1893. Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson a challenge to white caricatures of blacks playing the banjo as happy, lazy, drunk, untutored . . . Dvorak’s New World Symphony a challenge to all would-be American composers: the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the negro melodies. Dvorak opens his Largo with a soft chorale in the brass: religious, spiritual, contemplative, serious . . . Hopeful and beautiful, too, as if in preparation for something more hopeful and beautiful to come. The light in Tanner’s painting the same. It surrounds and illuminates the older man of past sorrows, the child of the future he teaches. Light often conveys more than we ever understand of sacred human practices such as discipline, nurturing, listening, love. Inspired by African-American spirituals, Dvorak’s English horn solo becomes one of the world’s most beloved melodies. Longing, yearning, plaintive. Hopeful, sad, nostalgic. Lovely to sing, impossible to put into words. Maybe it’s our hope for something better, our contemplation of all that has passed. As the Largo comes to a close, Dvorak returns to this melody again. He adds numerous pauses of silence, reduces the orchestra to a solo violin, viola, and cello. The musicians grow fewer, the silences greater. I try to hear all these silences in The Banjo Lesson. The moments of thought or preparation before the music is attempted again. How to improve on what was just played or learned. How to fill up each silence with future hopes built on present study and work.
Performance of Largo from Dvorak’s New World Symphony by Symphony Orchestra of India.
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