This past July 4th weekend was a joyous one, the first to be free of Covid lockdowns. It is now, however, time to go "beyond burgers", and restore the deeper reasons for which we celebrate the occasion.
What is America? Is it a set of states? A territory bounded with borders? A union of people that mutually agree to associate, and to abide by a body of law, a constitution, devised “for the greatest good of the greatest number”?
Many, many nations have these things. None of them define what America is, as distinct from any place else.
Before Abraham Lincoln, when people spoke of the United States, they said, “the United States are....” After Abraham Lincoln’s successful Presidential defense of the Union, and victory against slavery, a new idea of America came into being. “The United States is....” Lincoln’s idea of America, Frederick Douglass’ idea of America, was a new America, “a more perfect Union.”
But if America “is an idea, not a place”, what is the idea?
According to the Declaration of Independence, America is not a form of self-government—it is a method of self-government. Whenever the form (as for example seen in the racially discriminatory Supreme Court legislation of 1896-1954) becomes destructive of the ends for which the form was ostensibly created, it must be consciously rejected and abolished. That is how self-government, and musical composition improve. That idea of American self-government is identical, in principle, to Classical music’s motivic thorough-compositional method of motivfuhrung. Motivfuhring is the idea of an underlying unity of action and change, that governs the motion of musical movements in such works as a symphony, sonata, or string quartet. Though motivic thorough-composition was first pioneered by Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, with his invention of the string quartet, and his later 1781 revolution upon his own invention (in his op. 33 String Quartets), made the organic unity of such a movement, as a process of change, a matter for conscious deliberation, though for the time being limited within a single movement.
Haydn and Mozart loved each other as father and son (Perhaps it was also so for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, though they could never have met). Mozart, composed, over three years, Six Quartets dedicated to Haydn, and wrote that he was, like a father, entrusting his sons to a friend. Why did it take Mozart three years, when Haydn composed much more quickly?
Mozart had accepted the challenge, and succeeded in extending the motivfuhrung principle to an entire work, of three or four movements! The development of music was towards a more perfect union. That is not some academic concept. The principle of the American Revolution could not exist side-by side with oligarchical structures such as slavery. Such "dissonances' had to be integrated, freely, into the concept of the Republic, as belonging to a more perfect composition.
DVORAK
Jeanette Thurber founded the National Conservatory of Music in 1891 for specific reasons. She was a graduate of the Paris Conservatory, and wished to elevate American standards overall. More importantly, she recognized that the victories gained by African- Americans in the wake of the Civil War were being reversed by sharecropping, and the Jim Crow reaction.
For Jeanette Thurber (one of the unsung genii of the USA), this resurrection of racism could be most efficiently be fought, by educating young African-Americans in classical music. What better way to cut through the Gordian Knot?
She hired the best in every department, but sought out Antonin Dvorak to head composition. Dvorak had mastered thorough composition. He was inspired by the Third Symphony of Brahms to compose his own Seventh Symphony so that it would not contain "One superfluous note”. Dvorak was also a Czech [Bohemian] patriot. Thurber counted that he would be sympathetic to the cause of American descendants of slaves, and she was right! In an interview with the new York Herald, Dvorak said:
"In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."
He, and a few collaborators, agreed that "negro spirituals" provided all of the necessary ingredients for a national school of classical music. The freakout was intense. Dvorak was denounced, and it was even suggested that the words were put into his mouth by the journalist James Creelman. Dvorak, however, defended his statements.
We suggested a while ago that inspiration for truly national music might be derived from the Negro melodies and Indian chants. We take this view partly by the fact that the so-called plantation songs are indeed the most striking and appealing melodies that have yet been found on this side of the water, but largely by the observation that this seems to be recognized, though often unconsciously, by most Americans. All races have their distinctively national songs, which they at once recognize as their own, even if they have never heard them before. It is a proper question to ask, what songs, then, belong to the American and appeal more strongly to him than any others? What melody could stop him on the street if he were in a strange land and make the home feeling well up within him, no matter how hardened he might be or how wretchedly the tune were played? Their number, to be sure, seems to be limited. The most potent as well as the most beautiful among them, according to our estimation, are certain of the so-called plantation melodies and slave songs, all of which are distinguished by unusual and subtle harmonies, the like of which I have found in no other songs but those of old Scotland and Ireland"
Here we see the Classical Principle at its highest. The Classical Principle is never about serving the status quo. It is always about elevating the common and oppressed peoples, to a higher level. Harry Burleigh taught the "Negro Spirutuals" to Dvorak, which he loved. Dvorak asked Burleigh, whose family had been active in the underground railroad, to relate not just the music, but of the struggles of his people. Burleigh made some beautiful settings of the spirituals, far beyond what might have been expected. Here is his arrangement of "My Lord, What a Morning."
Dvorak included American spirituals into his New World Symphony in subtle ways. He was often subjected to the racist charge that he was a dumb Czech peasant "stupified by the din and hustle of a busy life" in the New World, and only composed works based on traditional Cezh melodies while in America. That is also wrong. Rather than quote spirituals, he found common characteristics in rhythm and harmony between African-American, and native "indian" music, and composed new tunes that sounded American because of those characteristics. These were presented in his New World Symphony on Dec 16th, 1892,which is both the birthday of Beethoven, and the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
Once in a while though, Dvorak references one of the spirituals. His quote from "Swing Low Sweet Chariot in the New World Symphony is most notable. But' listen to Harry Burleigh's arrangement of " Go Tell it n the Mountain":
and compare it to the horn solo in Dvorak's Cello Concerto.
But perhaps the most strikingly American thing the composer did was this. He had attended a concert of patriotic American songs, and remarked that it was a shame to have "My Country 'tis of Thee" set to a British tune (Go Save the King). He started work to compose new music for the poem. It was never finished, but the song was used in the Larghetto of the String Quintet, Op 97, which he composed in Spillville Iowa. It begins at measure 17. Try signing the poetry to it.
My country 'tis of thee
Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died
Land of the pilgrims pride
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring. Let freedom ring.