The Application of Critical Approaches to Antonin Dvorak’s Largo from the New World Symphony

I have always struggled in finding a methodology to analyze works of art less familiar to me. As music has encompassed much of my energy, it is visual art, poetry, dance, drama, and film that provide the greatest challenges. In spite of my efforts and in face of the complexities of each art form, in the world of visual art I am but a dilettante.

To better understand the import of any work, examined the literary works of Susanne Langer and Ernst Gombrich to develop a meta-critical methodology. To test this methodology, I analyzed a portion of a musical work of which most people are familiar.

Musical works are frequently examined through linear and harmonic analysis requiring significant expertise of musical structures and thorough understanding of musical elements and how they are manipulated. Elements usually described include pitch & melody, timbre, rhythm, form, harmony, dynamics, including the subsets of these areas. The analyst may also examine the elements that predominate to express meaning. For example, in Romantic music the melody usually predominates to elicit expression; or for "disco music", rhythm drives the music's meaning.

 This article examines and compares ways to analyze a portion of Dvorak’s familiar New World Symphony utilizing the often disparate and contrasting aesthetic theories of Ernst Gombrich and Susanne Langer. It offers analyses encompassing both philosophical and musical ideas to obtain a more complete sense of the work’s meaning while providing important insights into the theorems of two important aesthetic theorists. Citations are provided to those interested in such analysis. I is recommended that the reader listen to the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony for context. Here's a link to a beautifully photographed performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASlch7R1Zvo

The application of Susanne K. Langer’s conceptual framework to an analysis of the ambiguities and meanings in the Largo (Second Movement) from Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9 in E minor, leads the listener into the exploration of particularly interesting images. Langer's aesthetic theories take one into the realm of human expression colorfully represented, exemplified and magnified by the powerful structural elements of music.

           Through its formal structures, the Largo creates a virtual world within itself, expressing feelings associated with nostalgia, homesickness, death and a yearning for the after life and perhaps, better times. According to Anton Seidl, conductor of the NY Philharmonic Society orchestra for the 1893 world premiere of the work at Carnegie Hall, “it is not a good name, New World Symphony --- it is homesickness, home longing (Biancolli 1947, 240).” It is generally accepted that the Largo is a musical stepchild of an opera Dvorak considered writing in America, based on Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. The slow, second movement entitled Largo, is apparently suggested by the funeral scene of Minnehaha. Included here is one of the most famous melodies in music. Today, many know it as Goin’ Home, due to subsequent arrangements of the music for chorus with text; Dvorak denied using any actual American melodies, composing rather in the spirit of American music (Bernstein 1966, 151). The emotive images are over-determined, helping to create a variety of human feelings cohabiting in the vital import (Langer 1953, 52). The expression of an idea, in this case, comprised of specific human feelings and images, is the ruling purpose of art (Langer 1953, 52). The purpose of art is then the presentation of an idea through an articulate symbol such as music. The composer has organized the semblance of events in order to constitute a “purely and completely experienced reality, a piece of virtual life (Langer 1953, 221, 228)." The music exists in a virtual world of its own.

The sentience or feelings expressed are among the formal properties of the work. This sentience exists regardless of the listener’s personal characteristics. The expression of particular human feelings permeates the whole structure and the articulation of the structure is an articulation of the ideas conveyed (Langer 1953, 52). The musical work’s formal properties and codes profoundly affect the listener’s experience. A careful study of the formal properties of this music enables one to be fully responsive to it. Symbols expressing feelings are created by the music and are expressed always, wherein the music exists objectively when presented to us (Langer 1953, 211). An occurrent art, music exists for the time that it is heard (Langer 1953, 121).

In the writings of French Impressionist composer Claude Debussy, one discovers that he, like Langer, believes that music expresses human feelings. Furthermore, Debussy placed great emphasis on Nature as an important source of inspiration for expression in music. In 1903 he writes, “Music is a mysterious form of mathematics whose elements are derived from the infinite. Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of the curves described by changing breezes. There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little --- the book of Nature… (Vallas 1967, 8).”

