ELGAR AND MART&: THE CELLO WORKS AND MUSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF TWO REMARKABLE, SELF-TAUGHT, NATIONALISTIC COMPOSERS

The British Edward Elgar and Czech Bohuslav MartinB were two of the most prominent Nationalistic composers of their respective countries during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their musical patriotism incorporates the unique paths of their lives as socially isolated and self-taught composers as expressed their outstanding Nationalistic compositions produced through the period of history encompassing the two World Wars.In the first chapter of this dissertation, a brief biography of Elgar is presented and the essential aspects of his formative years influencing him to become a self-taught musician are discussed. The second chapter demonstrates Elgar's musical characteristics through the study of a selection of his masterpieces. In the third chapter, a brief biography of Martinti is presented along with a history of his musical development, characterized by his social isolation during four different periods of his life-his residences in PoliCka, Prague, Paris, and then in the United States. The fourth chapter considers MartinB's musical characteristics as revealed through the study of a selection of his greatest works. In support of this doctoral project, I performed two recitals of cello works by Elgar and Martini3 at the University of Maryland, College Park. The first recital, accompanied by Susan Slingland and Hiroko Yamazaki, included three of Martini3's works, Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano (1941); Variations on a Theme of Rossini for Cello and Piano (1 942); and Sonata No. 3 for Cello and Piano (1952). The second recital, accompanied by Wonyoung Chang and Naoko Takao, presented Martini3's Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano (1939) and Elgar's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra Op. 85 in E minor (1 919).

An Exorbitant Privilege in the First Age of International Financial Integration

The exorbitant privilege literature analyzes the positive differential returns on net foreign assets enjoyed by the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century as the issuer of the global reserve currency. In the first age of international financial integration (1870-1914), the global reserve currency of the period was the British pound sterling. Whether the United Kingdom enjoyed a similar privilege is analyzed with a new dataset, encompassing microdata on railroad and government financial securities. The use of microdata avoids the flaws that have plagued the US studies, particularly the use of incompatible aggregate variables. New measures of Britain’s net external position provide estimates on capital gains and dividend yields. As the issuer of the global reserve currency, Britain received average revenues of 13.4% of GDP from its international investment position. The country satisfied the necessary condition for the existence of an exorbitant privilege. Nonetheless, Britain’s case is slightly different from the American one. British external assets received higher returns than were paid on external liabilities for each class, but British invested mostly in securities with low profile of risk. The low return on its net external position meant that, for most of the time, Britain would not receive positive revenues from the rest of the world if it were a net debtor country, but this pattern changed after 1900. The finding supports the claim that, at least partially, exorbitant privilege is a general characteristic of the issuer of the global reserve currency and not unique to the late twentieth century US.