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WATCH . . . a performance
of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, second movement, with its famous “Going Home” theme, online.
WATCH . . . a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, fourth movement, online.
Two other symphonists also loomed large: Antonín Dvorˇák (1841–1904) and Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). Both wrote nine symphonies, and Dvorˇák composed one important concerto for cello as well. Dvorˇák was one of several significant nineteenth-century artists and intellectuals born in the Czech Re- public. The composer spent most of his productive life in Prague, but he also lived in the United States for nearly three years, summering in Spillville, Iowa, in 1892. His beloved Symphony No. 9 in E minor “From the New World” (1893) was written during this period.
Gustav Mahler, too, was born in a region of the Czech Republic (in Moravia). Like his countryman Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), however, Mahler moved to Vienna for his professional training and there he spent the better part of his career. Mahler also traveled to the United States (1909–1911), conducting the New York Philharmonic and touring American cities with that group. His 1910 concert in New Haven, Connecticut, was even reviewed by a college newspaper (the Yale Daily News). There are many spellbinding symphonic movements by Mahler, several of which reach colossal size and monumental length with the addition of solo voice and chorus.
Music and Nationalism
Today we are witnessing a globalization of music and of culture generally. Com- panies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook covertly encourage the adoption of English as a universal language and overtly promote economic ties that jump borders. The various nations of Europe have formed a European Community, and we in the United States belong to the free trade zone formed by the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). University students are encouraged to spend a semester studying abroad. Thousands of students around the world can all take a single course simultaneously online through providers such as Cours- era and edX. Everyone, it seems, is looking and learning outward.
In the nineteenth century, however, things were very different. People were looking inward, often for a force that would liberate them from political oppres- sion. At a time when people of one language were frequently ruled by foreign- ers who spoke another, Europe’s ethnic groups came to realize that their ethnicity might be an agent of liberation. Driven by the unifying force of group identity, the Greeks threw off the Turks and formed their own country (1820s), the French- speaking Belgians rebelled from the Dutch (1830s), the Finns from the Russians (1860s), and the Czechs from the German-speaking Austrians (1870s). (Some of this cry for national autonomy still echoes today in relations between Ukraine and Russia.) Before the nineteenth century, French, German, and Russian were the dominant languages of Europe; thereafter literary works published in Czech, Hun- garian, Norwegian, and Finnish, among other languages, were not uncommon.
Music played an important part in this ethnic awakening, sounding out cul- tural differences and providing a rallying point in a process called musical nation- alism. National anthems, native dances, protest songs, and victory symphonies all evoked through music the rising tide of national identity. “The Star-Spangled Banner” (U.S. national anthem), “La Marseillaise” (French national anthem), and
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