The Musical Diplomacy of Metternich

That festivities are woven into the historical image of the Austrian diplomat, foreign minister, and state chancellor Clemens von Metternich (1773–1859) is in part the byproduct of his investment in music. As an amateur performer, passionate connoisseur, attentive patron, and frequent host, Metternich cultivated an international soundworld that presented opportunities for cooperative performances. Ensemble music and collective listening provided experiences of international concert that gained significance in the context of multilateral congresses and meetings. Musical exchanges, sustained through the activity of women and professional musicians, contributed to fostering diplomatic relations and international presence. In the context of the Restoration’s competing soundworlds, Metternich deployed a patronage of Rossini’s work and Italian opera music, with increasing intensity but mixed effect. This history speaks to the function of music in the presentation of self in international encounters and the resources to be found in the plurality of roles diplomats perform.

‘The Timpani Beats Just Hit on My Heart!’ Music, Memory, and Diplomacy in the Philadelphia Orchestra's 1973 China Tour

This article examines the underexplored history of the 1973 Philadelphia Orchestra China tour and retheorizes twentieth-century musical diplomacy as a process of ritualization. As a case study, I consult bilingual archives and incorporate interviews with participants in this event, which brings together individual narratives and public opinions. By contextualizing this musical diplomacy in the Cold War détente and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, I argue for the complex set of relations mobilized by Western art music in 1973. This tour first created a sense of co-dependency between musicians and politicians. It also engaged Chinese audiences by revitalizing pre-Cultural Revolution sonic memories. Second, I argue that the significance of the 1973 Orchestra tour lies in the ritualization of Western art music as diplomatic etiquette, based on further contextualization of this event in the historical trajectory of Sino-US relations and within the entrenched Chinese ideology of liyue (ritual and music).

Sound Power: Musical Diplomacy Within the Franciscan Custody in Mandate Jerusalem

Although often underestimated or barely quoted by historical studies, music plays a crucial role in the cultural agenda of Church institutions and missionary congregations. Among the Catholic actors, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land was a central one connecting two of their main goals: evangelisation and education. These two tasks were strictly linked: music was a central element in the liturgies celebrated in the parishes and in the Holy Places and at the same time a pedagogical tool, taught in the schools ruled by the Friars. Music reveals also the complex process of encounter of Palestinian and Western patterns in modern Palestine. In this way the music sung and taught in the St Saviour also contributed to shape the soundscape of Jerusalem. The chapter discusses various sources related to Augustine Lama, at that time the director of the schola cantorum of St Saviour.

Dissonance and Diplomacy under Donald Trump

The Epilogue is dived into three categories: “US-Cuban Relations in the Trump Era,” “Play On: Musical Diplomacy Continues,” and the final “Conclusion.” In this last chapter, the author delves into the current state of US-Cuban relations. The future of US-Cuban musical exchanges is uncertain in the age of Trump. Yet, musical interaction continues to create ties between the United States and Cuba even as diplomatic and economic normalization appears to have stalled. Thus, the author states, this story is still incomplete.

Jazz as Intercultural Dialogue at the Havana Jazz Plaza Festival

Chapter Four consists of an in-depth analysis of jazz in US-Cuban musical exchange along with an ethnographic description of Havana’s International Jazz Plaza Festival. Cuba’s relationship to jazz became complicated after the revolution. Performers on the island had to carefully negotiate their desire to play jazz with the Castro government’s descriptions of jazz as imperialist music. The 2012 Havana Jazz Plaza Festival and the US musicians who played at the event are analyzed in-depth to show how participants navigated US-Cuban relations to perform in a festival that uses jazz as a form of intercultural dialogue. Arturo O’Farrill, a New York musician of Cuban heritage who was regularly featured in the jazz festival, illustrates the significance of Latin jazz in musical diplomacy and how the definition of jazz is redefined through the festival lens.

Musical diplomacy in a divided city: the Lassus-Mayrhofer manuscripts

Gifts of music manuscripts continued to serve an important diplomatic function well into the 16th century. This article investigates the production, content and function of two choirbooks prepared by the Benedictine monk Ambrosius Mayrhofer of St Emmeram in Regensburg, which mainly contain sacred music by Orlande de Lassus. They were dedicated to Abbot Jakob Köplin of St Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg (1568) and the city council of Regensburg (1567) respectively. The programmatic opening motet and accompanying illuminations of the Regensburg choirbook suggest that it functioned as a politically motivated gift that helped to ‘harmonize’ the frictions within a city divided by ancient rights and new religious allegiances: Regensburg was a free imperial city with a predominantly Protestant population and council, but also harboured an episcopal see and several nunneries and monasteries (among them St Emmeram), with the Catholic Dukes of Bavaria as close and powerful neighbours. Mayrhofer’s music manuscript projects a conciliatory message that was particularly timely in the late 1560s, when the permission of Eucharistic communion under both kinds (with consecrated bread and wine) offered a short-lived hope of religious compromise.