{"id":2163,"date":"2021-11-23T22:46:06","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T03:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2163"},"modified":"2021-11-23T22:46:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T03:46:10","slug":"dvoraks-prophecy-a-two-hour-webcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/11\/dvoraks-prophecy-a-two-hour-webcast.html","title":{"rendered":"Dvorak’s Prophecy — A Two-Hour Webcast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My brand-new book Dvorak\u2019s Proph<\/a>ecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music<\/em><\/strong> (already a best book of the year in The Financial Times<\/em> and Kirkus Reviews) proposes a \u201cnew paradigm\u201d for the history of American classical music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Replacing the modernist \u201cstandard narrative\u201d popularized by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, it begins not ca. 1920 but with the sorrow songs so memorably extolled by W E. B. Du Bois and Antonin Dvorak. Emphasizing proximity to vernacular speech and song, it privileges Charles Ives and George Gershwin as our two great creative talents. And it necessarily incorporates the Black Classical Music now being belatedly exhumed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In effect, I am presenting a buried lineage, beginning with the American Dvorak and proceeding to Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, Florence Price, William Grant Still \u2013 all of whom absorbed Dvorak\u2019s roots-in-the-soil Romantic cultural nationalism. The peak achievements here include (I would say) Burleigh\u2019s \u201cSteal Away\u201d and (setting Langston Hughes) \u201cLovely Dark and Lonely One,\u201d Dett\u2019s The Ordering of Moses<\/em>, and Dawson\u2019s Negro Folk Symphony.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another way of looking at it all is to fix on the composers left out of the standard narrative \u2013 the American Dvorak, Burleigh, Ives, Gershwin, Dawson \u2013 and also, e.g.,  Silvestre Revueltas, Bernard Herrmann, and Lou Harrison. (My series of \u201cDvorak\u2019s Prophecies\u201d films<\/strong><\/a>, just now released on Naxos, includes treatments of Ives, Dawson, Herrmann, and Harrison.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These eight \u201cleft out\u201d composers have long been explored and promoted by PostClassical Ensemble and my PCE colleague Angel Gil-Ordonez \u2013 and the most recent \u201cPostClassical\u201d webcast,<\/a><\/strong> on WWFM, is dedicated to Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy<\/em> and compositions by these eight formidable American voices. In conversation with Angel and the inimitable Bill McGlaughlin, we ask and re-ask: \u201cHow is it possible these pieces aren\u2019t known?\u201d Angel calls the American neglect of Ives \u201cthe biggest mystery in American music.\u201d I comment that Revueltas is \u201cthe composer we should be studying right now\u201d \u2013 because he knows how to embed the call for social justice into enduring works of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically, American classical musicians have lacked curiosity about American music; they remain fundamentally Eurocentric. In my book, I treat this as a larger American self-affliction; the epigraph quotes George Santayana: \u201cThe American mind does not oppose tradition it forgets it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this matters more than ever. Never before have we so urgently needed a common cultural inheritance to foster a newly consolidated national self-awareness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a need so acute that it isn\u2019t noticed or discussed.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here (below) is a Listeners Guide for our three-part WWFM webcast<\/a><\/strong>. Profuse thanks, as ever, to David Osenberg, who makes WWFM the nation\u2019s most enterprising classical-music radio station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For information on the book and the films: www.josephhorowitz.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COMING UP: “DVORAK’S PROPHECY ON NPR: “1A” Thursday, Nov 25 at 10 am ET.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART ONE:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

00:00 \u2013 Harry Burleigh<\/strong>: Steal Away<\/em> (Kevin Deas and Joe Horowitz at the National Cathedral)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7:00 \u2013 Burleigh as a forgotten hero of American music. His place in the new narrative proposed by Horowitz in Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy<\/em>, replacing the modernist \u201cstandard narrative\u201d of American classical music <\/p>\n\n\n\n

15:00 \u2013 Antonin Dvorak<\/strong>\u2019s little-known \u201cAmerican\u201d style after the New World<\/em> Symphony. His American<\/em> Suite, movement 3, performed by PostClassical Ensemble and Angel Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez, for whom it proclaims \u201cThis is America!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23:00 \u2013 Dvorak\u2019s three American tropes: African-American, Native American, the American West. How to account for our continued ignorance of his later American output? Horowitz: \u201cWe\u2019re just not interested in ourselves, we lack curiosity.\u201d The Metropolitan Museum traces a lineage of American painting; the NY Philharmonic does not trace a lineage of American music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

29:00 \u2013 The \u201cmost striking omission\u201d: Charles Ives<\/strong>. Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez: the failure to play Ives is \u201cthe biggest mystery\u201d in American music, \u201creally a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

36:00 \u2013 Ives: The Housatonic at <\/em>Stockbridge (as presented in the new \u201cDvorak\u2019s Prophecy\u201d film \u201cCharles Ives\u2019 America\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART TWO:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

00:00 \u2013 George Gershwin<\/strong> and \u201cthe Gershwin threat.\u201d An under-rated Gershwin piece: the Cuban<\/em> Overture, with its surprising Andalusian episode<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2:08 \u2013 Gershwin Cuban<\/em> Overture, performed by Angel Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez and PCE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

14:08 \u2013 Why don\u2019t we know the Cuban<\/em> Overture? It fails the criteria of modernism<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18:55 \u2013 William Levi Dawson<\/strong>\u2019s Negro Folk Symphony<\/em>: \u201cburied treasure\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

20:26 \u2013 Dawson\u2019s symphony, movement 2: \u201cHope in the Night,\u201d performed by Leopold Stokowski<\/p>\n\n\n\n

41:00 \u2013 Could the Black musical motherlode that fostered popular genres have equally served American classical music?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PART THREE: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2:00 \u2013 Silvestre Revueltas<\/strong>: another major composer who falls outside the modernist narrative. Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez: \u201canother tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8:15 \u2013 Revueltas: Redes<\/em> (ending), with PCE conducted by Angel Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez<\/p>\n\n\n\n

11:52 \u2013 Why Revueltas is \u201cthe composer we should be studying right now\u201d re: political art and social justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

22:00 \u2013 Lou Harrison<\/strong> and his Violin Concerto<\/p>\n\n\n\n

25:00 \u2013 Harrison Violin Concerto, movement 3, with Tim Fain and PCE led by Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez<\/p>\n\n\n\n

35:25 \u2013 Bernard Herrmann<\/strong> as \u201cthe most under-rated 20th<\/sup> century American composer\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

38:00 \u2013 Herrmann\u2019s Psycho<\/em> Narrative performed by PCE and Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My brand-new book Dvorak\u2019s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music (already a best book of the year in The Financial Times and Kirkus Reviews) proposes a \u201cnew paradigm\u201d for the history of American classical music.  Replacing the modernist \u201cstandard narrative\u201d popularized by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, it begins not ca. 1920 but with the sorrow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-yT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2169,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions\/2169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}