Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1895, the New York Choral Society gave the premiere of a choral work by Antonin Dvorak entitled “The American Flag.” Mrs. Jeannette Thurber, who brought Dvorak to New York City to teach at her National Conservatory, had asked him to set a patriotic poem of that name. The idea was the new work would be performed to coincide with Dvorak’s arrival in the fall of 1892, and the big celebrations planned that year for the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the New World. Unfortunately, Dvorak didn’t get the text in time, and so another choral work, his recently completed “Te Deum” was performed during the big Columbus Quadricentennial. “The American Flag” was put on a back burner, as it were, and wasn’t performed until AFTER Dvorak returned to Prague. Dvorak never heard the work performed at all, in fact. The blustery, outright chauvinistic tone of its pro-New World, anti-Old World text would hardly endear it to European audiences of his day. In fact, this work hasn’t proven to be a big hit with AMERICAN audiences, either. “The American Flag” remains one of Dvorak’s least-performed pieces. Michael Tilson Thomas conducted a recording of it timed for release in 1976 during the American Bicentennial. Ironically for so “American” a work, that recording was made in Berlin with a German orchestra and chorus!