>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> On behalf of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, I'd like to welcome you to this afternoon symposium, Dvorak in the New World, presented by the Library in collaboration with the Embassy of the Czech Republic. Anne McLean and I'm delighted to be partnering with the Embassy in this project on behalf of the Music Division. It's part of the impressive Mutual Inspirations Festival 2011. It's taking place around the city this fall. I know a lot of you have already been to some of the interesting programs and as you've been seeing, the festivals draws in many of Washington's major cultural intuitions to mark the 170th university of Antonin Dvorak's birth. I'd like to acknowledge our partners, Barbara Karpetova the embassy's first secretary who is by the way a cultural diplomat but also a musicologist. The festival has been Dr. Karpetova's project and she had enlisted some very distinguished collaborators, as you can see, if you look at the website for the festival, www.mutualinspirations.org. Also, I'd like to Mary Fetzko, the Embassy's Public Relations Specialist. We're very pleased today to have one of the world's foremost Dvorak scholars speaking this afternoon. Michael Beckerman is Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music and Chair of the Music Department at New York University. He's receive the Janacek Medal from the Czech Ministry of Culture and as a Laureate of the Czech Music Council. His books include Dvorak in his World, Janacek as Theorist, and New Worlds of Dvorak. Joining him today for this symposium is Eva Velicka, the Director of Dvorak's Museum in the Czech Republic. Also a musicologist, Dr. Velicka is a Martinu scholar and she is the Founder of Omnimusa, an organization devoted to supporting the creation of new music and the interconnection of music and other artistic genres. So following these presentations, you'll have a chance to examine some of the facsimiles in our foyer. And afterwards, as you saw up in the program, we'll have a recital with Reginald Bouknight. But I'd like to just briefly introduce Barbara Karpetova now and have her tell you a little more about the proceedings. Thank so much. [ Applause ] >> Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy to be here. And as a partly scholar, I'm in fact very thrilled to be here. This is a Library of Congress. [Laughter] It's quite special, I would say. I am very thrilled how the Dvorak's music and everything which connects and-- is welcome here in Washington, DC. This is my really warm thank you to Washington, DC community. It's very, very educated community and all of the events we are trying to set up are really welcome. Thanks for that Washington. And I guess there are too many scholars today so I would give the floor to the one who is here to tell you with us who came over from New York, who's going to lead us through the symposium is Dr. Beckerman. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Thank you and thank you Barbara-- Barbara for putting together such as wonderful series of programs. It's been very exciting. And of course to all the distinguished guests who are here. So last year, several members of the Czech Embassy, in particular Barbara, decided that in order to celebrate Dvorak's 170th birthday, the manuscript of the New World Symphony should make something like a triumphant return to these shores since the first time in the 1890s. This entire festival Mutual Inspirations was organized around this. And I stand here today along with the director the Dvorak's Museum in Prague and many others engaged with the issues and realities related to this manuscript. Obviously, the very fact that this event was conceived by the capable and imaginative cultural arm of an embassy lends it something of a political tinge, drawing attention as it does to the long standing and fruitful ties between the United States and the Czech Republic which go back to the '90s. Of course 1993, but of course Czech-American relations predate this very recent milestone. And we all know that more than a 100 years before the Czech Republic was born, Dvorak arrive in New York to direct the National Conservatory. Almost immediately, he came under the influence of such figures as Jeanette Thurber, Henry Thacker Burleigh, and Henry Krehbiel. And by the New Year had decided to write a symphony with references to African-American song, Native American drumming, it was a very up to date symphony in many ways because Dvorak used Twitter. Well, in this case-- [laughter] in this case, it was the twits of Robins and Bluebirds. I only put in that joke because there are some really boring parts in the middle of the paper. That supposed to compensate for them. But you can decide whether it does. There's possibly even a quote from Yankee Doodle not to mention several movements based on Longfellow's song of Hiawatha. Surely, the New World Symphony was a political statement of sorts, at the very least in attempt to both demonstrate and advocate cultural pluralism to American musicians, composers and audience-- audiences many of whom were and sometimes still are resistant to the idea. Dvorak's American years were exciting times field with vigorous assertions, ardent debate about what it meant to be American and who precisely was allowed into the mix. We all agree that bringing over the New World Manuscript was an ideal way to commemorate these events and draw attention to some the issues. By the spring, we were ready to go and everything from air transport, security guards had been planned. But as the story goes, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. And revealing I think things about the role and value or a manuscript in our culture that we might not have been aware off. This particular thing involves blood plasma because for almost as long as the fictional trial in Capek and Janacek Macropolus case, the Czech Government has been involved in a nasty spot with a plasma trading company. I will avoid describing these events in extensive detail because like so many things today, you can find out all about it on the internet. Suffice it to say that things got so out of hand this spring that certain artworks belonging to the Czech Government were impounded in lieu of payment. This was done on the order of a court in Vienna and while it is heartening to contemplate that this could actually bring attention to the Czech-Cubist, Emil Filla, a wonderful painting, it was-- it had a deeply disheartening effect on the international movement of National Treasures. So the New World Manuscript was not going to be leaving anytime soon. Or course we have some, hopefully, rich compensations for you in the thoughtful choice of facsimiles that we brought, that Eva has brought. And since there is no downside that does not also have some kind of an upside, there's a certain benefit to not having the original present, one of which is to consider the nature of such a manuscript. The whole thing suggests that a National Treasure is a very complicated thing indeed and especially a musical autograph. Not simply a record of a composition in the composer's hand. Such things are routinely treated as holy icons to be displayed and venerated. Yet in this way they're also a kind of reductive black box. Our worship is based on a strange combination of knowing and willful desire not to know for we have a tendency to worship most powerfully that which is irreducible and indescribable. This translates to the very we display such things unlike status and paintings and meteorites, manuscripts are also somewhat weird. We exhibit them as if they were works of art and venerate them but unlike Michael Angelo's David which one can walk around and examine, you know, the most you can show when you display a manuscript is figure it out, right. Two pages, you can't do anything wrong which is sort of like bringing Michael Angelo's David and like only able to show one of his fingers. And by the way, if anybody remembers, there was a time when a statue was exhibited as if it was a manuscript at the world's fair when Michael Angelo's PA talk came and they put it on a conveyer belt and you had between 60 and 90 seconds to-- so, and let's face it. A visiting artifact tends to take up all the air in the room as befits a true celebrity. I sort of realized that this was the case with the celebrities. The first time I ever actually gave up anything like a public talk, I was like a junior in high school and I've been selected to be part of a panel of peer discussing. I was always proud of myself, you know, peer discussing. It's a big room in a hotel as first time ever and there I was discussing and then suddenly the basketball player, Bill Bradley, a senator walked into the room and then nobody paid any attention to anything we