CL A SSICA L CON NECT IONS L ISTENER’S GU I DE
Dvořák’s
Discovery
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CL A SSICA L CON NECT IONS L ISTENER’S GU I DE
My first exposure to Dvořák’s New
World Symphony was in 10th grade,
when my high school orchestra played
a simplified arrangement of the finale.
Later that same year I heard the real
thing at a Boston Symphony concert.
The high school version was OK.
The real thing rocked my world. The
piece has been part of my musical life
ever since.
Sometimes Classical Connections
introduces you to important pieces
of music that you didn’t know before.
Sometimes it fills you in on the
fascinating context of a piece that
everybody thinks they know. Time for a
new look at the New World!
I bet nearly every member of the
Dayton Philharmonic has the same
story. They probably played the same
high school arrangement! The New
World Symphony is a piece we’ve all
grown up with. We all know it. We all
love it. It’s in our bones.
But we know this piece so well
that we take it for granted. We don’t
really know that much about it. We just
know the basics. Dvořák came to the
U.S. and wrote a series of “American”
pieces, including this symphony. It’s
got a beautiful slow movement with the
English horn playing the tune of “Goin’
Home”. It’s one of the most beloved
symphonies. But the true story is much
deeper and much more interesting. So
the New World Symphony is the perfect
subject for a Classical Connections
concert. It links Dvořák to Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow and Buffalo Bill,
to the skyscrapers of Manhattan and
the plains of Iowa, to the folk songs
of his Bohemian countrymen and the
spirituals of African Americans.
PROGRAM
Sunday, February 7, 2016, 3 pm
Antonín Dvoř ák (1841­–1904)
Slavonic Dance, op. 48, no. 3
Henry T. Burleigh (1866–1949)
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
William Henry Caldwell, Baritone
Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”)
Adagio—Allegro molto
Largo
Molto vivace
Allegro con fuoco
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Hiawatha, Harry, Buffalo Bill, and a
Whole New World
by Neal Gittleman
The great European empires
crumbled in the 20th century. But the
cracks were beginning to show in the
19th. Not just in politics. In music, too.
The common-practice musical
language that Europeans had shared
since the 1600s began splintering
into a rainbow of national styles. For
countries such as Hungary, Poland, and
Bohemia—whose musical traditions
had been subservient to the arbiters of
musical taste in Paris and Vienna—
musical independence came long
before their political independence.
The fall of the kings and emperors
started here in 1776, so Europeans
closely followed events on this side of
the Atlantic. As residents of the various
empires began to assert their own
national aspirations, people also became
obsessed with the exotic cultures of
foreign lands.
One of those readers was Czech
composer Antonín Dvořák.
When Dvořák came to New York in
1892, his main concern was running the
National Conservatory of Music. But
he also was excited to be in the land
of Hiawatha and eager to experience
Native American culture firsthand.
New York City had about as much
American Indian culture as Dvořák’s
native Prague. But shortly after Dvořák’s
arrival, Buffalo Bill Cody’s
Wild West show played
Madison Square Garden.
The composer was one
of the rapt thousands in
attendance. A more up-close Buffalo Bill
Native American experience came in
the summer of 1893, which Dvořák spent
with his family in the all-Czech town of
Spillville, Iowa.
Dvořák was homesick in New York.
The Spillville sojourn, an immersion in
Czech culture, was the cure. Dvořák got
further exposure to Native American
culture when the Kickapoo Medicine
These two trends came together
Show came to Spillville. This wasn’t
in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic
Buffalo Bill’s glitzy show, with Indians
poem The Song of Hiawatha, published
on display as foils for Cody and Annie
in 1855. It was quickly
Oakley. This was an all-Native American
translated into many
troupe, 800 strong, demonstrating
languages, and readers
traditional remedies, ceremonies, and
across Europe thrilled
music. Dvořák was particularly thrilled
to the wild exploits of
by the Kickapoos’ drumming and
Hiawatha and Minnehaha Henry Wadsworth
chanting.
by the mysterious shores Longfellow
of Gitche Gumee.
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When Jeanette Thurber founded
the National Conservatory in 1884, she
had two goals: to establish a Europeanstyle school that would give Americans
a solid training in classical music,
and to create musical opportunities for
talented women and African Americans.
