Dvorak salutes the flag

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1895, the New York Choral Society gave the premiere of The American Flag, a choral work by Antonín Dvořák. Jeannette Thurber, who brought Dvořák to New York City to teach at her National Conservatory, had asked him to set a patriotic poem of that name. The idea was the new work would be performed to coincide with his arrival in the fall of 1892, and the big celebrations planned that year for the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in the New World.

Unfortunately, Dvořák didn’t get the text in time, and so another choral work, his recently completed Te Deum was performed during the big Columbus Quadricentennial. The American Flag was put on a back burner, as it were, and wasn’t performed until after he returned to Prague. He never heard the work performed at all, in fact.

The blustery, outright chauvinistic tone of its pro-New World, anti-Old World text would hardly endear it to European audiences of his day. In fact, this work hasn’t proven to be a big hit with American audiences, either.

The American Flag remains one of Dvořák’s least-performed pieces. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a recording of it timed for release in 1976 during the American Bicentennial. Ironically for so American a work, that recording was made in Berlin with a German orchestra and chorus!

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): The American Flag; soloists; choirs; Berlin Radio Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; CBS/Sony 60297

On This Day

Births

• 1744 - Austrian composer of Spanish descent Marianne (Anna Katharina) von Martínez, in Vienna. She studied composition with Haydn, and Haydn and Mozart attended her musical soirée.

• 1860 - Austrian composer Emil Nikolaus Von Reznicek, in Vienna

• 1905 - Hungarian-born British composer and teacher Mátyás (György) Seiber, in Budapest

Deaths

• 1604 - Italian composer and publisher Claudio Merulo, 71, in Parma

• 1955 - Rumanian composer Georges Enesco, 73, late on May 3 or early on May 4, in Paris

Premieres

• 1795 - Haydn: Symphony No. 104, conducted by the composer, at the King’s Theater in London. This symphony is sometimes nicknamed the Salomon Symphony, although it (along with Haydn’s Symphonies 102 and 103) was in fact commissioned for and premiered at Viotti’s Opera Concerts, not as part of the earlier series of Haydn concerts arranged by the impresario Salomon.

• 1895 - Dvořák: cantata The American Flag, in New York

• 1920 - Vaughan Williams: revised version of Symphony No. 2 (A London Symphony) at Queen’s Hall in London, conducted by Albert Coates. The first version of this symphony had premiered at Queen’s Hall in London on March 27, 1914, conducted by Geoffrey Toye. A final (twice revised) version of this symphony was published in 1936.

• 1924 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 6, in Moscow

• 1974 - Rautavaara: Flute Concerto, in Stockholm, with flutist Gunilla von Bahr and the Swedish Radio Symphony, Stig Westerberg conducting

• 1976 - Bernstein: musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at the Mark Hellinger Theater in New York City, conducted by Roland Gagnon. A trial run of this show had opened in Philadelphia at the Forrest Theater on February 24, 1976.

• 1976 - Sondheim: revue Side by Side by Sondheim (compiled from various Sondheim musicals by British singer-actor David Kernan and others). This revue opened on Broadway on April 18, 1977.

• 1989 - Joan Tower: Island Prelude for oboe and strings, by soloist Peter Bowman and the St. Louis Symphony, Leonard Slatkin conducting