The commanding form of the musical work is reflected in its basic rhythmic content (Langer 1953, 29). The pulse is slow, steady, somber, and expressively consistent with the total feeling of the work, its vital import. The semblance of organic movement represented in the rhythm helps the music to symbolically evoke specific attributes of human emotional life. Rhythmic continuity and repetition evoke and support certain feelings existing in the work. Melodic and rhythmic patterns repeat in the work, giving the composition the appearance of vital growth (Langer 1953, 129).

The primary illusion or schein, is carefully shaped by the composer’s work through his artistic imagination in order to achieve significance and logical expression; in music, this is time in the mode of the movement of audible forms or the illusion of flowing time (Langer 1953, 120, 125). As the composer’s creative processes begin, perhaps at the keyboard with wanderings of melody and sounds, a total Gestalt presents itself and becomes recognizable as the fundamental or commanding form of the work. The central significance, or Idea and its symbol, is the commanding form guiding the artist’s judgment in the work’s composition (Langer 1953, 121, 122). Under the influence of the total Idea and after having seized upon a motif consisting of powerful melodic patterns and basic rhythmic content, Dvorak composed the Largo.

Dvorak, a musician trained in Western Europe, composed the New World Symphony while on an extended visit to America. Inspired by America's natural beauty and indigenous folk music, he grasped his Idea and created a symphonic tribute. The imposing character of the work's themes and their construction support and emphasize the feelings expressed. Romanticist principles concerning the citation of those themes and the ambiguities invoked by unique treatment of period devices allow for special consistency and effects, which support the vital import or meaning of the work.

The non-discursive meanings of the music consist of imagery in the virtual world of this music. Musical devices are assembled in seemingly incongruous relationships in order to abstract their usual musical associations. Musical devices are abstracted and given new embodiment in unreal instances in order to set them free from their usual uses. Musical elements and their relationships are abstracted, making them clearly apparent in a particular vital import consisting of the feelings and meanings expressed. Peculiarities of previously accepted musical convention function to provoke oblique thought while acting as symbols to express human feelings (Langer 1953, 223); that is, Dvorak's use of certain musical elements with their ambiguous relationships evoke thoughts consistent with the vital import, serving to encourage the listener to interpret "depth meanings" or to "read between the lines (Langer 1953, 51).” The non-discursive meanings that emanate from the elements of the music are subjugated by the creation of sentience. The sentience and human feelings expressed are associated with loneliness, homesickness and Heavenly rewards. These feelings reflect the work’s vital import and significance.

In a basic conceptual mode, the elements from which music is created consist of but twelve tones, organized in almost infinite combinations. Through this vast mathematical language, the individual composer, the mind and heart with something to say, expresses and communicates to us (Bernstein 1966, 34). The composer organizes these elements. Upon exercising a structural analysis of a composition, one realizes the Urlinie, or syntax of discursive elements (Langer 1953, 124). Working within Romantic period tonal relationships, this sum of scattered forces (Vallas 1967, 8), form, harmonic qualities and timbre, are all used to create the primary illusion of time while expressing specific human feelings.

The carefully crafted form and content direct the listener to understand the primary illusion in one way. Fixing abstract relationships to feelings expressed in the work and visualization of the non-discursive representations of complex relationships that exist, furthermore direct the listener to an understanding of the vital import or meaning of the work.

The ambiguities of this music are solved, in part, through a study of the assimilation of the primary illusion of time and secondary illusions from other art forms. In this piece, the composer creates abstract relationships between sounds and incorporates illusions from other art forms that appear as secondary illusions or echoes; all coexist to create the primary illusion of time in the mode of the movement of audible forms. While the illusion of time with its critical components of sound exist in this virtual world, poetry’s primary illusion of life with human feelings of loneliness, religious pensiveness, nostalgia, and homesickness emerge. Visual images from the art form of painting appear as echoes. The composer utilizes a variety of devices to “produce and sustain the essential illusion, to set it off clearly from the surrounding world of actuality and articulate its form to the point where it coincides unmistakably with forms of feeling and living (Langer 1953, 67-68)."  The composer skillfully sustains the illusion, sets it off from reality, and demonstrates its elements' essential relationships. The primary illusion of the music determines the substance and character of the work while secondary illusions endow it with “richness, elasticity, and wide freedom of creation that makes real art so hard to hold in the meshes of theory (Langer 1953, 51)." All of these elements help produce and support the primary illusion. All the elements of the work are factors in the semblance and are virtual themselves. The context of the music determines the elements’ properties and all elements of the work support the primary illusion. The almost infinite combinations of elements, including the abstraction of sound, musical devices and secondary illusions, add richness and fecundity to the form (Langer 1953, 84).

