Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World”
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)

[1893]

Antonín Dvořák came from a small Bohemian village, where his zither-playing father was the local butcher and innkeeper. He might have spent his whole life scraping by as a freelance musician in Prague had it not been for the intervention of a most influential champion, Johannes Brahms, who encountered Dvořák’s music while judging a competition. On Brahms’ recommendation, the publisher Simrock commissioned Dvořák in 1878, and the resulting Slavonic Dances catapulted the Czech composer onto the international stage.

Even after three decades of writing symphonies and chamber music scores that proved him to be a worthy heir to Beethoven and Brahms, Antonín Dvořák was thought of, for better or worse, as a Czech composer. That reputation paid off when a wealthy patron who was setting up a conservatory in New York recruited Dvořák to come direct the school and teach its composition students. Just as he had defined a Czech style for the world, he was tasked with leading American composers toward their own national sound.

Dvořák homed in on two essential sources: the musical traditions of Black Americans and Indigenous Americans. His understanding of Indian culture was indirect, gleaned from Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855) and from melodies that appeared in heavily edited songbooks. Dvořák did have the benefit of direct contact with Black music through one of his students at the conservatory, Harry Burleigh, a singer and composer who had learned spirituals from his formerly enslaved grandfather.

Going beyond just teaching others, Dvořák incorporated American sounds into his own works from that period, including the symphony that he composed in New York for a debut at Carnegie Hall, subtitled “From the New World.” In the symphony’s first movement, a leaping motive sounded by the horns at the start of the Allegro molto section becomes a building block for adventurous exploration. A secondary theme set in a major key, first heard in the flute, introduces a pastoral contrast.

The “New World” influences become more salient starting in the Largo second movement. Drawing on the melodies he learned from Burleigh, Dvořák crafted an original theme first presented as a solo for English horn. Later, with the addition of lyrics by William Arms Fisher, this melody became “Goin’ Home,” and the fact that it is frequently mistaken for an authentic spiritual proves how well Dvořák synthesized his source material.

The third movement fulfills the traditional function of a symphonic scherzo in the mold of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, while also tying the work together with quotations from the two preceding movements. According to Dvořák, a wedding scene from The Song of Hiawatha served as inspiration for this festive music.

The finale, like the opening movement, blends European-leaning themes and techniques with glints of folk material, including flashbacks to some of the symphony’s earlier highlights. As the Czech composer duly acknowledged, “I should never have written the symphony ‘just so’ if I hadn’t seen America.”

Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, strings