0.10 Appendix 1: musician biographies  (Page 13/37)

Dvorak, antonin (1841–1904)

The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was one of Europe’s most accomplished composers of the latter 19th century and one of the most influential figures of the nationalist movement in what is now Czechoslovakia. His romantic orchestral, choral, and chamber works were often influenced by Slovic and other Eastern European folk music.

In 1892 Dvorak accepted a position at the National Conservatory of Music in New York to teach composition and orchestration and to conduct the choir and orchestra. The following year Dvorak composed one of his most famous pieces, Symphony no. 9, From the New World, which was premiered in Carnegie Hall in December of 1893. Based on simple pentatonic themes, which Dvorak believed were common to Native American and African American folk music, the piece occasionally evokes a feeling of African American spirituals and includes a fragment from “Swing Low Sweet Chariots” in the G major theme of the work.

In 1893 Dvorak penned an article in the New York Herald in which he urged American composers to turn to their own folk music, particularly African American melodies and Native American chants, as source material for compositions that would reflect a distinctly “American” flavor. While a number of composers tried unsuccessfully to work with Native American materials, black spirituals influenced the works of a number of American composers including George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, William Grant Still, Harry Burleigh, and Duke Ellington.

Dylan, bob (b. 1941)

Born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, singer/songwriter/poet Bob Dylan is the most influential popular folk singer in the post–WW II years. After a year of college Dylan dropped out of the University of Minnesota and in early 1961 arrived in Greenwich Village where he became a rising star in the burgeoning folk music scene. His gruff voice and wailing harmonica on his first recording of traditional ballads, blues, and gospel songs made for Columbia Records in 1962 became his trademark. On his second album, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), he demonstrated his prowess as a brilliant songwriter with such pieces as “Blowing in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice Its All Right.” The former established Dylan as a national figure when the popular folk trio Peter Paul, and Mary made the song a hit in 1963. Over the next two years Dylan turned out a number of topical songs in the Woody Guthrie/Pete Seeger tradition. Pieces such as “Masters of War,” “It’s a Hard Rain Gonna Fall,” “The Times They Are a Changing,” “With God on Our Side,” “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” and “Oxford Town” were seething indictments of war and racism in America. These protest songs earned him the title of “the voice of the new generation,” a role he would soon reject. As he matured, his lyrics began to become more abstract and surreal in songs like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “My Back Pages.”

In 1965 Dylan shocked the folk music world by appearing at the Newport Festival with a loud, raucous electric backup band. Accused of “selling out” the acoustic folk music revival with his electric rock-influenced arrangements, Dylan nonetheless went on to forge a new sound that critics dubbed “folk rock.” In 1965 and 1966 he released three albums of original songs backed by an electric band that today are considered his most creative work. His overt protest songs had evolved into more subtle and poetic critiques of modern society and individual alienation with compositions such as “Maggie’s Farm,” “Subterranean Home Sick Blues,” “Mr. Jones,” “Desolation Row,” and his anthem-like “Like a Rolling Stone,” which charted number two in summer of 1965 and established Dylan as a bona fide rock star.