Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904)

A Brief Biography
Antonin Dvorak was born the son of a butcher in a small village just north of Prague. His father was firmly committed to having him pursue the family trade, and Dvorak did become a butcher's apprentice. But the youngster loathed the job, and his musical talent caused him to undertake schooling in locations where there were more musical opportunities and where he could improve his mastery of German. At age 16 he entered the Prague Organ School and upon graduation it seemed that perhaps he would take on the uneventful life of a church musician, since his was deemed by the teachers there to be a practical talent rather than one cut out for theoretical or creative work. But during his school days Dvorak had obtained a glimpse of higher possibilities than this. He was a capable viola player who had participated in numerous orchestral performances, including operas by Wagner and Meyerbeer. In addition, he cultivated the acquaintance of a fellow student who had both a library of scores and a piano in his rooms, and Dvorak made good use of both resources (sometimes to the annoyance of neighbors who heard him playing during the night). His professional career began as part of a small ensemble that played entertainment music for restaurants, dances, and the like. Eventually this group became the foundation for a new Czech orchestra, and in 1863 it was the ensemble Wagner used for a concert of his own works on a trip through Prague. During nearly a decade in this orchestra (eventually with the great Czech nationalist composer Bedrich Smetana as its conductor), Dvorak began to compose; two symphonies were written in 1865, when he was 24, and he began some operas shortly thereafter. One of these offered him a valuable experience: it was called King and Charcoal Burner, and although it was a comic opera Dvorak set it in a rather elaborate, Wagnerian manner. When it was accepted for production but then rejected because it was too complicated, he withdrew the first setting and completely recomposed it in a simpler, more folkish style. This taught him to be more self-critical and helped him to find his true compositional voice.

Dvorak left the orchestra in 1871, when he was 30, in order to have more time for composition, but that meant that for a number of years his income was meager and primarily the result of teaching (and he did have a church job for three years beginning in 1874). His first steps toward public recognition for his compositions came in 1872, when his piano quintet op. 5 was performed in an afternoon concert of one of Prague's musical societies. In 1873 a cantata entitled "Hymn: Heirs of the White Mountain" was performed to great acclaim, and this emboldened Dvorak to begin a third symphony and, later in the year, to get married to Anna Cermakova, one of his students and the younger sister of Josefina who had been the inspiration for a cello concerto Dvorak had written earlier. The following year, 1874, was a decisive one, because Dvorak entered the competition for the Austrian State Stipendium, submitting the 3rd and 4th symphonies, some overtures, and some songs. He won a significant cash prize (400 gulden) which gave him further confidence, launched new compositional projects (commentators often point to his Fifth symphony, written at this time, as his breakthrough work in terms of compositional maturity), and prompted him to enter the competition in several subsequent years as well. After he won an even higher amount of money from the same source in 1877, one of the jurors, the famous Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, informed Dvorak that another of the jurors, Johannes Brahms, was deeply impressed by Dvorak's music, and that Dvorak should ask Brahms to put in a good word to his own publisher, Simrock, on Dvorak's behalf. Dvorak did so, and the rest, as they say, is history. Dvorak rocketed to fame on the shoulders of his first set of Slavonic Dances, published in 1878; once these were overwhelmingly successful Simrock was always eager to publish more works by Dvorak, and once his music was published Dvorak did not need to work so hard to promote his music. For the next decade and more his was a comfortable life in which he composed what he wished, had it published, and became a well-known figure as conductor of his own works in Germany, England, and of course his native Bohemia. His champions included such famous musicians of the day as Brahms, the conductors Hans Richter (in Vienna and England), Hans von Bülow, and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Richter was a particularly valuable and enthusiastic proponent of Dvorak's music. By 1887 Dvorak's music was universally popular, so that Richter's performance of the Symphonic Variations that year was described by him as the most successful performance of a new piece he had ever experienced (interestingly, the piece had made no impression when led by Dvorak in Prague a decade earlier).

