capacious and complex. This paper examines the Russian state’s appropriation of Tchaikovsky’s concerto not only as a nationalist musical motif, but as an irredentist anthem reflecting President Vladimir Putin’s intention to restore Russia’s “historic frontiers.” In addition to analyzing how the work was deployed before, during, and after the 2020 and 2022 Games, I explore the composition’s appearance in contemporary Russian internet culture, including a viral mashup of the concerto with Queen’s anthem “We Will Rock You” and a live performance inspired by the mashup featuring pianist Denis Matsuev and conductor Yuri Bashmet at a homecoming event for Russian athletes in Moscow’s Red Square. Tchaikovsky has emerged as a lightning rod for post-Soviet identity and politics in the wake of Russian’s invasion of Ukraine. Arguing that these examples offer musical evidence for the political rhetoric that insists Ukraine is rightfully a part of Russia, this article illustrates the ways that musical nationalism has proven malleable and been (mis)used in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Although largely unknown, Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) was a prolific German romantic composer. Boasting a portfolio of over seven symphonies, fifteen concert overtures, and numerous chamber works, her musical ouevre situates her in the larger framework of the cultural artistic movement of German Romanticism. She was a key figure in the concert culture of Berlin, worked with other prominent musicians to develop a more educated and engaged audience, and received popularity and praise in reviews focusing on her symphonic prowess despite the limitations imposed upon her sex. While recent performances have engaged in reviving Mayer’s music, almost no scholarship exists that takes into account her musical, societal, and political contributions.

In this paper, I will explore Mayer’s agency and unique engagement with nationalism within a genre coded as ‘male’ and how she situated herself among the German Romantic movement. I will examine historical reviews of Mayer’s work, demonstrating her prescience in self-advocacy; her letters and correspondences with Franz Liszt, Felix Mendelssohn, and A. B. Marx; and secondary scholarship on international nationalism relating to Mayer’s contemporaries, which will be used to extrapolate her own influence on the cultural landscape. I will also use the few contemporary articles and single biography about Mayer to further a more nuanced narrative concerning Mayer’s influence within her musical community and her now-forgotten contributions to the symphonic genre. This paper will provide a foundation for additional feminist scholarship examining Mayer as a significant voice in the German Romantic movement and highlighting the vast yet underrecognized accomplishments of female composers.

Ceremonial spectacles, such as the Olympic Games, are potent arenas of national cultural production (e.g. Hogan 2003, D’Agati 2011, Silk 2018). As North Americans wrestle with the implications of a colonial history, it is important to understand how these spectacles rehearse Eurocentric ideals. In response to the work of Dylan Robinson (2020), Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2021) and others, I undertake this study as part of settler responsibility within the co-intentional (Huygens 2011) work of anti-colonialism between settlers and Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island and further afield. Following Mackey’s (1999) observations of other Canadian cultural sites, I examine the tendency within constructions of nationalism at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics to clothe representations of Canadian national identity in the language of multiculturalism and tolerance while ultimately enforcing a settler standard which results in exclusion.

In this presentation, I discuss two scenes from the Vancouver 2010 Opening Ceremony which represent different musical approaches to diversity. While national spectacles such as the Olympics tend to distract observers from the reality of social injustices (MacAloon 1984), using a multimodal methodology (Machin 2010), I argue that the disjuncture (Goodwin 1992) between the multimodal elements (music, visuals, and text) in these scenes reveals an underlying settler colonial mindset (Wolfe 2006, Veracini 2010).

In the first scene, the music is intentionally included for the Western/Eurocentric value it communicates. However, when read in concert with the ballet gestures and artistic projections also employed in the scene, I assert that it curates a narrative that contributes to Indigenous erasure. In contrast, the second scene features a variety of musical selections which attempt to show one aspect of the diversity of music in Canada, yet I argue that this diversity is subverted by the visual associations that are made in the costume design and choreography.

Through my close examination of the multimodal content, I conclude that both of these examples reveal the workings of the colonial matrix of power (or CMP, Mignolo 2020) within Canadian national identity construction. As my examples demonstrate, understanding the role music plays in the operation of the CMP is a continuing step towards a decolonized future.