{"id":56346,"date":"2025-10-17T09:15:54","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/student-affairs\/?post_type=bates_events&p=56346"},"modified":"2025-10-28T10:42:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T14:42:27","slug":"bates-college-orchestra","status":"publish","type":"bates_events","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/student-affairs\/events\/bates-college-orchestra\/","title":{"rendered":"Bates College Orchestra"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Visit the Music Dept. for Tickets and Live Stream Information<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Presented By: The Bates Department of Music: The Bates College Orchestra performs the Bart\u00f3k Romanian Folk Dances<\/strong> and Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s Symphony No. 9 \u201cNew World.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Program Notes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, I (Hiroya Miura, Director) had the chance to study with Czech conductors and later to work with Czech musicians. One violinist once told me something that stayed with me: \u201cCzechoslovakia had the first country and western music radio station in Europe.\u201d<\/em> Hearing this, I immediately pictured Dvo\u0159\u00e1k in Spillville, Iowa, where he spent the summer of 1893 with his family and is said to have sketched ideas for his New World Symphony.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1892, Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k came to New York at the invitation of Jeannette Thurber, a wealthy patron of music, to serve as director of the National Conservatory of Music (today\u2019s Juilliard School). His salary was about three times that of a U.S. Senator. One of Thurber\u2019s most ambitious projects was to encourage the creation of a truly American opera. Soon after Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s arrival, she suggested The Song of Hiawatha<\/em> by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a possible subject. This epic poem, first published in 1855, was based loosely on Native American legends and had already been translated into Czech by Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s friend Josef V\u00e1clav Sl\u00e1dek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the opera never came to fruition, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k was deeply moved by the idea. In 1893, the critic Henry Krehbiel wrote an extensive analysis of the New World Symphony<\/em> in the New-York Tribune,<\/em> noting that Dvo\u0159\u00e1k had told him the second movement Largo<\/em> was inspired by The Song of Hiawatha.<\/em> In the same article, Krehbiel also referenced the work of Alice Fletcher, who transcribed Native American melodies in the late 1800s. Around this time, one of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s assistants, the African American composer Harry T. Burleigh, also introduced him to spirituals\u2014echoes of which can be heard in the Largo.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In performing the New World Symphony<\/em> today, we are reminded of its wide-ranging American connections: to New York, to Iowa, and to Maine through Longfellow, born in Portland.B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k, too, had an intimate connection to America. In addition to his work as a composer, he was a pioneering ethnomusicologist. Alarmed by the spread of fascism, Bart\u00f3k emigrated to the United States in 1940, where he was commissioned by Columbia University to transcribe a vast collection of Yugoslav folk music. Even earlier, before the devastations of the World Wars, he had traveled widely through Eastern Europe and Turkey collecting folk melodies. Though he was unable to publish all his research during his lifetime, he donated much of the material to Columbia University. The melodies heard in today\u2019s Romanian Folk Dances<\/em> all come from this remarkable body of work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presented By: The Bates Department of Music: The Bates College Orchestra performs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1431,"featured_media":56347,"template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_bates_event_start":"2025-11-15 19:30:00","_bates_event_end":"2025-11-15 21:00:00","_bates_event_allDay":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"event-tag":[48,42],"class_list":["post-56346","bates_events","type-bates_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","event-tag-main-events","event-tag-nov-15"],"start":"2025-11-15T19:30:00","end":"2025-11-15T21:00:00","location":{"rendered":"

Olin Arts Center<\/span>, 210<\/span>
75 Russell St. <\/span>
Lewiston<\/span>, ME<\/span> 04240<\/span><\/div>","simple":"210 Olin Arts Center, Lewiston, ME, 04240"},"featured_image":{"url":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/student-affairs\/files\/2025\/10\/Orchestra-900x602.webp","id":56347},"structureddata":"