pathy, regardless of national
prejudice. What, therefore, distinguishes Dvorak's symphony may not be
mere negro melody, or even American song, but a genuine folk-feeling, in
the widest meaning.

In one way, Dvorak's work reminds us of Mendelssohn's Scotch Symphony:
both exploit foreign national melody in great poetic forms. One could
write a Scotch symphony in two ways: one, in Mendelssohn's, the other
would be to tell of the outer impression in the terms of your own
folk-song. That is clearly the way Mendelssohn wrote most of the Italian
Symphony,--which stands on a higher plane than the Scotch. For folk-song
is the natural language of its own people. It is interesting to see the
exact type that each theme represents; but it is not so important as to
catch the distinction, the virtue of folk-song _per se_ and the purely
natural utterance of one's own. Of course, every one writes always in
his folk-tones. On the other hand, one may explore one's own special
treasures of native themes, as Dvorak himself did so splendidly in his
Slavic Dances and in his Legends. So one must, after all, take this
grateful, fragrant work as an idea of what American composers might do
in full earnest. Dvorak is of all later masters the most eminent
folk-musician. He shows greatest sympathy, freedom and delight in
revelling among the simple tones and rhythms of popular utterance,
rearing on them, all in poetic spontaneity, a structure of high art.
Without strain or show, Dvorak stood perhaps the most genuine of late
composers, with a firm foot on the soil of native melody, yet with the
balance and restraint and the clear vision of the trained master.[A]

[Footnote A: The whole subject of American and negro folk-song is new
and unexplored. There are races of the blacks living on the outer reefs
and islands of the Carolinas, with not more than thirty whites in a
population of six thousand, where "spirituals" and other musical rites
are held which none but negroes may attend. The truest African mode and
rhythm would seem to be preserved here; to tell the truth, there is
great danger of their loss unless they are soon recorded.]

In a certain view, it would seem that by the fate of servitude the
American negro has become the element in our own national life that
alone produces true folk-song,--that corresponds to the peasant and serf
of Europe, the class that must find in song the refuge and solace for
its loss of material joys. So Dvorak perha