Customer Reviews

New Worlds of Dvorak: Searching in America for the Composer's Inner Life

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Beckerman takes a real chance with this book. Rather than trying to analyze Dvoř?k's musical legacy by starting with Dvoř?k himself, he starts largely with an analysis of the music and uses this to infer the composer's personality. Unfortunately I think Beckerman has in come places strayed to far from the objective reality of Dvoř?k's life and has been swept away by the passions of music, which magnify the passions of life.

Perhaps most curious about New World of Dvoř?k is that it barely seems to discuss the Master at all, but rather seems to spend most of its time discussing the critics, music researchers, philanthropists, and journalists who were so caught up in what they say as the promise of Dvoř?k. In many ways Beckerman does not describe who the composer really was, or what he really wrote, but what he represented to the Americans who brought him to America and followed his every move as though he was single-handedly spelling out the destiny of American music.

Rather than being a true biography of the composer, I would consider this book more of a very narrow historical and thematic sketch of American musical culture at the time of the Master's visit. Although Beckerman makes some very compelling musical arguments that attempt to find the true inspiration of Dvoř?k's supposedly "American" pieces, his analysis goes so far as to claim there the in fact exists no American nationalist music whatsoever, and this conclusion is just too hard to swallow. It is likewise odd that Beckerman insists that Dvoř?k suffered from debilitating mental anguish and persistent psychological problems. It almost seems that it offends Beckerman's sensibilities that a composer of Dvoř?k's historical significance was essentially "clean."

I appreciate what Mr. Beckerman is trying to do here, but this book strays far from the path of scholarly research and well into the realm of conjecture. Beckerman tries to analyze every phrase of Dvorak's New World Symphony to uncover its meaning, but Dvorak left few or no details about his thoughts in composing it. Dvorak didn't want the New World Symphony to become a programmatic piece. Instead, he used Native American and African American musical concepts to create a vision of America as he saw it at the end of the nineteenth century. He believed strongly that America's musical future rested mostly with Native American and African American traditions. Unfortunately, Beckerman's insistence on analyzing every phrase puts him way out on a limb, grasping for any explanation and often fabricating rationales to suit his purpose. His love for the New World Symphony is evident, but the process itself is neither enlightening nor particularly interesting, so I'd have to say this book was a disappointment. Instead, I'd recommend "Dvorak in America," by Joseph Horowitz, which sticks to the facts.

I have loved working with this book. I conducted the 9th Symphony last year and this book was extremely helpful in studying the piece.