9 e moll "Z nového světa"), also known as the New World Symphony, was composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893 while he was the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America from 1892 to 1895.
[3] Astronaut Neil Armstrong took a tape recording including the New World Symphony along during the Apollo 11 mission, the first Moon landing, in 1969.
The exposition's closing theme in G major is known for being similar to the African-American spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot".
[1] Then a solo cor anglais (English horn) plays the famous main theme in D-flat major accompanied by muted strings.
The movement's middle section contains a passage in C♯ minor evoking a nostalgic and desolate mood which eventually leads into a funeral march above pizzicato steps in the basses.
The movement is a scherzo written in ternary form, with influences from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha.
After a brief introduction, the horns and trumpets declare the movement's main theme against sharp chords played by the rest of the orchestra.
Following the recapitulation which begins in the unexpected key of G minor but later corrects itself back to the original key, the movement reaches its climax in the coda, in which materials from the first three movements are reviewed for a final time while the Picardy third is expanded after the orchestra triumphantly plays a "modally altered" plagal cadence.
While director of the National Conservatory he encountered an African-American student, Harry T. Burleigh, who sang traditional spirituals to him.
[7]The symphony was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, and premiered on 16 December 1893, at Carnegie Hall conducted by Anton Seidl.
[12] In a 2008 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, prominent musicologist Joseph Horowitz states that African-American spirituals were a major influence on Dvořák's music written in North America, quoting him from an 1893 interview in the New York Herald as saying, "In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.
Michael Steinberg writes[14] that a flute solo theme in the first movement of the symphony resembles the spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot".
[c] Dvořák was also influenced by the style and techniques used by earlier classical composers including Beethoven and Schubert.
[1] At the premiere in Carnegie Hall, the end of every movement was met with thunderous clapping and Dvořák felt obliged to stand up and bow.
[2] In the UK, the largo became familiar to the general public after its use in a 1973 television advert directed by Ridley Scott for the Hovis bakery.