The underlying theme of Michael Beckerman’s book New Worlds of Dvořák: Searching in America for the Composer’s Inner Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003) is the power of the extramusical to inform our perception of an artist’s work. Beckerman examines in detail the years that Dvořák spent in America in an effort to arrive at some notion of the composer’s private thoughts and feelings, arguing that this will enhance our appreciation or understanding of his music. Beckerman’s tone is that of a thoughtful critic who is imaginative and insightful, yet at the same time skeptical. Some readers will be disappointed that questions asked are not always questions answered, but the heuristic value of the book is considerable and it is provocative writing that will engage the reader from the beginning. Beckerman has no qualms about raising questions with which he himself is still grappling.
The book introduces us to various key figures who had an influence on Dvořák during his soujourns in the New World: Jeannette Thurber, philanthropist, who lured the composer to America to teach at the music conservatory she founded and who hoped that Dvořák would point the way toward a new ”American” compositional style; Henry Burleigh, African-American conservatory student and composer who sang spirituals to Dvořák; James Creelman, intrepid ”yellow journalist” who did much to call attention to the composer during his stay; and New York newspaper critics James Huneker, who introduced Dvořák to African-American and Native American music, and Henry Krehbiel, who knew the composer most intimately and wrote analytical critiques of the ”New World” Symphony for the New York Daily Tribune.
Beckerman deals with the question of why an anxiety-ridden, travel-fearing Dvořák would leave his home and family to make a journey to a land about which he knew very little. Besides the obvious attractions of money, fame, and admiration on a par with Haydn’s triumphant reception in London, Dvořák also welcomed the opportunity to escape from some of the pressures that he felt at home and to travel to America and compose works in an ”American” idiom, including an opera or cantata based on H. W. Longfellow's poem ”Song of Hiawatha.” The reasons that the ”Hiawatha” project (with which Dvořák was constantly occupied) was never ultimately realized is the subject of Chapter 5. The author paints a complex picture of Dvořák as a sort of tone magician, manipulating listeners with carefully calibrated musical gestures that are calculated to achieve maximum effect. Beckerman also discusses Dvořák’s shrewd self-marketing and the deft control that he exerted on critics and audiences in the reception of his works. These views challenge some traditional scholarship that presents the composer as something of a gifted primitive who wrote beautiful music that he somehow channeled from a higher source, or as a naïf who was innocent of journalistic spin and self-promotion.
The copious audio selections are key to understanding the points that Beckerman makes; he could have included scores instead of a CD, but with the latter choice he is able to reach out to a broader audience. (The music examples in score are displayed at www.wwnorton.com/trade/Beckerman, accessed 21 May 2003). The CD tracks include piano snippets played by the author and recordings of Dvořák’s works, as well as selected portions of pieces by figures as diverse as Beethoven, Chopin, Smetana, and Stephen Foster. There are also fanciful realizations of sketches: one is by Czech musicologist Jarmil Burghauser (CD 45); the other (CD 26) is presumably by the author as there is no attribution. The most fascinating of all the examples are the African-American melodies and the symphony themes they may have inspired (CD 28-36). Here is some of Beckerman’s most daring work.
Some of the comparisons are quite effective and show Beckerman’s keen sensibility for the relation between textual inspiration and musical realization in the best interpretive critical tradition advocated by Joseph Kerman in his book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). One of these examples is the melodrama accompanying the ”New World” Scherzo (p. 42, track 8); others are from the final movement (p. 61, track 22; p. 63, track 25). Some examples are less convincing (p. 49, track 14). Yet Beckerman does maintain a skeptical distance, and criticizes some studies (James Hepkowski, ”Culture Clash,” The Musical Times 34 [1993]: 685-88; and Robert Winter, Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, From the New World, CD-ROM [Irvington, NY: Voyager, 1994]) that have tried to show programmatic connections between ”Hiawatha” and all of the ”New World” movements, even the outer ones (p. 52). It is particularly felicitous that the book includes Dvořák’s ”Hiawatha” sketches and African-American melodies, so that the reader can follow the author’s arguments. Beckerman’s assertion that Mildred Hill was the author of the article ”Negro Music” for the December 1892 journal issue of Music is convincingly argued, although it does not seem likely that the surname of the pseudonym Johann Tonsor was meant to be an acronym. The name Johann Tonsor appears in various genealogies at least since the Renaissance.
Just as Beckerman exhorts us to seek intent and meaning in Dvořák’s works and actions, it is fitting to consider the author’s own predispositions as well. Beckerman aims to deconstruct ideas of nationalism and Czechness in order to bring Dvořák and other composers into the European mainstream, so as to present a more balanced and circumspect view of the composer’s oeuvre and place in music history. (For more on Czech traits in music, see Michael Beckerman, ”In Search of Czechness in Music,” 19th Century Music 10, no.1 [Summer 1986]: 61-73). This is to show that Dvořák, Suk, Janáček, and others were not mere provincial muzikanti whose worth is linked to an imagined notion of nationality. Beckerman’s point of view is understandable, given the reception history and revisionist historiography of many Austrian and German critics and musicologists who were surprisingly successful at convincing the world that---as one German-born musicologist I know has been heard to say---”German is music.”
Most Slavic composers have at least partially embraced their role as nationalist composers, as representatives of their geographical, ethnic, and linguistic groups. Music publisher Fritz Simrock was always asking Dvořák for more ”Slavonic” compositions, Janáček’s first international success (Jenůfa) was for an opera strongly associated with pastoral Czech village life, and Smetana is inevitably associated with his nationalist Má vlast (My Homeland). Yet each of these composers was certainly as cosmopolitan as his Austrian and German counterparts. It would seem odd to say ”German composer Johannes Brahms” or ”Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg,” although we often feel the need to attach the modifier ”Czech” to Dvořák, Janáček, and Smetana.
Whether Dvořák is best understood only through a Czech filter or not, many Czech people identify strongly with the man and his music. Dvořák embodies for them an untouchable ideal of artistry and they hold affection for him as a sort of Czech ”Papa Haydn.” What Czech does not swell with pride when he hears one of the themes from the ”New World” symphony? Given all of this, it is not surprising that when an American scholar gives a paper at a Czech musicological conference that challenges deeply-held beliefs of a nation toward its hero, his ideas will be met with some consternation, opposition, even some sharp criticism. This was the case when Beckerman delivered a paper entitled ”Dvořák and Anxiety” in the Czech Republic in 1997. This paper appears, in revised form, as Chapter 13 of New Worlds. This chapter (”The Master is Not Well”) is one of the most illuminating in the book. In it, Beckerman examines the extant documentary evidence about Dvořák and concludes that the composer likely suffered from agoraphobia and acute anxiety. He acknowledges that ”there are those, particularly in the Czech Republic, who object to this kind of inquiry, who view a discussion of Dvořák and anxiety as intrusive, disrespectful, willfully iconoclastic, or simply beside the point. But it is none of these. If Dvořák really was a man of the people, someone who could sit down with farmers more easily than with princes, and if he was truly someone who could express things to all of us, it was not only because he was Czech, or Catholic, or unpretentious, or the product of a small-town upbringing, it was also because of his fears, which alone gave him something in common with all of us in a way both simple and profound” (pp. 190-191). Sometimes it is necessary to probe uncomfortable areas in order to arrive at deeper truths. What we know about composers’ lives is important and colors the way in which we hear their music.
Paul Christiansen
* Original review in Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music *Library Association, vol. 60, no. 1 (September 2003) and used permission of the Music Library Association.