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  • BBC Music Magazine

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    Jan 20, 2022 3 minutes

    Dvo ák’s Prophecy – And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music

    Joseph Horowitz

    WW Norton 256pp (hb) £23.99

    In 1893 Dvo ák declared: ‘In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music’. Joseph Horowitz dashes this hope in his opening paragraph. The ‘Black musical motherlode’, he states, settled into popular music instead, while American classical music ‘stayed white’. To explain why, he usefully looks sideways (Charles Ives

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