Sound Diplomacy

“This is an outstanding history of the coming together of Germans and Americans through music that adds tremendously to our knowledge of international and cross-cultural relations at a crucial moment in history: the first phase of globalization. Historians of that process have yet to examine either classical music or the emotional experiences it produced, and so Gienow-Hecht’s excellent book will be widely hailed as a major contribution.”

“Jessica Gienow-Hecht’s book is an exciting contribution to the expanding field of transnational history. She breaks new ground by placing music in the context of an intersectional and multifaceted history of American-German relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Going beyond existing histories of cultural transmission which have focused on the role of government, she stresses the critical role of informal networks and personal relationships in the development of an elective affinity between Americans, Germans, and an idealized concept of German music.”

“Gienow-Hecht has put back in motion hosts of musicians—and their admirers—who once traveled back and forth across the Atlantic in the service of musical culture. Her theoretically astute, thematically wide-ranging, and socially inclusive account of German-American relations with a symphonic soundtrack is a great read. Gienow-Hecht gives us a highly original analysis of the emotional dimensions of cultural internationalism and proves herself a discerning but sympathetic critic of the many claims people have made for the universality of music, especially the Austro-German tradition. Music may not be able to change society or to instill universal brotherhood, but its capacity to evoke an awareness of subjective states and social bonds receives its due in this wonderful book.”

“With an enthralling narrative based on prodigious research, Jessica Gienow-Hecht demonstrates how central German symphonic music became to Americans’ anxious claims to possess high culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But as she also reveals, the music welcomed as German did not particularly serve the German state. Her fascinating study leaves us with the question of what relationship a powerful culture has to cultural power.”