After two years as a teacher in the United States during the 1890s, noted Czech composer Antonin Dvorak issued a surprising challenge to his hosts.
"Just as this nation has already surpassed so many others in marvel- ous inventions and feats of engineering and commerce," he said, "and has made an honorable place for itself in literature. ..,so it must assert itself in the other arts, and especially in the art of music."
In Dvorak's time, as today, American classical music...