She lured Dvořák to New York with an
extravagant salary to bring the school
credibility, fame, and first-rate artistic
leadership.
musical language—he called it “a great
and noble school of music”—from the
musical traditions of Native Americans
and African Americans.
One of those black
Conservatory students
was Harry T. Burleigh, a
young baritone from Erie,
Harry T.
Pennsylvania. Burleigh was
Burleigh
also the baritone soloist at St. George’s
Church on New York City’s Stuyvesant
Dvořák believed that young American Square, the church that Dvořák attended
musicians deserved a rigorous musical
every Sunday. Spirituals were a staple of
curriculum like those of the great
Burleigh’s St. George’s repertoire. His
conservatories of Europe. But he didn’t compositional skills weren’t advanced
want them to get a Eurocentric musical
enough to qualify for Dvořák’s class,
education. He wanted them to get an
but Dvořák encouraged
American education with European rigor. Burleigh and hired the
young musician to serve
Dvořák was dismayed by the fact
as his amanuensis and
that the Conservatory’s composition
music copyist. Burleigh,
students—and the composition faculty,
in turn, gave Dvořák an
too—all wrote music in the standard
education in African
Austro-German style. “No!” said Dvořák.
St. George’s
American spirituals.
Americans needed to write in their
Burleigh said that Dvořák’s favorites
own musical style.
were “Deep River” and “Swing Low,
Dvořák had built his own musical
Sweet Chariot”. He also introduced
language on the traditions of Bohemian Dvořák to the songs of Stephen Foster
folk music. But how to develop an
and sang the baritone solo in the Carnegie
American school of composition when
Hall premiere of Dvořák’s arrangement
American folk music traditions reflected of “The Old Folks at Home”.
white Americans’ European roots?
Combine Hiawatha, Harry Burleigh,
Dvořák thought of Hiawatha. He saw Buffalo Bill, and a homesick Antonín
the black students at the Conservatory.
Dvořák, and what do you get? The New
And he had his great idea: America
World Symphony!
should build its own non-European
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Shortly after he arrived in America,
Dvořák received a commission from
the New York Philharmonic for a new
symphony. The piece premiered on
December 16, 1893, bearing the subtitle
“From the New World”. It reflected all
the ideas and influences that had been
filling Dvořák’s imagination.
Many of the themes in the symphony
came from sketches for a never-completed
opera based on The Song of Hiawatha.
Any American can pick out “Swing
Low, Sweet Chariot” in the middle
of the first movement. The beautiful
English horn solo of the second movement sounds so much like an African
American spiritual that one of Dvořák’s
composition students, William Arms
Fisher, created the ersatz spiritual
“Goin’ Home” by setting words to the
tune. The pounding tom-toms of the
Kickapoo Medicine Show are there in
the scherzo. The finale is a musical
kaleidoscope filled with ideas informed
by Dvořák’s American experiences.
It’s as if Dvořák wanted to show his
students how their “great and noble”
music might sound.
Oh, and one more thing…The
orchestral score and instrumental
parts of the New World Symphony were
prepared by a trained stenographer
who also had impeccably precise musical
handwriting.
Harry T. Burleigh!
Symphonies
For centuries, composers have
been tempted by the siren song of the
exotic. Handel set several operas in the
Middle East. Jean-Philippe Rameau’s
1735 opera-ballet The Amorous Indies
told four love stories set in Turkey,
Peru, Persia, and the most exotic locale
imaginable—Illinois! Nineteenthcentury examples of exoticism include
The Pearl Fishers
Samson and Delilah
Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, Saint-Saëns’
Samson and Delilah, Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheherazade, and Verdi’s Aida.
Exotic settings let composers
infuse their music with the fresh (if
often inauthentic) sounds of foreign
cultures. Audiences who would never
leave their own hometown could
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experience the mysteries of far-off
lands just by going to a musical performance. Exoticism was a subtle
manifestation of the evolution of the
mainstream musical style into the
Babel of styles that exploded in the
20th century.
