Dvořák's prophecy : and the vexed fate of Black classical music

Title:

Author:

Horowitz, Joseph, 1948- author.

Summary:

"A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"--how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonin Dvorák prophesied a "great and noble" school of American classical music based on the searing "negro melodies" he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would found popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, he looks back to literary figures--Emerson, Melville, and Twain--to ponder how American music can connect with a "usable past." The result is a "new paradigm" that makes room for Black composers including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson, and Florence Price to redefine the classical canon."-- Provided by publisher.

Edition:

First edition.

Contents:

Foreword / by George Shirley -- Preamble. Using the past -- Dvořak, American music, and race -- In defense of nostalgia -- Nostalgic subversions -- Oedipal revolt -- The bifurcation of American music -- Classical music Black and "Red" -- Using history: a personal quest -- Summing up.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 229 pages ; 24 cm

Personal Subject:

Dvořák, Antonín, 1841-1904.

Subject Term:

Music -- History and criticism.

African Americans -- Music -- History and criticism.

Music -- African American influences.

Music and race.

Author(s):

Shirley, George,

Publisher:

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

Publication Date:

2022

ISBN:

9780393881240

Publication Information:

New York : W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., [2022]

Call Number:

780.973 HOROWITZ

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003577817	Adult Nonfiction	780.973 HOROWITZ	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

In 1893 the composer Antonin Dvor??k prophesied a "great and noble" school of American classical music based on the searing "negro melodies" he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would found popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall.

Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, he looks back to literary figures?Emerson, Melville, and Twain?to ponder how American music can connect with a "usable past." The result is a ?new paradigm? that makes room for Black composers including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson, and Florence Price to redefine the classical canon.

Author Notes

A former New York Times music critic, Joseph Horowitz is the author of ten books exploring the history of American music, including Classical Music in America and Artists in Exile -both named books of the year by the Economist. He lives in New York City.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

American classical music turned away from Black music and other folk traditions to its lasting detriment, according to this knotty cultural history from music critic and historian Horowitz (Artists in Exile). Reflecting on Czech composer Antonín Dvorák's 1893 declaration that American music would be "founded upon... negro melodies," Horowitz argues, that, on the contrary, American classical music went mainly in a Eurocentric, modernist direction that was uneasy with jazz and other Black influences, thus opening a permanent divide between highbrow art music and lowbrow pop music. He surveys some 20th-century Black classical composers, including William Dawson, Florence Price, and Harry Burleigh, but his focus is on such white composers as Charles Ives and George Gershwin, whose incorporation of Black vernacular styles into their works made them "the twin creative geniuses of American classical music." Rife with murky pronouncements--"as creative seedbeds, free societies are less efficacious than usable pasts"--much of the book is a tart polemic against 20th-century critics and composers including Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland for embracing a snooty modernism and for their "Oedipal" dismissal of forerunners who blended classical and vernacular music. Unfortunately, Horowitz's preoccupation with long-forgotten, avant-garde critical controversies make this interpretation of America's protean musical development feel dated. (Nov.)Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly identified Arthur Farwell as a Black composer.

George Shirley

Foreword	p. xi
Preamble Using the Past	p. xvii
Chapter 1 Dvorák, American Music, and Race	p. 1
Dvorák's Prophecy
Dvorák's Progeny: Burleigh and Coleridge-Taylor
The Black Symphonists
Porgy and Bess
The Appropriation Debate
Chapter 2 In Defense of Nostalgia	p. 29
James Gibbons Huneker and the "Old Guard"
In Defense of Nostalgia
Henry Edward Krehbiel and "Negro Melodies"
The Fragmentation of Culture
Chapter 3 Nostalgic Subversions	p. 51
Using the Vernacular: Mark Twain and Charles Ives
Race and the Moral Core-The Transcendentalist Past
Chapter 4 Oedipal Revolt	p. 75
The Useless Past: Van Wyck Brooks and the Myth of the "Gilded Age"
The Useless Past; Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, and the Standard Narrative
Leonard Bernstein and the Ives Case
Copland and Mexico- Postscript: The Standard Narrative and the CIA
Chapter 5 The Bifurcation of American Music	p. 101
Why American Classical Music Stayed White
Was There a Usable Musical Past?
Using Whitman and Melville
Confluence
The Souls of Black Folk
Chapter 6 Classical Music Black and "Red"	p. 131
Rediscovering William Levi Dawson
Rediscovering Florence Price
Rediscovering Nathaniel Dett
Americas Forbidden Composer
Chapter 7 Using History-A Personal Quest	p. 149
The Condition of Pastlessness
Culture and "Social Control"
Trigger Warnings
Reencountering Harry Burleigh
Reencountering John Singer Sargent
Reencountering Arthur Farwell
Porgy and Dvorák's Prophecy
Summing Up	p. 183
A New Paradigm
The Paradigm Summarized
Dvorák's Prophecy
Acknowledgments	p. 203
Notes	p. 205
Index	p. 215
About the Author	p. 230

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Table of Contents