Antonín Dvořák was born in Mühlhausen, Bohemia in 1841 and died in Prague in 1904. He completed his Ninth Symphony in May of 1893, and Anton Seidl conducted the first performance with the New York Philharmonic later that year. The score calls for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is approximately 40 minutes.
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Dvořák might never have come to the new world—or composed a symphony by the same name—had it not been for the tenacity of a dedicated, indefatigable, and fabulously wealthy woman. Jeanette M. Thurber, the wife of a millionaire green-grocer, had single-handedly established the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. When the conservatory needed a new director in 1892, Mrs. Thurber set her sights on Dvořák. At first Dvořák wasn’t interested. But Mrs. Thurber persisted, and after a long series of cables culminating in an offer of twenty-five times his current salary, Dvořák finally relented.

Once in America, Dvořák was drawn to American folk music of every kind. He frequently asked a Black composition student, Harry T. Burleigh, to sing and play him Negro spirituals and plantation songs. According to Burleigh, “Dvořák just saturated himself with the spirit of these old tunes.”

Dvořák said: “I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called the Negro melodies. In the Negro melodies of America I have discovered all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. America can have her own music, a fine music growing up from her own soil and having its own special character—the natural voice of a free and great nation.” Dvořák set out to capture that spirit in his new symphony. (The composer was correct in his assessment in every particular save one: he could not have known that the “great and noble school of music” he predicted would one day become known as “jazz.”)

The debut of the Ninth sparked a debate over just how American it really was. No one can miss the resemblance of the first movement’s flute solo to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The second movement’s English horn melody is so like a Negro spiritual that someone later turned it into one, writing words to go with Dvořák’s music. And we have it from Dvořák that Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha inspired the symphony’s middle movements—the second movement by Minnehaha’s funeral scene, the third by the ritual Indian dance. But the music was Dvořák’s: “I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of Negro and Indian music and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, and orchestral color.”

Yet when European audiences heard the Ninth, they found it to be as Bohemian as anything Dvořák ever wrote—and they were correct. Despite his enthusiasm, Dvořák’s knowledge of American music was superficial; when he wasn’t actively trying to sound American, he sounded just like Dvořák. And those who hear the landscapes of America in the Ninth might be surprised to know that Dvořák composed it before he had set one foot outside New York City. Perhaps it is, as Kurt Masur has observed, a great tragic symphony written on the theme of homesickness.

All such questions are insignificant beside the achievement of the symphony itself. It brims over with melody and drama. Its emotional span runs from quiet tenderness to sheer ferocity. It is full of magical moments—one thinks of the other-worldliness of the second movement’s opening chords, and how they are reincarnated with fearsome power in the Finale. If Dvořák took little that was truly American, he gave back what is arguably the greatest symphony composed on these shores: a magnificent gift from a generous man. Our gratitude is due him—and, of course, to Mrs. Thurber.

ˆ Mark Rohr 2008