More recently Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble recorded the song with an American banjo player, a Chinese sheng player, and singer-songwriter Abigail Washburn singing lyrics in English and Mandarin.

It was famously sung at a 1958 concert by Paul Robeson at Carnegie Hall. Singer Jan Clayton performed it in the 1948 movie, The Snake Pit. Fisher died in 1948, but the song lived on. When he guessed if Bryan picked the song, the judge made a comment with an unintentional innuendo he seemed to regret. He called the new song, ' Goin' Home,' and had it published 1922. One of Dvorak's students, William Arms Fisher, put words to the longing melody from the second movement. 9 was premiered by the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on December 16th, 1893. Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin talks about Dvorak's masterful blend of melodies, 'from the quintessential American idea (especially from the Europeans' perspective) of great spaces and nature, and a kind of nostalgic feeling from Dvorak, feeling lonely here in America, longing to go back to his European roots.'ĭvorak's Symphony No. Dvorak soon began working on the symphony, which he said reflected his 'impressions and greetings from the New World.' He brought to it his studies of spirituals and Native American music, as well as his own Czech culture.

Was it a spiritual? A gospel hymn? A Czech folk tune? Or most likely, something new-informed by all of these?ĭvorak had come to New York City to be the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America, a conservatory founded in 1885 with a goal of cultivating American music. The theme played by a solo English horn, which begins the second (largo) movement, at one time spawned debate as to its origin.

A yearning melody from the second movement took on a new life as a popular American song that continues to be reinvented. 9, 'From the New World,' soon after arriving in America in 1893. RICHARD RODRIGUEZ each step, with every graduation from one level of educa.

Going Home by A. American