Dvořák: Symphony no. 9

by Chris Vaneman

Composer Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)

So, here’s a discussion question for you: what, exactly, is “American music?”

Is it music that was first performed in America? Music written by an American? Music written or performed in a specifically “American” tradition? And, given that all those “American” traditions – from Appalachian folk ballads to jazz to rock to hip-hop – are all actually mash-ups of traditions imported from places like Europe and Africa, how do you put your finger on when a tradition stops being European and starts being American?

I ask because the Ninth and last symphony by the great Czech master, Antonin Dvořák, could by certain definitions claim to be the first great American piece of classical music.

From 1892 to 1895, Dvořák lived in New York City and spent his summers at a Czech immigrant community in rural Iowa. During that time, he was the first Director of the now-defunct National Conservatory of Music, and during that time, he wrote an article for Harper’s magazine which would come to loom large in American musical history. In it, Dvořák declared that, while Americans had “worked wonders in most fields of endeavor,” in music they were sadly backward, content to produce poor imitations of European music. The way to greatness, Dvořák asserted, lay in the development of a national style of composition based as much on America’s muscular folk and popular traditions as on the European classics. By way of illustrating his point, Dvořák composed the most popular and perhaps greatest of his symphonies.

And despite his thoroughly European heritage, Dvořák was in a perfect position to make the point. He is generally (and rightly) thought of nowadays as an exemplar of nationalism in music, evoking and celebrating the culture and community of a people outside the Austro-German tradition of Mozart and Beethoven. In the waning years of the 19th Century the Czech people, long subject to the rule of the Austrian empire, were working to throw off the yoke of Vienna; Dvořák’s music suppled them with turns of melody, harmony, and form that were recognizably Czech.

But Dvořák can also be taken to represent another ideal, one perhaps more prevalent in America than in Europe: the rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps ethic seen of the Horatio Alger stories. The son of a small-town butcher, Dvořák originally planned on following his father’s trade, but a benevolent uncle recognized the boy’s musical gifts and sent him to Prague to study. Upon leaving school Dvořák supported himself as a violist for more than a decade, composing in his spare time as a sort of hobby. He was in his thirties before Brahms, a jury member for two composition contests Dvořák entered, recognized his genius and presented a portfolio of Dvořák’s works to his publisher. Within a few years, such works as the 1878 Slavonic Rhapsodies had made him famous across Europe. When he arrived in America in 1892, less than two decades after supporting himself as a violist in a theater orchestra, Dvořák had been awarded an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University and was among the best-known musicians in America the second he set foot here.

Like Beethoven and Schubert – who, like Music Director John Young Shik Concklin, both played viola as well – Dvořák completed nine symphonies. The Ninth, which the composer subtitled “From the New World,” is the best-loved, in part at least because it is filled with melodic gestures inspired by American folk melodies. The National Conservatory which Dvořák directed offered admission to both women and African-Americans (shockingly progressive for the time!), and there Dvořák became friendly with the Black vocalist Harry Burleigh. The two spent many an hour together, Burleigh sharing spirituals, plantation songs, and Stephen Foster tunes with the enthralled composer. Burleigh’s songs bore greatest influence on the Symphony’s Largo, especially its touching primary tune. Stated first by the English horn, whose reedy tone color evokes Burleigh’s voice, the melody is so similar to a spiritual that it later became one – the words “Goin’ Home” were set to it a few years later.

The Ninth was premiered by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Anton Seidl, and was, to put it mildly, a success. After the Largo the packed house was unable to restrain itself and burst into applause. Seidl, reported the New York Herald, gestured to a man in one of the boxes:

… With hands trembling with emotion Dr. Dvořák waves an acknowledgment of his indebtedness to Mr. Seidl, to the orchestra, and to the audience, and then disappears into the background while the remainder of the work goes on… At its close the composer was loudly called for. Again and again, he bowed his acknowledgments, and again and again the applause burst forth.

Even after he left his box and was walking about in the corridor the applause continued. And finally, he returned to the gallery railing, and then what a reception he received! The musicians, led by Mr. Seidl, applauded until the place rang again.