said. The only thing that anybody remembered was that. So a manuscript is like a celebrity and kind of a sacred icon and an object standing in for the composer we venerate. >> Its queasy religious status reminds us that probably the first books put in cases and exhibited were exquisite and ornate bibles. In addition to this, any manuscript brought over by a foreign government and shown in this official library of the United States as a good deal of political attraction as well. From the story of the manuscripts derailment in terms of these events, we might conclude that it has an economic value as well. But this is something I will consider only at the very end of this paper. Having established that manuscripts maybe worship, celebrated, scientifically studied, and used as economic ransom, I now like to suggest they're also a source of other kinds of material that can inspires us to think broadly about a range of issues. Since the legal procedure is a congenial and appropriate model for obvious symbolic reasons in this case, I'd like to spend the rest of our time in an imaginary court where a team of legal experts including prosecutor, defense attorney, judge and jury will consider several important cases related to our study of Dvorak. First is the New World American Music. One the music debates, musical debates of the 1890s was whether with the composition of the New World Symphony, Dvorak had written an American work. Critics like Henry Krehbiel, James Huneker, W.J. Henderson and Philip Hale as well as Amy Beach and many other crossed swords if not blood on these issues. So o ye o ye, court in session, here's the argument for the prosecution in the effort approved, the New World as American. See I wanted be able to clear my throat but that sort of tacky. So I figure if I built a court case and I could clear-- well anyway. Here it goes. In numerous places, the composer Antonin Dvorak meet statements about aspects of the symphonies American identity. He call it the New World, he said anyone with a nose could tell the influence of the United States. He told at least two critics that the inner movements were base on Longfellow's song of Hiawatha and this has been confirmed by scholarly study. So for example, the famous largo is associated with the passage on the prairie. There is further an impressive body of evidence that Dvorak modeled African-American songs as he composed and this evidence comes from somebody known to be a frequent guess that Dvorak's home. Harry Burleigh though, Edward McDowell and others mentioned it as well. Not only did he encounter noticed and use African-American song as he composed but in a series of articles and statements in the newspaper in the spring of 1893, he made the stunning pronouncement that caught many by surprise that any American music worthy of the name should have African-American song at its very foundation. Dvorak was in experience musician and he had encountered many things in his lifetime but he had never encountered anything that sounded like these African-American songs and he was stunned by them. He'd never encountered anything so deeply expressive and as a devote catholic himself, he was delighted by the fact that these songs which he took to be America's folk songs were all about David playing the harp, Daniel and the lions and goat-- they were biblical instead of Czech folk songs which were basically about girls and drinking. [Laughter] He loved them but he was delighted by these things. So taken all together says the prosecutor, the use of American musical themes, American landscapes, America, Flora and Fauna, American legends at the very core of this symphony, make it a piece of American music. The defense noting the-- many people streaming into the court room, clears her throat and she says, let us imagine for the moment that all of these statements are fully accepted by both the scholarly and public musical community, even though later we may come back to quibble about it. Still, what is it mean to be American and write American music? Dvorak considered himself obviously to be a Czech. There's a famous statement where he says-- reported by his secretary Kovarik, he says, "I use American ideas to show composers what could be done but I'm not American. I'm always been a Czech composer." So if instead of a musician, Dvorak had been a gifted painter creating workspace like [inaudible] on the mountains and prairies of the west would that make him an American painter or at most a Czech painter who's subject is America? And if were pleased with ourselves from making these distinction we're then forced to ask ourselves the further question of whether perhaps the subject of the painting or the symphony was not anything American but rather American subjects were being pressed into service because the real point was to use them, to explore the interplay of abstract tone colors and thicker brush strokes different harmonies. It's music. Who knows what the subject is. Then the defense goes in for the kill and says, "So, a question like is the New World Symphony Czech or American is difficult not only because the term American is poorly defined and we don't really know whether to be Czech or American as a matter of citizenship, national origin, language, neuropsychology or DNA but also because we need facts to prove one argument over the other?" And in the end, the defense says, raising her hands in the air, "We don't really know what happened in the past and the more we think about it, the more difficult it gets." Prosecution responds in an exasperated manner with much eye rolling in returns the argument. Not only did Dvorak write an American symphony, he wrote it because-- and now he pauses for effect-- he was contracted to do it. We get back to do economics. Jeanette Thurber brought Dvorak to United States for the express purpose of getting him to write an example of American music for young and energetic country searching for new directions. We do not argue that they're simply one possible American music but rather that Dvorak created one kind of American music and named it as such. New World means American, United Statesian, an expression that our fellow countries in South America would actually prefer that we use sometimes. This is American music it references African-American music, it references Native American music and legends, most of its audience took it as an example of American music, your honor, we believe we have proved this case. It's American music. The defense stretches. Noting perhaps that Dvorak merely did what he done in the past back when he was Czech. She saunters over to a piano that is mysteriously appeared in the court room. And she plays-- it's a festival connections. [Laughter] She plays this. [ Music ] >> And notes that it is an African-American melody that Dvorak first encountered when he read it in an article called Negro Music which is published in 1892. This was the first piece of notated African-American music he'd seen. But then she notes, she says, you all know Dvorak's oratorio, Saint Ludmila where there is passage-- [ Music ] >> So, she says all these things matching, you know, anytime you were thinking about the exotic whether it's African-American, Native American, Turkish-- [ Music ] >> It's the same thing that comes. This isn't anything particularly American. He-- They're not particularly authentic. And all these things are appearing whenever somebody tries to do something exotic. And she goes further, she says, why do think Jeanette Thurber choice Dvorak? She assumes in oratorical stance. Dvorak was not chosen because he was a natural democrat, which he was; and not because he'd work his way up from poverty, which he had done; and not even because he was a great composer, which is certainly true; rather it was Dvorak's Mozartian, Protean tendency to assimilate and then combine unlike elements into convincing holes. The defense attorney notes that Dvorak and Mozart were not the only figures to do this to some extent the 19th century was filled with such things. Beethoven childlike Turkish march in the middle of the vast humanist canvas of the 9th Symphony finale which is replete with drinking songs, double fugues and weird obstructions. Think of the Czech pilgrims march in the slow movement of Mendelssohn Italian symphony and the Gypsy Finale in the Brahms G minor piano quartet. But more than these others, the defense insists that Dvorak style was always a style of styles. >> A genuine Hapsburg conflation of argots dialects from the most aristocratic to the harshly rustic from the high Victorian style of the oratorios and masses, to the cymbolom infused inflections of the Gypsy songs, and from the Smetana Czech exuberance of the Carnival Overture, to the high Austrian internationalism of the F Minor Trio. Who else could traverse so quickly