dvorak's 'american' string quartet no.12 in Fmag.

August 3, 2011 at 11:23 PM ·

The American SQ was written the same year this happened:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893

The more things change...

August 4, 2011 at 03:14 AM ·

BIll wrote: someone in an interview on npr said recently that the americans (and australians) are the only nationals in the world who still haven't figured out who they are.

I resent that.  What about Canadians?  We currently stand for none-of-the-above.  [Or more correctly none-of-the-below ;) ]

August 4, 2011 at 03:20 AM ·

The "American" quartet, of course, was written during the summer Dvorak spent in Spillville, Iowa.  Ever been there?  There's a wonderful little museum devoted to him in the upstairs of the house where he lived.  (My maternal grandparents lived their entire lives in a town about 15 miles away.)  That corner of Iowa is stunningly beautiful, green and hilly, still as rural as it was then.  The bird call used in the quartet is what Dvorak heard around him.

In 1893, Spillville still was the frontier.  My ancestors were among the first settlers in that area, coming in 1865, a time when there wasn't even a bridge across the Mississippi into northeastern Iowa.  Thirty years later, the area was well settled, but it was all still new and full of promise, and hardship, too.  The political world of Washington, D.C. and the financial world of New York were probably just as dysfunctional then as now, but CSPAN and Fox News weren't providing 24/7 coverage of it.  My grandmother, born in 1895, was in her mid-teens before she first saw an automobile. 

I'm not sure anyone could write such a beautifully optimistic piece anymore.  Look at European music and painting after World War I- there's a darkness there that never has gone away.  After World War II- the Holocaust, Hiroshima- the optimism and sense of unlimited possibilities was gone for good.

August 4, 2011 at 02:23 PM ·

"someone in an interview on npr said recently that the americans (and australians) are the only nationals in the world who still haven't figured out who they are. "

Vacuous pseudo-intellectualism.

August 4, 2011 at 03:19 PM ·

for me, this music - the "new world" and even something like copeland's "fanfare for the common man" - is fixed in a time and place that's long gone.  i understand "this land is your land" was sung at the republican convention that nominated g.w. bush for a second term - woody guthrie must have been spinning in his grave ... millionaires and enron officials singing his song.

music like "land of hope and glory" seems to have resonance in contemporary great britian and "ode to joy" is the e.u.'s anthem - i wonder if people, both inside and outside the u.s., believe they're experiencing the essence of america when they hear these dvorak pieces?

August 4, 2011 at 04:52 PM ·

In the squares of the city by the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office I saw my people
And some were stumbling and some were wondering if
This land was made for you and me.

Please, please tell me they included this verse, or the one about private property!

August 4, 2011 at 09:40 PM ·

To me, Aaron Copland best expresses the "essence of America" in pieces like Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, The Red Pony, Lincoln Portrait, and so on.  Not only are his themes genuinely American, but his composition evokes the open spaces and massiveness of the American landscape.  Dvorak's symphony From the New World uses supposed tunes from Native Americans, but I don't think most people would recognize them as such.  His perspective is more that of a visitor than a native, perhaps.