Page 81 - GTMF 2024 Season Program

July 12 & 13
PROGRAM NOTES

Antonín Dvořák

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, “From the New World”

AT A GLANCE

Born: 1841
Died: 1904
Date of Composition: 1893
Instrumentation: Symphony
No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 is scored
for 2 flutes (2 doubling piccolo),
nd
2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets,
2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets,
3 trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion and strings.

From the premiere of the Dvořák
Ninth down to the present day,
music lovers have been divided
as to how much—if any—actual
new-world music inspired the
“New World” Symphony. There are
those who maintain that at least
some of the themes originated
in either African-American or
Native-American folk songs;
others point to influences from Antonín Dvořák — Wikipedia
American literature. The opposition
dismisses all that as the product
of wishful thinking or confirmation
bias. Dvořák himself muddied the with the folk idioms of Dvořák’s themed movies, commercials,
waters by first asserting that he native Bohemia is also a given. educational videos and the like.
had been inspired by African- Thus, its American-ness—or lack (I first encountered the “New
American folk music, then later thereof—is bound to lie mostly in World” Symphony at age five,
backtracking and promoting the the ear of the beholder. Dvořák’s via a children’s phonograph
work’s overall Czech character. student Harry T. Burleigh insisted record that dramatized Columbus’
That the “New World” is a late on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot first voyage.) Perhaps the work’s
Romantic symphony in the as the source of the secondary mixed origins make the best
mainline European tradition is theme in the first movement, case for its essential American
unquestioned; its structure, even though the resemblance is citizenship, for like most of us, it
orchestration, scope and overall only partial. The haunting slow came here from somewhere else
mien place it firmly amongst movement theme was arranged and was gradually assimilated
Dvořák’s late works, not to as the quasi-folk song Goin’ into the great melting pot of
mention those of his symphonic Home by one of Dvořák’s American culture.
contemporaries—Brahms and admirers. Consider the ubiquitous National identity aside, the
Tchaikovsky above all. That it co-opting of the Ninth as Dvořák Ninth is a meticulously
is soaked through and through background music for American-

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