Musical Spheres
Retelling the Story of American Music
Joseph Horowitz, Dvořák’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music. Foreword by George Shirley. W. W. Norton, 256pp., $30 cloth.
When Antonín Dvořák arrived in America in 1892, he believed he was entering “The New World.” He was no Christopher Columbus, in geo-navigational terms at least, but he was certainly a geo-musical explorer. Jeannette Thurber, then president of the National Conservatory of Music in America, had offered the Bohemian an astonishing salary (equivalent to half a million dollars today) to work in New York City.
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