Manchester Medical Orchestra 10 December 2013
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): Symphony No. 9 in E minor Op. 95, From the New World (1893)
At the height of his powers in 1893, Dvořák attracted a salary equivalent to around £250,000 as director of the US National Conservatory of Music. There was a simmering awareness of the lack of musical heritage in the ‘new world’, and so Dvořák’s principal task was to lay the foundations for such a tradition by writing an expressly American symphony. He was perfect for the job: bucolic in his Bohemian roots, egalitarian in outlook, and a ‘cultural nationalist’ above all. When the New York Philharmonic commissioned the symphony, Dvorak wrote that ’The Americans expect great things of me…to show them to the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create a national music.’ In creating a national voice, he later wrote that ‘The future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.’
During his travels in the early 1890s, Dvorak familiarised himself with a smattering of American-Indian and African-American folk music. He was already familiar with Longfellow’s 1855 epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, and the adventures of the eponymous Native American hero provided the inspiration for the symphony’s inner. Although much of the symphony readily conjures images of the Mid-West, the only identifiable folk tune appears in a strain of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Elsewhere there is widespread use of the pentatonic scale, which omits the fourth and seventh notes of the scale, and which the composer noted to be common to African-American, Native-American, Czech, and, interestingly, Scottish music.
In hindsight, it was remarkably enlightened of both Dvořák and his New York commissioners to choose and endorse such music as the foundation of American classical music. As late as 1890, the massacre of some 300 Lakota Native-Americans, mostly women and children, took place at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for which US forces were rewarded with Medals of Honour. Three years later, Dvořák’s ground-breaking symphony was derided as ‘barbaric’ and ‘negrophile’ in the altogether more Anglo-Saxon Boston. Fortunately, it was rapturously received in New York, already an ethnically diverse city.
The first movement (Adagio – Allegro molto) opens with a slow introductory theme, given by the cellos and then flute, before some violent timpani outbursts precede a dramatic pause. The principal theme is then given, initially by the horns and then by the full orchestra. A dancing woodwind motif acts as bridge into the distinctly Slavonic second theme, which is subtly passed around the orchestra. Dvořák’s melodic generosity then gives us the only apparently unoriginal theme in the symphony, a soft and atmospheric variation on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot:
After the repeat, the early themes are developed in an unsettled, skittish passage. It takes a broad, aggressive reassertion of the Swing Low theme by the horns to find a solution. The movement closes in a blaze of brass and timpani.
The famous cor anglais melody of the Largo has variously been misappropriated for ersatz spirituals and bread adverts. Dvořák attached this theme to chapter ten of Longfellow’s poem, depicting Hiawatha’s journey home with his new wife, Minnehaha. The subsequent processional passage evokes her death and funeral. The movement’s climax provides a momentary bright climax, in which hints of the first movement are heard again, before the cor anglais melody reappears. It is finally given to progressively small numbers of string players, eventually leaving just a solo violin and cello. The music chokes on itself, much like the funeral march in Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, before the soft brass chords which began the movement reappear.
The Scherzo, Dvořák wrote, ‘Was suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where the Indians dance’. It is an energetic flurry, demonic in places, interrupted only by an attractive trio. The coda gives an ominous warning in the form of distant horn calls recollecting the first movement. In the Allegro con fuoco finale, Dvořák shows his masterly abilities in bringing together motifs from the remainder of the symphony. All of the themes shown above reappear in various guises, with the addition of a striking motif first heard in the horns and trumpets. A second melody, altogether more lyrical and free-flowing, appears in the clarinet and low strings. The quick tempo continues unabated, the music becoming progressively more skittish and unsettled as the cellos and violas search for resolution. After a militant restatement of the movement’s main theme, a softer, slower passage ensues. Horn fanfares intervene, though, signalling a return to the wilder theme. This is eventually repeated in full orchestration before resolving to the bright sounds of E major, followed by discordant juxtaposition of the principal themes from the two outer movements. The final word is a quiet one: after the last, stabbed chord, pairs of instruments sustain the last chord, the texture slowly thinning into a soft pause.
Leroy Anderson (1908-1975) – A Christmas Festival (1950)
Most famed for his large catalogue of easy-on-the-ear light orchestral music, Leroy Anderson was born to Swedish parents in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and studied Scandinavian languages at Harvard. Alongside a successful career in military intelligence and linguistics, publishing on Icelandic grammar among other subjects, he developed a strong relationship with the Boston Pops Orchestra and its conductor, Arthur Fiedler.
A staple of the Christmas repertoire, Anderson's Christmas Festival is one of the most popular medleys of seasonal tunes. In its original format the work consisted of 9 carols In rapid succession, though Anderson later arranged a trimmed-down version at the expense of an attractive brass chorale on The First Noel. The festival begins with a proud setting of Joy to the World, followed by Deck the Halls, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Good King Wenceslas. After Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, a distant churchbell punctuates Silent Night. Jingle Bells then sparks into life in cat-and-mouse style before erupting into a noisy march. Out of this, O Come All Ye Faithful blazes out from the low brass, driving the music excitably towards its grand close.
