Heard It in an Ad · Story 1
1973 · British bread advert
To the British, the New World Symphony smells of bread
A delivery boy pushes his bike up a cobbled hill. The tune behind him was written in America.
The piece in this story
Dvořák · II. Largo · about 12 min
Track info
「Symphony No. 9 'From the New World'」Performed by MusopenWikimedia CommonsPublic Domain
Play the slow movement of Dvořák's New World Symphony in Britain and someone may well start talking about bread. The tune got stuck to one television advert and never came loose.
Where you heard it
In 1973 the bread brand Hovis ran a television advert in which a delivery boy pushes his bicycle up a steep cobbled hill while a brass band plays this Largo. It was directed by Ridley Scott, who later made Alien and Gladiator. It was filmed on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, in the south of England.
The real story
The music has nothing to do with Britain. Dvořák finished the symphony in 1893 while he was director of a music conservatory in New York, and it was first performed in New York that year. The famous melody of the second movement is first sung by the cor anglais. Later his pupil William Arms Fisher set words to it, turning it into the song "Goin' Home".
Tell a friend
A Czech composer wrote this tune in America, and the British hear it and think of bread.
Antonín Dvořák1841–1904Read the story of Dvořák →