from Dumki to Slavonic dances and from folk song to fugue? What other composer in Europe at this time could have brought this rich pallet and added to it a range of local styles both real and imaginary. These explains members of the jury both how quickly Dvorak could moved to an American accent and why some insisted that this was really the same kind of music he always wrote. He had just stacked another arrow in his very Czech and European quiver. Objection from the prosecution. If indeed Dvorak combined all these unlike element as the defense says, it would a recipe for incoherence, a musical mess and a sonic mishap. The defense perhaps a New Yorker offers this description-- offers this description of the great cathedral at Saint John, the Divine. The cathedral reflects a hodgepodge of architectural styles with a gothic nave, a Romanesque crossing under the dome, chapels in French, English and Spanish gothic styles as wells as Norman and Byzantine, Gothic choir stalls and Roman arches and columns. The defense notes that this stylistic mix even applies to the stained glass windows whose subject matters ranges from saints to swordsman and from bishops to baseball players. The famous sports window. "The point," she says, "Isn't whether you can point to different styles but how they're integrated by the energy and intellect of the composer." The stomachs of the jurors are rambling and the judge asks for a preliminary findings. After a brief recess of six months where the jury spends everyday sequestered in a cheap New Jersey motel with torn carpets, there is a decision. While Dvorak undoubtedly use a wide and impressive range of elements he found in United States in composing his New World Symphony, especially a deep and abiding reliance on African-American musical models, It cannot be said precisely whether this is American music because we actually don't know what such a thing means. But in a surprise move, the jurors also add that after sitting around for half a year, they don't really know if Dvorak is a Czech composer either for the same reasons, some think he might be an Austro-Hungarian composer, and others that he might actually be a European composer. But in the end all happily agree that at the very least he was a composer. [Laughter] So the judge considers-- in this part is called celebration versus investigation. It's the boring part. The depleted jurors have gone home and the judge and lawyers are just sitting around having a desultory conversation about Dvorak. The judge says, let's imagine that a particular figure like Dvorak is worthy-- worthy to be disseminated in the case of the music worthy to be heard. We decide this base on our own evaluation but also the evaluations of others. The individual turns into a collective. The collective says this is valuable. So how we deal with them? "We have," says the judge, "I believe two dimetrically oppose ways of presenting this thing to others through celebration or investigation. While this may overlap in places and sometimes seemed to be consonant, they're in fact, mostly opposing activities." Celebrations a matter of advocacy, the purpose is to make the strongest possible case of all times for the figure, work or artifact in question. So you're celebratory statements like Beethoven not only remade the image of the artist and the society but by his intellectual, courage, reformulated the very notion of how the composer was suppose to work. Or it was Dvorak many, more than any other figure who grasp the essence of the American musical experience. Such phrases can be couch in the language of academic certainty but they're essentially stumps speeches resistant to anything like evidential proof and not wanting it. Who uses this kind of language anyway says the prosecution. Judge answers agents and managers or cast or organizations in opera houses. Welcome to Janacek's world says the metropolitan opera. Writers of music history textbooks but really we all do, to some extent, we can't help it. While for some such [inaudible] are result of economic necessity, people who make a living, filling concert halls. For many people, listeners and scholars, these composers are their heroes, their gods and it's simply natural to speak in such a way. To some people, things like the New World Symphony are such amazing and inexplicable gifts that celebrating them and their creators seems the only logical process aside from engaging them in concert halls and recordings. "But what," the judge continues, "if a result of one's interest in a particular aspect of a composer's work, someone wants to investigate rather than celebrate. And what if one further concludes that this process should in general follow the laws of both a scientific method and a court of law?" In other words it must not be a matter of advocacy and special pleading but must be something like this passionate, objective, and seek verifiable processes basing statements on available facts and methods. Investigation insists the one make a distinction between what one believes and what one knows and one doesn't like to do that. The defense has been sitting quietly appearing to be asleep, but she interjects. It's a little more complicated than. I would submit that there are at least two fundamental types of investigation. One, someone in keeping with the instinct to celebrate and the other it's polar opposite. The first to these in follows investigations of a range of matters related to the composer or the work. What kind of paper is the manuscript written on? Is the noted and E or an E flat? Did the composer really stop and peels on a way to Detroit or was it rather Zanzibar. So to make something up when a member of the audience in Cincinnati at the first performance of the New World cries saddle, did-- was he saying Anton Siddall [phonetic] or was he actually using the word saddle in reference to the world aspects of the symphony. All these are questions which well not celebratory in themselves would rarely if ever bring us into any conflict with any basic or larger idea and never challenge the veneration. Exactly says the judge. It's those other questions that get us going. What was Dvorak's relationship to Wagner? Why wasn't Dvorak at the first public performance of the New World Symphony? Is the New World Symphony really a work on the level with a Beethoven symphony? What did Dvorak really think of women composers? How much beer did Dvorak drink? [Laughter] Now, it's not that any of these questions need to bring us into conflict with the instinct to celebrate. It's more that they might. Let's imagine for a moment what kind of investigator we want if for an example, an independent commission were set up to explore the pending court case that I began with today. Most of us would want this body to work neither for the interests of one party or the other but simply to ask questions and seek answers according to their principles and a series of best practices. Depending on those answers, other questions might arise and we would wish that investigative body to continue to be able and free to ask any of those questions as well and so forth. In other words, to investigate certain kinds of questions freely in our business one must be ready to wait into controversy. One doesn't look for it, but if it comes, one can't stop in the interest of advocacy. Of course, in the case of any investigation related to Dvorak, there's not the same kind of pressure that there is in the court of law. Courts of law have to arrive at a judgment and after that, the matter is dropped. But we can stop investigating without penalty anytime we want. And even if we keep going, our research often results in the humanistic equivalent of the mistrial. Because sooner or later, we get into areas of such complexity and intellectual knock time that is stepped in any direction seems to take us further away from our destination. For one says the prosecution, I agree with the arguments made by the defense. It turns out that knowing anything is savagely difficult which is another reason why celebration often seems preferable. When we do research, we confront any number of paradoxes. While in an inquiry, the number of things we know maybe amazingly vast or at least large enough to make our brains think that we have complete coverage. This is a dangerous misunderstanding. In reality, what we need to know in any inquiry is a perilous fraction of what we actually do know. So while we may have hundreds of various records from Dvorak's American years, we probably have references to about a billionth of the composer's time in the United States. Not only do we have scanned references to realtime activities, but even our broad brush understandings are shaky. When did Dvorak meet the African-American singer Henry Burleigh first and hear him sing funerals. Hear him sing all kinds