In the Largo, human feelings with their emotional content are expressed, a direct echo from poetry’s primary illusion of life. Brasses and low woodwinds open the movement in lush Db major in one bar pianissimo, sustained phrases. These instruments are orchestrated to support the mood that is pensive, fecund and satisfying. Elegant, lush and muted strings follow, breaking into a divisi enhanced chordal structure, preparing a clear, rich but subdued background for the English Horn’s first representation of the theme, Goin’ Home. Attribution to a typical Negro Spiritual song like Goin’ Home is presented as a secondary illusion from painting in the mode of scene; it evokes the realization of visual space in the listener’s imagination. (a song entitled Goin’ Home was actually written by W. A. Fisher, an American student of Dvorak's, and was arranged for baritone solo and chorus, using his own text) (Bernstein 1966, 159). For the listener cognizant of Goin' Home's text, the emotive images of life are even stronger. One imagines the lonely, suffering Negro slave singing soulfully as he toils, wistfully reminiscing of his homeland and perhaps, better times in Heaven after death. The English Horn is chosen as a solo instrument due to its cutting, nasal, wailing and emotionally charged sound, supporting the sentience. Its double-reed attributes allow it to be clearly heard over the string accompaniment while yet playing in the lower, tenor range of the harmony. Evocative references, created by the sound of the instruments, melody and inferred text, function as echoes from poetry’s primary illusion, that of life.

As an echo from visual art, the sentience of the work is supported from within the melodic style. The main melodic theme utilized in the Largo is arranged in a pentatonic scale, giving reference to non-Western European styles such as American Indian, Asian or African music. This elicits a feeling of uncertainty that adds evocative color to the emotional landscape. Rehearsal number 2 introduces a passionate theme arranged in the Aeolian mode, added to the collection of modal music. Visual references of indigenous American cultures are strongly represented, evoking one to imagine Native Americans dancing; thus, echoes from dance.

A brief transitional section follows which utilizes ambiguous borrowed chord relationships. The sounds created amplify images of loneliness and feelings of loss and uncertainty. The chordal path leaves the home base of Db, not only using secondary dominants for color and effect, but borrowing tonic chords of other keys as well. Ending in Db with grand fortissimo brass and timpani chords, the string section continues the melodic line, utilizing a counter melody played by the violins and cellos over a pedal point contrabass pitch of Db. In spite of the many dissonances that occur when chords and melody change over a single note, the cursory device of the pedal point helps maintain a feeling of transition and somberness. Ultimately, the strings fade to a whisper while the somber English Horn restates the first theme, slightly modified with assistance from the bassoons and strings in creating the emotional climax of the first portion of the movement. This section serves as a transitional segment that refers, one might argue, philosophically to man’s mortality.

The French Horns interrupt the mood with a German hunting horn series. A new, quasi-Native American melody in triplet motion emerges in C# minor, accompanied by string tremolos. The sentiment is that of increasing intensity leading toward a temporary emotional high, followed by a stately but soulful clarinet-led melodic theme accompanied by a walking, rhythmic contrabass line. The dark tone color of the clarinet with its straight, vibratoless sonority is particularly evocative of solemn and poignant emotion. The walking bass line is relative strong with its large skips and march-like stature. After a brief and lighter sounding flute-led counter melody, the Meno section introduces a new theme led by the clarinets, now accompanied by similar walking bass line notes performed by the cellos in a tremolo fashion.

