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 ters to Bohemia and in the music of his only composition of this period, the violoncello concerto. He was a homeloving man, too deeply rooted in his native soil both as an artist and as an individual to be able to remain long away from it. Although America had enriched him and he felt obligated to it, he welcomed the moment when he could return home permanently in April 1895.

Before Dvořák’s arrival newspapers propounded the delicate question as to whether Dvořák would become the creator of a national American music. No such achievement could have been expected of any man. A national American music simply could not be created by a composer going to America in the fiftieth year of his life and only for a short period of three years. He himself was more conscious of this than anyone else, though he was a firm believer in the early birth of an indigenous American music; and wished to point the way which could be followed by native American composers.

Dvořák did not write any articles. But the author of this essay found a remarkable article in the “Harper’s New Monthly Magazine,” vol. XC, No. 537, pages 429–434,February 1895, and redeemed it from oblivion. The title is “Music in America by Antonín Dvořák.” The footnote says: “The author acknowledges the co-operation of Mr. Edwin Emerson, Jr., in the preparation of this article.” All Dvořák experts agree today that there is no doubt about Dvořák’s authorship of this article. The form belongs to the American essayist, but the contents show clearly the ideas of Dvořák well known to all who were his intimate friends. The article was dictated to Emerson in the first part of March, 1894, because Dvořák mentions there the 300th anniversary of Palestrina’s death “celebrated in Rome a few weeks ago,” and that anniversary was on February 2, 1894. It was the second year of Dvořák’s directorship in New York.

Let us quote here only two last paragraphs of the valuable article: “My own duty as a teacher, I conceive, is not so much to interpret Beethoven, Wagner, or other masters of the past, but to give what encouragement I can to the young musicians of America. I must give full expression to my firm conviction, and to the hope that