November is Dvorák month in Austin!

If all you know about the Czech composer is his "New World" symphony, then this is the time when you can learn about his lasting impact on American music.

The University of Texas is marking the centenary of Dvorák's death with an ambitious multidisciplinary festival called New Worlds: Dvorák in Search of America. Using as a springboard Dvorák's brilliantly fruitful visit to our country from 1892 to 1894, during which he served as director of the New York National Conservatory of Music and composed some of his finest work, the festival will examine how Dvorák's efforts to teach our nation's young composers how to find the true American musical voice fit in the late 19th-century search for an American identity. It was a search that anticipated the more familiar American music of Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Roy Harris, and others decades later, as well as the development of one of our greatest and most truly American art forms: jazz (and its happy, scraggly stepchildren, rock and R&B).

The festival goes far beyond music to encompass history, art, American studies, and theatre. Joseph Horowitz, former director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and author of Dvorák in America, is directing the festival. Helping him explore the questions "What is America?" and "Who is an American?" as they were asked at the turn of the 20th century and are asked today will be Yale art history professor Tim Barringer, UT American Studies scholars Bill Goetzmann and Shirley Thompson, historian H.W. Brands, composer/conductor Gunther Schuller, popular music historian Karl Hagstrom Miller, actor Lucien Douglas, the Miró Quartet, and Peter Bay, among others.

Much of the activity is focused on the actual conference on Friday, Nov. 19 (www.finearts.utexas.edu/Dvorak). But a pair of introductory events this week are worth noting.

Perspectives on the "American Sublime"

Tim Barringer, professor of art history at Yale, presents a lecture followed by a guided tour of "Go West: Selections From the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, C.R. Smith Collection."

For more information, call 936-8746 or visit www.thestoryoftexas.com.

Dvorák and the "American Sublime"

Festival director Joseph Horowitz hosts an intimate, informal introductory event featuring musical performances, images from American landscape paintings, and commentary. Pianist Rick Rowley performs Dvorák's American Suite, pianist Gregory Allen performs Dvorák's Humoresques No. 4 and 7, selected piano works by Edward MacDowell, and Arthur Farwell's Navajo War Dance No. 2 and Pawnee Horses, and the UT Chamber Singers, conducted by James Morrow, will sing Dvorák and Fisher's "Goin' Home" and Harry Burleigh's "Deep River" and other spirituals.

In addition, actor Lucien Douglas of the UT Department of Theatre & Dance presents the "Hiawatha Melodrama," a narration of parts of Longfellow's poem set to Dvorák's music. Tim Barringer provides commentary on American landscape art, and Erika Bsumek speaks on Native-American culture.

For more information call 471-1444.