Anthony D. Smith and the role of art, architecture and music in the growth of modern nations: a comparative study of national parliaments and classical music in Britain and Denmark

Abstract

This essay takes its inspiration from Anthony D. Smith’s work and offers a brief com-parative analysis of national parliaments and composers in Britain andDenmark. It examines how ideas of the nation became ‘real’ in those key pub-lic institutions of the two countries, their national parliaments and through theworks of the composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Carl Nielsen. Our aim is also to advance cross-national study of national art, architecture and music(Brincker and Brincker, 2004; Brincker, 2014; Leoussi 2004, 2009) and thereby address the critique raised by, among others, Rogers Brubaker, that studies of nations and nationalism have a tendency of generating non-cumulative knowl-edge that does not move beyond the insights that one acquires from single case studies (Brubaker 2004). In response to Brubaker and building on Smith, we show,first, the role of the arts in official and popular definitions of national identity in Britain and Denmark; and second, the existence of formal patterns in European national art, architecture and music as the idea of the nation spread across Europe.