of things, spirituals, plantation songs. Was it October? Was it January? Was it March? We don't know and we may never know. So says, the prosecutor. Let just enjoy the music which we can never understand or explain completely, celebrate it with festivals and praise, none of these downer stuff, revisionist approach that seeks to knock a figure off of their pedestal. This happens basically because most critics and musicologist wouldn't know what to do with the pedestal if they got and hear it. [ Laughter ] >> The defense who's been wrinkling her brow over the last few minutes finally speaks, "So it turns out," perversely she says, "that history turns out to be the art of figuring out what didn't happened." [Laughter] Or to put it in other way, historical investigation is the art of using evidence to find out what happened then trying to imagine all those things that might have happened for which there is no evidence. And on top of that, trying to imagine what didn't happen. And after that, if you have energy left, you have to try to put it all in an almost infinite layer of context. The natural progression in serious historical investigation is generally from greater to lesser certainty. Even as one arguably has much more information at one's disposal. She reaches into her bag and pulls out of volume and while turning pages, she continues. There are many reasons why we seemed to receive from that which we use to know. Some of which I've suggested above. But at its core is the reality that the historical moment is infinitely reacher than any memory of it. The combination of physical sensations, mental life, observation in a given instant is infinitely rich, our memory of it is simply determined by the size of our brain and its storage capacity. Once something happens, it's gone. She finds the right place in her book. She says, this is quote from the great philosopher Jean Amery, whose At The Mind's Limits is one of the best books that's ever been written about what it was like to be in a concentration camp. Amery wrote, "One can devote an entire life to comparing the imagined and the real and still never accomplish anything by it." And we agree. One of the greatest differences in the universe is from something as we imagine it and something that really happened. Yes, says the defense. In force celebration always destroys investigation. If the only possible answer to any questions is Dvorak was a god, there is no investigation. The judge says, let's find a test case. In order to determine what we might be able to know and what's impossible. Picking at random he says, let's look at the finale of the New World Symphony. He notes that the finale is an odd kind of musical creature. Neither the goal of the work's trajectory like the famous last movement of Beethoven's 9th or perhaps even the Jupiter symphony. But on the other hand, not any kind of throw away or now it's over, it occupies a kind of middle ground. In most recordings, almost all, it's the longest movement after the largo and filled with vivid and captivating musical images. A sound system is mysteriously appears in the courtroom. The judge says, "Let's begin by playing two of those images and asking people to listen for detail." [ Noise ] >> Sounds like it's gonna be loud. Let's see. [ Music ] >> Exhibit 1, says the judge. Here's exhibit 2. [ Music ] >> The judge says, as I'm sure you can hear-- so entering over the keyboard. The first example proceeds a kind of dramatic [inaudible] fanfare in a kind of A, B, A, C, forms we have-- [ Music ] >> A, B. [ Music ] >> A again. [ Music ] >> And surprise. [ Music ] >> So you have the fanfare at the end. It's a simple format. In the second iteration however-- [ Music ] >> There's no fanfare, it disappears, and it tails off into quietude. So what's the account for this? How do we account for these differences and can they help answer any of our questions. Can they get us somehow beyond celebration? Well, says the prosecution, as part of the process we have to put these examples in context. The formal structure of such a movement is often described as-- excuse me. [ Laughter ] [ Noise ] >> The judge finds that political appointees he didn't make are suddenly in charge of the [inaudible]. [Laughter] So the prosecution says, you have to understand in order to interpret this that Dvorak is using a procedure of composition that's usually known as sonata form. That means we have a main theme with preceded [ Music ] >> So that's the main theme. It establishes the key. It establishes the tone. And that's what you'd expect in a piece like this as P.D.Q Bach would say "It's what you get in all your best symphonies." And then of course there is-- after these, there's something like a transition. [ Music ] >> This brings us to a second theme that by design is radically different in every way from the character of the opening. If the opening is forceful and aggressive and loud, this is soft and yielding imaginary. [ Music ] >> And again, as in everything from Anna Cline to Beethoven's 5th, this is-- there is a closing passage. [ Music ] >> And this is followed in the symphonic model by the part that sometimes it's considered the most important part, the part that gives its identity, it makes is western music, et cetera, et cetera. The development section where our materials from the other parts of the piece and in this-- in this particular other parts of other movements are sort of put together in various formats and here's a little snip-it of the development. [ Music ] >> So Dvorak simply using a normal symphonic model and the part that was pointed to earlier is what happens after the development which is the main theme comes back, big deal. [ Music ] >> So this is based on mainstream formal models. Dvorak is using a sonata design, big deal. The defense who's been listening intently furring her brow, speaks up saying that in fact, what is suppose to be a return-- actually if you listen sounds more like a conclusion [ Music ] >> So how do we account for the difference between the return which is suppose to be the same in many ways as what you've heard at the beginning, why is it so different? The judge interrupts to note that while we can never say precisely what a musical idea is in words, we can often easily say what it is not. He suggests that both attorneys would agree that if the opening of the movement depicts something, it's unlikely to be [inaudible] or a joyous and pious Christmas scene. >> Whatever it is meant to suggest, it is something powerful even aggressive. If it is not a battle cry explicitly it is something very much like it. "Correct," says the defense, but in return-- in the return not only is the confident fanfare missing but after one statement of the theme it's character changes completely, something happens to it. The prosecutor not fond of discussions of musical character suggest that there are several purely musical explanations for this. He says it's well known that the Dvorak was always conversing for its contemporary reason suggests that it could be just like Beethoven's. So the opening of Beethoven says [inaudible]. [ Music ] >> But the second time round. [ Music ] >> So says the prosecution by changing the nature of the idea when it returns, he's simply having a chat with Beethoven. It's-- There's nothing special about that. And even if it's not Omajo to Beethoven, Dvorak still creating these shapes for purely musical reason-- reasons. Some kind of instinct tells him that in the abstract world of musical storytelling, he needs a respite after the heightened power of the music that precedes the main idea. So here's the music that precedes the main idea. [ Music ] [ Background Music ] >> Fake return. [ Music ] [ Background Music ] >> Real return. [ Music ] >> So the prosecution says the difference is between the two simply respond to the local activity of the symphony at that point Dvorak's instincts tell him that after that very powerful return that he has to pull back. The defense is unconvinced. Perhaps she has some new evidence. She begins slowly, how do we describe this music? Is it simply pure sonic drama as the prosecution said, creating what we call heightened tension through the combination of harmonic certainty, increase in volume in general instability? Or is there another explanation for some of the choices Dvorak made? She reaches again into her briefcase, pulls out a few sheets of paper. Exhibits A and B she calls them, saying that in departure from his usual practice the composer took great pains to tell critics and audience that the middle movements of the symphony were based on passages from Longfellow's Hiawatha. It's all right here in black and white she says, the prosecution is impatient. But Dvorak said nothing about the finale. You just can't make something up that isn't there. Bare with