Disney! Elvis!
Starbucks! Bieber!
Kanye! Kim!
and Trump!
This isn’t product placement.
This is a list of typically American
but globally-recognised brands.
It seems America’s everywhere these days
but things weren’t always this way.
Throughout the 19th century, it was Europe that called the shots –
in art, music, politics...you name it.
But during the 20th, Europe became so not cool anymore.
American rock and American rap relegated Europe to a dustbin called the ‘Old World’.
And the New World?
Well...
that’s Disney-Elvis-Starbucks-Bieber-Kanye-Kim-and-Trump.
Antonin Dvorak was born in 1841 in the Old World:
a place called Bohemia
modern-day Czech Republic.
He’s a simple country bumpkin.
Life’s all fiddle-playing, zither-strumming, polka-dancing and church-going for family Dvorak.
But when dad forces him to become a butcher, Antonin’s outta there.
Blood, slaughter and animal guts got nothing on becoming a famous composer.
So he flees to Prague and becomes a champion of Czech music.
You think fusion food’s all the rage these days?
Try fusion MUSIC in the 1890s.
Dvorak gets famous for the way he blends the folky melodies of his native Bohemia with serious
classical music.
Ding dong!
Who's calling?
Some Yankee called Jeanette from across the Atlantic.
Jeanette Thurber’s got some crazy ideas and she’s
prepared to steal all her wealthy husband’s hard-earned money to make them happen.
Her newest obsession is to set up a music school
in Manhattan called the National Conservatory of Music of America.
And its USP?
Well, it will encourage its students to compose a new style of classical music -
an authentically American classical music, never heard before.
You see, it’s 1892 and the world hasn’t yet gone all
Disney-Elvis-Starbucks-Bieber-Kanye-Kim-and-Trump.
For Americans considering a classical music career, Europe’s the place to study.
So every American symphony composed up to that date is in a copycat European style.
But Mrs Thurber knows that America’s got youth,
vigour, and is about to lead the rapidly-changing world order.
It’s not called the New World for nothing.
And if Dvorak was able to create a typically Czech style of classical music
by looking to the folk traditions of his native land,
why can’t he come over to New York and do the same for American classical music?
Pushy Mrs Thurber offers Dvorak a 2-year post as
director of her new school on an awesome 15k salary
20 times more than what he’s earning in Prague.
Dvorak accepts, leaves behind his beloved Bohemia and settles in Manhattan.
There, he indulges in the nerdiest hobbies ever.
Like...
spending hours in Central Park talking to the pigeons.
Like...
checking out the chic ocean liners in the docks.
Like...
watching the trains roar into New York’s newly-built
stations and making sure they match the timetables.
It’s all buzz and sensation!
But work comes first and Mrs Thurber’s first juicy challenge for Dvorak is to
compose that distinctively American symphony she’s always craved.
She gets Dvorak hooked on some cool source material
like an epic poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called The Song of Hiawatha.
It’s stuffed with compelling portrayals of the wild American landscape.
It’s crammed with awesome stories about Hiawatha, the legendary Native American chieftain.
It's got Dvorak excited.
That and his new trendy New York environment:
ocean liners, trains, pigeons and all that.
And...
BOOM!
Come 1893, the symphony’s done and dusted.
Within just 3 months of arriving in America!
You see, some things are easier when you’re older:
by now Dvorak’s 52, financially-independent, already famous, and super-skilled at his craft.
Like most symphonies, Dvorak’s 9th is a large orchestral piece in four movements.
The first begins on a bit of a downer.
Melancholic, brooding…
it’s a common theme throughout the piece in fact.
It points to Dvorak’s homesickness whilst in NYC.
Turns out all those ocean liners, trains and pigeons did little to
make up for Dvorak’s longing for the world he left behind.
But with a sudden burst of horn fanfare
it’s ‘Bye-bye Bohemia, Hello America’.
The horns go up and down in arpeggios with a theme that conveys the excitement
of the New World’s undiscovered frontiers, its pioneering spirit.
There’s something distinctly un-European about all this
and it’s not just that the melody’s being played on brass and woodwinds
rather than the more conventional strings.
It’s that rustic flute solo which sounds so similar to
Dvorak’s favourite African-American spiritual:
'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.
In fact, some people thought Dvorak had taken a
bit too much inspiration from African-American spirituals
and accused him of plagiarism.
Mr D hits back:
"It is merely the SPIRIT of these melodies which I have tried to reproduce"
"I have not actually used any of them"
"It's a lie!"
Let’s take his word for it.
But for all that American spirit, the structure is bog-standard European.
