As Jonathan Del Mar's exemplary editions of the Beethoven symphonies revealed, popular orchestral works can be frequently performed from inaccurate scores and parts for decades or longer before the situation is rectified. The same editor's Urtext of Dvořák's Symphony ‘From the New World’ confirms the point; its full score, critical commentary, and parts, published in 2019, are now happily complemented by a study score. These provide music lovers, scholars and students with easy access to an affordable and reliable musical text.
The separately published Critical Commentary describes the wide range of sources that inform this edition and repays a close reading. Here Del Mar lays out the range of materials he consulted, accounts for hundreds of editorial decisions, and records the unfortunate limitations of earlier editions. The descriptions of each source reveal the essential challenges faced in establishing an authoritative text. First there is the autograph full score containing blue crayon and pencil markings whose hand must be established. Del Mar assigns the blue crayon to Dvořák, while the pencil markings prove more problematic, as only some of these come from the composer. Then there is a manuscript copy of the full score, into which Dvořák had entered final revisions but which is now lost: however, many of these have been inferred by consulting the set of parts copied by the New York Philharmonic's librarian from that source for the first performance in New York on 16 December 1893. This source was itself lost for many years until rediscovered in 1988 and so was unavailable to several twentieth-century score editors.
A further area of complication arises from the fact that Dvořák was not involved in preparation of the first published edition. As this was published by Simrock in Germany, at a time when the new work was in great demand, sending the proofs back and forth to Dvořák in New York would have taken too long. Brahms provided significant support to a fellow composer he championed by checking the proofs on Dvořák's behalf. Yet these well-intentioned interventions generate questions about the authority of the changes made, a key consideration for a modern Urtext edition.
There have been no fewer than four previous Urtext editions, published by Artia (1955), Supraphon (1977, reissued 1986 and 1998), Eulenburg (1986), and Breitkopf and Härtel (1990). However, most of these are not informed by Dvořák's amendments to the lost score reflected in the parts that themselves went missing as noted above; and even the more recent scores draw on that rediscovered source in ways that are limited and inconsistent. Two supplementary sources also enter the story. A programme note published in the New York Daily Tribune, the day before the first performance, features 14 handwritten music examples of key themes, one of which helps corroborate the rhythm of part of the famous cor anglais solo in the slow movement. And Dvořák's hand-written lecture notes, for a talk given shortly after the premiere, clarify the placement of the horn entry in bar 4 of the first movement (a point on which other sources are in conflict). So, Del Mar is the first to draw fully on all the currently available sources while also providing a detailed record of the editorial decisions that have been made.
Issues of notation are of course addressed, summarized within the two-page preface in the study score, and treated more fully in the Critical Commentary. These include the placement of harpins, and some inconsistencies in Dvořák's notation. Of particular concern is the distinction of staccato markings when Dvořák's Punkte (dots) become elongated and start looking more like Striche (dashes), or vice versa. In addition, timpani rolls are written in different ways (‘tr’, with or without a ‘wiggle’ of varying length, or a notated tremolo). Where these inconsistencies convey no intended difference in execution, they have been usefully standardized in the printed score.
The musical text of the study score is clean and consistent, making it easy to read, as with previous Bärenreiter scores. The extremely common practice of varying the number of systems per page is present in all movements, leaving this reader wondering whether it would have been worthwhile to fix the layout even at the cost of a few more printed pages. Fortunately, system breaks are prominently printed to aid navigation. The only presentational concern of substance concerns the English translation of the work's subtitle on the cover and title pages: in the full score, parts, and critical commentary ‘Z nového světa’ is translated as ‘From the New World’. But in the study score this is abridged to ‘New World’, despite the fuller version in the autograph score. Although the work is of course routinely referred to as the New World Symphony, it is unclear why the English version varies here from the Czech and the German titles that are also provided.
The invention of the full subtitle is just one point addressed in Jan Smaczny's Introduction, in a quotation from Dvořák's assistant Josef Jan Kovařík, who observed the composer adding the phrase to the title page just before it was sent to Anton Seidl, conductor of the premiere. The seven-page introduction helpfully sets the score in the wider contexts of Dvořák's biography and concert life in the 1890s, where the prospect of expressing American national identity through Western classical artworks held great appeal for many, even if the nature of that desired expression was sometimes unclear.
As Smaczny's narrative observes, Dvořák addressed the challenge by drawing on a range of national signifiers: pentatonic themes, flattened sevenths, spirituals including those sung by composition student Harry T. Burleigh to Dvořák, and Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha. With due acknowledgement of Michael Beckerman's research, we read about how Dvořák articulates his ambition for a national music in the press, and comments on the signifiers to listen out for in advance of the premiere: what one might term today as the execution of a media strategy.Footnote 1 As a recent article by Eva Branda shows, this was not the first time Dvořák effectively influenced public discourse.Footnote 2 Dvořák was presented with an enormous opportunity while facing tremendous pressure to deliver in the gaze of public scrutiny, especially given his position as head of the National Conservatory of Music of America.
Of course, Dvořák largely succeeded in the task of creating an instant classic that satisfied multiple audiences: for his patron, Jeanette Thurber, the work's success encapsulated all her hopes as creator of the National Conservatory. Press coverage was largely enthusiastic, and further performances were soon secured in America and internationally. The most critical voices would later exploit the double-edged sword that is popularity, viewing anything that makes the crowd cheer and shout with suspicion. Recent research into the ‘middlebrow’ phenomenon provides a useful context for such views.Footnote 3
The construction of the musical argument is helpfully addressed in the Preface which identifies clarity of structure as a feature of the work. Some readers may be surprised to discover the exposition repeat, often omitted in performance. The deft handling of the tonal argument throughout the work is striking; this helps enliven what could easily have become a rather routine recapitulation in the first movement, for example. Listening with score in hand also facilitates a deeper exploration of the web of thematic recall that stretches across the work. The urgent build-up of reminiscences in the Finale points up an aesthetic concern with unity – not merely the connectedness of the preceding movements, but a question of whether the ‘national’ musical materials have been successfully integrated into a convincing symphonic discourse. This drawing together of themes underlines that the raw material of melody has indeed been transformed into an integrated network of symphonic motifs.
This new score is timely, enabling students and researchers approaching the work from a variety of perspectives to consult a reliable musical text in the course of their studies. Among them will be readers of Douglas W. Shadle's recent book on the symphony, published in the Oxford Keynotes series.Footnote 4 The fresh contexts that that study brings – in particular its attention to the racial politics of the period – suggests Dvořák's Ninth Symphony will continue to provide a focal point for academic study from a variety of critical perspectives. All those with an interest in the work will surely be grateful for Del Mar's provision of an authoritative Urtext, which must have required an enormous commitment of time and patience to produce.
