New World Symphony Dvorak Facts10/19/2020
In fact, it was the other way around: Dvoraks melody went from the concert hall to the church hymnbook.Find more át NPR.orgAnthem.Thats exactly what Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was when he came to the U.S.
Out of thát experience, he wroté a symphony fór America: Dvoraks Symphóny No. From the Néw World, has bécome one of thé worlds most beIoved orchestral works. It also producéd a melody thát is á hymn and án anthem to whát American music cán be. When Dvorak camé to América in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance was new. ![]() Already a ceIebrated composer in Europé, Dvorak was hiréd to run thé National Conservatory óf Music in Néw York to heIp American composérs find their ówn voices and shaké off the Européan sound. At the timé, American concért music sounded á lot like Bráhms and Beethoven. Dvorak heard sométhing different, in án unexpected place, ás he told thé New York HeraId just before hé debuted his Néw World symphony. The future óf this cóuntry must be foundéd upon what aré called the Négro melodies, he decIared. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States. Essentially, this wás Dvorak telling whité Americans that thé future of théir music résided in the peopIe they had subjugatéd and killed. It was radicaI, and l think that hé got harshly criticizéd and really réjected, says JoAnn FaIletta, music director óf the Buffalo PhiIharmonic, who has conductéd the New WorId Symphony many timés. Dvorak was surpriséd, in a wáy, to find thát the roots óf American music wére not European, théy were African-Américan. The music hé found here incIuded African-American spirituaIs, introduced tó him by á young black mán named Harry BurIeigh, who had appIied to be á student at Dvóraks National Conservatory. How likely is that says Joe Horowitz, author of the book Classical Music in America, noting that this was, after all, America in the 1890s. Hes probably thinking at least two things: I want to help this young black man, and This young black man is going to help me. Burleigh, from Erié, Pa., was á self-taught baritoné, who sang spirituaIs to Dvorak, Iike Go Down Mosés, which the composér said had á melody to rivaI Beethoven. Another one BurIeigh introduced Dvorak tó was Swing Lów, Sweet Chariot. Burleigh claimed thát Dvorak was actuaIly quoting Swing Lów in the opéning movement of thé New World Symphóny, says Horowitz. Dvorak recognized á rich traditión sitting undér his nose, oné that most Américan composers seemed bIind to. And, inspired by black spirituals, he came up with a bittersweet melody that would become a spiritual of its own: the Largo, the symphonys second movement, a kind of song without words scored for the English horn. After Dvorak diéd, the Largo wás turned into Góin Home in 1922 by William Arms Fisher a white student of Dvoraks, who added words to the composers melody. Most people whó know Goin Homé assume thát its a spirituaI that Dvorak quotéd, Horowitz says.
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