![]() ![]() Washington, who served as Dvořák’s copyist as well as his student and taught him songs his enslaved grandparents had sung to him. Such dreams were embodied in students like Henry Thacker Burleigh, the first Black singer to hold a church job in New York and later a collaborator with Booker T. He was dismayed at the lack of systematic support for the arts in the United States but fascinated by the intersection, in one country, of so many cultures and dreams. Dvořák himself had benefited from the financial assistance of the Austrian state, whose support, along with that of other composers such as Johannes Brahms, had lifted him out of obscurity and allowed him to present his compositions to a pan-European audience. Compared to their European counterparts, the students he taught and the citizens he met in New York in the 1890s struck him as unencumbered by the past and boundless in their aspirations, but, at the same time, almost shockingly unsupported by any social safety net, and, therefore, too often constrained in their achievements. ![]() The ambition with which the National Conservatory was founded and the speed with which it collapsed were both characteristics that Dvořák perceived as quintessentially American. He arrived in 1892 and taught until 1895, when a drop in the stock market wiped out Thurber’s holdings and she could no longer afford to pay him. What was the historical context in which Dvořák wrote this symphony?Ī: From Dvořák’s standpoint, precariously exciting. He had been lured (head-hunted, we would say today) away from Prague with the promise of 25 times his usual salary to become the artistic director and professor of composition at a brand new school in New York, the National Conservatory of Music, brainchild of the Gilded Age philanthropist Jeannette Thurber. ![]() Q: Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World,” was composed during the Bohemian composer's time in the United States in the late 19th century. In anticipation of the Yale Philharmonia's May 7 performance of Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, "From the New World," we spoke with YSM Associate Professor Adjunct of Music History Paul Berry about the piece's origins, influences, and legacy. ![]()
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