Book Review: DVORAK'S PROPHECY by Joseph Horowitz

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music by Joseph Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Dvořák's Prophecy" is a very erudite (if sometimes a bit self congratulatory) book by scholar and music critic Joseph Horowitz, which raises important questions on the role of race in a nation's classical music history. Classical music still comes off as elitist and white because of its beginnings, despite efforts to democratize it and make it accessible to all. Horowitz highlights little known composers that aren't, as of now, included in the canon, and explains why that is.

When the great Czech composer Dvořák came to New York to help found a school of music, he stayed for a few years and fell in love with what he heard and considered to be truly American: Negro and Indian music. With the black spirituals especially, he prophesied they would become the foundation for a unique classical music, the bedrock of identity for a young continent still looking for itself. "“In the negro melodies of America," he said, "I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music."

The book came out in the pandemic, amidst all the chaos in American society. With all this madness going on globally, why bother to read this very niche book? Why even care about a genre that is considered passé, or utilized by a ruling elite to emphasize the cultural divide between haves and have nots?

As a Filipino watching a vernacular translation of Rossini's and Mozart's Figaro operas this past weekend, I had similarly themed questions in my mind. To be honest, they've been unanswered questions for decades. But reading this book shone a light on the form this problem takes in my own country.

To be Filipino and to love classical music seems almost unpatriotic, given our colonial background. It may come across as studying how to be white underneath the brown, to some. But, as the author reminds us, music and beauty belong to all mankind, regardless of skin color.

To be moved by the beauty of classical music is to partake in the cause of shared humanity itself, one that believes "that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins," and that "there breathes a hope, a faith in the ultimate justice and brotherhood of man."

But to appreciate a common legacy is one thing. To drive a beautiful art form into the future, or to make it come alive to new audiences, is another.

Quoting W.J. Henderson in his book, Horowitz writes: "Art addresses itself to humanity; it cannot be monastic, nor can the artist live a hermit life. What he has to do is to study his own people and his own time and strive ever to bring his inner life into harmony with them."

And as for singing opera in vernacular Filipino? "Only in this way can a musician express the true sentiments of his people. He gets into touch with the common humanity of his country."

Opera is only one form in a tradition that includes so many combinations of instruments. Horowitz takes us on a musical journey, introducing composers that, to my shame, I've only heard of for the first time in this book. He points out the performative nature of the Eurocentric classical music world, which is bad news for composers. He indicts institutional bias against gifted black composers like Florence Price, Nathaniel Dett, and William L. Dawson (to name but two of many), and lampoons art institutions themselves that are partly to blame for the failure of memory, the failure to make sense of past events, settling for too-easy narratives that divide American music into "jazz vs. not jazz" and focusing exclusively on Gershwin and Copland.

The language is very learned, which narrows down the audience for this book. And a lot of it is self-referential, requiring the reader to seek out the author's other books.

But it is worth the read, if only to be reminded of the danger classical music faces all over the world: beware the purist's pride in exclusivity, for it leads to a shrinking audience and a possible death of a form of art.

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