To American audiences, Antonín Dvořák is best known for his Ninth Symphony, “From the New World,” and his belief that an American school of composition should be based on Black and Native American musics. What is less well-known is that this perspective had precedent in his upbringing. Born in Bohemia, Dvořák came of age as a subject of the Austrian Empire and thus had to navigate a Germanic mainstream that viewed the native cultures of his region as exotica at best and primitive suppliers of dissent at worst.
For the first 20 years of his music career, Dvořák was a fixture of Prague’s music scene, working as an organist and composing. It was after winning the Austrian State Stipendium in 1876—his second time entering and his second time winning—that he was able to shift his focus fully to composing. And after winning the prize again in 1877, he was propelled into the European mainstream, thanks to the advocacy of composer Johannes Brahms and critic Eduard Hanslick, who served on the prize committee. For the next decade, Dvořák traveled the continent, completing commissions and premiering his works. It was within this critically fruitful period that he completed and premiered his Eighth Symphony.
Dvořák wrote his Symphony No. 8 in two-and-a-half months in 1889. Dedicated “To the Bohemian Academy of Emperor Franz Joseph for the Encouragement of Arts and Literature, in thanks for my election,” the symphony honored his admission to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature, and Arts. Dvořák conducted the premiere a year later. Despite his growing acclaim and success, the tension between his Bohemian identity and imperial Austrian culture continued. During conversations to publish his Eighth Symphony, his German publisher Simrock requested that they print the symphony’s movements and Dvořák’s name in German. Dvořák refused and took his work to the London publisher Novello, who released the score in 1890.
Unlike the darkly romantic Seventh Symphony, the Eighth is cheerful and optimistic. The Allegro con brio opens with a serious, lyrical theme in the cellos, followed by the main theme in the flute. The full statement is delayed as we move through a harried, exciting section. The Adagio, while stately in tempo, continues the juxtaposition of serious to joyful: The main theme in the first flute and oboe doesn’t emerge until the latter half of the first section, another clever way Dvořák plays with expectation. The third movement, in A-B-A form, shows Dvořák’s love and skill with original dance melodies. In the midst of a refined but fun waltz, the B section is more emotionally open, heard by some to evoke a Bohemian folk dance, and elements of this theme return in the exuberant coda. The Allegro ma non troppo begins with a trumpet call—a sign, in the words of conductor Rafael Kubelík, that it’s time to dance! The main theme is first heard in the lower strings in an iteration that is stately and noble, a wonderful contrast to the playful, joyous statement that features the whole orchestra. Elements of the theme are then fragmented, developed, and restated between periods of ferocious textures, new motifs, and contemplative episodes.
Damien LeChateau Sneed is a pianist, vocalist, organist, composer, conductor, arranger, producer, and arts educator whose work spans multiple genres. He has worked with jazz, classical, pop, and R&B legends, including Aretha Franklin, Jessye Norman, Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Ashford & Simpson, Lawrence Brownlee, The Clark Sisters, and many others. He is a recipient of the 2014 Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the 2020 Dove Award. He has served on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee College of Music, and New York University.
Sneed was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera to compose Marian’s Song (2018) about the life of Marian Anderson. For Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, he created an original score for Testament (2020). Opera Theatre of Saint Louis commissioned The Tongue & The Lash (2021) and a reimagined adaptation of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha (2023). He conducted Nathaniel Dett’s Ordering of Moses at Riverside Church (2022) with his own Chorale Le Chateau for the Harlem Renaissance Centennial. His Los Angeles Philharmonic debut was as vocal soloist in Wynton Marsalis’s All Rise for the Hollywood Bowl’s centennial. He conducted the Flint Symphony Orchestra for Patti Austin’s final performance, and on piano presented his Our Song, Our Story tour with the Griot String Quartet and many featured soloists.
Sneed recently signed with Apple Music’s Platoon Records (London) with a single digital release of his classical composition Sequestered Thoughts, commissioned by the Library of Congress with the composer as solo pianist.
