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Podcast: New Books in Performing Arts
Episode: Douglas W. Shadle, "AntonÃn Dvořák's New World Symphony" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Description: Most music students have been taught that the New World Symphony was the first piece of classical music written in an American national style which AntonÃn Dvorák invented when he utilized influences from Black music in the second movement. The impression most textbooks leave is that this innovation was instantly approved by composers and critics alike, and that American classical music was born through Dvorak’s intervention. Like most myths, this bears only a slight resemblance to the truth. Douglas W. Shadle sets the record straight in Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony (Oxford University Press 2021). He tells the...