Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World", Op. 95, B. 178 (Czech: Symfonie c. 9 e moll „Z nového sveta“), popularly known as the New World Symphony, was composed by Antonín Dvorák in 1893 while he was the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America from 1892 to 1895. It has been described as one of the most popular of all symphonies.[1] In older literature and recordings, this symphony was – as for its first publication – numbered as Symphony No. 5. Astronaut Neil Armstrong took a tape recording of the New World Symphony along during the Apollo 11 mission, the first Moon landing, in 1969. . . . Dvorák was influenced not only by music he had heard, but by what he had seen, in America. He wrote that he would not have composed his American pieces as he had, if he had not seen America.[19] It has been said that Dvorák was inspired by the American "wide open spaces" such as prairies he may have seen on his trip to Iowa in the summer of 1893." [Wikipedia]