Accounts of foreign enthusiasm reached the United States two months before Dvorak’s arrival. A.J. Goodrich, then the leading American music theorist, commented that Schoenefeld’s music had “attracted instant attention, for here was a motive not already developed by Brahms, Dvorak, Saint-Saëns, Grieg or Tschaikovski.” When Dvorak finally arrived, the idea of mixing black vernacular idioms with conventional classical idioms had fascinated musicians across Europe and the United States for nearly two years. That he would be asked to weigh in on the subject was all but inevitable.

He immersed himself in this burning topic soon after arriving. He listened to one of his black conservatory students, Harry Burleigh, sing spirituals and studied the Louisville music teacher Mildred Hill’s scholarship on black folk songs. Maurice Arnold, another black student, showed Dvorak his attempt at writing an orchestral piece using black idioms. And the manuscript for Schoenefeld’s new “Rural Symphony” sat on Dvorak’s desk awaiting judgment in a conservatory-sponsored contest. (It eventually won.) By May 1893, Dvorak had seen and heard enough.

“When I first came here last year,” he explained in a statement to the press, “I was impressed with this idea and it has developed into a settled conviction.”

Although Dvorak hadn’t originated the concept, his endorsement of incorporating these melodies and idioms into “classical” music spurred a vigorous, racism-laced debate. Detractors questioned the Americanness of the melodies, claiming that they were African or actually derived from white sources heard on plantations. The New York composer William Mollenhauer snipped that “an American would be ashamed to derive his inspiration from such trash.”

For the first time, prominent black intellectuals also addressed the topic. Harry Smith, the editor of The Cleveland Gazette, remarked that Dvorak’s prescription “seems to be a bitter pill indeed for many prejudiced musicians (white) to swallow.” Dvorak, he added, was “on the right track, for the simple reason that about all the truly American music we have is furnished in these very same ‘Negro’ melodies.”