The Sound of a Nation

Composers Silvestre Revueltas and Antonín Dvořák both grappled with how to capture a nation and its culture in sound.

Taken on July 21, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong’s lunar photograph of Buzz Aldrin saluting the American flag is one of history’s most iconic images. But placing that flag on the moon was not without controversy. Why the United States and not the United Nations? Later that year, Congress clarified that the flag was “intended as a symbolic gesture of national pride in achievement,” not a territorial claim. How to express national feelings in a context that some perceive as universal is a conundrum that classical composers know very well.

Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák arrived in New York City as the newly appointed director of the fledgling National Conservatory in September 1892 — just in time to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s own Atlantic journey. By this time, Dvořák was famous throughout the United States for music that seemed to capture the spirit of his homeland. But, from his perspective, these stylistic infusions did not diminish a universal mode of expression rooted in the German symphonic tradition. Considering the American landscape, he said not long before his arrival, “Americans will have to reflect the influence of the great German composers, just as other countries do.”

Dvořák did not realize that Americans had hotly debated this topic for years. How can one write music in the great traditions of Europe while making a distinctive national mark? Some composers, such as John Knowles Paine, rejected the premise by arguing that writing a conventional symphony well was itself a gesture of national pride. Others argued that Americans should steep their works in the spirit of folk melodies, particularly the spirituals of enslaved African Americans popularized in concert halls by the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

After learning of the debate, Dvořák planted a sturdy American flag in May 1893: “I am now satisfied,” he told a reporter for the New York Herald, “that the future of music in this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies” — that is, spirituals, Creole songs, and other folk music with African origins. His pronouncement caused an uproar among those who, like Paine, saw no need to inflect their music with folk elements, as well as white musicians who could not accept that African Americans might be representative of the whole country. (This was the Jim Crow era, after all.) The furor raged in the national press for months until Dvořák’s latest symphony, “From the New World,” premiered in December.

Though still in the four-movement model of German tradition, the piece sounded unlike any other music New York audiences had ever heard. We now know that much of the symphony, particularly the third movement, was inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855). The intense opening theme of the first movement displays Hiawatha’s adventurous spirit, while the second movement, allegedly based on Hiawatha’s wooing of Minnehaha, captures her sadness of leaving home and the trepidation of embarking on a new life. The scherzo portrays the rollicking dance at Hiawatha’s wedding feast, and the bold finale integrates passages from earlier movements into a dramatic conflict ending in heroic triumph.

Hiawatha, of course, was hardly related to African American music, causing the work’s first listeners to wonder how it was “American” at all. Yet the melodic and rhythmic profiles of African American folk music pervade it throughout. A lilting melody in the first movement clearly echoes “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” for example, while the broad, lyrical theme of the second movement carries the poignancy of sorrow songs. (One of Dvořák’s students later wrote the text “Goin’ Home” as a faux spiritual using the same tune.) Even the timbre of the solo English horn likely imitates the voice of Dvořák’s African American assistant, Harry T. Burleigh, who at times sang spirituals in his teacher’s home.

Though Dvořák did not express patriotic feelings for the United States, he wanted to plant a flag that Americans could view with a sense of national pride. And, indeed, they have. This symphony has become a goodwill symbol for US orchestras on countless international tours, including The Cleveland Orchestra’s 1998 performances in China under Music Director Laureate Christoph von Dohnányi. Of course, Dvořák’s penchant for colorful orchestration suffuses the work, contributing to its universal popularity for well over a century.

Silvestre Revueltas, on the other hand, did have patriotic feelings for his native Mexico, even after spending many of his formative years in the United States. Unlike Dvořák, and contrary to popular belief, the left-leaning Revueltas did not want to represent Mexico with music from a timeless folk past, but with the sounds of everyday music-making found in the streets around him. In this regard, La Noche de los Mayas is an exception, rather than the rule.

The score originated as a set of 36 independent musical numbers accompanying a film of the same name. Revueltas struggled with alcohol addiction and wrote film music near the end of his life for additional income. Nearly 20 years after Revueltas’s death in 1940, an ambitious Mexican conductor named José Yves Limantour (1919–76), who was seeking a platform in Europe, expanded and stitched together four numbers from the score into a standalone suite. (Composer Paul Hindemith created his own two-movement suite in 1946 after visiting Mexico, though Limantour’s version is heard more often in concert.)

Limantour cleverly organized the piece into a symphonic structure with a stern opening movement, a dance-like second, a slow and romantic third, and a rhythmically vigorous finale. The whole work is designed to portray an archaic, enchanted world from another time. The musical devices range from simple, tuneful melodies with sparse accompaniment to long drones and highly dissonant clashes. Unusual percussion instruments provide distinctive coloration across the entire work.

As Revueltas biographer Roberto Kolb Neuhaus has argued, however, Limantour’s arrangement, with its use of many pre-Hispanic percussion instruments not employed in the original score, fed into the widespread desire for “exotic” Mexican music at mid-century, at the expense of Revueltas’s own artistic and political aims. The work’s popularity nevertheless helps it stand as a flag for Mexico in the crowded international landscape of classical music, but perhaps a flag that the composer himself would not have planted.

— Douglas W. Shadle

Douglas W. Shadle is an associate professor of musicology at Vanderbilt University and the author of two highly regarded books: Orchestrating the Nation and Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony. A leading authority on composer Florence B. Price, he sits on the board of the International Florence Price Festival.