The exotic elements in music didn’t
just come from distant cultures. Love
of nature was one of the core values of
the Romantic movement. Romanticism
was an esthetic movement of, by, and
for city folk, who romanticized not just
nature but also people who live close
to nature: farmers, hunters, hermits,
wanderers, country folk in general. They
weren’t foreign, but they were exotic! So
Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Weber’s
opera Der Freischütz, and Brahms’
Hungarian Dances were all part of the
exoticism craze.
The New World Symphony, too.
There’s some controversy about the
meaning of Dvořák’s title. Some take
“From the New World” literally, meaning
a symphony by a Czech composer
channeling the exotic sounds of
America, with special emphasis on
Native American and African American
melodies. Writing of the New World to
the Old World. Others hear the piece as
100 percent Czech, written by a homesick
composer thinking of his homeland.
Writing of the Old World from the New
World.
Either way, the piece is exotic.
Negro spirituals and American Indian
rhythms thrilled European audiences
fascinated with all things American. But
for listeners in London, Paris, Vienna, or
Rome, even the Bohemian folk elements
in Dvořák’s music were exotic, too!
William Henry Caldwell,
baritone, choral clinician,
and guest conductor, is
currently the resident
WILLIAM HENRY
conductor of Classical
CALDWELL
Roots for the Cincinnati Symphony and
The Martin Luther King Celebration Choir
for the Cleveland Orchestras. He recently
appeared as soloist with the Bach Society
of Dayton and was featured with the
Cleveland Orchestra for the annual MLK
Celebration. A retired full professor, he
was director of Vocal and Choral Activities,
chairman for the Department of Fine and
Performing Arts, and director of the Paul
Robeson Cultural Center at Central State
University. Under his chairmanship the
Department was declared a “Center of
Excellence” by the Ohio Board of Regents.
In 1994 Mr. Caldwell and his internationally
acclaimed CSU Chorus were nominated for
a Grammy Award with Erich Kunzel and
Cincinnati Pops and later recorded Porgy
and Bess. He performed the roles of Cokey
Lou in Gershwin’s Blue Monday and Jim in
the Dayton Opera’s anniversary production
of Porgy and Bess.
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TIMELINE ~ Antonín Dvořák
1841
September 8, born in Kralupy, Bohemia to
innkeeper František Dvořák and Anna Dvořák.
1847
Begins violin and singing lessons.
1857
Enters the Prague Organ School, studying
organ, harmony, and composition.
1862
Named Principal Violist in the orchestra of the
newly opened Czech National Theatre.
1871
Leaves the Theatre Orchestra and begins
composing professionally. Writes first songs.
1877
Sends a portfolio of music to
Johannes Brahms, who recommends
Dvořák to his publisher.
1878
Composes a set of Slavonic Dances, inspired by
Brahms’s Hungarian Dances.
1883
First of several concert tours to England
establishes Dvořák’s international reputation.
1891
Invited to direct the National Conservatory of
Music in New York.
1892
Arrives in New York to begin work at the
Conservatory. Meets baritone Harry Burleigh.
1893
Composes New World Symphony.
Financial trouble at the Conservatory.
1895
Returns home to Bohemia.
1904
May 1, dies in Prague of a pulmonary embolism
after a five-week illness.
1841
Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”. Adolphe
Saxe invents the instrument that bears his name.
1847
Brontë sisters’ Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
1857
James Buchanan becomes 15th U.S. president.
Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal.
1862
Second Battle of Bull Run. Ludwig Köchel’s
catalogue gives Mozart his “K-Numbers”.
1871
Paris Commune. Great Chicago Fire.
Verdi’s Aida premieres.
1877
First Wimbledon tennis tournament.
Edison invents the phonograph.
Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah.
1878
First U.S. college newspaper: Yale Daily News.
Pro baseball’s first-ever unassisted triple play.
1883
Nietzsche channels Zarathustra. Buffalo Bill’s
first Wild West Show. Brooklyn Bridge opens.
1891
Tchaikovsky opens Carnegie Hall.
Edison patents movie camera.
1892
Toulouse-Lautrec paints At the Moulin Rouge.
First public basketball game.
1893
U.S. stock market crash. Lizzie Borden acquitted.
Katherine Lee Bates writes “America the Beautiful”.
1895
The Time Machine. Gillette invents safety razor.
1904
Peter Pan. Construction begins on Panama
Canal. Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.
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