Dvorak's Prophecy: Film 1

The first film in the series keys on Dvorak's prophecy and explores it's present-day pertinence. In New York City and Spillville, Iowa, Dvorak boldly chose to regard African Americans and Native Americans as representative Americans. That decision was both acclaimed and ridiculed at the time. It remains inspirational. His New World Symphony, still the best-known and best-loved symphonic work conceived on American soil, is saturated with the influence of plantation song, and also with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. This act of appropriation, my film argues, was an act of empathy performed by a great humanitarian. The musical selections here are mainly taken from the Hiawatha Melodrama, which I co-composed with the music historian Michael Beckerman with orchestrations by Angel Gil-Ordonez. It mates Dvorak with Longfellow. The participating commentators include the music historians Mark Clague and Lorenzo Candelaria, the literary historian Brian Yothers, the conductor JoAnn Falletta, faculty members from Howard University- and also (sagely commenting on cultural appropriation) the bass-baritone Kevin Deas, with whom I have long enjoyed the privilege of performing the spiritual arrangements of Dvorak's assistant Harry Burleigh. (Joseph Horowitz)