Antonín Dvorák (1841–1904)

Dvorák’s parents recognized Antonin’s exceptional musical talents and in 1853 sent him to continue his studies at the nearby town of Zlonice. As well as learning German at his new school, Dvorák received musical tuition from the church choirmaster Josef Toman, and from another cantor, Antonin Liehmann. Under their guidance he gained a thorough grounding in music theory, and became a proficient organist, pianist, violinist, and continuo player. Because of his peasant upbringing and his rural education, it is sometimes thought that Dvorák was naïve and unschooled, but in fact his education was decent and thorough, and by the time he left Zlonice for the German Municipal School at Ceská Kamenice in 1856, he was well prepared. He never forgot his debt to Spitz, Toman, and Liehmann. After a year at Ceská Kamenice, he enrolled at the Prague Organ School. He played viola in the orchestra of the Prague Cecilia Society, attended concerts, absorbed the rich culture of the city, and worked hard. He graduated in 1859 as the second-best student in his year.

After his graduation, Dvorák worked in Prague as a viola player and music teacher. He became a member of the band that in 1866 became the new Provisional Theatre Orchestra. The director and conductor of this new orchestra was the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (1824–1884). A great Czech nationalist, Smetana expanded the standard orchestral repertoire to include and encourage the music of Bohemia. He encouraged Dvorák and Dvorák produced several pieces while he was working under Smetana, most notably a song cycle called The Cypress Trees, which told a story of unfulfilled love—the product of a similar unhappy event in Dvorák’s own life, when he fell in love with one of his own students. He later married the woman’s sister, Anna. The marriage was long and happy, and the pair had five children.

Dvorák’s first opera, Alfred (1870), like so many operas written at this time, showed the influence of Wagner in its epic scope and dark, heavy musical shading. It was not successful. Three years later, the success of his cantata, Hymnus (The Heirs of the White Mountain), enabled him to give up orchestral playing, and the following year his Symphony in E flat won the Austrian National Prize and the special approval of the most-distinguished juror, Johannes Brahms (1933-1897). Two years later, when Dvorák won again with his Moravian Duets, Brahms recommended him to his music publisher, Simrock. As a result, Dvorák’s music, with its powerful, folk-influenced melodies, captivating rhythms, and attractive harmonies, rapidly gained popularity all over Europe. Brahms and Dvorák became lifelong friends.

The benign influence of Smetana could be heard clearly in the strongly nationalist and extremely popular Slavonic Rhapsodies (1878), and a stream of successes followed. Dvorák became a wealthy man, and bought an estate in southern Bohemia. He was particularly popular in Great Britain, where his Stabat Mater (1876–1877) was a terrific success, and in 1884 he paid the first of nine visits to London. Several of his works were premiered in England: the Symphony in D minor (1885) was composed for the Philharmonic Society, and his cantata The Specter’s Bride (1885) received its first performance in Birmingham. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Cambridge University in 1891. That same year he was appointed professor of composition at the Prague Conservatoire.

Dvorák’s fame was not confined to Europe. In 1892, he was granted a leave of absence from Prague to accept the directorship of the newly-founded National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The three years that he spent in the U.S.A. were among the most productive of his career. He traveled widely and drew inspiration from the American landscape. He took a deep interest in the music of African Americans and Native Americans, and urged American composers to compose in the spirit of the music they heard around them: “I am now satisfied,” he wrote, “that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the African American [sic] melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.” Dvorák’s students recognized the truth of his words, and some of them went on to teach and influence a generation of American composers. Dvorák’s influence, direct and indirect, can be heard in the music of Gershwin, Copland, and Ellington. The Symphony No. 9 in E Minor (From the New World), written in 1893, is an eloquent demonstration of his theories of what American music should be like, and it remains one of the most popular works in the orchestral repertory. The influence of African American voices is heard too in his beautiful and deeply spiritual Ten Biblical Songs of 1894.

Dvorák returned to Prague in 1895, and devoted the remainder of his life to teaching and the writing of operas and symphonic poems. The operas Dimitrij (originally 1881–1882, revised 1894–1895), The Jacobin (originally 1887–1888, revised 1897), Kate and the Devil (1898–1899), Rusalka (1900), and Armida (1902–1903), all belong to the last nine fertile years of his life.

Dvorák was immensely successful and internationally popular during his lifetime, and remains one of the most universally well-liked composers. His natural gift for melody was combined with a deceptive simplicity of orchestration—in fact, while he learned not to imitate Wagner, he incorporated Wagner’s dramatic shadings and textures into his orchestral works as well as his operas. The deeply atmospheric opening of the New World Symphony demonstrates his debt to Wagner, while it is at the same time totally Dvorák’s own. Dvorák’s operas did not attempt the epic sweep of Wagner’s, concentrating instead on national and folk themes. The waltzes, polkas, reels, and dumkas (the dumka is a ballad-form, in which elegiac and fast tempi alternate) of his native Bohemia were successfully integrated into classical structures. This is most of all true of his chamber music, where dance forms and folk melodies are explored and transformed into music of radiant beauty. The influence of Brahms too can be felt in much of the chamber music, particularly in the deep and carefully nuanced textures of the Piano Trio in F Minor (1883)—this work can be regarded as a gracious tribute to his friend and champion.

Dvorák dignified familiar forms, and made them beautiful, exuberant, and mysterious. He once remarked: “To have a lovely thought is nothing so remarkable... but to carry out a thought well and make something great of it, that is the most difficult thing. That is, in fact—art!”