LCK-80008
DVORAK
SYMPHONY No. 5 in E MINOR, OP. 95 ("From the New 'World")
2nd. Mov. Largo 3rd. Mov Scherzo (Molto vivace)40. Mov. Allegro con fuoco 1st Mov. Adagio-Allegro molto
RAFAEL KUBELIK conducting THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Two candidates for the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music, New York, were suggested to Mrs. Jeannette M. Thurber, its founder, when that energetic and philanthropic lady decided in 1891 that her institution was not fulfilling its chief purpose of bringing to birth an American school of composition. These candidates were Dvorak and Sibelius; but when the member of the Conservatory staff who made the recommendations found herself unable to travel to Finland to discuss the matter with Sibelius, the post was forthwith offered to Dvorak. At first he refused it. but Mrs. Thurber, who was not one to take no for an answer, eventually overcame his reluctance to leave his country for a long period by sending him a contract, with very generous terms, ready for signature.
On Sept. 15. 1892, therefore, Dvorak set out for New York, accompanied by his wife and two of his six children. He arrived there as the Columbus Fourth Centennial Celebrations were in full swing- a propitious omen for Mrs. Thurber's cherished project. At the composer's inaugural concert on October 21, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the wealthy founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, made a speech in which he referred to "two new worlds-the New World of Columbus and the new world of music," thus making public the reason for Dvorak's appointment and perhaps suggesting to him, if he recalled the word., the subtitle for the E minor Symphony that he added to the score at the last moment
As Dr. John Clapham, wrote in an interesting article (to be drawn upon gratefully in this note) Dvorak and the impact of .America (The Music Review August 1954) "the choice of Dvorak ... was a good one, for he was a nationalist composer with a considerable international reputation, he took a keen interest in the folk-song of foreign nations and he was greatly respected as a teacher."
In a letter to friends in Prague dated November 21, 1892, Dvorak wrote: "The Americans expect great things of me and the main thing is, so they say, to show them to the Promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a National Music. If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people is so immense." When numerous compositions came in for a series of prize competitions offered by Mrs. Thurber, Dvorak found the operas very poor but was interested in the instrumental music, symphonic concertos, etc. In the letter quoted above he wrote 'the composers are... brought up in the German school, but here and there another spirit, other thoughts, another colouring flashes forth, in short, something Indian, something a la Bret Harte, I am very curious how things will develop,"
While American life and ways were making a considerable, impression on Dvorak, something happened to inspire a work-his first composed on American soil-that was to justify Mrs. Thurber's most sanguine hopes. A copy of Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha in a Greek translation, came into his hands, with a suggestion that he should make an opera out of it. Though enchanted by the poem, he did not do this, nor did the idea of a cantata occur to him (that was left to Coleridge-Taylor) but his note-books provide convincing evidence of his interest in the poem, The first entry, dated December 1892, has, under the heading "Legend," the middle section tune in C minor from the slow movement of the "New World" Symphony.
Dvorak sketched out ideas for the first three movements of this symphony in the last three weeks of January 1893 and had completed the work by May 24, forgetting to write in the trombone parts for the closing bars in the excitement of receiving a cable saying his remaining four children had arrived safely at Southampton on their way out to join the family. On December 16, some months before the first performance by the New York Philharmonic Society under Anton Seidl, the composer gave an interview to The New York Herald in which he said: "I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must he founded on what am called the Negro melodies. - when I first came here last year I was impressed with this idea and it has developed into a settled conviction. These beautiful and varied themes am the product of the soil. They are American... In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music ... there is nothing in the whole range of composition that cannot be supplied from this source."
As Dr. Clapham remarks, Dvorak here omits all reference to, other branches of American folk music, but in a later. account the composer claims to have spead his net more widely. "It is the spirit of the Negro and (American) Indian melodies," be says,
"that I have endeavoured to reproduce in my new symphony. I have not used a single one of the. melodies, I simply wrote characteristic themes incorporating in them the qualities of Indian music and, using these themes as my material, I developed them with the aid of all the achievements of modern rhythm, counterpoint and orchestra colouring. The two accounts are not consistent and furthermore the critic of The New, York Herald perceived that whatever the debt of the work to the "Indian" spirit it remained Bohemian in atmosphere. "Dr. Dvorak can no more divest himself of his nationality," he said, "than the leopard can change its spots"
Dr. Clapham declares there is no concrete evidence that the composer did in fact hear any genuine Indian melodies during his first winter in the United States, though he might have come across publications containing them. Then we must leave the matter, which affected not at all the enormous success of the work and consider how far it was influenced by India legend. Here convincing evidence is available. Otaka Sourek, Dvorak's chief biographer, writes of the slow movement in a book on the symphonies, "The inspiration, according to Dvorak came from the scene of the burial in the words in the 'Song of Hiawatha'. Perhaps the composer had in mind, in particular, the verses about the death and burial of his squaw, the faithful Minnehaha of the Dakota tribe. The whole of this movement with its noble serenity might he re- producing that inner picture of Dvorak's imagination which conjured up in vivid poetic colours the natural beauty of the heart of America, of the land with broad spreading plains, uninhabited woods and huge rivers. The funeral song in the middle of the movement is inscribed 'legend' but there is ground to believe that the breathtaking depths and the emotional eloquence of it were not only conceived by literary reminiscence,but by the thought of his far away home in Southern Bohemia." Of the Scherzo, Dr. Sourek writes, "Dvorak is believed to have said that this movement was inspired by the scene of the festivities in the wood where the Indians dance in 'Hiawatha' (and so, It adds, it is probably descriptive of Hiawatha's marriage).
However all this may be, the symphony is certainly a work of very mixed character, The dramatic thrust of the opening theme of the Allegro of the first movement, foreshadowed in the slow introduction, is no doubt a tribute to the energetic life of the great city in which the work was written: but it is coupled in the Allegro with a second phrase purely Czech in feeling This quality persists, for while the G minor flute tune with a drone bass sounds like a Czech dance, the later G major tune, also on the flute, bears a definite resemblance to the negro spiritual "Swing low, Sweet chariot." The unfadingly lovely melody for cor anglais at the start of the slow movement might well have been composed in the spirit of a negro folksong and had, indeed, been turned into one with the not inappropriate title of "Goin' home. " When, however, the composer puts it into quick time-a sort of fore-shortening-on oboe, flute and clarinet later in the movement, it sounds purely Bohemian.
The vigorous first phrase of the Allegro in the first erupts into this and the two remaining movements - thus giving the symphony a certain unity -and the numerous short melodic phrases (never more than four bars in length) in the final movement suggest the restless energy of the country. In the coda of this finale Dvorak brings the opening themes of the three previous movements before the curtain to take their bows, reserving for the first one (and the last heard) a wonderful harmonic surprise.
ALEC ROBERTSON