me says the defense. There are other kinds of evidence as well. For example, we know that after composing the two epic bookends of this American period, the New World Symphony and the Cello Concerto, Dvorak never again wrote an orchestra work that didn't have a story attached to it. In fact, in the last nine years of his life, he wrote nothing but operas and tone poems. And we know that when he wrote the first of these tone poems, he wrote the words from the poem into the first draft as if it were a kind of melodrama, so close was the association between the declaim text and the musical sound. So what kind of thing is this finale? Is it a full pledged symphonic movement as the prosecution says or is it really some kind of tone poem? And if it's a tone poem, how do we find out what the subject is? This is just reaching says the prosecution and the judge seems to be nodding [inaudible], you just can't muck about until you find something you think fits the music. It's complicated says the defense. But we're dealing with evidence in the best way we can, is it likely that after two movements of the new world richly showing scenes from Hiawatha that Dvorak completely abandon it in the finale while still using the same themes from those movements? But look at this, she says, the strange and distorted return of the main theme is the same kind of theme Dvorak himself noted in a famous article in New York Herald on December 15th, 1893. Remember? Speaking about the largo which she refers to in this as an adagio, he says the second movement of my new symphony is an adagio. But it's different from the classic works in this form. It's really a study or sketch for a longer work either a cantata or opera which I propose writing which will be based on Longfellow's song of Hiawatha. I've long had the idea of utilizing that poem. So we've agreed that the opening brass music with its concluding fanfare is something like a war cry and there is such a place in the song of Hiawatha and it's even part of a written scenario that Dvorak received when he was writing a libretto for it. It is the final battle between Hiawatha and Pau-Puk-Keewis. Pau-Puk-Keewis you may remember is the evil genius of the Ojibway who does a fabulous dance at Hiawatha's wedding. He's a creative artist but he's also a very big time troublemaker like some artists, irresponsible. Not as statesman. And Hiawatha is the good statesman and Pau-Puk-Keewis can't stand it. He's always been jealous of Hiawatha, resents Hiawatha's maturity and status and so when Hiawatha leaves for a while, Pau-Puk-Keewis does the worst thing he can imagine doing as you may remember from you Disney films, Hiawatha talks to animals and Pau-Puk-Keewis kills all Hiawatha's animals especially the mountain chickens who are his favorite pets. And says the defense, I think these lines go along with that music. [Background music] Full of wrath was Hiawatha when he came into the village, found the people in confusion, heard of all the misdemeanors, all the malice and the mischief, of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered words of anger and resentment, I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis. Slay this mischief-maker! Not so long and wide the world is that my wrath shall not attain him. I will say this Pau-Puk-Keewis. Slay this mischief-maker! Not so long and wide the world is that my wrath shall not attain him. Then in swift pursuit departed Hiawatha and all the hunters on the trail of Pau-Puk-Keewis. And aloud cried Hiawatha, standing on the summit of the mountains, "Not so long and wide the world is, not so rude and rough the way. But my wrath shall overtake you, and my vengeance shall attain you!" Pau-Puk-Keewis running away. Over rock and over river, through bush, and brake, and forest, ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Like an antelope he bounded, till he came unto a streamlet. In the middle of the forest to a streamlet still and tranquil, that had overflowed its margin. Over rock and over river, through bush, and brake, and forest, ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Like an antelope he bounded. Then he comes to a dam, stands, looking in, the water comes up over his ankles, flowed the bright and silvery water. And he spoke to a beaver who bubbled up and said, "Cool and pleasant Is the water. Let me dive into the water. Let me rest there in your lodges. Change me, too, into a beast!" [ Laughter ] [ Applause ] >> And there's more she says. Then it explains exactly what Dvorak is doing and why the return of the main themes is very, very different than what you hear at the beginning because in this scene Pau-Puk-Keewis says the defense turned himself into a beaver but Hiawatha continued to pursue him. So he turned himself into a bird, Hiawatha continued to pursue him. And then Pau-Puk-Keewis took refuge in a mountain. [Background music] There without stood Hiawatha, smote great caverns in the sandstone. Hiawatha cried aloud in tones of thunder, "Open! I am Hiawatha!" But the Old Man of the Mountain opened not, and made no answer from the silent crags of sandstone. "Open! I am Hiawatha!" Then he raised his hand to heaven, called imploring on the tempest, called Waywassimo, the lightning, and the thunder, Annemeekee, and they came with night and darkness, sweeping down the Big-Sea-Water from the distant Thunder Mountains and the trembling Pau-Puk-Keewis heard the footsteps of the thunder, saw the red eyes of the lightning, was afraid, and crouched and trembling. Then Waywassimo, the lightning, smote the doorways of the caverns, with his war-club smote the doorways, smote the jutting crags of sandstone. And the thunder, Annemeekee, shouted down into the caverns, saying, "Where is Pau-Puk-Keewis!" And the crags fell! [ Music ] [ Background Music ] >> And beneath them dead among the rocky ruins lay the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis, lay the handsome Yenadizze, slain in his own human figure. [ Music ] >> Very nice says the prosecution, clapping ironically. Lots of storm and fury but really approves nothing. You were assuming that Dvorak is using music to illustrate the text but he doesn't include the text only a few nerdy musicologists know it. He's clearly using the text to generate abstract sonic patterns when you cleverly combine them it sound as if they belong together. But Dvorak's New World has done perfectly well all these years without your melodrama. And it raises other question if we suddenly know what this passage means, what about the other passages in the movement for which we have found no text? Are they suddenly less meaningful? The defense bristles. Trying to understand the sources of the music of a great composer is part of the natural curiosity of the investigator. Besides, how do you know what Dvorak really wanted to do in the end? What he really wanted us to find. The judge who has been nodding, one way or the other sagely clears his throat. There are many issues here we're not hearing about. Yes, I'm willing to agree that the passage you have played is maybe some kind of storm but what kind of storm? Is it about Hiawatha or does the composer use Hiawatha as a pretext? Does the storm have other sources? Could it be a philosophical storm? The defense is by now a bit put out after all that effort says, Dvorak was not known to be much of a philosopher. Well, says the prosecution, perhaps not in words but he's certainly a kind of philosopher in music. In the end, says the judge, the storm might even be personal after all Dvorak like all human beings had a rich inner life of drama and struggle even if his outward appearance was one of stability and tranquility. In New York, he's missing his children, trying to decide whether to come out as a composer of program music, risking the ire of his greatest supporters like Brahms and Hanslick, Joachim. He struggles at times with anxiety and stress. The storm can be that as well. At this point, the cleaning crew comes in and without any deference to the exalted rank of the judge and the lawyer says; hey, you guys gotta get out of here. The judge says, one last moment I have something like a final statement to make. Judge says, I've listened for quite some time and I'd now like to happily conclude these legal preceding, drawing on a paradox introduced at the beginning that the New World Symphony is many things including a sacred icon, a source of information, an economic and legal rest or thing all rolled into one. We admit the symphony is both American and not American and that we really don't know what this means. And that the passage we considered from the finale is many things including a storm called forth by Hiawatha as Prospero to vanquish Pau-Puk-Keewis, a storm that may represent Dvorak's own conflicts, a piece of abstract sound inspired by the idea of