be dismissed asmere antisocialist prejudice. Closelyrelated, the workers’choral
societies bring into sharp relief the historicalaffinities of socialism with what
this book calls cultural nationalism–thatis, the cultivation (or invention) of na-
tional traditions by diverse social groups specificallyduring periods of emer-
gence and the central role of writers,artists, and composers in inventing na-
tion-based models of community,oftenprior to national unification or
liberation.³Through the notion ofVolkssele(folk soul), Herder laid the founda-
tion for the equation of nation with folk, includinginethnicand linguistic terms.
He also established the philological practices thatmade collectingand catalog-
ing themyths, tales, legends, and songsofathus defined peopleakey compo-
nent in the narrativization ofanation’smythical past and heroic future. The
nineteenth-century workers’movement shows that oppositional cultures and so-
cial movementscould be fullycompatiblewith emerging discourses of cultural
nationalism, especiallythrough their selective appropriation of folk traditions
and bourgeois formsfor the largerproject of political emancipation. The depend-
ency of culturalnationalism ongendered constructions of national identity must
be treated as an integralpart in this complicated process; the same can be said
about the centralityofemotions in negotiating the meaning of tradition and
modernity in the making of the proletarian dream.
The musicalcontributions to the discourses of folk, nation, and class have
complicated historical assessments of the workers’ choral movement and,
more generally, working-class culture, around the following problematics:
First,nocultures areauthentic in the sense claimed by theirproponents,al-
though manyrelyonmyths ofauthenticityto assert theirlegitimacy.Second,
all cultures develop by appropriating existing traditions and conventionsand
by making them their own; this includes the moments of cultural contact and
exchangeacross national borders.Third,culturalpractices exist within hierar-
chies of power and under conditions of cultural hegemony. The resultantstrat-
egies of emulation, affirmation, denunciation, and exclusion are always socially
defined, politicallymediated, and historicallysituated.Forall these reasons,
workers’choral singingcannot be reduced to its aspirational, agitational, com-
Forstudies on culturalnationalism, seeF. M. Barnard,Herder on Nationality,Humanity,and
History(Montreal: McGills-Queen’sUniversity Press,2003), and, beyond the German context,
AnthonyD.Smith,TheCulturalFoundations of Nations:Hierarchy,Covenant, and Republic(Lon-
don:Wiley-Blackwell,2008) andJohn Hutchinson,TheDynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The
Gaelic Revivaland the Creation of the IrishNation-State(London: Routledge,1987). On the con-
nection between cultural nationalism and mass movements,see George L. Mosse,TheNational-
ization of theMasses: Political Symbolism andMass Movements in Germany fromthe Napoleonic
Wars through the Third Reich(NewYork: H.Fertig, 1975).
On Workers Singing in OneVoice 85