A New World

When Dvořák accepted Thurber’s invitation to develop a national American music, he was at the height of his career. As compared to Europe, American classical music was in its infancy. Thurber saw Dvořák as the ideal person: he had the necessary experience, enjoyed an international reputation, and was interested in folk music. The Ninth Symphony ‘From the New World was Dvořák’s first work after his appointment. The première, held on 16 December 1893 in New York’s Carnegie Hall, was immediately a great success. Many people heard in the melodies the longstanding story of immigration on the American continent.

Dvořák did indeed draw inspiration from the negro spirituals of enslaved Africans and by the music of the indigenous population, such as the literary epic ‘The Song of Hiawatha’ by Longfellow. But as he himself emphasised: “It is merely the spirit of the African-American and Indian melodies which I have tried to reproduce in my new symphony. I have not actually used any of the melodies.” Elements from the musical history of European immigrants can also be heard: he subtly incorporated Bohemian, German, French and Scottish folk music into his symphony and combined elements from both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ worlds. The symphony thus does not sound entirely American, but rather ‘multinational’ – as Leonard Bernstein had dubbed the work.

Soon after his period in New York – he only spent three years there – Dvořák expressed his hope for the future of American music in an analytical article titled ‘Music in America’:

“I must give full expression to my firm conviction, and the hope that just as this nation has already surpassed so many others in marvellous inventions and feats of engineering and commerce, and has made an honourable place for itself in literature in one short century, so it must assert itself in the other arts, and especially in the art of music.”