Some background: In an article in The New York Herald, May 21, 1893, headlined "Real Value of Negro Melodies," Dvorak said the African American melodies he heard contained "all that is needed for a great and noble school of music." He followed his up in a couple of weeks with a letter to the editor. Details in "New Worlds of Dvořák: Searching in America for the Composer's Inner Life" by Michael Brim Beckerman, which I consulted via Google books.
Very thought-provoking is a press release (of all things!) on a 2004 music festival commemorating the 100th anniversary of Dvorak's death, by Vivé Griffith of the Public Affairs Office at the University of Texas at Austin. The festival was billed as “New Worlds: Dvorak in Search of America,” and Griffith noted, "When Antonin Dvorak came to America in 1892, he encountered a country undergoing a national identity crisis. The music he wrote while here represented multiple aspects of the country and influenced American music for decades to come."
It's an interesting take, and one that I think has a lot of merit.
"Dvorak came to New York [in 1892] as director of New York City’s National Conservatory of Music at the invitation of the conservatory’s founder, Jeannette Thurber," Griffith said in the press release. "Once here, he entered a continuing conversation about just what constituted American music in a country that was unsure of its identity." She notes:
The range and variety of American music was thrilling for Dvorak. He made a visit to Spillville, Iowa, where he observed the landscapes Longfellow had evoked being brought under cultivation. There he was excited by the Native American melodies and chants he encountered.That's also true of Dvorak. He wasn't American. But he was an astute observer, and he had a lot to say about American music. A couple of years later, he elaborated in the Herald in "Music in America," Harpers 90 (1894-95): 428-34 [No. 537]. Some excerpts follow.
He reveled as well in African American music, such as spirituals like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” the likes of which he had never heard before. In fact, Dvorak recognized in black music the future music of America, and his prediction was borne out in the ragtime, blues and jazz that would be so central to the music of the 20th century.
“In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music,” he wrote. “They are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry, gay, or what you will…. There is nothing in the whole range of composition that cannot be supplied with themes from this source.”
Taken with these influences, plus the popular music of Stephen Foster and others, Dvorak was ready to offer his take on America. His “New World Symphony,” which premiered late in 1893 at Carnegie Music Hall, was a resounding success, and it remains to this day one of the most popular symphonies ever composed on American soil.
“New World Symphony” is not American music. It is European music about America. ...
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The American voice, so far as I can judge, is a good one. When I first arrived in this country I was startled by the strength and the depth of the voices in the boys who sell papers on the street, and I am still constantly amazed at its penetrating quality. (432)
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A while ago I suggested that inspiration for truly national music might be derived from the Negro melodies or Indian chants. I was led to take this view partly by the fact that the so-called plantation songs are indeed the most striking and appealing melodies that have yet been found on this die of the water, but largely by the observation that this seems to be recognized, though often unconsciously, by most Americans. All races have their distinctively national songs, which they at once recognize as their own, even if they have never heard them before. When a Tsech [sic. Czech], a Pole, or a Magyar in this country suddenly hears one of his folk-songs or dances, no matter if it is for the first time in his life, his eye lights up at once, and his heart within him responds, and claims that music as its own. So is it with those of Teutonic or Celtic blood, or any other men, indeed, whose first lullaby mayhap was a song wrung from the heart of the people.
It is a proper question to ask, what songs, then, belong to the American and appeal more strongly to him than any others? What melody could stop him on the street if he were in a strange land and make the home feeling well up within him, no matter how hardened he might be or how wretchedly the tune were played? Their number, to be sure, seems to be limited. The most potent as well as the most beautiful among them, according to my estimation, are certain of the so-called plantation melodies and slave songs, all of which are distinguished by unusual and subtle harmonies, the like of which I have found in no other songs but those of old Scotland and Ireland. The point has been urged that many of these touching songs, like those of [Stephen] Foster, [433] have not been composed by the Negroes themselves, but are the work of white men, while others did not originate on the plantation, but were imported from Africa. It seems to me that this matters but little. One might as well condemn the Hungarian Rhapsody because [Austro-Hungarian composer Franz] Liszt could not speak Hungarian. The important thing is that the inspiration for such music should come from the right source, and that the music itself should be a true expression of the people's real feelings. To read the right meaning the composer need not necessarily be of the same blood, though that, of course, makes it easier for him. [Franz] Schubert was a thorough German, but when he wrote Hungarian music, as in the second movement of the C-Major Symphony, or in some of his piano pieces, like the Hungarian Divertissement, he struck the true Magyar note, to which all Magyar hearts, and with them our own, most forever respond. This is not a tour de force, but only an instance of how much can be comprehended by a sympathetic genius. The white composers who wrote the touching Negro songs which