what elements of dvorak's new world symphony is negroish?
doublespeakeasy
can't connect anything there with blues, ragtime, jazz, gospel.
what's negroish about it?
can you name some negro music that might have inspired the new world
symphony?
doublespeakeasy
La Donna Mobile
questions is necessarily the way your readers wish to read them.
The most famous bit of it I knew first as a hymn 'Going Home', often played
at funerals, and in the Hymn Book it says 'Negro Spiritual' (I have avoided
hymn books for a good few years, I don't know if they still use this term).
I then learnt it as the theme tune for Hovis bread, before being informed it
was from a Dvorak symphony
"doublespeakeasy" <doubles...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8a01597a.04080...@posting.google.com...
Dr.Matt
The usual explanation is that the theme of the largo is a variation on
"Swing Low Sweet Chariot".
--
Matthew H. Fields http://personal.www.umich.edu/~fields
Music: Splendor in Sound
A genuine countertenor voice silences all arguments. --Salman Rushdie
Brights have a naturalistic world-view. http://www.the-brights.net/
Peter T. Daniels
>
> i heard that dvorak too some negro music for his 9th symphony. i just
> can't connect anything there with blues, ragtime, jazz, gospel.
Could that be because it predates those styles?
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Owain Sutton
> In article <8a01597a.04080...@posting.google.com>,
> doublespeakeasy <doubles...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>i heard that dvorak too some negro music for his 9th symphony. i just
>>can't connect anything there with blues, ragtime, jazz, gospel.
>>
>>what's negroish about it?
>>
>>can you name some negro music that might have inspired the new world
>>symphony?
>
>
> The usual explanation is that the theme of the largo is a variation on
> "Swing Low Sweet Chariot".
>
>
*Could be considered* a variation of Swing Low. Restricted-range
pentatonic tunes can all be show to be 'related' somehow.
To me, the most 'non-European' element to the symphony is the
walking-bass added-sixth, somewhere near the very end.
J. Teske
(doublespeakeasy) wrote:
>i heard that dvorak too some negro music for his 9th symphony. i just
>can't connect anything there with blues, ragtime, jazz, gospel.
Well the piece was written (ca. 1893) before ragtime, jazz and blues
as we think of them today originated. Dvorak did hear some spirituals
and was moved by them. Dvorak did not travel in the Deep South, but
most likely heard some itinerant Black musicians; or the small Black
population in NYC at the time. He is known to have been to Minnetonka
Falls, MN where he heard some Native American music. I don't know
what train route he took to Iowa, but it is possible he may have spent
a little time at the Mississippi River where minstrel shows were not
unknown.
>
The theme of the slow movement as been ascribed to the spiritual
"Going Home." However, for the most part, the only thing New World
about this symphony is the geography of most of its composition.
(Dvorak spent a few years in America in the early-mid 1890's to set up
a conservatory in New York City. During the summer of 1893 he spent a
couple of months in Spillville, Iowa, the hometown of one of the
students of that conservatory and a place that was - and still is -
heavily populated by people of Czech heritage. In the 1890's Czech
was still spoken by a considerable number of the residents, most of
whom were either immigrants or first generation at that time. Quite a
number of them also had the surname Dvorak, a fairly common Czech
name, as a visit to the cemetary in that town will attest. Dvorak was
amused that the butcher in Spillville was also named Dvorak as the
composer, in his youth, had apprenticed as a butcher.)
Dvorak also heard some Native American music during that time and the
slow movement of his Violin/Piano Sonatina is sometimes called "Indian
Lament". That name may have actually originated with Fritz Kreisler
who did an arrangement of the piece. Again, to most classical
musicians that piece still sounds thoroughly Czech. Dvorak did
advocate to the students at the conservatory that they should not
neglect American musical ideas, including Afro-American and Native
American elements in their music, much as he and other Czech composers
did with their native folk music. I suspect that the Ninth Symphony
would not have sounded appreciably different had Dvorak never come to
the U.S.
Jon Teske, violinist
>
Mike kB
> The usual explanation is that the theme of the largo is a variation on
> "Swing Low Sweet Chariot".
The theme introduced by the flute in the 1st mvt. is a suggestion of "Swing
Low", althought Dvorak himself never said he used that particular song.
There is little doubt he had heard the tune, due to his fascination with
American folk music and his relationship with "negro" composer Harry T.
Burleigh, who was a student of Dvorak at the National Conservatory in NYC.
Jerry Kohl
> On 6 Aug 2004 23:06:36 -0700, doubles...@hotmail.com
> (doublespeakeasy) wrote:
> The theme of the slow movement as been ascribed to the spiritual
> "Going Home."
I had always been told that the "spiritual" "Going Home" was
nothing but the Dvor^ák theme with newly made words to fit--
rather like the lyrics fitted to his "Humoresque" ;-)
--
Jerry Kohl <jerom...@comcast.net>
"Légpárnás hajóm tele van angolnákkal."
davyd
news:8a01597a.04080...@posting.google.com...
If anything, it's the other way around. Many years after Dvorak died,
someone set the main melody of the second movement as a "Negro spiritual".
Sacqueboutier
the following meaderings on 8/7/04 4:28 AM:
> You know, troll, you really should consider whether the way you phrase your
> questions is necessarily the way your readers wish to read them.
>
> The most famous bit of it I knew first as a hymn 'Going Home', often played
> at funerals, and in the Hymn Book it says 'Negro Spiritual' (I have avoided
> hymn books for a good few years, I don't know if they still use this term).
> I then learnt it as the theme tune for Hovis bread, before being informed it
> was from a Dvorak symphony
It is used sometimes, but most new humnbooks use the term "African-American
Spritual".
Dvorak wrote this tune outright. It was later taken and made into the tune
you knew as a child. Dvorak may have heard some Negro Sprituals while in
America, and this may have influenced his composing, but the tune is his.
Don
doublespeakeasy
> You know, troll, you really should consider whether the way you phrase your
> questions is necessarily the way your readers wish to read them.
>
bad in dvorak's day, blacks were negroes and the music was called the
negro spiritual.
if it was negro, then it stands to reason it was negroish.
Daniel Kolle
<donna...@REMOVEbrixton.fsworld.co.uk> thought hard and said:
>You know, troll, you really should consider whether the way you phrase your
>questions is necessarily the way your readers wish to read them.
Huh?
--
-Daniel "Mr. Brevity" Kolle; 16 A.A. #2035
Koji Kondo, Yo-Yo Ma, Gustav Mahler, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Geirr Tveitt are my Gods.
Head of EAC Denial Department and Madly Insane Scientist.
Daniel Kolle
<donna...@REMOVEbrixton.fsworld.co.uk> thought hard and said:
>You know, troll, you really should consider whether the way you phrase your
>questions is necessarily the way your readers wish to read them.
Blacks were called negroes in Dvorak's time. I am sure you know this.