While their names are not frequently juxtaposed in existing scholarship, Percy Grainger and Edward MacDowell both maintained that cosmopolitanism was not merely a return to eighteenth-century idealism, but also a practical solution to mediating the anxieties of their epoch. I argue that, as members of a transatlantic network of artists, their overlapping system of referents and mutual fascination with Nordic cultures was integral to the development of mutable definitions of cosmopolitanism. At the same time, the deliberate consciousness of difference that permitted for the simultaneous expansion and contraction of identities also contributed to the rise of conflicting imperatives. In the case of Grainger, certain tensions remain unresolved, including the propensity to circulate racial hierarchies under the moniker of ‘cosmopolitanism’. Therefore, in this article, I offer a methodology for appraising the common foundations of their affiliations, advance new analytical tools for evaluating the practice of ‘cosmopolitanizing’ local sources, and problematize the purported universality of their resultant discourse. By focusing upon the particular aspect of harmonic contextuality, I find that a distinct mode of hybridity emerged as they sought to distance themselves from European artistic models while in living America – one that ironically brought properties of time and space into closer proximity. This study thereby illustrates that the consequences of their cultural dialogue led to the end of anachronisms in the service of a ‘continual and restless spirit of change’.
In the aftermath of a controversial presidential election in the United States, the Brexit decision in the United Kingdom, and the spread of political instability across Europe, the role of cosmopolitanism in global politics has faced new scrutiny. In this context, the value of international partnerships in the twenty-first century, including NATO, the European Union and even the United Nations has been contested. Ross Douthat's editorial in The New York Times, 'The Myth of Cosmopolitanism', speaks to the ambient fear that continues to afflict many countries. In it, he declares, 'From now on the great political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists. From now on the loyalties that matter will be narrowly tribal-Make America Great Again, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Englandor multicultural and cosmopolitan'. 1 The problem, he states, is that 'people who consider themselves "cosmopolitan" in today's West … are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the particular species that we call "global citizens"'. Daniel Drezner's rejoinder, 'The Truth of Cosmopolitanism' contests Douthat's assertions, claiming his observations to be a 'perfect cocktail consisting of one part insight, one part self-loathing and one part flagrant error'. 2 According to Drezner, the worthy insight is that widespread anxieties do, indeed, divide our contemporary societies. However, the error lies with the assumption that the 'nativist/ cosmopolitan' rift is the primary duality that plagues the West. A myriad of other factors, Drezner argues, are also responsible for creating socio-political fissures, including age, race and gender. But these concerns are not unique to our own time. This debate could easily have occurred a hundred years ago. In fact, it did. During a similar age of anxiety at the end of the long nineteenth century, the American critic and composer Daniel Gregory Mason (1873-1953) recorded in 1918: Whether we like it or not, we have to take our age and our country as they are; they are an age of rapidly accelerating intercommunication of all peoples and a country
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