Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”, Op. 95

Violas and cellos begin softly, with basses underneath. The violins rest while clarinets, bassoons and horns play short phrases. These phrases already contain the outline of the horn call that is the main theme of the Allegro.

Dvořák asked for the whole introduction to be “drawn out, where possible”. Its opening melodic outline recurs in other works from his American years, in the third movement of the E♭ major String Quintet and in the Humoresque No. 1.

From bar 24 the horns play the Allegro’s theme in E minor above quiet string chords and pizzicato basses. It opens with leaps in the manner of a fanfare, and the answering phrase falls. Dvořák brought this theme back in every later movement.

On 12 April 1893 Dvořák wrote from New York to Emil Kozánek about his new symphony: “It pleases me very much and will differ considerably from my early compositions.” He finished the score on 24 May.

From bar 91 the second theme begins in G minor, shared by flutes and oboes above a repeated horn note. It stays within a small compass and uses F♮, the lowered seventh. Later the same theme returns in the major as a dance.

In summer 1893, on his first afternoon in Spillville, Iowa, Dvořák gave his assistant Josef Kovařík the 128-page score to copy at four pages a day. Kovařík did so, and Dvořák complained that they were “quite empty ones”. When Kovařík copied sixteen, Dvořák said angrily: “That’s dreadful work, I should know!”

A solo flute plays the third theme in G major. Its opening has the rhythm of the horn call. The strings hold sustained chords beneath it.

The flute’s tune is often compared with the spiritual Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and most scholars consider its outline and rhythm too close to be chance. Dvořák told the New York Herald he had “not actually used any of the melodies”, only the spirit of Black and Native American songs.

The development takes up the horn call and the opening of the flute melody. The music modulates quickly from A major to A minor, then to F major and F♯ minor. The phrases return over moving bass notes.

On 21 May 1893, three days before he finished the score, the New York Herald printed Dvořák’s views under the headline “Real Value of Negro Melodies”. “These are the folk songs of America,” he said, “and your composers must turn to them.”

The opening call returns in E minor. The other themes follow a semitone higher. The second begins in G♯ minor, and the flute melody returns in A♭ major.

In New York, Harry T. Burleigh sang spirituals for Dvořák, and the two met repeatedly before Dvořák began the symphony. The five-note scales and displaced accents of these songs informed the melodies he wrote for it.

Jeannette Thurber founded New York’s National Conservatory in 1885 and admitted students whatever their race or sex. In 1892 she offered Dvořák its directorship. On 23 January 1894 he conducted its student orchestra and an all-Black choir of 130 at Madison Square Garden Concert Hall, for the Herald’s clothing fund.

In the coda the horn call passes up through the brass, with timpani prominent beneath the full orchestra. The flute melody earlier moved to A♭ major. The movement ends in E minor.

Clarinets, bassoons and brass begin with a chain of chords that moves from E major to D♭ major. The violins enter muted, and the wind choir drops out, leaving a single cor anglais.

The cor anglais solo in bars 7–⁠10 uses four pitches, F, A♭, E♭ and D♭. Each phrase is in dotted rhythm, played over muted strings.

In the sketches Dvořák gave the melody to a clarinet, in a more European shape. In the score it is played by the cor anglais, with a stronger pentatonic outline. The instrument’s tone is said to have reminded him of the voice of the singer Harry T. Burleigh.

Dvořák wrote two phrases into his sketches for this movement: “Legend” and “The Legend Begins”. Michael Beckerman heard the opening chords as a musical “once upon a time”. The sketchbooks contain earlier versions of these chords, one of which begins and ends in C major.

In the summer of 1922 William Arms Fisher, a former pupil of the composer, played a piano arrangement of the Largo and began to write words to it. He made the cor anglais melody into the song Goin’ Home, nearly thirty years after the symphony.

In February 1900 Dvořák sent Oskar Nedbal, who was preparing to conduct the symphony in Berlin, a published analysis of it. He asked him to leave out “that nonsense about my using Indian and American motifs – it is a lie!” He had meant only to write in the spirit of American national melodies.

The key changes from D♭ major to C♯ minor, on the same sounding tonic. Flutes and oboes share a new tune over repeated string chords. Later, pizzicato bass notes give this middle section the tread of a funeral march.

Dvořák told the New York Herald in December 1893 that he had “carefully studied a certain number of Indian melodies which a friend gave me”. Iroquois performers had sung and danced in Prague for ten days in August 1879. He saw Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in spring 1894, after the symphony was finished.

On 15 December 1893 people queued in heavy rain for the public rehearsal at Carnegie Hall, and every seat was sold. Anton Seidl conducted the New York Philharmonic. The official première followed the next evening.

A quick figure for solo oboe divides the long phrases into short groups of notes. Flutes and clarinets join with trills and runs. The harmony moves to C♯ major, and the strings play a crescendo underneath.

