In this book, Celia Applegate asks why the 1829 performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion crystallized the hitherto inchoate notion that music was central to Germans' collective identity.
Celia Applegate is William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair of History and Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat and coeditor of Music and German National Identity.
