music and race antonin dvorak

Japanese / Related posts from blogosphere

Music and race: Anton�n Dvor�k the negrophile

Robert Schwartz and independently Jorge Pullin kindly sent me a pretty

interesting article by Joseph Horowitz, an artistic advisor to

orchestras:

New World Symphony and Discord

race and music in Boston and New York at the end of the 19th century.

Czech composer Anton�n Dvor�k was assigned the task to create the

American national music. He was impressed by many things in America

but he decided that the "negro melodies" such as "Swing Low" and "Deep

River" were the "future for American music". He thought that the black

themes would penetrate into classical compositions while jazz became a

completely new genre but his prediction was nontrivial anyway.

In Boston, Dvor�k's opinions were politically incorrect because the

blacks were "not inherently musical" according to many powerful

figures over there. For example, a very influential Harvard professor

argued that blacks and whites were different species. Dvor�k was

labeled a "negrophile". Also, critics in Boston newspapers routinely

and "scientifically" described Dvor�k's and Tchaikovsky's music as

"primitive" and "barbarian". In New York, however, the people who

thought that the blacks were "inherently musical" were stronger and

created a much better environment for Dvor�k.

The New World Symphony back in Vienna

One can see that Anton�n Dvor�k always cared primarily about music and

the pure excitement from it but the environment full of snobs and

political preconceptions influenced him anyway.

The 21st century

In some sense, I feel that during the decade in the U.S., I

encountered less American culture - including jazz - than what we are

normally exposed to in Central Europe. For example, a party on

Thursday was in the style of Chicago of the 1930s, gangsters

blackmailing bankers, shooting, prohibition, jazz, Chicago the musical

(e.g. the Czech version of All That Jazz that I've only known since

they preloaded it on an MP3 player I bought), roulettes, and shooting