“In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”

— Antonín Dvořák

Interviewed by James Creelman, New York Herald, May 21, 1893.
Context: In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. They are pathetic, tender, passionate, melancholy, solemn, religious, bold, merry, gay or what you will. It is music that suits itself to any mood or any [[purpose. There is nothing in the whole age of composition that cannot be supplied with themes from this source. ]]

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In the negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music." by Antonín Dvořák?

Antonín Dvořák photo

Antonín Dvořák4

Czech composer 1841–1904

Related quotes

“I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.”

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) Czech composer

Interviewed by James Creelman, New York Herald, May 21, 1893. http://web.archive.org/20060923062509/homepage.mac.com/rswinter/DirectTestimony/Pages/62.html

“I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.”

W. C. Handy (1873–1958) American blues composer and musician

“Beatles' "aryan" music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll: it replaced syncopated african rhythm with linear western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles.”

Piero Scaruffi (1955) Italian writer

Beatles The History of Rock Music http://www.scaruffi.com/vol1/beatles.html

“I think America concedes that (true American music) has sprung from the negro. When we take these things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down.”

W. C. Handy (1873–1958) American blues composer and musician

Music Preservation Society biography http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org/downloads/HandyBiography.pdf

“It's a nice feeling. I was not like the popular guy in high school. This is revenge for all the bullies in high school [laughter]. It's a great feeling. Maybe women sometimes are more open to romantic music.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Inside Connection, February 2004

“Music is the melody whose text is the world.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“Contour refers to the pattern of musical pitch in a melody—the sequence of ups or downs that the melody takes—regardless of the size of the interval.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

“My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. To attempt what old Chinese painters called 'spirit resonance' in melody and sound.”

Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000) Armenian-American composer

Alan Hovhaness, Hovhaness.com biography http://www.hovhaness.com/hovhaness-biography.html

“I think I only needed something to hold on to. It has never been about depravity. It's always been about melody. But melody and I met in many depraved situations. Meeting melody is the victory of the empty spiralling nightmare.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Extract from Prison Diaries, published in The Guardian, 2006
Music and politics

“The absolutely inaudible is rejected from music during the period of Viennese Classicism in which every musical line is potentially or imaginatively audible, but it makes a dramatic reappearance in the music of Schumann. The most striking of many examples is one of the episodes in the Humoresk, the last of the great piano works of Schumann's early years. … There are three staves: the uppermost for the right hand; the lowest for the left; the middle, which contains the melody, is not to be played. Note that the melody is no more to be imagined as a specific sound than it is to be played: nothing tells us that the melody is to be heard as vocal or instrumental. This melody, however, is embodied in the upper and lower parts as a kind of after-resonance-out of phase, delicate, and shadowy.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 1 : Music and Sound

Related topics