As in most European symphonies, its first movement is in sonata-form -
a theme is stated, developed and transformed throughout.
The second movement has the best-known bit
once immortalised by Hovis to sell its bread.
A tender melody is played by the cor anglais.
Come again?
Why this obscure instrument?
Well, Dvorak wanted an instrument that sounds really close to the human voice here
and not just any voice but the voice of his star student:
a singer called Harry T Burleigh.
Mrs Thurber’s school was as progressive and enlightened as herself.
It admitted women, the underprivileged, and every BME and LGBTQ+ category you could think up.
Now Harry Burleigh was black, and when he sang Dvorak some African-American spirituals
not only was Burleigh looking back to his enslaved ancestors.
Dvorak too was connecting with his own past -
to a world equally distant from Manhattan.
Dvorak’s cor anglais theme is no actual Afro-American spiritual
but its simple pentatonic melody makes it sound so much like one.
And this isn’t the only American inspiration here.
Dvorak suggested that this bit of the piece was inspired by the Song of Hiawatha.
It illustrates the woodland burial scene of Minnehaha
Hiawatha’s wife
after her dramatic death in her father’s wigwam.
But how much did Dvorak really know about Native American music
as opposed to the Afro-American spirituals he’d heard from Harry Burleigh?
After all, Dvorak hadn’t even ventured inland to America’s vast and desolate prairies.
Two possibilities:
The first is that he remembered a festival in Prague 13 years previously.
It was a widely publicised event celebrating the tribal dances, songs, archery skills
and acrobatics on horseback of a group of Native Americans who visited.
Dvorak’s friend had even notated examples of the Native American music played during the event.
The second possibility is that Dvorak was inspired
during a visit with Mrs Thurber to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
It starred actual Native American performers acting out the conquest of the Wild West.
Whatever the case, Dvorak’s music screams Native America –
stray buffalo on craggy cliffs and covered wagons beside misty rivers.
In fact, exactly the same was happening in fine art.
Dvorak’s artist friends in the Hudson River School of Painters were inventing
a unique American art by showing us the epic wildness of its landscape.
But those pangs of homesickness suddenly return
and a lively Czech dance in a major key takes over.
These folky tunes hark back to a world that he couldn’t quite leave behind.
Such an experienced composer
now in his mature years
doesn’t forget his roots easily.
The third movement is again pretty traditional in structure.
Its format is what we call scherzo and trio.
Turns out that ABA doesn’t just stand for
Agnetha, Benny, Bjorn and Anni-Frid.
In the classical music world it means:
theme number A followed by a different theme number B
before going back to number A again.
In this movement theme A is the scherzo –
that means bright bouncy tunes and snappy rhythms.
Dvorak said this bit illustrates the passage in the Hiawatha poem
where a magician called Pau-Puk-Keewis dances at Hiawatha’s wedding feast.
The dancer treads softly before going into a wild frenzy
emphasised by the pounding tom-toms.
Next we get a totally different theme B.
This is the trio section.
It’s far from the wildness of the previous Native American theme.
Instead, it’s a folky Czech dance full of dainty hops and delicate trills.
Finally, just as the ABA format indicates
we return to the part A scherzo again.
The fourth movement begins with a rousing brass fanfare.
Dvorak’s heralding the dawn of the New World here.
NOT ‘Make America Great Again’
but simply
‘Make America Great’.
This movement is all about flashbacks
to all those themes previously heard.
The themes intermingle.
Some convey Dvorak’s excitement in the New World.
Others ache for a return to Dvorak’s home in the Old World.
It’s about contradiction
mixed emotions…
Near the end, brass and percussion thunder as we hear a repeating of the fourth movement’s theme
this time in an epically slowed-down minor-key version.
But this is no Czech nostalgia.
There’s a change to major key and the piece ends with an American-sounding boogie-woogie bass line.
When the New World Symphony premiered at Carnegie Hall in December 1893
the demand was so overwhelming that they had to increase seating.
Dvorak had whipped the public into a frenzy of speculation by titling the symphony:
'From the New World’.
Debates raged over whether the piece would hail a new American music.
Dvorak had explained that it was the nation’s African-American and
Native American roots that inspired the piece.
But for all its American spirit it also looks from the New World back to the Old
back to the rhythms of Dvorak’s native Bohemia
back to the musical traditions of Europe.
In this sense, perhaps the symphony is as American as they come.
Like America, it’s a melting pot of foreign inspirations,
ingredients from other worlds that come together to form a new one.
Disney-Elvis-Starbucks-Bieber-Kanye-Kim-and-Trump:
eat your heart out...