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Dvorak in America: In 1892 Anton Dvorak came to the United States to accept the post of Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Dvorak’s works were already popular in the country, and he was received with great enthusiasm and expectation. During his so called "American" period, Dvorak composed what he considered some of his greatest works. Among these, Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World") is undoubtedly the most well known and loved. Much has been said about the "American" character of "From the New World." Dvorak became interested in African American and Indian folk music during his almost three year stay in the U.S., and harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic elements of both have often been associated with Symphony No. 9. While it is true American folk forms influenced Dvorak’s compositions during his "American" period, many have mistakenly considered "From the New World" a particularly American work. Toward the end of the 19th century America could boast several excellent performing groups (the Metropolitan Opera, the Philharmonic Society, the Boston Symphony Orchestra), but American composers of importance and vitality were few. This was due in no small part to a lack of educational institutions prepared to train new generations of American musicians. Setting out to solve this deficiency, Jeanette Thurber, the founder of the National Conservatory, decided she needed to import a great European composer to direct her school. After some deliberation, she set her sights on Dvorak. Dvorak flatly refused Thurber’s first offer, cabled to him in the spring of 1891. But, by December of that year, he had changed his mind and the prospect of earning somewhere around ten times as much as what the Prague Conservatory was paying was ultimately too tempting (Stefan 185-93). American public interest in Dvorak was high, and upon his arrival in New York, he was met by a swarm of journalists. Dvorak’s stay in the U.S. was hotly anticipated. According to critic Paul Stefan, many believed at the time that "Dvorak would call forth a new American music out of the soil, that he would surely discover and develop unknown American composers; at the very least, he would himself compose great ‘American’ masterpieces" (Stefan 194). Through a music critic on the Conservatory staff, James Huneker, and one of his composition students, H.T. Burleigh, Dvorak soon developed an interest in American Negro music. Given the high hopes that Dvorak would promote a particularly American style of music, it’s not surprising that this quickly caught the attention of the newspapers. A feature article on the composer appeared in the May 21st, 1893 New York Herald. Dvorak was quoted: I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States…. [Negro melodies] are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them…. In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music…. I did not come to America to interpret Beethoven or Wagner for the public…. I came to discover what young Americans had in them and to help them to express it (Clapham 197-8). This article was received with great pleasure, especially by Thurber. In their enthusiasm, several papers ran follow-up stories. Included among these was a collection of "interviews" with prominent European musicians and critics (Bruckner, Brahms, and Rubinstein were a few) gathering their opinions on what Dvorak had said about American music. These "interviews," however, were probably completely fabricated (Stefan 201). Many were eager to promote the immediate creation of an American music, and much was said in Dvorak’s name that he may never have actually uttered. "Negro melodies" were not the only folk music to attract Dvorak’s attention during his stay in America. While he resided in Spillville, Iowa, he first heard American Indian songs. Traveling Iroquois "medicine men" were passing through, and Dvorak went to see them sing, drum, and dance. His friend and neighbor, Josef Kovarik, notated a fragment of one of the Indian melodies that Dvorak was to later use in the E flat String Quintet. Here is one of the points of interpretation that has lead many to a misunderstanding of Dvorak’s "American" music. To the ears of some, Kovarik included, that Indian fragment shows up in a recognizable form in the Quintet. It has a noticeably exotic character, and a drum-like rhythm can be discerned (Stefan 218). Others would say, however, that Dvorak so transformed that fragment during composition that, in the final result, its American Indian character is negligible (Schonzeler 157). Symphony No. 9 has been the subject of similar debate. There seems to be general agreement that a melody very reminiscent of the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" appears in the first movement (Stolba 539). The Negro character of the Symphony’s rhythmic elements and use of pentatonic scale, however, is much less certain. The "Scottish snap" rhythm that recurs throughout the work was never peculiar to black American music. Indeed, Dvorak found similar syncopation in Slavic and Hungarian music (Stefan 204). One must also be especially careful in describing Dvorak’s use of pentatonic scales as influenced by Negro music. The pentatonic scale, after all, can be found in folk music worldwide, from the far East to Europe. Besides a general eagerness for Dvorak to compose "American" music, confusion over the true character of the Symphony No. 9 arose from various other sources. Arthur Seidl, who conducted the first performance of the Symphony at the New York Philharmonic made a careless comment about the work being "a lot of Indian music" that, unfortunately, stuck. Critics inaccurately wrote about its "original American melodies" (Stefan 204). The melody of the Symphony’s Largo was later given words and transformed into the spiritual "Goin’ Home," not the other way around (text 540). Dvorak was aware his work was being misconstrued and was adamant that it be viewed correctly. Before a performance of "From the New World" in Berlin, he wrote to the conductor, "… but the nonsense--that I made use of ‘Indian’ and American motives--leave out, because it is a lie…" (Schonzeler 153). One of the fundamental misconceptions about Symphony No. 9 comes from the title Dvorak hastily gave it upon completion, "From the New World." Dvorak’s friend, Josef Kovarik, said of the matter:
Similar confusion has arisen from the nicknames others attached to works composed by Dvorak in America. The String Quartet and Quintet he wrote during the summer of his stay in Spillville, for example, came to be known as the "American" Quartet and "American" Quintet (For a time, the Quartet was referred to as the "Nigger" Quartet.) (Sconzeler 158). While Symphony No. 9 is influenced by American folk music, Dvorak inevitably translated all the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic ideas he came upon into his own Bohemian idiom. He wished to make this clear to those performing or hearing his music and is reported to have said, "Whatever I have written in America, England, or elsewhere is and always remains Bohemian music" (Schonzeler 153). "From the New World" is a musical representation of Dvorak’s experiences in America, but it is also filled with a powerful longing to return to Czechoslovakia. Within the Symphony, themes with an American coloring alternate with ideas that have an obvious Czech character. The Czech themes ultimately predominate (Stefan 211-12). The homesickness displayed in "From the New World," Dvorak felt poignantly during his entire stay in America. His friends and colleagues in New York couldn’t help noticing how, when at the dockside, his eyes followed the ocean liners out to sea (Stefan 196-7). When Dvorak traveled the country, it was Czech communities he visited and wished to be among. Spillville, Iowa, was, in fact, the oldest Czech settlement in America, a sort of little Bohemia transplanted to America (Stefan 214). While Dvorak never wrote American music, he nevertheless became an important figure in the history of the country’s music. He was among the first to realize the significance of our native forms in creating music unique to this nation. But he did not come to America to create American music; he came to teach Americans how to create it. While he developed an interest in American folk music (as he did in Scottish and Irish music while visiting England), and it influenced his composition, his work remained resolutely Bohemian. Through general misconceptions about the piece and, especially, a widespread desire at the turn of the century for the United States to rise to the musical equal of Europe, Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 has been subject to an undue amount of critical misinterpretation.
Works Cited Clapham, John. Dvorak. W.W. Norton & Co., New York:
1979.
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