Hungarian pianist, composer, and conductor Ernst von Dohnányi (1877–1960) spent the last eleven years of his life in America, in Tallahassee (Florida). From 1949, the old master worked as a professor of piano and composition at Florida State University, and in addition to teaching, he gave concerts and composed. Unlike in the earlier stages of his career, the majority of his American works were made to order (Table 1), and during these works, Dohnányi had a rather new situation in which he sometimes had to adapt to the wishes of the client.

Title of the composition	Time of composition	Commissioners
Second Violin Concerto (op. 43)	1949–1950	Frances Magnes
Three Singular Pieces for Piano (op. 44)	1951	––– (Composed for own piano concerts)
Concertino for Harp (op. 54)	1952	Edna Phillips
Stabat Mater (op. 46)	1952–1953	George Bragg and his Boy Chior
American Rhapsody (op. 47)	1951–1953	Ohio University
Aria for Flute and Piano (op. 48/1)	1958	Ellie Baker
Passacaglia for Flute (op. 48/2)	1959	Ellie Baker
Twelve Short Studies for the Advanced Pianist	1950	––– Composed with teaching purpose
Symphony (E) op. 40	(1. version: 1943–1944) 2. version: 1954–1957 3. version: 1957	––– To the memory of his parents
Daily Finger Exercises for the Advanced Pianist	1960	––– Composed with teaching purpose

Dohnányi was not accustomed to such creative constraints, as he pointed out in his memoirs:

Of course, there was hardly any time for composition in recent years. I work slowly but thoroughly. In a ʻperfectionist’ way, as they put it here. Still, I was forced to write ʻto order,’ ʻon comission’ as it called, when money was needed, which was twice as difficult for me.[1]

Money or inspiration? What is the best drive for an artist?

Having left all his possessions in Hungary, Dohnányi needed to work and teach until the end of his life. He played much less concerts in America than in the years before the World War II. To support his family, he worked hard, taught, and gave master classes as a visiting professor at several American universities. This explained why he composed much of his music in America on commission.

The commission of the American Rhapsody in the autumn of 1951 was a very generous gesture by John Calhoun Baker (1895–1999), president of Ohio University. Dohnányi visited Athens, Ohio, every year from 1948 onward, twelve times in all. Therefore, it is not surprising that Baker requested that Dohnányi compose a celebratory orchestral piece for the 150^th anniversary of Ohio University in Athens. He was paid $1,000 for this. For comparison: Dohnányi was also asked to compose a similar piece for Florida State University, Tallahassee, but the Dean of FSU, Karl Kuersteiner (1901–1973), did not offer any payment or royalty for the work. Moreover, he not only told the composer what the arranged melody should be but even named the piece. Kuersteiner gave the title Rural America to the planned work – presumably on the basis of Dohnányi’s widely known Ruralia hungarica (op. 32).

In my opinion, more important than the money was the fact that Kuersteiner did not give Dohnányi the freedom to compose, as he specified the song to be arranged. Therefore, Dohnányi did not accept that commision (which undoubtedly contributed to a less than cordial relationship between Kuersteiner and Dohnányi). Baker gave Dohnányi free rein, both in terms of form and the melodies he used. Inspiration was very important for him – more important than the money – in his creative work. Since Dohnányi did not generally like to compose for commission, it is no wonder that the American Rhapsody is a result of sometimes quite bitter struggles.He wrote in his memoirs:

I remember well that the American Rhapsody was under preparation for two years, since I was studying the old American folksongs in vain, I felt no inspiration to make up that short piece, and it was only two years later, when I finally had the time to create a work that satisfied me.[2]

The difficulty in finding the right musical material is best captured in the fact that the work was commissioned, and this was the main difficulty for Dohnányi. At first, he thought of weaving songs from American universities into his composition, “like Brahms did in his Akademische Festouverture,” but John Baker, the president, and Karl Ahrendt, the dean of the music faculty of Ohio University, suggested that the composer should work on popular folk songs instead. Baker also suggested that Dohnányi use the melody of Alma Mater Ohio.

The search for the right melodic material took almost a year. After the concept of the work had changed, and once Dohnányi had found the right melodies for him, the compositional work progressed relatively quickly. The work eventually became one of the composer’s most successful performances during his North American years. A few months after the premier, in June 1954, Ohio University acknowledged his efforts with an honorary doctorate.

To summarize the creative process of Ernst von Dohnányi’s American Rhapsody, we can conclude that composing to commission slowed the compositional process, as Dohnányi was initially not sufficiently motivated or inspired. With regard to musical material to build on, it was obvious that something American would be appropriate. This led to the idea of using American folk tunes for the American Rhapsody, much like Liszt did in his Hungarian Rhapsodies. The quality of the result was not affected by the commission, and Dohnányi created a unique form from the material that was alien to him.

(A detailed study on this subject is expected to be published in Studia Musicologica – An International Journal of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2025.)

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[1] Dohnányi Ernő: Búcsú és üzenet [Farewell and Message]. (München: Nemzetőr, 1962), 33. Translation by myself.

[2] Ibidem.

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Information on the author: Ilona Kovács (Hungarian University of Dance, Budapest)

graduated as a musicologist from the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music Budapest. She obtained her PhD from the same institution (2010). She also holds a piano teacher and a music producer degree. She has written numerous studies about Dohnányi, a monograph about Zoltán Pongrácz (Budapest: Mágus, 2004), and numerous articles on Hungarian composers. She has also published many studies on the relationship between music and dance. Her latest book, Ernst von Dohnányi in a New Perspective, was published by L’Harmattan (Paris: 2023). Since 2010, she has been a professor at the Hungarian Dance University, and since 2021, she has been the Head of the Department of Art Theory. Contact: kovacs.ilona@mte.eu

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