{"id":480,"date":"2013-03-04T23:47:01","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T04:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=480"},"modified":"2013-03-04T23:47:01","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T04:47:01","slug":"dvorak-and-hiawatha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2013\/03\/dvorak-and-hiawatha.html","title":{"rendered":"Dvorak and Hiawatha"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two wicked questions to ask conductors of Dvorak\u2019s New World<\/em> Symphony are: \u201cWhy does the coda begin with a dirge?\u201d and \u201cWhy is there a diminuendo on the final chord?\u201d The musical content of the finale in no way dictates these developments. Obviously, a story of some kind \u2013 a \u201cprogram\u201d \u2013 is in play. The dirge is a pentatonic \u201cIndian\u201d theme with timpani taps. It is restated as an apotheosis. Then there is a robust arpeggiated tonic cadence and that final E major chord fading to silence. Any conductor who performs this music without a story in mind has failed the composer.<\/p>\n

But what story? Any story that fits will do. But there is an obvious story already at hand: \u201cHiawatha\u2019s Leavetaking\u201d from Longfellow\u2019s famous poem. Hiawatha sails his birch canoe into the purple mists of evening, \u201cto the regions of the home-wind, to the land of the hereafter!\u201d That, to my ears, is what the coda to the New World<\/em> Symphony describes.<\/p>\n

That Dvorak and Longfellow have something to do with one another is indisputable. The composer told New York reporters that the middle movements of his symphony were inspired by The Song of Hiawatha.<\/em> We know that the opening of the Scherzo was envisioned as the whirling, spinning Dance of Pau-Puk Keewis at Hiawatha\u2019s wedding feast. And, thanks to the music historian Michael Beckerman, we are pretty sure that Minnehaha\u2019s death in winter inspired the heart-stopping middle segment \u2013 with pizzicato double basses \u2013 of the great Largo.<\/p>\n

The alignment of Longfellow\u2019s poem with Dvorak\u2019s symphony is not only suggestive but supremely poetic. Dvorak was already stirred by The Song of Hiawatha when in Prague he read it in Czech. In New York, he re-read it in English (a language he knew). His crowning aspiration, in America, was to compose a Hiawatha opera or cantata. But it was not to be. <\/p>\n

My own obsession with Dvorak\u2019s Longfellow fixation long ago compelled me to create (with the video artist Peter Bogdanoff) a visual presentation<\/a> for the Largo and Scherzo of Dvorak\u2019s symphony, culling text from Longfellow\u2019s poem and imagery from iconic nineteenth century American painters (Bierstadt, Church, Remington, Catlin, etc.); it\u2019s been used by the New York Philharmonic and many other orchestras. I\u2019ve also, with Mike Beckerman, created a nine-minute \u201cHiawatha Melodrama\u201d for narrator and orchestra, also widely performed. (You can see and hear it by scrolling to 35 minutes at http:\/\/vimeo.com\/27663049.) This combination of textual and musical fragments has now begotten a full-fledged, self-sufficient concert work: a 32-minute Hiawatha Melodrama in five parts: \u201cHiawatha\u2019s Wooing,\u201d \u201cHiawatha\u2019s Wedding Feast,\u201d \u201cThe Death of Minnehaha,\u201d \u201cThe Slaying of Pau-Puk Keewis,\u201d and — an Epilogue — \u201cHiawatha\u2019s Leavetaking.\u201d The music is drawn from Dvorak\u2019s New World<\/em> Symphony and American<\/em> Suite. In addition, I\u2019ve composed sections myself, using themes from Dvorak\u2019s symphony and suite, and also from the Larghetto (\u201cIndian Lament\u201d) of his Violin Sonatina, which happens to be a picture of Minnehaha.<\/p>\n

The new Hiawatha Melodrama was premiered to a standing ovation last weekend by PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordonez (who also orchestrated the sections I\u2019ve composed), with Kevin Deas as narrator. We\u2019ve also just recorded it for Naxos, for a themed CD (\u201cDvorak and America\u201d) that will also include music by Arthur Farwell (who as the leader of the \u201cIndianists\u201d movement in music called himself the \u201cfirst composer to take up Dvorak\u2019s challenge\u201d).<\/p>\n

In other words: I have just made my debut as a composer. As it happens, I\u2019ve also just finished, in draft, my first novel: The Disciple: A Tale of New York in the Gilded Age<\/em>. The novel is historical fiction \u2013 the story of Anton Seidl, who spearheaded the Wagnerism movement in America. At the moment, I don\u2019t see myself writing any more \u201cnon-fiction\u201d books. I\u2019m a novelist now — and a composer, with more projects to come. Though I cannot explain these sudden personal and professional developments, they can\u2019t be unrelated. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two wicked questions to ask conductors of Dvorak\u2019s New World Symphony are: \u201cWhy does the coda begin with a dirge?\u201d and \u201cWhy is there a diminuendo on the final chord?\u201d The musical content of the finale in no way dictates these developments. Obviously, a story of some kind \u2013 a \u201cprogram\u201d \u2013 is in play. […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-480","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-7K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","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=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}