Dvorak saw the prospect of establishing an American national school of music, above all, in lessons learned from European examples where, during the 19th century, folk music had often provided sources of inspiration, even in the case of the most serious compositions. Burleigh, whom he had met on many occasions before embarking upon the symphony, and probably via other sources as well. The composer had come across them during his first few months in New York, on the one hand thanks to the African American singer Harry T. Dvorak had used this approach many times in the past, but never with such consistency and deliberation.įrom a purely musical point of view, the symphony’s strongest inspirational source is drawn from Afro-American songs. A characteristic feature of the composition is the frequent reminiscence of themes from previous movements at crucial points in each subsequent movement, a principle which gives the symphony its homogeneous expression. The exceptional and compelling nature of the work lies in its remarkable lyricism and concise thematic treatment, striking rhythms, purity of expression, elemental temperament and the equilibrium of all these qualities together. The unity of form and content is flawless, and the four-movement framework is constructed with unerring architectural proficiency.
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The symphony is a product of professional mastery. The symphony was to prove the composer’s theory of the possibility of using characteristic elements of African American and Native American music as the foundation for an American national school of composition which, in fact, did not exist during Dvorak’s time in the United States. The New World Symphony is the composer’s ninth, and also his last (nine is something of a magical number in the history of music: various world composers completed the same number of symphonies, such as Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler). All this found Dvorak at the height of his creative energy and contributed to the genesis of a work of exceptional quality. An ideal set of circumstances had presented themselves by this stage in his career: strong impressions of his new environment, financial independence, a sense of his role as an “ambassador” of Czech music, and his ambitions to ensure that he would not fall short of expectations. This symphony, Dvorak’s most popular in an international context, was written during the first year of the composer’s tenure in the United States.