{"id":548,"date":"2014-07-01T21:21:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-02T01:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=548"},"modified":"2014-07-01T21:21:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T01:21:06","slug":"dvoraks-hiawatha-symphony-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2014\/07\/dvoraks-hiawatha-symphony-part-two.html","title":{"rendered":"Dvorak’s “Hiawatha” Symphony — Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hiawatha<\/a>
\nMy last posting introduced the Hiawatha Melodrama, proposing a radical re-interpretation of Dvorak\u2019s New World<\/em> Symphony. As a postscript, here<\/a> is a visual rendering of the Melodrama\u2019s fifth movement by my colleague Peter Bogdanoff. <\/p>\n

As concocted by myself and the Dvorak scholar Mike Beckerman, the Melodrama aligns text from Longfellow\u2019s \u201cThe Song of Hiawatha\u201d with music by Dvorak. The world premiere recording is part of a new themed \u201cDvorak and America\u201d Naxos CD <\/a>(Naxos 8.559777) featuring PostClassical Ensemble<\/a> conducted by Angel Gil-Ordonez. <\/p>\n

The starting point of the Melodrama is Dvorak\u2019s testimony that the middle movements of his symphony were inspired by Longfellow\u2019s poem. In effect, the Melodrama suggests what a Dvorak \u201cHiawatha\u201d cantata or tone poem might have sounded like (and Dvorak aspired to compose such a work). It also establishes some of the extra-musical imagery that fired Dvorak\u2019s musical imagination. The New World<\/em> Symphony, being quasi-programmatic, marks a transition toward the tone poems and operas Dvorak would compose upon returning to Prague; he never composed another symphony. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis,\u201d the fifth of the Melodrama\u2019s six movements, includes sung as well as spoken text (at 3:30). Beckerman comments: \u201cWhile this at first may seem far-fetched, one must remember that as soon as he returned to Bohemia in 1895, Dvorak composed a series of tone poems based on the ballads of K. J. Erben. In at least one of these, he set down the poem, line by line, beneath the music \u2013 so this process was not alien to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here <\/a>is a related visual presentation for the Largo and the Scherzo of the New World Symphony.<\/p>\n

I next explore \u201cDvorak and America\u201d as an Aspen Institute seminar (July 9-10, as a DePauw University festival (Oct. 27 to Nov. 2), and as a Columbus Symphony festival (Feb. 20-21).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last posting introduced the Hiawatha Melodrama, proposing a radical re-interpretation of Dvorak\u2019s New World Symphony. As a postscript, here is a visual rendering of the Melodrama\u2019s fifth movement by my colleague Peter Bogdanoff. As concocted by myself and the Dvorak scholar Mike Beckerman, the Melodrama aligns text from Longfellow\u2019s \u201cThe Song of Hiawatha\u201d with […]<\/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-548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-8Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","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=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":550,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}