{"id":4443,"date":"2019-10-20T22:11:03","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T03:11:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=4443"},"modified":"2019-12-15T16:55:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-15T22:55:00","slug":"the-new-world-symphony-and-spirituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2019\/10\/20\/the-new-world-symphony-and-spirituals\/","title":{"rendered":"The New World Symphony and Spirituals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As my first search in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sheet Music Consortium<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, I mindlessly typed in \u201cDvorak.\u201d Mostly using this search as a test run to see how the database works, I expected to come up with a hundred and one variations on \u201cThe New World Symphony.\u201d Instead, what I found was a conglomeration of pieces by Antonin Dvorak himself and American popular songs that were evidently based on these works.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4444\" style=\"width: 240px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-52.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4444\" class=\"wp-image-4444 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-52-230x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"230\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-52-230x300.png 230w, https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-52-115x150.png 115w, https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-52.png 708w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 230px) 100vw, 230px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4444\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Arms Fisher, &#8220;Goin&#8217; Home&#8221;, Melbourne: Allan &amp; Co., c1922.\u00a0Sheet Music Consortium.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In particular, the fourth result up was a song called \u201cGoin\u2019 Home,\u201d billed as a \u201cNegro Spiritual from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ASlch7R1Zvo\">the Largo of The New World Symphony<\/a>.\u201d<a class=\"sdfootnoteanc\" href=\"#sdfootnote1sym\" name=\"sdfootnote1anc\"><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><br \/>\nAs it turns out, the Largo of the New World Symphony doesn\u2019t really quote any particular spiritual directly, and \u201cGoin\u2019 Home\u201d is not a preexisting spiritual but a song adapted from the Largo and set to words by one of Dvorak\u2019s white students, William Arms Fisher.<a class=\"sdfootnoteanc\" href=\"#sdfootnote1sym\" name=\"sdfootnote1anc\"><sup>2<\/sup><\/a><br \/>\nAfter reading in Douglas Shadle&#8217;s <em>Orchestrating the Nation a<\/em>bout Dvorak\u2019s assertion that American music should be based upon spirituals, I found it extremely ironic to find that the chain of influence for one of the most well-known \u201cspirituals\u201d connected to Dvorak goes the opposite direction. Rather than finding any authentic spirituals on which Dvorak based his American symphony, I stumbled upon popular songs and \u201cspirituals\u201d that were manufactured from the precise melodies in Dvorak\u2019s work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AAw78FOkhZs?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4445\" style=\"width: 243px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-54.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4445\" class=\"wp-image-4445 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-54-233x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"233\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-54-233x300.png 233w, https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-54-117x150.png 117w, https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-54.png 674w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 233px) 100vw, 233px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4445\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Antonin Dvorak,\u00a0Humoreske; Op. 101, no. 7. De Luxe Music Co. New York, 1911.\u00a0Sheet Music Consortium.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cGoin\u2019 Home\u201d is not the only instance of this that I found right away. Another popular song, \u201cIn your moonlit bower,\u201d by Jas. H. Harrington, popped up as a song \u201cadapted from Humoresque by A. Dvorak.\u201d<a class=\"sdfootnoteanc\" href=\"#sdfootnote1sym\" name=\"sdfootnote1anc\"><sup>3<\/sup><\/a><br \/>\nWhile there was no actual sheet music available for the adapted song, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LR9msTsmpZs&amp;t=38s\">the Humoresque<\/a> is immediately recognizable to most of us by recording. The mere fact that American popular music seemed to conjure up some sense of American-ness by reverse engineering from Dvorak\u2019s work, which may have contained minimal direct American influence in the first place, raises many questions for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is it right to claim that we are placing African-American spirituals at the center of a new American music if the piece that started this new music only vaguely references this music? Is it right to create new music based on a piece which only gives a broad sense of what a white man perceived to be the \u201cspirit\u201d of spirituals? And how can we make sense of the Czech composer\u2019s contributions to creating an American music when his direct exposure to actual American music was severely limited before the composition of \u201cThe New World Symphony?\u201d All of these questions and more are issues we must grapple with as we consider the role Dvorak played in creating an \u201cAmerican music.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Footnotes:<\/p>\n<div id=\"sdfootnote1\">\n<p class=\"sdfootnote\"><a class=\"sdfootnotesym\" href=\"#sdfootnote1anc\" name=\"sdfootnote1sym\">1 William Arms Fisher, &#8220;Goin&#8217; Home&#8221;, Melbourne: Allan &amp; Co., c1922.<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"sdfootnote1\">\n<p class=\"sdfootnote\"><a class=\"sdfootnotesym\" href=\"#sdfootnote1anc\" name=\"sdfootnote1sym\">2 The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, &#8220;Goin&#8217; Home, with Alex Boye &#8211; Mormon Tabernacle Choir&#8221;, Jan 2010.<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"sdfootnote1\">\n<p class=\"sdfootnote\"><a class=\"sdfootnotesym\" href=\"#sdfootnote1anc\" name=\"sdfootnote1sym\">3 Antonin Dvorak,\u00a0<em>Humoreske; Op. 101, no. 7,<\/em>\u00a0De Luxe Music Co. New York, 1911.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Works Cited:<\/p>\n<p>Antonin Dvorak,\u00a0<em>Humoreske; Op. 101, no. 7<\/em>. De Luxe Music Co. New York, 1911.\u00a0<em>Sheet Music Consortium. <\/em>https:\/\/library.duke.edu\/digitalcollections\/hasm_n1466\/, accessed October 20, 2019.<\/p>\n<p>The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. &#8220;Goin&#8217; Home, with Alex Boye &#8211; Mormon Tabernacle Choir&#8221;. Filmed Jan 2010. Youtube video, 5:49. Posted Jan 2014. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AAw78FOkhZs.<\/p>\n<p>William Arms Fisher, &#8220;Goin&#8217; Home&#8221;, Melbourne: Allan &amp; Co., c1922.\u00a0<em>Sheet Music Consortium.\u00a0<\/em>http:\/\/nla.gov.au\/nla.obj-175033277\/view?partId=nla.obj-175033289#page\/n0\/mode\/1up, accessed October 20, 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As my first search in Sheet Music Consortium, I mindlessly typed in \u201cDvorak.\u201d Mostly using this search as a test run to see how the database works, I expected to come up with a hundred and one variations on \u201cThe &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2019\/10\/20\/the-new-world-symphony-and-spirituals\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-19F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4443"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4928,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions\/4928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}