Dvořák
Symphony No. 9
In 1888, Jeanette Thurber, the wife of a wealthy New York grocery wholesaler, founded the National Conservatory of music to promote the composition and performance of truly “American” music. The students were African-American musicians, and the music studied included Negro hymns and spirituals, as well as music by Native Americans. To direct her school, Thurber approached Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, who traveled to America in 1892 to take the post. While it may at first seem strange to hire a Czech to run a school devoted to American music, Thurber chose Dvořák because of his long history of promoting the use of folk influences in classical music, and of incorporating the forms and themes of folk music in his own works.
The pay was good (Thurber promised him five times what he would make as a music director in Prague), and the 52-year-old Dvořák soon immersed himself in African-American music, writing, “I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies.” At the same time, however, Dvořák missed his homeland of Bohemia. Though supporting the development of “Negro” music by talented African-American students such as Henry Burleigh, Dvořák himself remained most influenced by the folk themes of his own country. In 1893, he began work on a new symphony, which he finished during a summer vacation in the Czech-speaking community of Spillville, Iowa, where he went to assuage his homesickness. The work, his ninth symphony which he subtitled “From the New World,” was premiered by Anton Seidl leading the New York Philharmonic Society in Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893. The work was so well received that, as the composer wrote to his publisher: “The newspapers say no composer has ever before had such a triumph. I was in a box; the hall was filled with the best New York public and the people applauded so much that I had to thank them from the box like a king.”
Dvořák continued his work with Mrs. Thurber’s university until 1895, when the two had a falling out over salary. Still missing home, and knowing of his growing recognition as a major composer in Europe, Dvořák returned to Bohemia that spring. He went on to direct the Music Conservatory in Prague from 1901 until his death in 1904.
From the beginning, Dvořák’s symphony sparked some controversy over its influences. Because Dvořák was leading a school designed to promote American music, it was assumed that the symphony would base its themes on such. An article published in the New York Herald on December 15, 1893 (just before the premiere), quoted Dvořák:
“I have not actually used any of the [Native American] melodies. I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music, and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms, counterpoint, and orchestral color.”
Despite the statement that he tried to evoke the feel of American music, it was widely speculated that the melodies had their sources in American music, with listeners claiming to hear strains of songs such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (though it is easier to hear “Three Blind Mice” in the final movement!). Dvořák firmly refuted such speculation in 1900: “Omit the nonsense about my having made use of ‘American’ motifs… I tried only to write in the spirit of those national melodies.” In truth the work is influenced by many forces, most of them European. Leonard Bernstein gave a lecture in 1956 detailing influences in the work from French, Scottish, German, Chinese and, of course, Czech sources, and pronounced it simply “multi-national.”
The symphony’s architecture is most certainly European, with Dvořák using a cyclical structure that had recently become popular, in which a symphony is linked throughout all of its movements by use of a recurring melodic or rhythmic motif. An example of this approach is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 (1888), with which Dvořák was undoubtedly familiar. The repeated motif in Dvořák’s symphony, a rising and falling nine-note call, is stated first by the horns just after the ominous introduction to the first movement, Adagio–Allegro molto. This many-hued movement features two other themes, a repetitive figure heard on flutes and oboes, and a quieter melody on the solo flute. Dvořák juxtaposes fragments of the first and third motifs through the development, until the gentle flute melody becomes a rousing fortissimo for the full orchestra, followed by a dramatic coda.
The second movement, Largo, begins in complete contrast to the previous. A restrained series of chords from the brass moves us from E to D-flat major, followed by the softest of lines in the violins, then the English horn sounds a plaintive melody. (One of Dvořák’s students later published it as a song with her own words as “Goin’ Home,” adding to the confusion about the symphony’s sources.) A second, equally melancholy theme ushers in a reappearance of the symphony’s main motif. Then we return to the melody of the English horn, echoed by muted strings and a final call from the brass.
Anyone looking for sources for this work can find a much more obvious quotation in the Scherzo, which opens with a brief but blatant reference to the scherzo of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. The jaunty trio at the movement’s center sounds positively Czech, and the symphony’s leitmotif makes several appearances.
The finale, marked Allegro con fuoco, launches almost immedi ately into a bracing, bold theme in E-minor for trombones and horns. Like so many of the motifs in this symphony, this melody is instantly memorable. It evolves into a second, equally vigorous theme, contrasted with a slower section by solo clarinet. Motifs from both the first and second movements are quoted, and the work ends with an ecstatic grand coda.