Run Time: Approx. 44 minutes

Audience members who have been with us for much of this season might recognize an ongoing discussion about the American musical sound—the Great American Symphony as keenly desired as the Great American Novel. Copland, Gershwin, Bernstein, and Russian visitors like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff; we’ve heard from them all this season. Another major player in the search for the American sound was Antonin Dvořk, a Czech composer who had made a name for himself in Europe by blending classical tradition with the folk music of his native Bohemia.

Uniquely, Dvořák was brought to the United States for the express purpose of helping to develop an American sound. Jeanette Thurber, founder of the then-prestigious National Conservatory of Music, brought him on as the school’s director. “The Americans expect great things of me,” he wrote, “and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a national music. If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people are so immense?”

Thurber, a wealthy philanthropist, had opened the school to both women and black students, nearly unheard of in 1892. Dvořák chose as his assistant Harry T. Burleigh, a talented black baritone who was known to sing in the halls of the conservatory. Burleigh introduced him to the folk music of America, especially African American Spirituals like “Deep River” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. And like many Europeans, Dvořák was enamoured with tales of Native American peoples. He had become obsessed with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem Song of Hiawatha, which follows the life of the eponymous Ojibwe hero, his battles, and his tragic love with the Dakota woman, Minnehaha.

Dvořák was convinced that the future of American music lay within these inspirations. He was partially right, of course: while Indigenous music has remained largely marginalized, Black music has dominated American culture for generations. Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, R&B, Soul, Funk, Hip Hop, Gospel—today we can thank Black Americans for nearly every popular genre.

Dvořák was heavily criticized for his assertions, but this was nothing new for him; the use of Bohemian music in “high art” was not always lauded in Europe either. But the traditions he learned in America eventually made their way into several important compositions, most prominently the New World Symphony.

Throughout the work, Dvořák refuses to couch his reliance on spirituals. The first movement in particular, boasts a theme based quite unabashedly on “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” said to be inspired by Burleigh’s rendition. It appears for the first time about four minutes into the piece as the contrasting lyrical melody first played by the solo flute. It follows the spiritual’s contour exactly, beginning with downward steps, followed by an upward arpeggio. Sung side-by-side, the comparison is undeniable.

Dvořák himself stated that the inner two movements were inspired by Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha—the second by Minnehaha’s funeral and the third by a native ritual dance. But the second movement’s famous English Horn solo that was later turned into the song “Going Home” is also Dvořák’s direct attempt at mimicking Spiritual. The simple, touching melody gets so close that many people think he stole it from an existing song.

Today, we think of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as an obvious staple of the American Orchestral oeuvre, but it wasn’t always that way. Upon the work’s premiere in 1893, audiences were wary, and many felt that his “American” inspiration didn’t count as American at all. As Joseph Horowitz wrote, “The issue of whether this music sounded ‘American’ instantly ignited fierce debate. At stake were delicate issues of national identity—in particular, whether the African-Americans and Native Americans from whose music Dvořák drew inspiration could be considered representative or emblematic ‘Americans’ in the first place. In New York, a city of immigrants, Dvořák’s method was taken to heart. In Boston…[it] was termed ‘barbaric.’”

I can’t help but notice that this debate feels familiar. The question of what it truly means to be American is on our minds today as much as it was in 1893, and is an unavoidable part of this Symphony’s history. Dvořák believed that what is unique to a place is fundamental to its identity. He saw the people and cultures intrinsic to this country in the same way he viewed his Bohemian roots—an essential part of the culture. Over the years this work has become one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire and an emblem of American music. But can we listen without considering the question of what it means to be American and who gets to claim that title?