The oboe opens in C# major with a theme in triplet motion. This brief section represents a variation of the triplet quasi-Native American theme stated earlier. The mood is that of building intensity and ultimately, great elation. The listener envisions the movement in this echo from dance and experiences the music’s sentience with feelings of joy and happiness that occur when one finally returns home or to a Heavenly reward! The entire orchestra gloriously explodes in its fervor. Quickly leaving these feelings of elation, the music shifts back to C# minor, C#’s parallel major, a metaphorical return perhaps to one’s mundane and difficult existence. This conventional transition back to C# minor easily places restatement of the original Goin’ Home theme back into Db major. The enharmonic relationship provides for a very smooth change and places the listener solidly into the realm of nostalgia, homesickness, and perhaps, melancholy. The English Horn sings Goin’ Home one last time. The violin and viola double the next portion of the melodic line. The nasal quality of the viola adds resonance and piquancy to the sentience, played over the sustained contrabass Db figure harmonized in a perfect fourth with the cello. The interval of the fourth evokes sadness with its openness and lack of harmonic color. The fourth also relates to the traditional plagal or amen cadence that follows a traditional hymn or prayer song. The listener experiences the pain of the Negro as he finishes his lonely, but hopeful orison. The movement closes much as it began using sustained, pianissimo brass chord figures. The song ends beautifully, utilizing hunting horn fifths in the strings over the sustained Db in the bassoons. The Largo strays only briefly from the main key of C# minor while tonal centers are carefully maintained to achieve a close feeling of belonging. These key relationships support the emotive elements that comprise the work’s vital import.      

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according to Gombrich...   

The application of Gombrich’s theoretical ideas and insights into an analysis of the meanings of Dvorak’s work, leads the beholder into the exploration of images and ambiguities in a paradigm that contrasts in important ways to Langer's approach. The interpretation of this music provides for intriguing responses.

The beholder’s experience and knowledge, together with natural perceptive abilities, help to formulate expectations. One’s perceptions of the music are based on these expectations, cultural influences and knowledge of the medium. Innate Gestalten gives one the facility to predict, to simplify, to anticipate what will occur and to expect certain characteristics (Gombrich 1969, 252, 302). The Gestalt psychology defines these innate abilities as predictable natural human traits that interpret musical configurations. For example, humans tend to make sense of visual images that are initially nondescript such as a Rorschach inkblot (Gombrich 1969, 252, 302). The beholder’s code for interpreting the technical aspects and meaning of the music is based on perceptions formed by his knowledge of music, art and history, influences of his world and innate abilities to rationalize (Gombrich 1969, 252, 302). Ultimately, the beholder will develop a cogent schema with which the work is experienced.

Understanding the basis of Dvorak's inspiration, that of American Negro and Native American folk songs and the music of American composers such as Stephen Foster, assists in the interpretative process. The expressive nature of these types of American musics and their characteristic qualities attracted Dvorak's interest. Furthermore, Dvorak's use of indigenous dotted rhythms and syncopes are among the striking features that represent one facet of American influence on this work.

Considering that Dvorak was a late Romantic era composer with Western European training creates expectations for the listener. The sound of violins, chromatic harmonies, beautiful melodies and rich expressive character are expected. When one considers the range of chromatic possibilities available to composers of the period, Dvorak’s limited use of chromaticism (he stays near Db and its C# enharmonic) presents a certain ambiguity. This limited use of chromaticism serves as a device to maintain focus on the melodic aspect of the piece with its expressive and emotive elements. The movement of melody and harmony over a simple pedal point accompaniment refers to a Native American flavor, enhanced by the modal character of the melodic line; all arranged, however, in late-Romantic Western European style. True to Western European musical tradition, the poco meno mosso presents a beautiful, brooding tune attributable to Dvorak’s experience as a conservatory student engrossed in the works of Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Wagner. A fourth tune at rehearsal number four is reminiscent of an old French jig, suggesting more evidence of Dvorak’s Western European influences (Bernstein 1966, 161).

