Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music by Joseph Horowitz

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music Reviews

• 
  Fontine

  I learned a lot, but I also felt that it was mostly a research paper on white people's views on other cultures' music.
• 
  Kelly Buchanan

  Okay, I have more than a few issues with this book, the first being that I just don't really feel that it is the book that its title seems to imply. Perhaps I would have reacted less harshly if it were called something like 'American Classical Music's Usable Past: Gershwin, Copland, Ives, and the Influence of Jazz,' or some other such thing. However, this work purports to center the narrative of suppressed voices of America's Black composers, but I feel it does not succeed in doing this. Firstly, I understand that "appropriation" as the term we know it to be today, would not have been something that was recognizable in Dvorak's time. Writing a study of this magnitude, however, that finds itself exploring the 'New World Symphony' and Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess' as central questions, I believe necessitates some serious discussion of the concept. Horowitz's work disagrees and essentially sidelines appropriation as a consideration because Gershwin wouldn't have known what we mean by it. He even goes on to essentially ridicule other scholars for giving this issue the consideration it deserves, recounting a reading of a scholarly introduction to Willa Cather's 'The Song of the Lark' and being "mystified" to find this term appearing there.
  
  Apart from all of this, my main problem here is that this book ends up doing the very thing it is attempting to condemn - sidelining the Black artists and musicians that grace its cover. We do get some meaningful discussion of Florence Price, Nathaniel Dett, William Dawson, Harry T. Burleigh, and others, but far more pages of this study are reserved for discussions of Gershwin (whose 'Porgy and Bess' Horowitz seems to have no issues considering as pretty much the same as works by Black composers), Ives, and Copland, whether or not they were open to jazz influences, and how, seemingly, if composers had only been more open to these sorts of influences, we might have been left with a greater Classical tradition that felt specifically "American," rather than grounded in the European standard repertoire.
  
  Horowitz spends a great amount of time being an apologist for other white composers whose music has fallen out of the repertoire, sometimes for being considered appropriative -such as Arthur Farwell's "Indianist" pieces. However much time and many resources Horowitz has spent attempting to further the cause of finding a "usable past" in American Classical music and bringing under-programmed pieces to light (and this seems to be considerable, given the amount of time that is spent discussing this towards the end of the work), I don't know that this makes up for what I felt to be the broad blind spots of this discussion, which must be complex given its racial, historical, and cultural implications.
• 
  Ann

  I hate leaving bad reviews, but wow, this book was a disappointment. For a book that purports to have something to do with Black classical music (it’s right there in the title, after all, and portraits of several Black composers adorn the cover), there is precious little mention of any Black composers, let alone any in-depth discussion of their work. Horowitz writes more about Mark Twain—neither Black nor a composer, obviously—in this book than about Dett, Dawson, Price, and his other Black subjects combined.
  
  Horowitz argues that Dvorak’s prophecy (that Black music would form the basis of an American classical canon) didn’t come to pass because figures like Copland, Thomson, and Bernstein failed to home in on a “usable past.” I’m not an expert, but isn’t it possible that these white cultural gatekeepers discounted the work of Black composers because of, um, racism? To be fair, it isn’t that Horowitz doesn’t mention race at all, but it is barely acknowledged until the final few pages of the book.
  
  There is a truly bizarre, six-page digression decrying “trigger warnings” and belittling concerns about cultural appropriation. Seriously, I was worried he was going to spend the rest of the book complaining about “cancel culture.” Where was Horowitz’s editor?
  
  Finally, and again touching on the need for a better editor, Horowitz’s writing is pedantic and belabored. Lotta SAT words in here. Lotta extra adjectives. Lotta 30-word sentences that coulda been 10-word sentences. Woof.
  
  
• 
  Reading

  My problems with this book:
  
  1. It's not about Black musicians. It's also not really about "Black music". It's frequently not about musicians. The most frequent artist mentioned in this book after Dvorak is Mark Twain.
  
  2. Horowitz spends a large chunk of this book reviewing works by other academics, which in turn are often analyses of contemporary critics from the 1880s-1920s, commenting on the art in questions. So essentially this book is a critique of critiques of critiques of works of art. It is so far removed from the art itself as to be entirely pointless.
  
  3. Horowitz dedicates an entire chapter to his annoyance with people being 'triggered' and 'cancel culture'. This barely has anything to do with the topic at hand. At one point he dedicates a few paragraphs to how upset he is that statues of confederate soldiers are being taken down.
  
  4. Instead of learning anything about the (apparently very frequent) complains he gets regarding his thesis (that true "Black" music and true "Indian" music is the purview of white people), he just dismisses them out of hand. He expresses incredulity that Native Americans weren't interested in taking part in his "Native American Music Festival" but seems entirely uninterested in investigating why.
  
