In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a "great and noble
school" of American classical music based on the "negro melodies" he had
excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before.
But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over,
it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found
few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers
mainly rejected Dvorák's lead.
Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from
Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin's Porgy
and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations.
Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music
fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to
literary figures--Emerson, Melville, and Twain--to ponder how American
music can connect with a "usable past." The result is a new paradigm
that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel
Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased
prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin.
Dvorák's Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation
about race in America--a conversation that is taking place in music
schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George
Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, "We have been left
unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains
how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical
music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more
equitable. And it is more truthful."
