Unanswered Question: August 2010 Archives

Though there are some historians of American music who dispute the crucial importance of Dvorak, and many more who simply ignore him, that the impact of his short American sojourn (1892-1895) remains incalculable was driven home afresh during the recent "Dvorak and America" NEH teacher-training institute in Pittsburgh.

After World War I, the iconic American spiritual was "Deep River." The person mainly responsible for that was Dvorak's one-time African-American assistant Harry Burleigh. Burleigh's version of "Deep River" was in fact half-Dvorak. Without the example of the New World Symphony, it would not have existed.

Backing up: Thanks to Wayne Shirley's exemplary history of "Deep River" (American Music, Winter 1997), I know that when the Fisk Jubilee Singers toured with this song after the Civil War, it was a relatively upbeat number. It was Burleigh who influentially slowed it down into a reverent, "timeless" hymn. This happened in 1913, when Burleigh arranged it for mixed a cappella chorus, and again in 1916, when he arranged it for solo singer and piano.

These Burleigh arrangements were historic. Before that, writes Wayne, a "mainly white mixed chorus of the period" would never sing a spiritual. "Burleigh's choral arrangements . . . freed the spiritual for performance by choruses in general. . . . In Burleigh's 'Deep River' we hear for the first time the full Dvorakian panoply of late nineteenth-century harmony applied to a mixed-chorus arrangement of a spiritual ; we also hear for the first time a spiritual arrangement using moderately complex choral textures."

Nor, before Burleigh, would a solo singer, white or black, commonly sing spirituals with piano accompaniment. Wayne: "The runaway popularity of 'Deep River' in 1916-1917 did more than establish the tune, specifically Burleigh's version of the tune, in the public consciousness. It also changed the public attitude toward solo-voice versions of spirituals as part of the concert repertory. . . . It was 'Deep River' that made it thinkable for spirituals to appear on a mainstream vocal recital - rapt singer standing in front of piano, attentive accompanist playing from the notes."

But that is not all. Though Wayne's article feints towards Dvorak's Largo (which so acutely resembles Burleigh's "Deep River" in tempo and tone), Wayne (who normally knows all things) had neglected to look at Burleigh's male chorus a cappella arrangement of "Deep River." Thanks to the Burleigh scholar Jean Snyder, we discovered at the Dvorak institute that this version - unlike the one for mixed chorus (i.e., men and women both) - begins and ends with a stately chordal episode mimicking the beginning and end of Dvorak's Largo. It makes explicit Burleigh's conflation of "Deep River" with Dvorak - the result of which was "Deep River" as we now know it.

The trajectory from the Fisk Singers to Dvorak to Burleigh leads onward to Roland Hayes, Marian Anderson, and Paul Robeson. Dvorak - the Bohemian visitor for whom "Negro melodies" signified the future of American music - is a vital part of this narrative. It would have happened differently without him.

Try absorbing that. Amazing.

SWAPPING HOROWITZ FOR ARRAU

As readers of this blog may be aware, my son Bernie is a diehard Vladimir Horowitz enthusiast who has forced me to my knees ("Horowitz on Horowitz on Horowitz on Horowitz: A Recantation") - more or less.

Bernie recently restored the "Vladimir Horowitz Website," which had been taken offline.
He continues to collect obscure concert and studio recordings in pursuit of a comprehensive library of Horowitz performances spanning six decades. He regularly assaults me with putative new evidence of Horowitz's genius. "Not another Liszt B minor Ballade!" I groan to no avail. "No more Carmen Fantasies!"

Notwithstanding jibes and insults from Bernie and his cohorts, my allegiance to Claudio Arrau remains intact. Far and away, he is the pianist from my own lifetime who has given me the deepest pleasure. That pleasure has now been renewed, ironically, as a by-product of my son's obsession. He has traded recordings from his Horowitz arsenal for several rare concert recordings by Arrau, including a desert-island Brahms B-flat Concerto.

Arrau owned the Brahms D minor Piano Concerto. He commanded a singular Brahms sonority - the fullness of cushioned tone, the fullness of texture and song he maintained even in the knottiest of Brahmsian ecstasies were his alone. His studio recordings of this concerto, with Giulini and Haitink, are nothing. But the concerto long remained in his repertory. I treasure memories of live Carnegie Hall performances, and possess even better performances: live recordings with Rafael Kubelik and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra, and with Robert Palmer and the Atlanta Symphony.

The B-flat Concerto, however, is a work Arrau less performed, and had stopped performing in the years I knew him (writing my Conversations with Arrau). The studio recordings, again with Giulini and Haitink, are stillborn. I had previously encountered on CD a live Arrau Brahms B-flat unidiomatically accompanied by Charles Munch, and another that came too late in his career to catch fire.

