ABSTRACT
The arrival of Antonin Dvorak in New York in 1893 as Director of the National Conservatory of Music provided the catalyst to focus attention on the need for music in the United States to explore new paths. One should remember that Dvorak, Bohemian by birth, felt a strong national pride in his country at a time when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Dvorak’s declaration that ‘The new American school must strike its roots deeply into its own soil’ was vigorously supported by American composers. Dvorak’s stylistic features are most strongly evident in the music of an American composer who had not been one of his pupils. A Northern Ballad, an orchestral work by Horatio Parker, then Professor of Music at Yale University, could be mistaken for a symphonic poem by Dvorak. Dvorak spent only three years in the United States but the force of his personality on pupils and other active musicians was profound.
