2. Dvorak's style

Herderian conceptions of nationalism also inspired the search for musical "languages" suited to particular times and peoples. Questions we might address in class include, Does music have one "grammar"? Or rather, if there are many musical grammars, how do we identify their genealogies? And is the diatonic scale analogous to the Indo-European language family in approaching closest to an "ideal" form? (From our Budapest vantage point, we may blaim such parochial "ideals" on nineteenth-century German philologists.) In Humboldt's conception, languages were manifestations of the mental capacity of a nation, and by extension, musicology could serve nationalist ends. Bracketing that discussion entirely, I offer here only a brief morsel by the late-nineteenth-century master of national style in classical form, Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904): Slavonic Dances, op. 72 (1887), no. 7 (kolo):


I do this mostly to give you a sense of the challenges facing Bartók and his generation. Note how neatly structured the excerpt is, stating the theme, developing it briefly, and then circling back to the original. An excerpt from Dvorák's Symphony No. 9 ('From the New World') would also be appropriate here, especially since the superb integration of folk sources involved American songs, rather than Czech ones.