Bernie has found the Arrau Brahms B-flat Concerto I have long dreamt of hearing, the performance of a lifetime. The conductor is Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, the orchestra is the Pittsburgh Symphony, the year is 1974. The pianist's warmth of tone and sentiment is here memorably returned. Today's Pittsburgh Symphony is a great Germanic orchestra whose tonal depth and dark sonic coloration set it apart from other American bands. And so it sounds playing Brahms in 1974. Today's Pittsburgh Symphony enjoys an exceptionally appreciative audience. And the audience response to 1974 Arrau's Brahms B-flat is itself memorable. The first movement ends on such a high note of exaltation that only creatures of stone could fail to react. One hears the usual coughing and shuffling between movements - and then, some seven seconds after the movement's end, the applause begins. This knowing violation of misguided rules of decorum - no clapping between movements - is of course unsupported. But after the second movement, a defiant minority bursts into loud applause the instant the seething, accelerating coda (unique in my experience of the work) pounds to a close. A precipitous ovation interrupts the finale's final chord, sealing the sense of occasion.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the other day that, "facing chronic red ink and houses only two-thirds full," the Philadelphia Orchestra might be undertaking "profound change." Alison Vulgamore, the orchestra's president, was quoted saying, "We simply can't go on doing the same thing . . . we have to be able to experiment."

Already, there are American orchestras in cities like Memphis and Louisville that seem intent on reinventing themselves. Elsewhere, symphonic reinvention is nascent, or merely handwriting on the wall.

It has long seemed to me that orchestras need to re-envision themselves as educational institutions. This would mean re-envisioning the content and purpose of subscription concerts: more thematic programs, more cross-disciplinary content embracing dance, film, theater, and the visual arts. One result would be a means of escape from the rigid confines of classical music. Another would be new links to museums, to high schools, colleges, and universities. An expanded mandate; an enlarged mission.

I have seen it work. Also, I've also just directed a three-week NEH teacher-training institute on "Dvorak and America," hosted by the Pittsburgh Symphony, which produced new ammunition for "profound change."

The faculty - a menagerie of colleagues and friends - comprised scholars of blackface minstrelsy, Yellow Journalism, 19th century landscape painting, and Chicago's "White City" of 1893; of Dvorak, Anton Seidl, Stephen Foster, and Harry Burleigh. The goal was to disseminate tools for infusing the arts and humanities in the classroom. The participants were 24 public and private school teachers from all over the US, spanning grades 3 to 12. The core materials were my young readers book Dvorak in America, the pathbreaking Robert Winter/Peter Bogdanoff interactive DVD "From the New World: A Celebrated Composer's American Odyssey" (with hundreds of pages of primary sources and many hours of music), and a "visual presentation" for the New World Symphony I co-created with Peter Bogdanoff during my years at the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

The third week of the institute was dedicated to individual projects created by the participating teachers over the previous two weeks - lesson plans and curricula they would implement in their schools.

Going into the institute, week three was a source of anxiety. With my colleagues, I worried how best to provide direction and advice to teachers many of whom began with virtually no knowledge of Dvorak or the New World Symphony. Our anxiety was misplaced. The teachers already knew how to teach.

And so Steve Kramer, who teaches Advanced Placement American History at an elite Dallas private school, created "Longfellow, Dvorak, and the American West," an exquisitely detailed lesson plan that ingeniously applies letters, paintings, sculpture, newspaper clips, passages from The Song of Hiawatha, and excerpts from the New World Symphony. "The objective of this lesson," Steve writes, "is to combine arts, music, and literature to show how the fine arts and popular culture . . . became an 'American culture' during the Gilded Age. A complementary but no less important objective is to incorporate in an Advanced Placement United States History course some music other than the jazz of the 1920s and the rock 'n' roll of the 1950s and 1960s. Dvorak and Longfellow can have a place in the AP curriculum."

Amen.

Cliff Hall, who teaches Music at an elementary school outside Philadelphia, will create a themed Dvorak concert for Black History Month, presenting student instrumentalists and singers in "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Goin' Home." Concomitantly, the students will learn about the slave trade, Dvorak's espousal of "Negro melodies," and the genesis of the New World Symphony.

Lynn Riale, who teaches Literature at a Catholic girls' school in Pittsburgh, will use passages from the New World Symphony to explore the culture resonance of passages from The Song of Hiawatha - a protean cross-disciplinary unit.

Carinna Tarvin, who teaches History in a challenged multi-ethnic Seattle-area high school, created a unit on "musical nationalism" that will introduce her kids to Dvorak, Bartok, Falla, Carlos Chavez, Silvestre Revueltas, and Thomas Mapfumo - all of whom drew upon cultures (African-Americans, gypsies, peasants, Rhodesian blacks) "that had traditionally been suppressed or ignored."

Circling back to the Philadelphia Orchestra: the lesson plans my teachers concocted powerfully point to new and urgent roles for orchestras as educators - sophisticated roles reaching far beyond Young People's Concerts and instrumental instruction.

In fact, if a pending NEH application is approved, five of my Dvorak institute teachers will participate in "Dvorak and America" festivals presented by the Buffalo Philharmonic, the North Carolina Symphony, and Pacific Youth Symphony - projects potently linked to middle and high schools.

Other teachers from the institute will implement their own ambitious "Dvorak and America" high school festivals in Pittsburgh and St. George, Utah, with the possible participation of local orchestras.

Challenged schools and challenged orchestras need one another.