  5. Horowitz spends a troubling amount of time in this book marketing his other books and projects. He frequently uses his own work as citation, and is always sure to mention where you can buy the CDs he has helped to produce.
  
  I spent most of this book thinking Horowitz was a well meaning if out of touch old white dude, but by the end I was pretty sure he is a bad person acting in bad faith, and is mostly just interested in making money.
  
  Avoid.
• 
  Jud Barry

  This is a much-needed piece of musical history and cultural criticism. Or cultural history and music criticism. One of its strengths is the breadth of its vision: when assessing American classical music of the so-called "Gilded Age" -- his cornerstone subject -- Horowitz takes pains to consider the other fine arts in addition to music as well as the bodies of critical interpretation that have grown up around them. This is crucial to part of the story he has to tell: one of the reasons American classical music turned its back on African-American and Indigenous influences in favor of a rootless modernism is that the American prophets of modernism -- Copland and Bernstein -- sealed themselves inside an ahistorical silo deaf to the sounds of a recent past and the broader culture that produced them.
  
  That said, the book is finally only tantalizing in regard to "the vexed fate of Black classical music." There is lengthy, elaborate, and repetitious treatment given Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess," for example, but scant mention of Joplin's "Treemonisha." What were the realities that so vexed Black classical music between, say, 1880 and 1980? The answers are there, but they are sketchy for the most part; some of the real lightning is found in footnotes. The effect is to leave the reader wanting a more comprehensive history of the very subject promised by the subtitle. I hope Horowitz returns with such.
  
  I also hope this book reaches the hands of those charged with programming for classical music organizations, which are badly in need of horizon-broadening.
• 
  petra

  To be upfront: yes, I gave up halfway through. By then, my thought process looked something like this: "Okay, I'm a high school senior who likes to read and write insightful, escapist fiction, and who happens to enjoy classical music. There is a chance that this book is just too Intellectual (TM) for me. There is a chance I'm just not the target audience." Then I came on here and checked the top reviews and... nope, not just me.
  
  By the point in the book where I stopped reading, I'd read a lot about Antonin Dvorak, Charles Ives, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, a bevy of (white) music critics of the time, and Mark Twain, who is connected to the primary topic only if you squint. The same can't be said for Black composers. It reads more as a music-centered cultural analysis of America in the late 19th/early 20th century, than as a discussion of Black classical music. There seems to be one chapter that actually goes into detail about Black composers. Genuinely: what was the reason?
  
  The book itself is incredibly difficult to read. Its topics are so loosely connected that I, at times, had to stop and rewind, asking myself, "wait, why are we talking about this now?" The sections which its chapters are divided into often have little, if anything, to do with music at all---let alone that of Black composers. They have even less to do with race. And in the end, they all seem so unnecessary: the erasure of Black composers and their music is the result of racism. There is, of course, a more complex answer to be found, but I don't think I'm going to find it by reading about German opera.
  
  Many other reviews have said this, but to restate: by focusing more on white musicians' and critics' responses to growing Black influences on American culture at the time, than on those influences themselves, Horowitz undermines the supposed goal of his book. (As a case study, I checked the index. Aaron Copland---a white composer---is mentioned more times than William Levi Dawson, Nathaniel Dett, and Florence Price---the three MOST mentioned Black composers in this book---combined.) Why write and publish a 200-page research paper criticizing the erasure of Black composers if you're going to commit the exact same offense? Make it make sense.
  
  Shout out to my orchestra director, by the way. During the pandemic, he did a better job teaching my lazy 15-year-old self about Black composers than Horowitz could in this book. I didn't go in completely stupid; I know Florence Price, I know William Grant Still, I know Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. I've enjoyed them. So I was looking forward to reading more about Black composers who've fallen into obscurity over the decades.
  
  Instead, I read a fuck ton of words about Mark Twain. One star.
• 
  Gabriela Francisco

  "Dvořák's Prophecy" is a very erudite (if sometimes a bit self congratulatory) book by scholar and music critic Joseph Horowitz, which raises important questions on the role of race in a nation's classical music history. Classical music still comes off as elitist and white because of its beginnings, despite efforts to democratize it and make it accessible to all. Horowitz highlights little known composers that aren't, as of now, included in the canon, and explains why that is.
  
  When the great Czech composer Dvořák came to New York to help found a school of music, he stayed for a few years and fell in love with what he heard and considered to be truly American: Negro and Indian music. With the black spirituals especially, he prophesied they would become the foundation for a unique classical music, the bedrock of identity for a young continent still looking for itself. "“In the negro melodies of America," he said, "I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."
  