a storm and also possibly none of the above. And while I'm happy to conclude that both celebration and investigation have their place when we think about the new world and its sources, I was struck by an article I saw in the paper last week. The judge pulls out the article. A Chinese journalist who wrote about a formal civil servant who kept sex slaves was detained by security agents who accused him of revealing state secrets. He responded, the journalist, I was only thinking about how to make my story as accurate as possible and satisfy the public's right to know but I discovered soon that I failed to address the most important issue, face. The fate of composers like Dvorak cannot, alas, be left only to those who wish to celebrate his legacy or those who believe that investigation should be limited to abstract score analysis and clearing up a few historical details. All those who celebrate should be urged to investigate as well, to ask questions and to ignore those who believe that somehow one must say face when one writes the history of a national hero. So let the investigations be open and broad and let the questions be challenging and even troubling, that's the way scientific and music studies too move forward. And of course there is another thing; celebration and investigation are not our only options. We can combine them both in something we call contemplation which links our experience of listening with careful and thoughtful consideration. And then the judge and attorneys get up and leave the room, leaving me here. And I promised you at the end that I would say something about the economic value of the new world manuscript by ruling that the Czech art works confiscated, that they could be confiscated. The court originally determined that national art could potentially serve as compensation for a government debt and therefore that national art had a cash value and a considerable one at that. So theoretically our manuscript could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But the court reversed its decision recently in the summer suggesting that actually as national treasures, such things are never for sale and cannot serve as economic hostages. In some sense, this removes such things as artworks and manuscripts from an economic realm and places them even more firmly into a separate space, one arguably even more different to comprehend. This reminded me of a wonderful story by Carol Chapek [phonetic] called Chintamani and Birds, Chintamani and [inaudible] and made into a wonderful film called The Chintamani and the Swindler, you remember this? A man obsessed with oriental carpets notices under a particular fat poodle in a grungy antique store an amazing carpet, a Chintamani with sacred bird patterns to keep our theme of bird song. All he wants is to get his hands on it. He even goes to England to visit the leading authority on carpets. He asks him, how much would a rug with this pattern be at this size? The expert responds, it's worth nothing because no such thing exists. But what if it did exist asks the collector. It would still be impossible to value, the expert responds, because it is unique and what is unique cannot be evaluated. So according to this approach, in economic terms, the value of our missing manuscript is simultaneously infinite and none existent. In it's own way consistent with the latest court ruling. Fortunately as you'll see in the next presentation, the true value of the manuscript lies in many other areas, most of which can be happily accessed without the iconic presence of the original. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> So dear ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy to be here and I want to thank you Mrs. Barbara Kapitova from the Czech embassy who invited me. I want to thank Mike for such a nice lecture and I also want to thank the Library of Congress. >> I won't play any music but I will show you some pictures so-- of some subjects from our collection. But firstly, I have to introduce also my institution that I work for and describe in more detail the theme of my presentation titled So firstly, the Antonin Dvorak Museum has its residences in a very small building but I can tell you that's exactly the largest museum in the Czech Republic and why? Because our museum is a part of national museum so we started with the logo of this museum then it comes Czech Museum of Music. It's a department because there are a lot of museums like nature museum or history museum or [inaudible] museum, which belong also to the national museum. So then there is this big museum and Department of the Czech Museum of Music is our Antonin Dvorak museum. So it is quite complicated but this the whole name and this is our building. So just a small presentation. And what is the mission of the museum? Just as musicians continually attend to compose this legacy by performing the music so museums contribute to this care by striving for the maximum possible preservation of composers [inaudible] lyrics. It may seem that when it comes to music this material part is much less important than for instance in the case of a painter legacy. After all the point is that the music is performed, played, heard and it has been done for a long time from new printed edition. So perhaps we do not need this water crafts, these manuscripts. But a collection of items, however, can tell incredible stories which complete the image of a composer as a human being and bring a number of stimuli on all areas of research. In the case of Antonin Dvorak we are really fortunate in that over the period of more than 100 years that have passed since his death almost all significant Dvorak documents have been successfully gathered within a single institution. This factor means an immense advantage for the composer's reception. And this institution is of course our Dvorak Museum. So this is really very nice that we have the access to most of the Dvorak documents to the autographs and that is also the reason that I can present some of them to you. So as I said, the residence of the museum is this nice, [inaudible] villa which is called America but it is not because of Dvorak. I can tell you that Dvorak was never there in this building. He lived not very far from this house but he was never there. And this is called America because there was restaurant with this name America in the 19th century. [Laughter] People-- and I have to-- I just have to tell you something about the history of the museum because this is really close connected to the collection. The museum was founded in 1932 by the Society for the erection of a monument, the Maestro Antonin Dvorak and later became the Society-- Antonio Dvorak Society. Since its origination, it has resided in Prague, in this spot America which was created by the architect, Kilian Ignac Dienzenhofer at the beginning of the 18th century. A short time previously, the society had a quite for the future museum as a gift from the composers widow, Mrs. Anna Cermakova, various items from his original study. It was his fila, a piano, several pieces of furniture including the writing desk also the gown Dvorak wore at the ceremony in Cambridge. And these two things are also today one of the main items in the Dvorak exhibition at the museum. So really Dvorak worked on this table and he played this piano. But I can tell you there are not so many things like this most of items in our collections are paper documents. What was the further fate of the museum? It was quite difficult fate and difficult story of similar institutions in the Czechoslovakia. In 1956 the existence of a private or non-governmental institution is no more possible because the communism regime and the state of a talk this museum and later on in 1976 it became a part of a national museum and this is a story I've already told you. So it has it advantage because a great institution such a national museum was really very successful to acquire a lot of things for the collection and really this collection is now totally unique due to its integrity and recourse and really later on I'll give you an example of another Czech composer whose not so lucky like Dvorak. So what does the collection contain? At the Antonin Dvorak Museum collection contains approximately 8,000 items of various types that's being the largest collection of Dvorak documents in the world. But I can tell you there are another really several thousands of items mainly from the personal effects of two distinguished Dvorak scholars Otaka Shurek [phonetic] and Tiami Vorccossa [phonetic] which have not been cataloged to date. So I think there are a lot of interesting documents perhaps not Dvorak documents but related more to the reception of Dvorak. The significance of the collection rest not in its size but in its uniqueness and concentrated character. As you can