The Largo, as well as the entire symphony in three movements, is arranged for full symphony orchestra. More than 100 highly skilled musicians perform it, ideally. This implies the presentation of a great range of possibilities in the treatment of orchestral devices, solo instruments, tonal color, timbre, convention, depth, range and rhythm. The symphony orchestra represents the epitome of instrumental media with its combination of woodwinds, brasses, strings and percussion. In true Romantic Western European tradition, Dvorak fully utilizes the orchestra’s capabilities with special attention towards his choice of solo or melody instruments. The somber sound of the English Horn and clarinet “sing” the wonderful Goin’ Home theme. The timpani support the passion evoked by the strings and brasses, accentuating and intensifying the elation expressed.  

The title New World Symphony conjures up expectations that music depicting earlier century finding of the “new world “ with all of the excitement attached to the idea. The listener expects that the work be presented within a limited context, set in conventional, 19th Century symphonic forms. The subtitle of the second movement, Largo, implies a very slow pace, probably in the slowest of the principal division of tempo, placed often between tempo markings of adagio and andante (Randel 1986, 436). A slow tempo connotes somberness, pensiveness, and a generally subdued mood. Knowing that the funeral scene of the American Indian Minehaha inspired Dvorak adds to the expectation of a slow tempo (Dvorak called this movement "Funeral in the Forest"). Most who listen to the work recognize the song Goin’ Home as a Negro Spiritual, thereby picturing field hands or plantation workers crooning in the moonlight. As one hears the melody, visual images are evoked, referring to the human condition with its suffering, death, religion and spiritual themes. The synesthesia or splashing over of impressions from one sense modality to another (Gombrich 1969, 366), helps the beholder to experience the music as fully as possible, and for the astute beholder, attain fulfilled expectations.

An understanding and study of the technical aspects of the music are critical to the viewer’s development of a schema. Listening to what we know to be a Romantic work modifies expectations accordingly. The beholder expects musical images to be presented in a sentimental, colorful, chromatic but disciplined manner with the mimesis of reality presented in glorified detail (Gombrich 1969, 11). However, unrelated musical elements are brought into seemingly incongruous and ambiguous relationships. In past historical eras, humankind saw the world through religion, mythology and dynastic hierarchies. In the Romantic era of music, humankind expresses in a way that is free, proclaiming the divine nature of free man for the glorification of the individual spirit, with freedom from formality and stylization (Bernstein 1966, 114).Within the constraints of Romantic period music, the composer uses musical devices to create effects.

Rules for the constancy of shape or form (Gombrich 1969, 52), are carefully expedited by the composer and effect the way we regress towards images created by the sounds (Gombrich 1969, 214, 215). These images are scaled appropriately and logically to appear very realistic; the music contains considerable depth and perspective.

Gombrich recognizes the need for careful study of form. Understanding realities inherent in the precise manners in which tones interconnect helps one to realize that music is conceived in tonality and in the sense of a tonal magnetic center, with subsidiary tonal relationships. We cannot hear two isolated tones, even devoid of any context, without immediately imputing a tonal meaning to them. Beholders may differ in ways they infer tonal meaning, but it is inferred nonetheless (Bernstein 1966, 12). Dvorak relies heavily on the effectiveness of his melodies and themes as form and their part in creating images via sound. This contrasts with Beethoven’s composition where he skillfully utilizes small bits of motivic material to create a magnificent architecture. Dvorak uses melody as form to give the work unity, continuity, and dramatic affect (Bernstein 1966, 152).

Dvorak’s treatment of melody is ambiguous when one considers the technical tradition of Western music in which he is fluent. Modal music is used to help create visual evocations of American Indians and the plight of the displaced African. His use of the pentatonic scale is based on the “modes” of ancient music and inherently evokes particular expressive qualities of form and color (Gombrich 1969, 374). This free, Grecian approach to melodic treatment contrasts with the Egyptian strict adherence toward traditional musical mores (Gombrich 1969, 126). Furthermore, using melody as a device to evoke and articulate visual space, removes creative constraints typically attributed to the visual artist. This music discovers uncharted regions to be explored in the universe of sound (Gombrich 1969, 358).

It is no accident that the particular human feelings are depicted metaphorically with images created by the melody, harmony, rhythm and other technical qualities of the work. These devices direct the beholder in experiencing the composer’s intent, provoking the realization of human feelings including “pleasant subjects of joy and triumph (Gombrich 1969, 371-373. Excerpt from a quote of eighteenth century critic Jonathan Richardson)."