dimmed [English author William Makepeace] Thackeray's spectacles so that he exclaimed, "Behold, a vagabond with a corked face and a banjo sings a little song, strikes a wild note, which sets the whole heart thrilling with happy pity!" had a similarly sympathetic comprehension of the deep pathos of slave life. If, as I have been informed they were, these songs were adopted by the Negroes on the plantations, they thus became true Negro songs. Whether the original songs which must have inspired the composers came from Africa or originated on the plantations matters as little as whether Shakespeare invented his own plots or borrowed them from others. The thing to rejoice over is that such lovely songs exist and are sung at the present day. I, for one, am delighted by them. Just so it matters little it matters little whether the inspiration for the coming folk songs of America is derived from the Negro melodies, the songs of the [C]reoles, the red man's chant,or the plaintive ditties of the homesick German or Norwegian. Undoubtedly the germs for the best of music lie hidden among all the races that are commingled in this great country. ... (432-33)
It is a proper question to ask, what songs, then, belong to the American and appeal more strongly to him than any others? What melody could stop him on the street if he were in a strange land and make the home feeling well up within him, no matter how hardened he might be or how wretchedly the tune were played? Their number, to be sure, seems to be limited. The most potent as well as the most beautiful among them, according to my estimation, are certain of the so-called plantation melodies and slave songs, all of which are distinguished by unusual and subtle harmonies, the like of which I have found in no other songs but those of old Scotland and Ireland. The point has been urged that many of these touching songs, like those of [Stephen] Foster, [433] have not been composed by the Negroes themselves, but are the work of white men, while others did not originate on the plantation, but were imported from Africa. It seems to me that this matters but little. One might as well condemn the Hungarian Rhapsody because [Austro-Hungarian composer Franz] Liszt could not speak Hungarian. The important thing is that the inspiration for such music should come from the right source, and that the music itself should be a true expression of the people's real feelings. To read the right meaning the composer need not necessarily be of the same blood, though that, of course, makes it easier for him. [Franz] Schubert was a thorough German, but when he wrote Hungarian music, as in the second movement of the C-Major Symphony, or in some of his piano pieces, like the Hungarian Divertissement, he struck the true Magyar note, to which all Magyar hearts, and with them our own, most forever respond. This is not a tour de force, but only an instance of how much can be comprehended by a sympathetic genius. The white composers who wrote the touching Negro songs which dimmed [English author William Makepeace] Thackeray's spectacles so that he exclaimed, "Behold, a vagabond with a corked face and a banjo sings a little song, strikes a wild note, which sets the whole heart thrilling with happy pity!" had a similarly sympathetic comprehension of the deep pathos of slave life. If, as I have been informed they were, these songs were adopted by the Negroes on the plantations, they thus became true Negro songs. Whether the original songs which must have inspired the composers came from Africa or originated on the plantations matters as little as whether Shakespeare invented his own plots or borrowed them from others. The thing to rejoice over is that such lovely songs exist and are sung at the present day. I, for one, am delighted by them. Just so it matters little it matters little whether the inspiration for the coming folk songs of America is derived from the Negro melodies, the songs of the [C]reoles, the red man's chant,or the plaintive ditties of the homesick German or Norwegian. Undoubtedly the germs for the best of music lie hidden among all the races that are commingled in this great country. ... (432-33)
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Not so many years ago Slavic music was not known to the men of other races. A few men like Chopin, Glinka, Moniuszko, Smetana, Rubinstein, and Tscaikowski, with a few others, were able to create a Slavic school of music. Chopin alone caused the music of Poland to be known and prized by all lovers of music. Smetana did the same for us Bohemians. Such national music, I repeat, is not created out of nothing. It is discovered and clothed in new beauty, just as the myths and the legends of a people are brought to light and crystalized in undying verse by the master poets. All that is needed is a delicate ear, a retentive memory, and the power to weld the fragments of former ages together in one harmonious whole. Only the other day I read in a newspaper that Brahms himself admitted that he had taken existing folk-songs for the themes of his new book of songs, and had arranged them for piano music. I have not heard nor seen the songs, and do not know if this be so; but if it were, it would in no wise reflect discredit upon the composer. ... (433)
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An American reporter once told me that the most valuable talent a journalist could possess was a "nose for news." Just so the musician must prick his ear for music. Nothing must be too low or too insignificant for the musician. When he walks he should listen to every whistling boy, every street singer or blind organ-grinder. I myself am so often fascinated by these people that I can scarcely tear myself away, for every now and then I catch a strain or hear the fragments of a recurring melodic theme that sound like [434] the voice of the people. These things are worth preserving, and no one should be above making a lavish use of all such suggestions. It is a sign of barrenness, indeed, when such characteristic bits of music exist and are not heeded by the learned musicians of the age.
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