Antonin Dvorák's well-beloved Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" (more commonly known as the New World Symphony), illustrates the nineteenth and early twentieth century fascination with American music, particularly its folk music. Towards the close of the nineteenth century, many composers from Eastern European nations (historically dominated by Western Europe and Russia) turned to traditional folk musics in order to solidify their particular national identity through sound. America, too, was unsure of its own style, dependent largely on European-trained musicians and European-influenced compositional techniques, and searching for an individual sound.
In the midst of this backdrop, the Czech composer Antonin Dvorák (already famous for his work in nationalistic styles of music) was invited to America by Jeannette Thurber in order to serve as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City and develop an "American sound." From 1892-1895, during his three years at the Conservatory, Dvorák explored what he considered to be the unique folk music of America: the music of Native Americans and the African American spiritual. The folk music of European immigrants might have sounded similar to the folk music of the homeland, but in the songs of the Native Americans and African Americans, many composers felt they had arrived at a distinct and fresh identity for America. In the spring of 1893, Dvorak composed the New World Symphony.
Though it certainly demonstrates Dvorák's interest in what he considered to be essential to "the future music of [America]," the New World Symphony sounds much more Czech than African or Native American (two distinct groups whose music the composer seems to have somewhat conflated). Dvorák did not claim to use any particular melodies, but rather attempted to transfer the "stylistic features" of the folk music (pentatonic scales and flattened leading tones) to a concert symphony setting. The first movement contains a flute solo vaguely suggestive of the spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. The second movement was intended to set the stage for a later work that would put Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha to music. Despite this intention to depict a Native American, the melody sounded so similar to an African American spiritual that William Arms Fisher wrote words for it in his song Goin' Home. Yet even though Dvorak's symphony can be criticized for inaccuracy in its representation of so-called American folk music, others such as Leonard Bernstein have noted the symphony's multinationalism, a characteristic which several claim is, after all, the defining feature of the most famous American metaphor: the melting pot.
