Existing research on the ISCM tends to focus on the ‘centres’ in Western and Central Europe and North America. Although the membership included countries in Latin America and Asia from early on – for instance, Argentina joined in 1924, and Japan in 1935 – and eventually in Africa (South Africa, 1948), much less attention has been paid to the role the ISCM played in these regions. As this chapter argues, it is in the ‘peripheries’ that the ISCM proved particularly influential in stimulating diverse conceptions of musical modernism within specific local contexts. However, the significance of the ISCM for its far-flung members was rarely reciprocated. The ISCM’s inflexible structure and flawed conception of internationalism, founded on the unquestioned sovereignty of the nation state, perpetuated the imbalances between centre and periphery. Using quantitative data on national and regional representation at various levels, complemented by qualitative data, such as interviews with key players and archival records, I formulate a critique of the ISCM as an institution that struggled to overcome the systemic Eurocentrism of its foundation.

This chapter provides an introduction to how Vaughan Williams’s music was received in interwar continental Europe, particularly within music magazines and scholarly periodicals. It is in two sections. The first considers the different contexts in which it was heard: choral performances of the Mass and folk-song arrangements, pieces played at International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) festivals, and performances of large-scale works in ‘seasonal’ orchestral concerts and recitals. For the most part, Vaughan Williams’s music was well received, even at ISCM festivals, where he might have been overshadowed by more radical figures; and the increased number of European performances that he received during the period reflected a growing interest among leading continental performers. The chapter then examines some of the writing on Vaughan Williams by continental critics, primarily those from France and Germany. These reveal two contrasting but not necessarily mutually exclusive narratives: one in which Vaughan Williams is presented as the leader of a new English school of composition that is underpinned by the language of English folk song, and another in which Vaughan Williams is considered in a pan-European context, where the influence of French impressionism is more keenly felt. A table of selected performances is also included.