美国国家公共电台 NPR How The 'New World' Symphony Introduced American Music To Itself

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to recognize what's remarkable¹ about a culture. That's what the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak did when he came to the U.S. at the end of the 19th century. He was an immigrant thrown into a new world and new sounds. And out of that experience, he wrote a symphony for America.

(SOUNDBITE OF PERFORMANCE OF ANTONI DVORAK'S "SYMPHONY NO. 9")

SIMON: Dvorak's "New World Symphony" has become one of the most beloved orchestral works in the world. It also produced a melody that's a hymn² and an anthem³ to what American music could be. NPR's Tom Huizenga has the story for our series American Anthem.

TOM HUIZENGA, BYLINE⁴: When Antoni Dvorak came to the U.S. in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance was new - so was Carnegie Hall, the game of basketball and Edison's wax cylinders⁵.

(SOUNDBITE OF ISSLER'S ORCHESTRA'S "FIFTH REGIMENT⁶ MARCH")

HUIZENGA: Classical music in America wasn't new, but it needed a reboot. And Dvorak was the man to do it. Already a celebrated⁷ composer in Europe, Dvorak was hired to run a national conservatory⁸ in New York to help American composers find their own voice and shake off the European sound. At the time, American concert music sounded an awful lot like Brahms and Beethoven. Dvorak heard something different in an unexpected place, as he told the New York Herald⁹ just before he debuted¹⁰ his "New World Symphony."

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Reading) The future of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.

HUIZENGA: The Negro melodies - that's a reading of Dvorak telling white Americans the future of their music resides in the people they subjugated¹¹ and killed.

JOANN FALLETTA: It was radical¹². And I think that he got harshly criticized and really rejected.

HUIZENGA: JoAnn Falletta is the music director of the Buffalo¹³ Philharmonic. She's conducted Dvorak's "New World Symphony" many times.

FALLETTA: Dvorak was surprised, in a way, to find that the roots of American music were not European. They were African-American...

HUIZENGA: ...Including spirituals.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT")

FISK JUBILEE¹⁴ SINGERS: (Singing) Swing low, sweet chariot - coming forth¹⁵ to carry me home.

HUIZENGA: Dvorak may have even heard the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who were popular at the time. But Joe Horowitz, author of the book "Classical Music In America," says Dvorak's real connection to African-American spirituals was a young, black man named Harry¹⁶ Burleigh. He'd applied¹⁷ to be a student at Dvorak's National Conservatory.

JOE HOROWITZ: Dvorak chose a black person to be his assistant. How likely is that?

HUIZENGA: Remember, this is America in the 1890s.

HOROWITZ: So put yourself in Dvorak's head. He's probably thinking at least two things. I want to help this young, black man. And this young, black man is going to help me.

HUIZENGA: Harry Burleigh was a self-taught baritone.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GO DOWN MOSES")

HARRY BURLEIGH: (Singing) Thus said the Lord, bold Moses said, let my people go.

HUIZENGA: Burleigh sang spirituals to Dvorak, like "Go Down Moses," which the composer said had a melody to rival Beethoven. Horowitz says Burleigh also sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" to Dvorak.

HOROWITZ: And Burleigh claimed that Dvorak was actually quoting "Swing Low..."

BURLEIGH: ...In the opening movement of the "New World Symphony," says Horowitz, who's at the piano to demonstrate - first the melody of "Swing Low."

HOROWITZ: (Playing piano).

BURLEIGH: Now listen to how Dvorak's melody flows out of that.

HOROWITZ: (Playing piano).

(SOUNDBITE OF PERFORMANCE OF ANTONI DVORAK'S "SYMPHONY NO. 9")

HUIZENGA: Dvorak, the outsider immigrant, could see something American composers were blind to. There was a rich tradition to draw on right in front of their noses. And Dvorak showed them how to do it. He wove American roots music into his vast symphonic canvas. And, inspired by black spirituals, he came up with a melody that would become a spiritual on its own - the largo¹⁸, the symphony's second movement.

(SOUNDBITE OF PERFORMANCE OF ANTONIN DVORAK'S "SYMPHONY NO. 9")

HOROWITZ: After Dvorak died, it was turned into "Goin' Home" by William Arms Fisher. And most people who know "Goin' Home" assume that it's a spiritual that Dvorak quoted.

HUIZENGA: But it wasn't. Joe Horowitz says William Arms Fisher was a white student of Dvorak who added words to the composer's melody, which went from the concert hall to church hymn books.

KEVIN DEAS: My family all thought it was a spiritual.

HUIZENGA: Bass¹⁹ baritone Kevin Deas first heard "Goin' Home" as a kid when he didn't realize the music was by Dvorak.

DEAS: We had "Goin' Home" in our hymnals that I grew up singing. And so I was familiar with the melody. But there was just this instant sense of I could identify with this music.

HUIZENGA: So Deas recorded it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOIN' HOME")

DEAS: (Singing) Mother's there expecting me. Father's waiting, too.

It has that sense of longing²⁰. And so much of the African-American spiritual tradition comes with this idea that heaven or home is a beautiful place to go to.

HUIZENGA: Dvorak's largo became not just an anthem for the weary but also a hymn for those who've died. It was performed at memorial events for Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Gerald Ford²¹. Spirituals - they inspired Dvorak. And in turn, he created one that inspired black composers and musicians, including pianist Art Tatum, who made the largo swing back in 1949.

(SOUNDBITE OF ART TATUM'S "GOIN' HOME")

HUIZENGA: Dvorak had a dream that American composers would follow his example, cultivate their own musical soil to grow distinctly American anthems²² of their own.

HOROWITZ: We blew it.

HUIZENGA: Author Joe Horowitz.

HOROWITZ: We never fulfilled Dvorak's prophecy. We squandered²³ it.

HUIZENGA: It was popular music that soaked up the African-American influences, which is great, Horowitz adds. Still, JoAnn Falletta says some did hear the call of Dvorak's New World anthem.

FALLETTA: He made American composers think about music differently. And the entire history of 20th century American music changed because of Antonin Dvorak. And maybe his prediction then gave composers like Gershwin the feeling that using jazz and writing for a classical orchestra was OK.

(SOUNDBITE OF GEORGE GERSHWIN'S "RHAPSODY IN BLUE")

HUIZENGA: George Gershwin looked to jazz. And Aaron Copland would look to American folk music. But before any of them was Antonin Dvorak. And before the birth of jazz, R&B and hip-hop, this old, white European predicted that the future of music in America will be black. And he was right.

FALLETTA: Yes. I think what's happened is that the roots of American music, whether it be African-American or Native American or ragtime²⁴ or Louisiana bayou music - all of that has now become accepted as a rich part of our fabric²⁵, of our musical life.

HUIZENGA: And that musical melting pot is what Antonin Dvorak celebrated and even elevated in his "New World Symphony," a philosophy of inclusion rendered in music. Tom Huizenga, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER & RAFAEL KUBELIK PERFORMANCE OF DVORAK'S "SCHERZO")