This is strictly a note from a mere historian. Wanting to raise a feeble
hand for Purcell, but being disallowed by the term "Victorian age"
(Beethoven?), I had the following thought, spurred by William Weber's
_Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England_ (but do not blame
him for it). To what degree is muscial "genius" a function of
nationalism? That is, had England/Britain (a problem in itself) already
experienced an era of strong nationalism/nation-building in the late-17th
and early-18th centuries, and, thus, its musical glories relate to an
earlier age than that of middle Europe? The relation of nation-building
to the rediscovery of folk culture (and, thus, of peasant melodies, etc.)
has been remarked upon by others.