see, the collection comprises ichnographies, scores reproductions, reception documents like programs, posters, audio-visual materials. Here we can see also picture of Chekofsky [phonetic] with a dedication to her. In Russia my [inaudible], to my friend. There is also cigarette case or a book-- a diary of Dvorak with a list of his work so we can see also here is [inaudible] from the New World, so really very precious things. But what is the most important thing we have? These are the autographs. Autographs, manuscripts and also correspondence, there are more than 2,000 of letters and the possibility to explore the autographs is absolutely essential, essential especially for researches and editors of new Dvorak editions. So my colleagues from the Czech Academy of Science in Czech Republic they work on this project since 1999 and they prepare new complete edition of Dvorak works. And truly they appreciated that they have all these documents in one institution. And this is quite important also in the Czech Republic because if you have the materials in the state or governmental institution they must be shown and provided to researchers, so famous. So if you come to Prague and if you would like to study Dvorak documents we will provide you with them. In private museums and collections, there is no such a rule, but in our museum it is. And I can give you an example of this another Czech composer as I mentioned who was not so lucky in this researchers are also not so lucky. This is Bohuslav Martino Czech composer from the 20th century with a similar fate like Dvorak. He spent also several years in America, created all his symphonies here and spent several other years in other countries in Europe. >> And it means and he never returned to the Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia. It was no more possible. And his documents and autographs are scattered in 17 institutions in a lot of countries. So it's a really big problem and I know it quite a lot because I used to work at the Martino Institution and was by preparation of Martino new critical edition and truly it's a big problem. So in Dvorak we are quite happy to have it in one house. But the situation in the case of Dvorak in the new edition is sometimes also not so easy. We have-- Even if we have all these materials in our house because the editors found out that the main source for the preparation of the new edition didn't necessarily be the composer's autographs score but the copies written in someone's else hand or prints or transcriptions or performing materials from the premiere and so on and so on. And these materials are not all of them in our house. A lot them are of course here in America so sometimes it's also not so easy in the case of Dvorak. And stories of manuscripts, accordingly-- when dealing with philological problems an autograph is not the only and in some cases most essential source and I know that my colleagues from the Dvorak editions try to solve question like this. Why did Dvorak use some peculiar connotation symbols in his autographs? What was their meaning? Why do many of the individual peculiarities finish in the print edition? What in an autograph maybe regarded as sloppiness and what is deliberate? Who were the transcribers of a Dvorak work? Who wrote all the parts for orchestra plays, opera singers? Who is concealed behind this or that safer? Is this all the transcription reliable and so on and so on? So many questions if you watch the autographs. But-- And you can see that inspecting the autographs can bring less satisfaction and arise more questions. But during my next presentation of the autographs-- date-- of Dvorak's works dating from his American period, I do not want to bother you with this. And therefore, I will completely avoid seeking answers to this question that I-- that mentioned and I will introduce these manuscripts as storytellers. Because music, autographs do not only provide music information, they also splendidly document the circumstances in which work originated. Let us begin with the autograph of the most famous and most fulfilled Dvorak work symphony number 9 So there's a print, yeah, I've chosen this print because it's the first print with the dedication of Dvorak you can see here. Dedicated to Emmanuel Cloud [phonetic] friend of Dvorak. But we can see from the New World, [inaudible] in Germany and we can find normally here not because it's the first print and it was different story. But normally we find it symphony and its number 9. But if we watch the autograph, we can observe that Dvorak didn't title the work as symphony but, as symphonia. I asked Mike how to pronounce if there is a difference. So not symphony but like this more Italian pronunciation symphonia. And this fact was really in the literature entirely missed out. The majority of the literature uniformly uses the term symphony whereas the German musicologist, Klaus Doge, refers to it as merely symphonia. So why in German it is possible to consider the two terms to be synonymous. Also in the dictionary, [inaudible] Music English sister [inaudible] and the entry symphonia in this fashion is entirely dismissed for the reference beyond our symphony. In the New Grove there are both of them. And in Czech language we know that this symphonia is rather linked with the musical production of the 17th and 18th century. And symphony is rather linked with-- connected with the romantic type and performance in the 19th century. So the user of the terms appears to be extremely [inaudible] which is also conferment in the case of Dvorak. We know that he titled Symphonia his second 7th, 8th and 9th symphony. And other most of the first symphonies he titled symphony. So I try to find out if there is a rule or something like that but there is no and I just asked also Mike what he thinks but really I think there was no purpose to design it like this and here we have the symphony-- the next-- the symphony number 4 or later on it was number 5. And we can see that on the first page of this symphony he used both, both of these terms [inaudible] symphony and here symphonia. So Dvorak, himself, makes all the speculations even more obscure by using both of the terms in his correspondence or on a single page of an autograph. So I think there is no solution for this problem. But this is also the story which can we see on manuscripts. Furthermore, we can see that the number 9 is not evident at all on the title page on the celebrated symphony number 9 from the new world. So we can see there're number 8 and Dvorak cross it out and there is 7, strange. This shift as against the current numbering originated back in the '60s. And Dvorak deemed his first symphony lost and when composing the next symphony he began numbering again from the number 1. But this first symphony was discovered in many years later. Another interesting piece of information is contained in the list of the composer's previous symphonies on the left side of the title page. I know that symphony 3-- see that. But today it's number 4 as I already told you. There is thick blue line. This could mean division of the symphonies that were printed which is also noted in the score including the specific names of the publishers. You see [inaudible] the mark again. But it might also express Dvorak's clear opinion and evaluation of his own symphonies. In the number 4 from 1874, the composer made a [inaudible] audibly changed in the compositional style and we know about this change also from his correspondence or from his expressions and it is possible that he wanted to indicate it also this change of style with this line because I do not know that another reason. So this title page of the autograph that has told us no fewer than three stories; the story of the intricacy of generic designation, the problem with the numbering of Dvorak symphonies, and indication of the composer's evaluation of his own symphonies. So perhaps it was not so funny but I can show you something what is really very nice is the last page from this New World symphony. >> What we can find there is a wonderful music. Here is [inaudible] thanks to Kat [phonetic]. We can find it in almost all scores and then the [inaudible] and then here the children-- it is in Czech, the children arrived in South Hampton 1:33 p.m. The telegram received. [Laughter] So really I laughed very much. [Laughter] Dvorak completed his symphony during the first year of his [inaudible] in America when only some of his families were with him, just two of his six children and his wife. But four of his children had stayed at home and after 8 month they finally set out, join the rest of the family in the USA. Dvorak couldn't wait to see them and when he found out that they had arrived in the English seaport he noted it down in the symphony score. [ Pause ] >> So there are two another