This week's song is a treat: a beautiful choral arrangement adapted from Dvorak's "New World Symphony," composed during his three-year visit to America.
This post shows what music can be for us, and is a great final meditation on “home.” At our most human, we honor and hand on the best of the culture from which we spring. In music, particularly, we also cross fertilize with the sounds springing from places other than our own.
Please forgive me if I wax marital and historical. My 74 year old husband—Mike—was born in Bed-Sty, bused with other Black kids to a white school in Queens in grade four. In grade six they put a trombone in his hand; everyone in band rehearsed fifty minutes BEFORE period one. Before long the teacher had the kids sight reading big classical scores every day at lunchtime. In high school Mike made All City Symphony, which took up Saturday mornings in Manhattan. He recalled the ensemble were all colors “because that’s what New York City schools were” but you got in “because you could play the notes.” The musicians he came up with, including in the Catskills, The Peabody Conservatory, and the Goldman Band, devoted themselves to the music, to excellence; they were fluent in its many languages. Including jazz. And this led to strong ties and respect among the practitioners of the art. Music can make kindred spirits. Across our apparent differences.
I will read and play this post for him, he sometimes gets the gist through his dementia. This post is like a parable of what he always believed music could be for us.
Thanks, Debra, for showing us how Dvorak’s love of this place we call America, and of the spirituals, bore fruit in a wonderful symphony and hymn, stirring what is best in us and calling us home.
I'd like to think we could, but we need to make ourselves again the sort of a people who could/would read "Huck Finn" in the same magazine that published Dvorak's reflection on America first. And like the great American writers, we have to value, love, and draw on the heritage of the past even to have a chance at such a flowering in our own time. What we produce now isn't "of the people" in any real way. It's manufactured, canned, crass and debased, and instead of appealing to the highest faculties it appeals to the most base. That is the plague of "modernism," which teaches us to despise the past and thereby removes us from our best chance at continuing and building upon the tradition to which we owe so much.
Way to make me cry over my coffee! How satisfying those repetitive notes are, carrying those meditative words. Great share! When I saw the title, I thought of this Knopfler piece.♥️
Yes! The intersection of the arts in the heyday of classic film adds greatly to the overall performance. I learned in researching this song that Duke Ellington began writing film scores in his early-mid career. Never knew that, but Dvorak wouldn't have been surprised at it.
Nancee, I am sorry to hear of your loss. Yes, this piece provides great comfort when it is used at funerals, though that wasn't its original purpose. It's very moving.
Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony is my #1 favorite Classical Music symphonic piece … the Largo never fails to result in tears rolling down my cheeks … it rips my heart out of my body and squishes it to mush … sooooo gorgeous ❣️❣️❣️
Donald, at the premier of this piece in New York, the audience evidently were so moved that they couldn't hold their praise until the end. After the Largo, they rose and called out "Dvorak! Dvorak!" until he came to the stage and took a bow. Then the rest of the symphony continued. Imagine being among the first audience to hear this piece of music.
This post shows what music can be for us, and is a great final meditation on “home.” At our most human, we honor and hand on the best of the culture from which we spring. In music, particularly, we also cross fertilize with the sounds springing from places other than our own.
Please forgive me if I wax marital and historical. My 74 year old husband—Mike—was born in Bed-Sty, bused with other Black kids to a white school in Queens in grade four. In grade six they put a trombone in his hand; everyone in band rehearsed fifty minutes BEFORE period one. Before long the teacher had the kids sight reading big classical scores every day at lunchtime. In high school Mike made All City Symphony, which took up Saturday mornings in Manhattan. He recalled the ensemble were all colors “because that’s what New York City schools were” but you got in “because you could play the notes.” The musicians he came up with, including in the Catskills, The Peabody Conservatory, and the Goldman Band, devoted themselves to the music, to excellence; they were fluent in its many languages. Including jazz. And this led to strong ties and respect among the practitioners of the art. Music can make kindred spirits. Across our apparent differences.
I will read and play this post for him, he sometimes gets the gist through his dementia. This post is like a parable of what he always believed music could be for us.
Thanks, Debra, for showing us how Dvorak’s love of this place we call America, and of the spirituals, bore fruit in a wonderful symphony and hymn, stirring what is best in us and calling us home.
Beautiful!
The hymn itself - moving.
Dvorak's recap of the accomplishments of this American nation during its first century - perfect.
To paraphrase John Adams, can we continue this tradition?
I'd like to think we could, but we need to make ourselves again the sort of a people who could/would read "Huck Finn" in the same magazine that published Dvorak's reflection on America first. And like the great American writers, we have to value, love, and draw on the heritage of the past even to have a chance at such a flowering in our own time. What we produce now isn't "of the people" in any real way. It's manufactured, canned, crass and debased, and instead of appealing to the highest faculties it appeals to the most base. That is the plague of "modernism," which teaches us to despise the past and thereby removes us from our best chance at continuing and building upon the tradition to which we owe so much.
Way to make me cry over my coffee! How satisfying those repetitive notes are, carrying those meditative words. Great share! When I saw the title, I thought of this Knopfler piece.♥️
https://youtu.be/3DB-uJ0TxKQ?si=K7C22oPJp_3CWv8o
Gosh! I forgot that this was part of the soundtrack for "Local Hero." Thank you for sharing that link.
Featured very beautifully in The Snake Pit, too!
Yes! The intersection of the arts in the heyday of classic film adds greatly to the overall performance. I learned in researching this song that Duke Ellington began writing film scores in his early-mid career. Never knew that, but Dvorak wouldn't have been surprised at it.
So appropriate this morning as we’re getting ready to go for the funeral of Bruce’s only sister in a few minutes!
Nancee, I am sorry to hear of your loss. Yes, this piece provides great comfort when it is used at funerals, though that wasn't its original purpose. It's very moving.
Made me pause.
Made me cry.
Grateful.
Ann, me, too. All three.
Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony is my #1 favorite Classical Music symphonic piece … the Largo never fails to result in tears rolling down my cheeks … it rips my heart out of my body and squishes it to mush … sooooo gorgeous ❣️❣️❣️
Donald, at the premier of this piece in New York, the audience evidently were so moved that they couldn't hold their praise until the end. After the Largo, they rose and called out "Dvorak! Dvorak!" until he came to the stage and took a bow. Then the rest of the symphony continued. Imagine being among the first audience to hear this piece of music.
As Gandalf said, "Not all tears are an evil."