Antonín Dvořák
© HNH International Ltd
Joseph Horowitz
© Maggie Horowitz

Dvořák’s Prophecy
A New Narrative for American Classical Music
A PostClassical Ensemble ‘More than Music’ film series
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff

AntonĂ­n Dvořák
Antonín Dvořák
© HNH International Ltd
Joseph Horowitz
Joseph Horowitz
© Maggie Horowitz

Dvořák’s Prophecy
A New Narrative for American Classical Music

A PostClassical Ensemble ‘More than Music’ film series
Written and produced by Joseph Horowitz
Visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff
Joseph Horowitz on the six
Dvořák’s Prophecy films
In tandem with Joseph Horowitz’s new book Dvořák’s Prophecy
and the Vexed Fate of Black
Classical Music (W. W. Norton), Naxos’s
Dvořák’s Prophecy films explore the American Dvořák, Charles Ives’ America, Black Classical Music, Aaron Copland and the Red Scare,
Bernard Herrmann ‘beyond Psycho,’ and Lou Harrison and ‘cultural fusion.’
In tandem with Joseph Horowitz’s new book Dvořák’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music (W. W. Norton), Naxos’s Dvořák’s Prophecy films explore the American Dvořák, Charles Ives’ America, Black Classical Music, Aaron Copland and the Red Scare, Bernard Herrmann ‘beyond Psycho,’ and Lou Harrison and ‘cultural fusion.’

‘The six Dvořák’s Prophecy films I have created with Peter Bogdanoff are an act of advocacy.

As in my companion book Dvořák’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music, my premise is that the “standard narrative” for classical music in the US – the one I grew up with, popularized by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein – shortchanges the American achievement. Following W.E.B. Du Bois, who called the “sorrow songs” of Black America “the singular spiritual heritage of the nation,” and Antonín Dvořák, who prophesied that “negro melodies” would find a “great and noble” American school, I begin not with Copland and the modernists, but with Dvořák and his protégé Harry Burleigh, who turned “Deep River” into a sublime concert song. I treat Charles Ives as an American creative genius comparable to Whitman and Melville. The standard narrative makes no room for a morbid Romantic like Bernard Herrmann – to my ears, the most under⁠-⁠rated 20th⁠-⁠century American composer, and not just for his terrific film scores. It omits William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony – forgotten following its galvanizing 1934 premiere by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. And it fails to reckon with Lou Harrison, whose majestic Piano Concerto may be the most formidable by any American. The films therefore argue for a longer, more eventful New World odyssey, documenting both democratic ideals and the legacy of slavery.’

Joseph Horowitz


‘Horowitz’s Charles Ives’ America may very well be the most important film ever produced about American music.’JoAnn Falletta, Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic

‘Horowitz’s six beautiful films reveal a compelling inclusive tradition in American classical music. Open to influences from popular, Black, Native American, and world music, this music is deeply interwoven with American culture.’Peter Burkholder, author of A History of Western Music

‘The Dvořák’s Prophecy films make an essential contribution to our understanding of the role that music has played, and must continue to play, in American culture as a whole. Because Horowitz does not shy away from political, racial, and gender issues of intense contemporary relevance, these films are especially important right now.’Larry Starr, Professor Emeritus of Music, University of Washington