The dance builds to a full orchestral climax. The first movement’s main theme and closing theme return alongside the Largo theme, with the brass above the strings.

At Meno mosso, Tempo I the opening tempo returns. The cor anglais plays the theme again in D♭ major, accompanied by four players in each violin, viola and cello part.

The string parts are reduced again, to two players each and then to solo violin, viola, cello and bass. Fermatas separate the phrases.

At the première on 16 December 1893, the audience would not allow the concert to continue after the Largo until Dvořák appeared and bowed. His son Otakar, who was in the hall, recorded this in his memoirs.

Bassoons, horns, trombones and tuba bring back the introductory chords, which move slowly to D♭ major once more. After the last wind chord, divided double basses descend and the movement ends.

The orchestra begins with sharp chords, timpani and triangle. Running strings follow, with accents displaced against the three-beat bar.

Dvořák told the New York Herald in December 1893 that the scherzo came from “the scene of the feast where the Indians dance” in Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha. In that passage of the poem, a dancer whirls faster and faster and throws sand into the air.

At bar 61, marked Poco sostenuto (a little sustained), flutes and oboes play a new tune in E major. Soft repeated string chords keep the three-beat pulse underneath. The bassoons play short phrases in reply.

The repeated-note figure passes from first violins to second violins, then to violas and cellos. Horns and timpani hold B, and each new entry is softer than the one before.

The central trio, from bar 176, is a broader dance in C major. The woodwinds play the melody over a running accompaniment in the first and second violins. Timpani and triangle return with short, widely spaced entries.

In Spillville in the summer of 1893, Josef Kovařík copied the new symphony at four pages a day. When he once produced sixteen, Dvořák scolded him: “Are you trying to dig yourself an early grave? Why do you do it? This is your holiday, man!”

The trio has a second dance, made of short skipping figures followed by trills. The violins play them first and the flutes, oboes and clarinets take them over. The bass continues in steps underneath.

Soft string figures lead back to the scherzo in E minor. Its sharp accents and abrupt shifts of weight return, and so does the wind tune in E major set within it. The trio in C major is not repeated.

In the coda the horns bring back the main theme of the first movement over repeated string chords. Later the theme first played by solo flute in that movement passes through winds and horns over running cellos and basses.

The strings begin alone and drive a short figure upwards. Winds and brass enter at the top of the climb. The brass then play the main theme, which has a broad opening phrase and a sharply accented reply.

A solo clarinet plays the second theme in G major. It holds long notes over quick figures in the cellos. The brass rests, and the flutes later join the clarinet.

Dvořák finished the score at nine in the morning on 24 May 1893. That afternoon a telegram told him that his children had reached Southampton on their way to America, and he added the news beside the time of completion.

The development combines themes from the second, third and fourth movements. The slow movement’s melody and the scherzo’s quick figures sound against the finale’s main theme. Dvořák changes their pairings and accompaniment, so that melodies from different movements occupy the same bars.

In the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, themes from the earlier movements are recalled at the start and then dropped. Dvořák brings them back in the development and adds more of them as the movement goes on. By the coda, every key idea of the symphony has returned.

At the public rehearsal on 15 December 1893 the Herald asked musicians what the symphony meant for America. Seidl hoped it would lead younger composers towards “a truly national school”. Victor Herbert was asked whether it would shape the country’s music and replied: “Yes, if the composers are Dr. Dvořák.”

The finale’s main theme returns after the combination of earlier melodies. Its broad statement leads into a shortened recapitulation. Dvořák kept the longest treatment of material from the earlier movements for the expanded coda.

London heard the symphony first in Europe, on 21 June 1894. Czech audiences first heard it at Karlovy Vary on 20 July. In Prague, on 13 October, Dvořák conducted it himself at the National Theatre.

In November 1893 Anton Seidl asked for the score so that he could prepare its première. Shortly before Kovařík took it to him, Dvořák added From the New World to the title page. Until that evening the title page had read Symphony in E minor.

The coda brings back themes from the earlier movements alongside the finale’s own. The chords that opened the Largo return, scored for full orchestra. The brass hold them in long notes while the strings rise against them.

After the première Dvořák wrote to his publisher Simrock in Berlin that “the papers are saying that no composer has ever achieved a triumph such as this”. The applause was so long, he added, that he had to bow from his box “like a king (don’t laugh!)”.

From bar 310 the orchestra makes a diminuendo after its large chords. The repeated string figures soften and the bass holds a long note. The clarinets enter above it with another quiet recollection before the final climb.

The closing pages move towards E major. In the final bar the strings, trombones and timpani play their last chord short, while the woodwind, horns and trumpets hold theirs. The held chord makes a diminuendo to ppp under a long fermata.