Oh Toni, how could I ignore the fact that today is your birthday anniversary? You, who never wrote a bad note?
Having cut my teeth on the “New World” Symphony, I later discovered that yours is one of those peculiar cases where, looking back, I find that what attracted me to you in the first place is not necessarily what is most characteristic in your other music.
However, having gotten to know your other works, I have to say, I may like them even better.
Hard to believe that the composer of the Serenade for Strings and the sunny Symphony No. 8 could write those lurid potboilers based on Czech fairy tales, or that one could find so much depth and melancholy in simple children’s stories.
Further, you virtually reinvented American music, directing young composers to forget about emulating Mendelssohn and Schumann and Brahms, since they could never hope to beat them at their own game, and focus on that which is distinctly America: Indian tunes and Negro spirituals (using the parlance of the day).
Thanks for everything, Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904). Yours was a beautiful and generous soul.
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