The song cycle for voice and orchestra includes five spirituals carefully woven together in a musical tapestry that highlights the tradition of the African American spiritual, often sung during times of slavery and hardship; expressing the powerful expressions of resilience; demonstrating the enduring human spirit standing in triumph despite immense adversity; and all the while, reflecting a deep faith, hope, and determination to overcome challenges by connecting to a higher power and community, even in the face of opposition. This song cycle for voice and orchestra incorporates the many styles (the spiritual, jazz, gospel, Afro-Latin rhythmic grooves, etc.) birthed from the confluence of European music and the vast development of African American cultural roots from the record of the White Lion (the first slave ship arriving in Point Comfort, Virginia) to today and beyond to the future. The five spirituals are “Go Down Moses,” “There Is a Balm in Gilead,” “City Called Heaven,” “Sinner Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass,” and “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.”
—Damien Sneed
Due to his work as a choral director and arranger, William Levi Dawson is known as a key figure of American choral pedagogy and composition, especially for his time teaching at the Tuskegee Institute (1931–1956). He arrived at Tuskegee at age 13, when he ran away from home to attend the school. He earned his diploma in 1920; got his bachelor’s degree from Kansas City’s Horner Institute of Fine Arts in 1925; and earned his Master of Music from Chicago’s American Conservatory of Music in 1927, at which point he began work on his first symphony. Three years later, he returned to Tuskegee as a faculty member to lead the new school of music. It was there that Dawson would shape the Tuskegee Institute Choir into a renowned ensemble.
Spirituals like “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel” were a central feature of Dawson’s musical style. He preferred to call Negro spirituals “Negro folk songs,” a term he felt better articulated the repertoire’s social and creative function. Because of how thoroughly Dawson transformed the material he drew from, musicologist Johann Buis has suggested that his arrangements of spirituals should be considered original compositions. In Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, a work that challenges genre precedents and centers African American music aesthetics, this transformational approach is evident.
The Negro Folk Symphony debuted with Leopold Stokowski and The Philadelphia Orchestra on November 14, 1934, at the Academy of Music. They gave two more performances in the Philadelphia venue before moving to New York City’s Carnegie Hall. It was this November 20 concert where Dawson received three rounds of applause at the end, and audiences broke protocol and gave enthusiastic applause following the second movement.
Despite this critical success, the Negro Folk Symphony fell from the spotlight. There were a variety of reasons: lack of multiple copies of the score and parts; the fickle nature of celebrity; interest that fell through; and in one case, unauthorized copyediting of the symphony. Dawson would expand the percussion section of the work after a West African research trip in 1952–1953. It is this version that was published by Shawnee Press and recorded by Stokowski and the American Symphony Orchestra in 1963.
According to Dawson biographer and musicologist Gwynne Kuhner Brown, the work lacked a programmatic title prior to a telegram exchange between conductor and composer. Stokowski requested a title of the symphony like “African American Symphony” or “Negro Symphony” in order to “explain itself to listeners …” Dawson responded with the title Negro Folk Symphony and the movement titles “The Bond of Africa,” “Hope in the Night,” and “O, Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!” Dawson would later come to see this work as an example of how to write a symphony that fully engaged with the folk repertoire of African Americans.
Dawson draws upon the Negro folk song “Oh, My Little Soul’s Gwine Shine Like a Star” in the first movement, “The Bond of Africa.” Opening with a pentatonic theme in the horn, this is more motif than melody; there is something unfinished as the orchestra presses on, Scotch snap and juba rhythms passing and building in a dense call-and-response texture. This motif returns throughout the work. In “Hope in the Night,” the jubilant folk section evokes a cakewalk, a social and theatrical dance developed by African Americans in the antebellum South. The emotional high is the third iteration of the opening theme, where the strings and a pounding timpani highjack the section. The last movement is built upon two Negro folk songs: “O, Le’ Me Shine, Shine Like a Morning Star!,” first heard in the woodwinds, and “Hallelujah, Lord, I Been Down into the Sea,” in the second theme, introduced by the oboe and passed to the ensemble. Here, Dawson’s use of rhythmic and timbral development is most stark: A call-and-response breaks out as the orchestra passes the motif around, transforming it through sequential modulation, a technique also used by Florence Price in her Violin Concerto No. 2 (1952). The end is less conclusion than question mark. Driven by rhythmic and timbral development, Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony is a stunning example of African American musical procedures and aesthetics in the symphonic genre.
—A. Kori Hill