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

• In June of 1891, Jeannette Thurber, President of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, invited Dvořák to take a post as the conservatory’s artistic director. Thurber hoped that Dvořák’s experience developing a nationalist style of Czech music would enable him to help American composers develop an American nationalist style. Dvořák arrived in the United States in September of 1892.¹

“The Americans expect great things of me. I am to show them the way into the Promised Land, the realm of a new, independent art, in short a national style of music! … This will certainly be a great and lofty task, and I hope that with God’s help I shall succeed in it. I have plenty of encouragement to do so.”

Dvořák, letter to Josef Hlávka, Nov. 27, 1892²

• Dvořák’s research on American musical styles included work with Henry Thacker Burleigh, the Black composer and baritone, who was a student at the National Conservatory at the time. Dvořák also studied transcriptions of Native American melodies.³
• On May 21, 1893, a New York Herald journalist published an interview with Dvořák, in which the composer argued that an American school of music should be built upon African-American music. The article also appeared in the Cleveland Gazette on June 3, 1893. The backlash from mainstream (white) American music critics was immediate and bitter.⁴

“I am now satisfied that the future music 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 … These are the folk songs of America, and your composers must turn to them…”

From Dvořák’s interview, in the Cleveland Gazette (June 3, 1893)⁵

“In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. They are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry, gay or what you will. It is music that suits itself to any mood or purpose. There is nothing in the whole range of composition that cannot be supplied with themes from this source…I intend to do all in my power to call attention to this splendid treasure of melody which you have.”

From Dvořák’s interview, in the Cleveland Gazette (June 3, 1893)⁶

To read Dvořák’s full statement, reactions, and analysis, check out Chapter 5 (p. 273) of Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895 by Lynn Abbot and Doug Seroff.

• Dvořák composed this Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” in New York in 1893.⁷
• The symphony premiered in New York on December 16, 1894. The New York Philharmonic Society performed the work under the direction of Anton Seidl.⁸

1.  Klaus Döge, “Dvořák, Antonín,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 24, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051222.
2. Quoted in Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff, Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889-1895 (United States: University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 273-274.
5. Quoted in Ibid.
6. Quoted in Ibid.
7.  Klaus Döge, “Dvořák, Antonín,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed February 24, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051222.
8. “Symphony No. 9, Op. 95 (Dvořák, Antonín),” IMSLP, accessed February 24, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.9%2C_Op.95_(Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k%2C_Anton%C3%ADn).