Antonín Dvořák
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, op. 95 ‟From the New Worldˮ

The offer arrived by telegram: Antonín Dvořák was invited to take up the post of director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York. Thanks to his success in England, the Bohemian composer was already a familiar name in American concert life. Dvořák was surprised, but also flattered, and the fee – immense by his standards – helped the father of six to make his decision. When he arrived in New York in 1892, expectations were high: “I am supposed to show them the way to the Promised Land – in short, to create a national music!” To the astonishment of some music-loving members of the white elite, Dvořák openly sympathised with the music of Native Americans and of the descendants of African slaves. He regarded African American songs in particular as the future of American music: “They are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, cheerful, merry …” A friendly music critic supplied him with a collection of Native American melodies. During a summer stay in Spillville, Iowa – a community shaped by Czech immigrants – he encountered members of the Iroquois. Even in old age, Dvořák’s son Otakar recalled the “medicine men” who lived in tents “south of the town, beyond the creek”. “My father took an interest in their songs and instruments. He received photographs of the Indians, which he counted among his most precious possessions.”

Are there concrete quotations from Native American melodies or African American spirituals in the New World Symphony? Dvořák himself insisted that everything was his own invention, though he conceded: “Well, anyone with feeling must recognise the influence of America.” Folkloristic elements include pentatonic scales (i.e. five-note scales), the flattened leading note, and the “Scotch snap”, a syncopated rhythm familiar from the dance music of European immigrants.

The sombre Adagio introduction to the first movement already features pentatonic turns. The energetic main theme of the Allegro, sounded by the horns, is marked by the distinctive syncopation of the “Scotch snap”. A theme in the flutes recalls the spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. The second movement has achieved particular popularity. Its expansive principal theme is likewise coloured by pentatonic inflections, while its melancholy character is intensified by the plaintive sound of the cor anglais. Dvořák was inspired here by a burial scene from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which tells the story of a fictional Ojibwe chief. For the Scherzo, too, Dvořák referred to Longfellow’s poem, citing “the festive scene in Hiawatha, where the Indians dance”. Triangle and timpani emphasise the slightly wild character of the Scherzo theme. In the finale, following a brief, urgent string introduction, the somewhat combative main theme appears in trumpets and horns. Yet the movement, so energetic up to that point, fades away almost unspectacularly in an ever-quietening chord for the winds.

Opinions on what is “Bohemian” and what is “North American” in this symphony diverged soon after its triumphant premiere at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1893. The famous cantilena of the slow movement, for instance – does it evoke the vast prairies of the American Midwest? Or does it express Dvořák’s profound longing for his Bohemian homeland? The critic of the New York Herald left the question open: “Dvořák’s work is American in spirit, but Czech in atmosphere. Dr. Dvořák can no more shed his nationality than a leopard can shed its spots.”