{"id":1637,"date":"2017-09-26T01:13:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T06:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=1637"},"modified":"2017-09-26T01:13:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T06:13:23","slug":"dvorak-and-the-spirit-of-indian-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2017\/09\/26\/dvorak-and-the-spirit-of-indian-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Dvorak and the Spirit of Indian Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

In <\/span>this<\/span><\/a> 1893 New York Herald article, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak discusses his 9th symphony, <\/span>From the New World<\/span><\/i>. Dvorak says that \u201csince he has been in this country, I have been deeply interested in the national music of the negroes and Indians,\u201d later concluding that the two styles of music were nearly identical as a national genre. Because of his interest in the national American style of music, he studied Indian melodies that a friend gave to him, becoming inspired by the spirit of their being, later composing this symphony on the basis of that spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the manuscript that was given to Dvorak wouldn\u2019t have been enough for him to authentically understand Indian music. As we have encountered in Richard Crawford\u2019s <\/span>America\u2019s Musical Life<\/span><\/i>, Europeans at the end of the Civil War found that the culture of Indian music was worth preserving, though their transcribing methods were fairly limited. Because there are several forms in which Indian music can exist and because those forms can be dependent on their purpose in the moment of a ritual, transcribing what one hears in a single performance then fixes the identity of that music. In addition, most of the documented Indian music was from the perspective of non-Indians and the Indian music that Dvorak studied followed this trend.<\/span><\/p>\n

With that in mind, it\u2019s evident that Dvorak\u2019s attempt at composing in the \u201cspirit of Indian music\u201d is completely removed from Indian culture. Even though he studied a \u201ccertain number of Indian melodies,\u201d his encounter is secondhand, failing to understand the circumstances in which that music would have been performed. In addition, we don\u2019t have records of what music he was looking at, so the credibility of that source dwindles further. Had he experienced an Indian ritual in person, his compositional approach would have likely been more legitimate and true to its source.<\/span><\/p>\n

Article sources<\/p>\n