Dvořáks Prophezeiung

In 1893, composer Antonín Dvořák predicted a "great and noble school" of American classical music based on the "Negro Melodies" he had enthusiastically discovered upon his arrival in the United States a year earlier. But while Black music produced popular genres known around the world, it never gained acceptance in concert halls. Black composers had few opportunities to have their works performed, and Dvořák found little resonance among white composers.
Joseph Horowitz combs through American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, in search of explanations. He challenges the standard narrative of American classical music shaped by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein and looks to literary giants—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to reflect on how American music can be connected to a "usable past." The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers such as Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while also giving more attention to Charles Ives and George Gershwin.

"This is an important, passionate, and timely book that traces how American classical music has lost its past—and offers suggestions for how that past can be reclaimed and a vibrant future created." (J. Peter Burkholder, author of Listening to Charles Ives)

"Joseph Horowitz...unveils a hidden musical history that may have a rich and profound influence on the future of music in our country." (JoAnn Falletta, Music Director, Buffalo Philharmonic)

"Dvořak's Prophecy will become a focal point for necessary conversations not only about the performing arts, but also about broader issues of importance: race, American historiography, and the search for our national soul." (Lorenzo Candelaria, Dean of the Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University)

"With his exploration of the unknown past of Dvořak, Ives, Farwell, Burleigh, Dett, Dawson, Price, and Gershwin, Joseph Horowitz invites us to a wonderful rediscovery... A feast awaits us, both in this book and in the music it describes." (Allen C. Guelzo, James Madison Program in American Ideal and Institutions, Princeton University)

“Joseph Horowitz’s *Dvořák’s Prophecy* is unique in its emphasis on the connections between major 19th-century American writers such as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Mark Twain and American classical music, and it is admirable in its portrayal of the central importance of African American literature, culture, and history to both the American musical tradition and the American literary tradition.” (Brian Yothers, author of *Reading Abolition*)

With over 50 audio samples

Translated from American English by Christian Much

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