Response from Joseph G. Moore on April 23, 2007

I won't comment on Vaughan Williams's music in particular, but I certainly think music that evokes and celebrates a certain nationality can accurately be described as 'nationalistic'. And I don't see that such a description is any more metaphorical than many of the other descriptions we employ with music: 'sad', 'anguished', 'triumphant', 'relaxing' and also 'spiritual'--though I won't say anything more about what might make music spiritual.

One way--though perhaps not the only way--for music to be nationalistic would be for it centrally to include certain melodic, rhythmic, harmonic or intrumental elements that are unique to a given nation. If a composer includes such elements because they will be recognized as deriving from that region, and she moreover uses them in an approving or celebratory fashion, then I think her music is nationalistic. And I don't see that describing it this way is any more metaphorical than rooting for that nation's soccer team, or pridefully ordering its beer.