Dvorak's New World Symphony - A Lens on the American Experience of Race (Dvorak's Prophecy) (Film 1, 2021)
Composer: Burleigh, Henry Thacker
Composer: Dvorak, Antonin
Composer: Horowitz, Joseph
Composer: Beckerman, Michael
Dvorak's Prophecy - A New Narrative for American Classical Music: Film 1: Dvorak's New World Symphony - A Lens on the American Experience of Race
Deas, Kevin
Conductor: Gil-Ordonez, Angel
Post-Classical Ensemble
Television Director: Horowitz, Joseph
Bass-baritone / Narrator:
Deas, Kevin
Year of Production: 2021
Playing Time: 01:29:03
Catalogue Number: 2.110703
UPC: 747313570355
This first film in the series keys on Dvorak's prophecy and explores its present-day pertinence. In New York City and Spillville, Iowa, Dvorak boldly chose to regard African Americans and Native Americans as representative Americans. That decision was both acclaimed and ridicules at the time. It remains inspirational. His New World Symphony, still the best-known and best-loved symphonic work conceived on American soil, is saturated with the influence of plantation song, and also with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. This act of appropriation, the film argues, was an act of empathy performed by a great humanitarian.
The musical selections are mainly taken fro the Hiawatha Melodrama, which co-composed with the music historian Michael Beckerman with orchestrations by Angel Gil-Ordonez. It makes Dvorak with Longfellow.
The participating commentators include the music historians Mark Clague and Lorenzo Candelaria, the literary historian Brian Yothers, the conductor JoAnn Falletta, faculty members from Howard University - and also (sagely commenting on cultural appropriation) the bass-baritone Kevin Deas, with whom Horowitz long enjoyed the privilege of performing the spiritual arrangements of Dvorak's assistant Harry Burleigh.
