When asked about their musical preferences during their downtime, WPR Music hosts provided enlightening insights. Dr. Jonathan Øverby, the host of the world music program “The Road to Higher Ground,” shared his reflections on listening to and performing “Goin’ Home.”
Antonín Dvořák composed the Largo from his Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World,” in 1893 while residing in the United States. This movement is renowned for its profound emotional depth among symphonic music. As the director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music, Dvořák endeavored to discover a uniquely American sound. He found inspiration not in elite concert halls but in the spirituals, frontier hymns, and folk traditions of a diverse, emerging nation.
One of Dvořák’s talented students, Harry T. Burleigh, played a crucial role by singing these spirituals for him. These melodies, rooted in the experiences of plantation fields and prayer meetings, expressed both the sorrow of bondage and the hope for freedom. Burleigh’s voice, enriched with memory and faith, provided Dvořák with access to a world of emotions that transcended racial and geographical boundaries. Through these songs, Dvořák found a music that embodied both pain and promise, which he referred to as “the future music of America.”
The Largo that resulted from this cultural exchange became a conduit linking continents, cultures, and emotions. Its main theme was later adapted by William Arms Fisher into the cherished song “Goin’ Home,” which conveys a spiritual return — an aspiration for peace, belonging, and divine connection, rather than just a physical location.
Subsequent recordings, such as those by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Václav Neumann, have highlighted the composition’s spiritual profundity and enduring humanity.
During my studies as a voice student at San Francisco State University, I first encountered Largo and felt a profound emotional stirring. The music resonated with my own quest for meaning, identity, and a sense of home, containing the same mix of melancholy and hope I recognized in my elders’ voices and the music of the Black church.
As my career progressed into concert artistry, this connection deepened. I began to perceive in Dvořák’s melody not only European yearning but also the echo of an American spiritual essence, honoring both immigrants and the enslaved, the exiled and the dreamers.
Fortuitously, I later performed “Goin’ Home” in Spillville, Iowa, a town with a significant Czech community where Dvořák himself found inspiration. Among the audience was the composer’s grandson, Antonín Dvořák III, serving as a living link to the composer whose music continues to bridge worlds with compassion and song.
This work still resonates with me as it mirrors my personal journey — navigating between cultures, striving for harmony between history and hope. The Largo serves as a reminder that home encompasses not only our origins but also the songs, memories, and courage we carry within us as we seek unity through sound.
Harry T. Burleigh’s life and artistry, particularly his arrangements of spirituals, hold great value for me. These arrangements preserved melodies once passed from heart to heart, field to field. Without Burleigh’s influence, Dvořák might not have discovered one of America’s earliest and most profound musical languages — a music born of sorrow, shaped by resilience, and sung by unknown bards whose faith transformed suffering into beauty.
“Goin’ Home” endures because it captures that universal human story — of yearning, transformation, and grace — and in it, I hear the sound of every road that leads toward higher ground.