Gombrich‘s theoretical ideas assist the beholder in developing a schema for interpreting Dvorak's Largo based on life experience, cultural biases, knowledge of humanity and musical styles, and information acquired through the study of other music, genre and media of the Romantic period. We also have natural and psychological Gestalten tendencies to experience music in somewhat predictable ways. Music provokes the beholder’s imagination by depicting an impressive array of seemingly incongruous images in realistic clarity. With scrutiny and methodical study, the images will present themselves.

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Comparison...Langer vs Gombrich

Langer approaches music as an art form of human expression that uses specific devices for support of those feelings. Like Leonard Bernstein, she recognizes music's direct connection with emotional expression (Bernstein 1966, 12). She provides extensive vocabulary for discussing how devices are assembled to create those specific images that support the work's meaning or vital import. One difficulty with her approach is the contention that music has inherent qualities that exist in spite of the listener’s background; if the listener does not understand, it is because he lacks the astuteness to comprehend. Gombrich places a great deal of responsibility on the beholder's role in the artistic experience. This implies that different listeners may experience the music in unique ways because an inherent meaning does not necessarily exist.

Langer or Gombrich do not discuss specific musical devices to the extent that they respectively discuss poesis and visual art. A thorough knowledge of music is necessary to cogently draw attention to and analyze ambiguities in terms of period style, melodic line, melodic inference, phrasing, dynamics, tempo, contrapuntal motion, key relationships, orchestral timbre, harmonic implications, rhythmic syncope, form, motif, and other structural elements of the music. However, the aesthetic theories provide the framework from which one determines and defines the meaning of the musical devices, and ultimately, the meaning of the artwork.

Application of a new theory that is comprised of a combination of both theories, accompanied by knowledge of the art form, provides the artistic observer with powerful vocabulary and tools for interpretation. A full and successful understanding of art evolves if one subscribes to this merge of aesthetic theory approaches. Careful study of both the artwork and the human participant are needed in order to ascribe full meaning. Technical aspects of the work create specific effects and affect, while participation of the listener through the expectation of probable consequences experiences the music (Meyer 1956, 29). The artwork exists and expresses its meaning in conjunction with the participation of the listener or beholder.

Overall, Langer provides more specific tools than Gombrich for the interpretation of musical art works. Langer's singularly powerful ideas are comprised of that which describe the illusion of each art form and how they appear in different media. Similarly, Gombrich provides his idea of synesthesia in explaining what Langer describes as illusion. That music's primary illusion is time in the mode of audible forms aptly describes the form and has significant ramifications. Illusion is a very palpable theory that provides the aesthetician with effective tools of interpretation. Claude Debussy noted this phenomenon of illusion when he states that art must remain an illusion "lest it become utilitarian, and as dreary as a workshop." He asks, "Do not the masses as well as the select few seek therein [in art] oblivion, which is in itself a form of deception? Though the smile of Mona Lisa probably never existed, still, its charm is eternal (Vallas 1967, 12)." Langer presents the virtual reality of art as a critical component of her beliefs, giving the artwork an existence in its own world. Gombrich defines illusion as a discursive device in art forms, not recognizing the virtual existence of a work. For him, art cannot function without the beholder or human participant.

There is a certain satisfaction derived from an analysis according to Langer; one senses that the exercise is complete. However, an analysis of the Largo completed according to Gombrich's approach, leaves one with a sense that the musical work was interpreted less officiously. Langer, with Leonard Bernstein's intuition and musical expertise, and Gombrich's critical emphasis on the human participant, provides one with an effective interpretative tool.

Works Cited

Bernstein, Leonard. 1966. The Infinite Variety of Music. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Biancolli, Robert Bagar and Louis. 1947. Complete Guide to Orchestral Music. New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers.

Gombrich, Ernst Hans. 1969. Art and Illusion. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Langer, Susanne K. 1953. Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Meyer, Leonard B. 1956. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Randel, Don Michael, ed. 1986. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Vallas, Leon. 1967. The Theories of Claude Debussy. New York: Oxford University Press.