DVOŘÁK’S PROPHECY – A New Narrative for American Classical Music

Film 1: Dvořák’s New World Symphony – A Lens on the American Experience of Race

A PostClassical Ensemble ‘More than Music’ film
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff

This first film in the series keys on Dvořák’s prophecy and explores its present-day pertinence. In New York City and Spillville, Iowa, Dvořák boldly chose to regard African Americans and Native Americans as representative Americans. That decision was both acclaimed and ridiculed at the time. It remains inspirational. His New World Symphony, still the best-known and best-loved symphonic work conceived on American soil, is saturated with the influence of plantation song, and also with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha. This act of appropriation, my film argues, was an act of empathy performed by a great humanitarian. The musical selections here are mainly taken from the Hiawatha Melodrama, which I co-composed with the music historian Michael Beckerman with orchestrations by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. It mates Dvořák with Longfellow. The participating commentators include the music historians Mark Clague and Lorenzo Candelaria, the literary historian Brian Yothers, the conductor JoAnn Falletta, faculty members from Howard University – and also (sagely commenting on cultural appropriation) the bass-baritone Kevin Deas, with whom I have long enjoyed the privilege of performing the spiritual arrangements of Dvořák’s assistant Harry Burleigh. – J.H.

Music:
Antonín Dvořák
Harry Burleigh
Michael Beckerman
Joseph Horowitz

with
Kevin Deas
PostClassical Ensemble
Angel Gil-Ordóñez
Mark Clague
Lorenzo Candelaria
Kehembe Eichelberger
JoAnn Falletta
Matthew Franke
Joseph Horowitz
Brian Yothers

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Audio language: English
Running time: 83 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)