Antonín Dvorák

Czech composer in the Romantic style
1841 - 1904

Dvorak was born in a small village on the banks of the river Vltava, approximately 45 miles north of Prague. He left school aged 11 to become an apprentice butcher, and the following year was sent to Zlonce to learn German. Most of his time, however, he spent on music lessons, learning the organ, viola, piano and basic composition. His interest in music was such that, despite misgivings, his father eventually allowed him to enrol at the Prague Organ School in 1857. There Dvorák received the strict training of a church musician, but after classes attended as many orchestral concerts as he could, enjoying especially the music of contemporary composers such as Wagner and Schumann.

After graduating in 1859, Dvorak became principal violist in the new Provisuinal Theatre orchestra, conducted after 1866 by Smetana. The need to supplement his income by teaching left Dvorák with limited free time, and in 1871 he gave up the orchestra in order to compose. He fell in love with one of his pupils and wrote a song cycle, Cypress Trees, expressing his anguish at her marriage to another man. He soon overcame his despondency, however, and in 1873 he married her sister Anna Cermakova.

In 1874 Dvorák entered no fewer than 15 works - including his Third Symphony - for the Austrian National Prize. He won and received a welcome cash prize and, perhaps more importantly, the admiration and support of Brahms, who was one of the judges. Brahms put Dvorák in touch with his own publisher, Simrock, who commissioned the popular first set of Slavonic Dances in 1878. These robust pieces, notable for sudden mood switches from exuberant dance tunes to dark and melancholy melodies, were played not only in the musical centres of Europe, but also in the United States and England. From this point on Dvorák's fame escalated. In 1884 he received a warm welcome to London, the first of nine visits. Several of his major works, including the Seventh and Eights Symphonies, were written for performance in England. Often regarded as Dvorák's greatest work, the Seventh Symphony powerfully expresses a mood of tragedy through solemn music overlaid with ominous and foreboding overtones. In contrast, the more relaxed Eight Symphony makes use of the folk melodies, conveyed with rythmic verve and colourful orchestration. Dvorák was appointed Professor of Composition at the Prague Conservatoire in 1891, but soon after took up the offer of Directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. He stayed for three years in the United States, spending summer holidays in Spillville, a Czech-speaking community in Iowa. It is from this period that some of his best-loved music comes, notably the Symphony No.9 (From the New World) and the American String Quartet. Both these works make use of themes influenced by American Indian folk melodies and Negro spirituals. As Dvorák later admitted, something of their melancholy can be attributed to the homesickness he felt during his time in America. Just before leaving in 1895 he produced his major symphonic work, the remarkable Cello Concerto, which in its expressive power and melodic beauty rivals even the Seventh Symphony.

Returning to Prague with some relief, Dvorák resumed his post at the Prague Conservatoire and in 1901 became its director. For the last three years of his life he devoted the greater part of his creative energies to working on symphonic poems and operas. He died in 1904. Dvorák's importance lies partly in his nationalist outlook. During the later half of the nineteenth century, Bohemia (later part of the Czech Republic) - long supressed under German rule - fought for its political and cultural independence. Dvorák, like Smetana and Janácek, consciously looked to Bohemian folklore for artistic inspiration, imitating traditional melodies, as in the Slavonic Dances, or using traditional legends, as in his best-known opera, Rusalka, composed in 1900. Dvorák exercised a great gift for absorbing folk styles and reproducing them in the context of the Classical tradition.

• Concerto for Cello in B Minor, op. 104
• Quartets for Strings Nos. 10, 12 "American", & 14
• Quartets for Piano and Strings Nos. 1 & 2
• Slavonic Dances
• Symphonies Nos. 7, 8, & 9 "From the New World"