… it mostly appeals to aesthetic and historical debates about the meaning of ‘Black classical music,’ resulting in the glaring omission of racism as a structural force with profound effects for individuals … Despite Horowitz’s earlier attention to an excessive devotion to masterworks, Dvořák’s Prophecy often reads as a jeremiad on the rapidly fading relevance of singular grand narratives … Much of Dvořák’s Prophecy offers breezy reflections on various Gilded Age touchstones … In an obvious oversight, Horowitz’s loose conflation of Eurocentrism with whiteness and Americanism with Blackness doesn’t account for racist double standards routinely applied to African American musicians … Horowitz’s failure to account for these more subtle dimensions of racism aren’t born of ignorance: he excuses himself from doing so with a highly selective exploit of evidence … Horowitz’s nonchalance, rooted in meager evidence, severely injures his credibility as an interpreter of racial history … Horowitz transforms Blackness into an abstract aesthetic category divorced from human bodies … Horowitz, in tiny, is simply out of his depth when discussing interracial cultural exchanges … Ultimately, Dvořák’s Prophecy thus wraps its author’s artistic tastes in an aged, loose-fitting historical costume now slightly more tailored to racial concerns.
Dvorak’s Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music
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