pieces American Flag and Te Deum which are being considered as American works. But I will show you that they are-- although they cannot be such an American. Why? Because he created them before his departure for America. The composition Dvorak finished shortly before going to America-- before starting the work on the New World symphony is the cantata for solo tenor and bass chorus and orchestra opus 102, the American Flag. The opus number may lead us to consider that the American Flag originated after during the world symphony. Yet Dvorak began working on this piece bearing an American title and composed to an English text prior to his leaving for the USA which he literally confirmed by his own note at the end of the complete sketch to the entire world. Let's have a look the [inaudible] in September 1892 Czech audience then Americky, So it's well known to mine, but-- [ Laughter ] >> The next example, Te Deum. This similar case, the title page of the score contains the following words [foreign language] for soprano and bass solo chorus and orchestra composed to honor the memory of Columbus which will be celebrated in New York on October 12th, 1892 by Antonio Dvorak. So yeah, the work was actually written prior to Dvorak's arrival in the USA as evidence by the note the end of the complete sketch. So you can see the [inaudible] 26 June, 1892. So again the same case, he celebrated Columbus but in the [inaudible]. So again to the first page. The score of Te Deum again, contains confusing information, this time pertaining to opus designation which Dvorak duly explains here. [Foreign language] so in Czech the Overture Othello has already been published under number 93. This opus number will have to be changed when it is printed. And he wrote in pencil the [inaudible] 102. Yet this number had already been given to the American Flag as I already said-- shown you. So Te Deum was eventually published as opus 103. So we can see that in the case of Dvorak the opus numbers do not reflect the chronologic of the works or origination but rather that of the publication. Yeah, the next example is from the very famous cycle, Humoresques. He wrote this cycle in the summer of 1894 when he came back to spend his holiday in his homeland. However, at the end of one of the Humoresques he wrote the American address over here. So I didn't succeed to find out who is it. But I like it very much but he used also the score sometimes where there was need as normal paper. [Laughter] He had no other papers so really you can find quite a lot of things in this course not only music. Next quite interesting thing we have seen the compositions written in America or for America in English or Czech-English title. Different case is Silent Wood or-- yeah, yeah it is called in English Silent Wood, a piece also written in America. Yet from the very beginning, intended for Dvorak's German publisher. So this is the commented by the headline Silent Wood a piece for cello with orchestra accompaniment in Czech and German so Klid, Waldesruhe. And then the composition you have also [inaudible] and so So you can see it was written for German publisher and he didn't intended to perform it firstly in America. There is also cover of this composition but this was certainly not inscribed by Dvorak, why? Firstly it is entirely in German and just the Czech title is in brackets and Dvorak wouldn't do it, never. And secondly, the composer is referred to here as Anton instead of Antonin. And this Anton, this is a German version of Antonin and Dvorak fought with his German publisher, Simrock, against this Germanized variant of his first name many times referring to the fact that in America they wrote his name correctly as Antonin. [Laughter] So therefore, he gave preference to the [inaudible] abbreviation Ant and dot, better than this Anton. So I don't know who wrote this but definitely not Dvorak. Another piece for cello that was composed in America this is the Rondo was intended for Simrock too which is also shown by the information written in pencil, about the copyright on the first notation page. So here we can see again Czech and German explanation and here [inaudible] copyright Simrock. So it was dedicated to Simrock and intended just for him for the first time. Yet New Words originated in America not only through actually composing but also as a result of revising. And absolutely unique case is the essential revision of the opera Dimitrij which Dvorak decided to get around to 13 years after the work had originated. So we can read this information on the first page of the opera. >> So here [inaudible] after 13 years 1881 composed Bohemia, 1894 revised in America and then nove-- you can see the third line-- new and newly drawn up scene and above all bolder instrumentation of the opera. So the fact that revising and correcting of opera's cost was a common practice of Dvorak is documented by their many sense of his pupil [inaudible]. Dvorak's visit to Mr. Snits [phonetic], the National Theater archivist were interesting. He would browse through a scroll of a young Czech composer, read it for a long time and round his finger along his coat is stuff it were a piano then piece up and down the room shake his head and finally say listen my dear Snits if someone had told me to write seven operas I would have done it. But I certainly wouldn't have been able to write score as clearly as this one with no deletions and no crossings out. So it was quite typical for Dvorak that he make a lot of revision and to-- that we can find a lot of pieces to delete or to cross out and so on. But really this Dimitrij is quite extreme. The original version there is no-- there's no more the original version and we-- this first version has been only preserved in print and performance materials. But the exquisite score was transformed into another opera. And you can see that Dvorak stretched out, paced it over and cut out entire pages of the score to which he attached new pages we can observe it also on the different types of papers. [ Pause ] >> And on this example we can see no fewer than five flares of paper. So Dvorak does not only let himself be sized by inspiration in the USA, which we can observe in the dozens IDs captured in his American sketch books, he also sat down to a really big task revising his [inaudible] opera. And in conclusion I would like to draw your attention to one page of the American Sting Quartet opus 96 which Dvorak sketch within three days in Spillville where he felt very much very well and we can see or I know that there is [inaudible] [foreign language], how beautiful shines the sun. So really he enjoyed the Spillville and the atmosphere. So all these examples show us that Dvorak was definitely inspired by America and I can quote very nice sentence from a letter of Antonin Dvorak to his friend, Emil Koznek. I know I would never have written these words the way I did if I hadn't seen America. And therefore we prepare also a small exhibition in the room behind and you can observe their documents and facsimile of manuscripts from Dvorak American period in the first books you can see some cabin tickets from the ship. And I can tell you Dvorak-- what Dvorak wrote about his trip. It was his first time also on the ship. Everything is so interesting beautiful. Let me begin with the trip. It lasted 9 days at sea and we had nice weather the whole time except for one ugly day. It was very stormy and took more than 24 hours until the ocean calmed but then we hit lovely weather all the way to New York. My wife, the children [inaudible] were ill so far about two days they didn't eat anything. Only I [inaudible] remained well for the whole trip. [Laughter] And you will see also the picture of Prague's station and today it is Masaryk Station and you know that Dvorak had a passion for trains and it was this station which led him to England and then to America. Then there is a book about Spillvile. Spillvile place in Iowa when he spent several month with [inaudible] who was something like his secretary in America. And this Czech American village really inspired him and brought him a lot of inspiration as we saw here and to-- I can also quote something from a letter about Spillville in Iowa. In this state Iowa brewing and selling beer is forbidden, yet the public can still sell it but when they are caught they have to pay a fine. Those Americans are strange people. [ Laughter ] >> One can hardly believe it, yet they want to drink beer although they themselves introduce the beer law against themselves. [Laughter] It is better in our country. [ Laughter ] >> And of course you can find some pages. I think we-- Yeah, we put the first page of the New World Symphony so you can see nothing that I have been talking about. So thank you for your attention. [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.