One of my favorite symphonies

While well-known by classical music lovers, Dvorak's 9th Symphony was, and is, one of my favorite symphonies.  I used to listen to it obsessively in college, and always have the CD nearby if I need some inspiration.

The story behind the music is equally impressive.  Dvorak was a Czech composer in the late 1800s who visited the USA.  He ended up traveling a great deal in the US and found musical inspiration in the spirituals sung by African-American slaves.  It also helped a great deal that one of his new American friends, an African-American baritone named Harry Burleigh, sang some of his mother's spirituals for Dvorak.  With these songs in hand, Dvorak sought to create a symphony inspired by his visit to the "New World" and shaped by the spirituals he had heard.  Dvorak's personal opinion was that the spiritual and Native American music would become the basis for an emerging American style of music.

Harry Burleigh, perhaps motivated by Dvorak's attempts to integrate the spiritual into a symphonic work, became a very prominent composer in his own right.  And guess what he is best known for?  Taking his spirituals and converting them into classical songs that we now know very well.

DWS