Dvorak's life was not without heartache. In 1875 one of Dvorak's daughters died two days after her birth (it is sometimes suggested that the piano trio in G minor was written in her memory). In 1877 a daughter, who was then a toddler, accidentally drank a solution of phosphorus and died, and within a month a 3-year-old son contracted smallpox and died on Dvorak's 36th birthday. (The first of five children to reach adulthood was Otilie, born in 1878.) Another difficulty with which Dvorak had to deal as he became increasingly famous was the patronizing attitude toward Czechs on the part of those who wished to help him. Such figures as Brahms and his publisher Simrock frequently made him angry by their suggestions that he move away from Prague to a center like Vienna or Berlin, or that he publish his music with German rather than Czech titles. Further, his career in Vienna was made difficult at numerous times by anti-Czech feeling in the Austrian capital-the planned premiere of the Sixth Symphony had to be delayed, and only Richter's fortitude permitted the first Vienna performance of the Stabat mater to take place at all.

By about 1890 Dvorak's fame prompted several changes in his life. The publisher Simrock wanted to insist that Dvorak offer new works to him first, but then was reluctant to pay the fees Dvorak asked, which were what he could get from other publishers. Eventually relations between the two were broken off (although they resumed a few years later). About that time, Dvorak paid a visit to Russia that was engineered by Tchaikovsky, who had become friendly with Dvorak beginning of a visit to Prague in 1888. In 1891 Dvorak was the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University. A year later Dvorak took up duties as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York at the invitation of Jeanette Thurber. Dvorak spent nearly three years in New York, with the famous summer in Spillville, Iowa occurring after the first year. Dvorak's role was to be a figurehead for the conservatory and to see what he could do to help found a national school (in the larger sense) of composition. Looking back on her years of running the Conservatory, Mrs. Thurber believed that getting Dvorak to come to America was her most significant coup. Dvorak wrote many significant works during those years, including the 9th Symphony ("From the New World"), the F major String quartet, the E-flat major string quintet, and the Cello Concerto.

During his time in New York Dvorak had become very close to Anton Seidl, music director of the Metropolitan Opera and one of the orchestras later to become part of the New York Philharmonic. Seidl had been an assistant of Wagner and was one of the great conductors of his day, and Dvorak's early love for Wagner's music was rekindled by exposure to Seidl. In addition, the responsibility of imagining an American style of composition caused him to think more intentionally about his own nationalistic role. Thus the major compositional projects once he returned home in 1895 were concert overtures on nationalistic subjects, and operas that return to including some Wagnerian influence. Dvorak was healthy until early in the year 1904, when at various times he complained of a pain in his side. He was bedridden for the month of April, felt good enough to get up to celebrate May Day, but died suddenly and unexpectedly just after having enjoyed a bowl of soup.

Dvorak and Niagara Falls
On his way back from Spillville, Dvorak had the opportunity to visit Niagara Falls. As was typical for him when encountering something new and interesting, he paid close attention to it for a number of minutes. When he turned away, he remarked, "What a Symphony in B minor that will be!" (A few years later Mahler also visited the falls. His comment was even terser: "Fortissimo at last!")

Dvorak and birds
Dvorak simply loved birds. At his country home he kept flocks of pigeons and watched them with great passion. During his residency in New York the singer Harry T. Burleigh recalled that when he visited Dvorak's home "he had bird cages all over the house with thrushes in them. He kept the cage doors open so the thrushes flew about freely." He startled his hosts in Spillville on the first morning of his visit by rising extremely early and going bird watching (he was especially intrigued because he found the birds there "different from ours, they have much brighter colors and they sing differently, too"). Some people find bird song in various Dvorak compositions, and the composer himself contemplated writing a bird symphony to which he would bring his best effort.

Dvorak as teacher
Once he had become famous Dvorak had doubts about his ability to teach composition, because he associated that activity with a systematic pedantry of which he did not consider himself capable. Nevertheless, just before he began his stint in America he began teaching composition classes at the Prague Conservatory and resumed them after having filled a similar post in New York. He was an intuitive teacher, one who was inspirational to his students because of the genuineness of his reactions to their ideas. He could be gruff and demanding as a pedagogue but brought out the best in his students. He sometimes drove them to distraction by approving a passage or piece on one occasion, then demanding that it be rewritten or replaced later. One of his students understood his pedagogical method well when he reported: "if he found something (and that happened very often) with which he did not agree and which he wanted to have differently and better written, he forced us to think about it and did not give in till we had found a better way." . "'What good would it be to you,' he would often say, 'if I were to write it the way it should be! It wouldn't be yours then and every musician worth his salt would know that somebody had put it right for you. Anybody who wants to compose must get accustomed to think and work independently!'"

