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Make America Great Again with Dvorak!

  • Writer: Jack Christie
    Jack Christie
  • Feb 12, 2024
  • 2 min read



With all the craziness of the news these days... Music helps me go to a time when things are perceived to be aiming upwards than downwards to hell.


I want to take the story to finding the land of America! Its hard not to think of America with this piece after all it was written about it.


SLOW SECTION: The story starts with leaving Europe. Leaving family... with a warning of it won't be all sunshine and roses. We set sail...


CRASH THE WAVES OF THE ATLANTIC as nighttime ensues... the waves calm... then we start to see something in the difference. We are getting close... what could it be?


FAST SECTION: A land and an opportunity!




We land on it, walking through the streets in the middle of night... its quiet. The excitement, anticipation is thrilling, but also there is a of sense danger lurking.


"THE AMERICAN DREAM" - as the theme is past around the orchestra.


We find a new part of town as the tune changes to being calmer. What city or street are you in? Where are you?


For me it is NEW YORK even though I have never been.


The music gets more excited as we find the countryside... Long island maybe.. or appalachia. The flute gives the original theme in a calmer and brighter tone like we are settled.


We move on... and hear some of the issues of America... big divides, guns, high crime, biased media...


A sense of shame has come from this however we long for the original dream and mission that we originally found as we set foot on this land.


Follow the two tunes, the aggressive one and the calmer one being past round the orchestra.


AND


With both tunes where do you find yourself? What are you doing? What are you imagining? Is it positive!? Think of the current state of affairs in US and does anything in the music resonate with these moments?


The last section reminds me of the current state of affairs in America. Super aggressive and angry and polarising . Moving onwards it could go either way... which is worrying. Maybe you need to listen to the other movements to see where it goes...

















1 Comment


Cedric Graebin
Cedric Graebin
Feb 13, 2024

You cannot write about the New World symphony without mentioning, at least en passant, Dvorak's admiration for the Negro Spiritual songs - "the future of American music" (and boy he was right!) and how he incorporated the main motif from "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in his first movement.

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