Symphony No. 9 in E Minor

A love letter to America, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 is one the most universally popular works of classical music and one with complex DNA. The E minor Symphony was the first piece Dvořák completed in New York City, where he served as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America and lived for three years. Shortly before its December 16, 1893, premiere by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, he gave it the title From the New World. The extent to which Dvořák was influenced by American culture has become a point of considerable debate, and points to the work’s rich layers. Take the second theme of the first movement, which clearly resembles the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” It may reflect the influence of Harry T. Burleigh, an African American composer and singer Dvořák had met at the conservatory. Connections to Native American music are less pronounced. The composer once stated that the middle two movements are based on Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha, with the largo representing Hiawatha at the grave site of Minnehaha. The scherzo, he said, was “suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where the Indians dance.” Any actual encounters with Native American musicians may have come when Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show arrived in New York in the spring of 1893, which featured Oglala Sioux performers. The fourth movement recaps themes from earlier movements, and the entire symphony is presented, naturally, with a Czech musical accent.