Dvorak’s Prophecy – And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music (Norton & Company, 2021) is the eleventh book of cultural historian Joseph Horowitz and offers a literary trail mix of insight about the adaptation (or lack) of African-American musicians into mainstream America – beginning particularly with Dvorak’s tenure as Director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music from 1892-1895. Horowitz’ eloquently spun content contains reflective commentary about America’s cultural scene by offering lengthy retrospective about seminal personalities such as Mark Twain and his The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Ives and his second symphony, Copland, Gershwin and his Porgy and Bess, Du Bois and his The Souls of Black Folk, Henry Higginson and his Boston Symphony and music critics Huneker, Henderson, Krehbiel and Thomson.
Of course, the book provides a meticulously researched overview of African-American classical musicians such as Dvorak’s relationship with Harry Burleigh, the Fisk Jubilee Singers (still receiving accolades since 1871) – which Horowitz points out were among an often forgotten but quintessential part of America’s classical music awakening. The author’s overriding theme about the marginalization of African-American classical composers, for example underscores the politics of culture and asks the question, What is American music and where did it come from – something Leonard Bernstein addressed in a Young People’s Concert of 1958. The musical thread of these topics is what Dvorak wrote in 1893 as motivated by a fascination for American folk idioms that include spirituals, sorrow songs of which many originated in western Africa as well as Native American music – indicative of his symphony From the New World.
“I am now satisfied that the future music of this country {USA} must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition…These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American….” Unfortunately since Dvorak’s time, performances of William Levi Dawson’s acclaimed Negro Folk Symphony, Florence Prices’ violin concertos, Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses, Burleigh’s arrangements of spirituals, William Grant Stills’ symphonies and George Walker’s Lilacs among others are few and far between.
There has been a more facile crossover of music from Black jazz, blues or rag time performers such as Scott Joplin, Lena Horne, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis. In this regard, Horowitz explores aspects and attitudes of why the so-called white European-American classical school of music has largely ignored the influence of Black contributors. Although African-American classical musicians at one time were segregated from most of America’s leading concert halls (in addition to other venues) there have been breakout artists such as Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson and Leontyne Price who lead the way.
If there are takeaways from this book it is the way Horowitz uses well documented snippets to highlight a lost and found interconnection between the American concert hall and a heritage of African-American music. Fascinating sources include: Krehbiel’s Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music (1914), Van Wyck Brooks America’s Coming of Age (1915), the Metropolitan Opera’s early years of programming, Dvorak conducting a concert in Madison Square Garden in 1894 with soprano Sissieretta Jones known as ‘The Black Adelina Patti’ and a forward by tenor George Shirley.
In mentioning his successful career as the first African-American tenor to sing leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera House Shirley says, “The disconnection between the rich history of Black American music and the classical music we typically hear has proven impoverishing, Because of our current conversation about race, we now observe a seemingly desperate effort to make up for lost time, to present Black faces in the concert hall. I think that’s only fair.”