Chorus

Abstract

The chapter presents the history of one patriotic and Catholic hymn, “God Save Poland” (1816), to take a long historical view and gesture toward the real power of imagined musical solidarity. The hymn was ubiquitous in Poland in the 1980s and exemplifies the saturation of symbols at the heart of Solidarity’s nationalist enterprise, even showing this nationalism to be driven by song. A performance history of the song reveals its constant position as both a hymn of Polish Catholicism and a galvanizing refrain at the secularized scenes of popular uprisings. At times the song has challenged Catholicism as normative for Polish identity, at times confirmed it. Collective song’s communicative power is also articulated in Krzysztof Meyer’s Polish Symphony (1982). The symphony, like other art music examples across Musical Solidarities, suggests that, despite their abnegation of political entanglement, composers, too, joined in the core musical strategies of the opposition.