1893–1895

Dvořák’s time in the United States introduced a series of new impulses into his work, both in purely musical, and psychological terms. In addition to the radical change in his environment the composer was strongly influenced by the music of African Americans and Native Americans, which he treated as he had done earlier in the case of Slavonic folk music: he was inspired by their characteristic traits to write several distinctive works whose original musical language is usually clearly distinguishable after just a few bars. In works from his American period Dvořák adhered to traditional music forms (symphony, string quartet, string quintet, instrumental concerto), whose melodic, harmonic and rhythmical structures were enhanced by new elements: the pentatonic scale, syncopation, drum rhythms and the use of the minor seventh in a minor scale. Several of these elements had already appeared in the composer’s works earlier on, but it was only in this period that Dvořák applied them to a much greater extent, in a focused endeavour to create a new, “American” expression; these elements were then added to his range of compositional devices. The works that were written during the composer’s time in America are some of the most frequently performed, not only from Dvořák’s oeuvre, but in terms of the world repertoire in general.