Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about the narratives that challenge or evade the national. It seeks to move beyond the stage of problematization to explore alternative approaches, and frameworks. The book confronts the paradigm of the nation in musicological criticism, and explores questions of trans-cultural transfers, cosmopolitanism, crossing boundaries, and shifting identities. It describes interrogates music education in the nation-state and cultural projects considered to be of national importance. The book includes critical challenges to national narratives as they feed into aesthetic criticism and music historiography. It concludes with James Andean's examination of the nationalist and political agendas that produced reductive and simplistic narratives of the postwar development of electroacoustic music in Europe and the USA.