  The book came out in the pandemic, amidst all the chaos in American society. With all this madness going on globally, why bother to read this very niche book? Why even care about a genre that is considered passé, or utilized by a ruling elite to emphasize the cultural divide between haves and have nots?
  
  As a Filipino watching a vernacular translation of Rossini's and Mozart's Figaro operas this past weekend, I had similarly themed questions in my mind. To be honest, they've been unanswered questions for decades. But reading this book shone a light on the form this problem takes in my own country.
  
  To be Filipino and to love classical music seems almost unpatriotic, given our colonial background. It may come across as studying how to be white underneath the brown, to some. But, as the author reminds us, music and beauty belong to all mankind, regardless of skin color.
  
  To be moved by the beauty of classical music is to partake in the cause of shared humanity itself, one that believes "that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins," and that "there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man."
  
  But to appreciate a common legacy is one thing. To drive a beautiful art form into the future, or to make it come alive to new audiences, is another.
  
  Quoting W.J. Henderson in his book, Horowitz writes: "Art addresses itself to humanity; it cannot be monastic, nor can the artist live a hermit life. What he has to do is to study his own people and his own time and strive ever to bring his inner life into harmony with them."
  
  And as for singing opera in vernacular Filipino? "Only in this way can a musician express the true sentiments of his people. He gets into touch with the common humanity of his country."
  
  Opera is only one form in a tradition that includes so many combinations of instruments. Horowitz takes us on a musical journey, introducing composers that, to my shame, I've only heard of for the first time in this book. He points out the performative nature of the Eurocentric classical music world, which is bad news for composers. He indicts institutional bias against gifted black composers like Florence Price, Nathaniel Dett, and William L. Dawson (to name but two of many), and lampoons art institutions themselves that are partly to blame for the failure of memory, the failure to make sense of past events, settling for too-easy narratives that divide American music into "jazz vs. not jazz" and focusing exclusively on Gershwin and Copland.
  
  The language is very learned, which narrows down the audience for this book. And a lot of it is self-referential, requiring the reader to seek out the author's other books.
  
  But it is worth the read, if only to be reminded of the danger classical music faces all over the world: beware the purist's pride in exclusivity, for it leads to a shrinking audience and a possible death of a form of art.
• 
  Kathleen Hulser

  Horowitz is a witty and acerbic commentator, and here once again he pokes a stick at our cultural conventions. Dvorak's Prophecy updates the quest for an "American" music by excavating the ignored and forgotten composers that the customary canon of EuroStars left out. Readers will be constructing their playlists as Horowitz incisively discusses such figures at Charles Ives, William Dawson, Florence Price, George Chadwick and Arthur Farwell, among others. The impact of French, German, African-American, Native American and various folk traditions supplies a fascinating base for hearing "American" music as assemblage, artfully sampled, assimilated and re-arranged. As always, Horowitz places composers at the center of his exegesis, ignoring the celebrity conductor/performer cults that have distorted the repertoire in the US.
  
  This is a terrific volume designed to not just make you think; you will hear differently as you sample your way through Frederick Delius and Nathaniel Dett, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and William Grant Still. Indeed, this work poses lots of questions about the historical ear: do we hear things differently in different eras? I have always thought that is a better pathway to understanding, than framing the question as changing musical tastes. Horowitz has done original work in searching through the development of folk, spiritual, ragtime, blues and jazz to trace bilateral influences that made Dvorak and Gershwin, and Frederick Delius change their idiom. His chapter on how Mark Twain and Charles Ives chew on the vernacular in their respective literary and musical traditions is great fun. He makes a convincing argument for appropriation as a natural development which -- if not for the pernicious and endemic racism that Jim Crowed music as surely as water fountains -- should have given us a robust historical black and white music base for 20th century composition. He even resurrects Arthur Farwell, sometimes seen as a naïf or a colonizer, but here appearing as someone whose vocals works sung in Navajo deserve a more thoughtful appraisal. Full of sassy ripostes, Horowitz gathers pungent quotes wherever he goes. Virgil Thompson, the perennial critic/composer who didn't get it, nevertheless characterized Melville's Billy Budd as "Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges." This book is an exhilarating deep dive into a usable past that honors the mavericks that should be at the core of our cultural self image.
• 
  Martha Anne Toll

  Here’s my review of this book for the Washington Post.
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/outloo...
• 
  Kristi

  There’s a lot to think about here, and I enjoyed listening to the music discussed within the book. I found it really required more music knowledge than I had, so it was a slow read.
• 
  Julian

  dnf
• 
  Eric

  This challenged my preconceptions of American classical music and really helped broaden my perspective of what music is performed and why today. While this is not the most approachable book, I found listening to the pieces mentioned while reading to be quite an enjoyable experience.
  
  As someone who has played in amateur orchestras for many years, this explains a lot about what music is programmed and why.