Dvorak visits Nebraska
During the summer of 1893, most of which was spent in Spillville, Iowa, Dvorak also had the opportunity to come to Nebraska. He came to Omaha to visit his friend Edward Rosewater, who had grown up in Bukovany. Dvorak's own account of the visit is the fullest we have:

"Not long ago we went on a trip to the State of Nebraska, to the town of Omaha, where there are also [as in Spillville] many Czechs. I went to visit Mr. Rosewater (Czech from Bukovany). He is a personal friend of [President] Harrison's and [President] Cleveland's and of many outstanding politicians. He has grown rich here and his magazine, the Omaha "Bee," is the most influential in the West and, in general, he is highly esteemed and respected. We stayed with him the three days of our stay there. In the evening Czechs came to play me a "standerl" and when we were leaving, an American band came too, and played a few pieces. As you can imagine, a banquet was not wanting and we were very jolly and the Czechs were tremendously happy and so was I."

Dvorak and the piano
Dvorak trained early on as an organist; this keyboard experience carried over into his work as a pianist. All who heard him play agree that he never developed either the temperament or the technique of a virtuoso, but likewise agree that he was a fine sight reader and a communicative player who knew how to find the essence of the music even if he did not play all the notes.

His piano compositions follow course. The piano concerto-despite many beauties the least successful of Dvorak's three concertos completed in his maturity-does not demonstrate the kind of virtuosity typical of most late 19th-century essays in that genre, and his many works for solo piano are mostly miniatures (character pieces and dances). Two large-scale pieces are the Theme and Variations in A-flat, op. 36 (1876) and the great Suite in A, op. 98 (1894). This latter work, though, has become at least as well known through Dvorak's orchestral version, and one of Dvorak's most famous melodies, the Humoresque in G-flat, op. 101, no. 7 (1894) is hardly known in its original piano version. It became famous through Fritz Kreisler's arrangement of it for violin and piano (or orchestra), and since then has been adapted for performance by many other instrumental combinations.

Dvorak and Brahms
One of Dvorak's most responsible biographers has gone so far as to write that "Brahms was the chief agent of Dvorak's success," largely because he paved the way for Dvorak with his own publisher, suggested that performers commission works from his younger Czech colleague, and because, as the leading German composer of instrumental music of his day, his genuine enthusiasm for Dvorak could not be concealed and carried great weight.

An excellent essay by David Beveridge on the relationship, both personal and musical, between Brahms and Dvorak seems to suggest that Brahms, as the more widely read, the more famous, and the one located in a major European capital (Vienna) could afford to be generous in his opinion and encouragement of Dvorak, and that Dvorak was too humble a person to sense any subconscious condescension in Brahms's attitude. Brahms admired Dvorak's music for the characteristic melodic charm that tends to be lacking from his own music, and mostly defended Dvorak's music to those who compared it unfavorably to his own, admitting that he'd have done things differently but that there is great beauty in Dvorak's music anyway. At the end of his life, after hearing Dvorak's cello concerto, he exclaimed: "had I known that such a violoncello concerto as that could be written, I could have tried to compose one myself!" It might be suggested that Brahms did use other pieces by Dvorak as models-in particular, Brahms's Third Symphony has many unusual features that can easily be explained by reference to Dvorak's Fifth, written some eight years earlier.

Dvorak admired Brahms greatly and gave him much credit for advancing his career. He was sometimes secretly annoyed by the older composer's distaste for the Czech people from a political perspective (and most of Brahms's relatively few expressions of distaste for Dvorak's music come in connection with the more overtly patriotic works), but found him personally congenial and visited Brahms whenever his travels brought him to Vienna. Dvorak's simple piety was a characteristic Brahms defended as necessary because Dvorak was too industrious in turning out new compositions to have time for questioning the faith he learned in childhood. But after one of his last visits to Brahms, Dvorak expressed sorrow at Brahms's lack of religious faith: "Such a man, such a soul-and he doesn't believe in anything!" he exclaimed. Earlier in that visit Brahms, whose distaste for Bruckner's music was pretty thorough, tried to induce Dvorak to move to Vienna in order to teach composition at the Vienna Conservatory in order to counterbalance the influence of Bruckner. Brahms even offered Dvorak his own fortune in order to finance moving Dvorak's large family to Vienna. In short, even if these two great composers only partially understood one another, their relationship was based on the greatest possible respect.