Just found a quote from Dvorak himself, in answer to origins of his New World melodies. "I did not really use any of the Negro and Indian melodies. I simply wrote original themes of my own and developed them, whereby I exploited all the possibilities of modern rhythm, harmonics, contrapuntal technique and orchestral colour." After the first performance (in Carnegie Hall), The press wrote that the composer had declared an allegiance to American music. Dvorak responded "The motifs are my own, and some I brought with me. That is and remains Czech music." An essay for an album for the Ninth Sym. (Munich, Kempf) by Kraemer states "It was only possible to confound American, Czech and "Indian" elements because at the time no one would see that the pentatonic scales (in the English Horn melody of the largo) and the syncopation in the first and third themes of the first movement are just as characteristic of Bohemian folk music as of Negro spirituals."