Already in he had drastically revised Dmitry. Though he attended only one session, this honor bears eloquent testimony to the long path he had travelled. This condition may have first arisen in when he was composing St. Ludmila on commission for the English: he felt himself to be under almost unbearable pressure and, as he himself recalled, was nearly driven to insanity. In the last few years before his death in , four months short of his sixty-third birthday, we observe a rather drastic and unexplained slowdown in all his activities.
He virtually ceased travelling. After conducting the world premiere of the Cello Concerto during his ninth and last visit to London in he never left continental Europe. After attending a concert in Berlin in he never left the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After appearances as conductor in Prague in the spring of he never again took up the baton in public.
And after visits to Vienna in , then possibly in May , he never left Bohemia. Even his known correspondence becomes ever more sparse during his last few years. In his music we find no lack of passages that are emotionally complex and sometimes deeply painful. Yet at root he appears to have been a man of strong mental disposition and great optimism, with a positive attitude toward life, strengthened by his firm religious conviction — as a Roman Catholic or perhaps, as his son Otakar asserted, a man of a broader religious outlook almost akin to pantheism; certainly he can be said to have virtually worshipped the beauty of nature.
But his rich legacy lived on and still lives today, provoking ever-new interpretations and insights. In particular he is often strangely overlooked, especially in America, as a composer of vocal music, which actually occupies about half his output in terms of performing time and which played a crucial role in the advancement of his career at several stages.
Those who know his vocal music and his symphonic poems contend persuasively that their neglect cannot be ascribed to any lack of quality. The explanations are diverse; here let us mention only one. We must remember that he lived during a period of intense nationalism among the Czechs, struggling to assert the distinctive character and worth of their culture after centuries of domination by the culture of Germans. His approach was almost always cosmopolitan, and his music deserves to be measured against the standards of all Western culture, not only or even primarily those of his nation.
Some of his most popular works would seem — if one doesn't listen very closely — to support his conventional image as a happy-go-lucky rustic with an unfailingly sunny disposition.
Skip to main content. Romantic Period. Search for:. Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player. You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser. From Rusalka Performed in German by Czech soprano Emmy Destinn in Hear the Music Romance Op. Beckerman, Michael B. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN New York: W.
Burghauser, Jarmil Includes a bibliography, co-edited by Dr. John Clapham and Dr. Pfannkuch, and a Survey of Life and Work. If there is a reference to one edition and the reader has access only to another edition, the catalogue numbers such as B. Butterworth, Neil Midas Books. ISBN X. Brown, A. Peter The symphonic repertoire, Volume 3, Part 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Clapham, John Stanley Sadie.
A-L in Czech. Goepp, Philip Henry Symphonies and their meaning: Third series: Modern symphonies. Philadelphia: J. Lippincott Company. Honolka, Kurt London: Haus Publishing. Horowitz, Joseph Cricket Books. Hurwitz, David Unlocking the Masters. Milwaukee: Amadeus Press. Peress, Maurice In , problems came to head over his salary, and he decided to return to Bohemia.
Its stand-out moment is the stunning Song to the Moon aria. He left behind many unfinished works. In , an American Liberty ship of the U. He was awarded the highest possible grant of gulden, which represented a fortune for the young family.
Dvorak was also successful in subsequent years, winning the award five years in a row. He had a great appreciation for Dvorak from the beginning and they later became lifelong friends. The fees Dvorak received were initially very low, however, they gradually increased as the composer became more prominent.
None of this came a moment too soon: despite the huge number of works he had already written, Dvorak, now past the age of thirty, was still an unknown entity in the eyes of the public at large. In terms of his subsequent career as a composer, the most important works to come out of this period were his Moravian Duets , which attracted the attention of the critics, for the most part in German-speaking territories.
Apart from the duets, Dvorak turned out a whole series of other pieces, including the popular Serenade for Strings in E major , the Piano Quartet in D major and Fifth Symphony in F major. After the death of his daughter Josefa, who died two days after birth, his one-year-old daughter Ruzena died under tragic circumstances phosphorus poisoning in August ; and, one month later, his son Otakar, then three-and-a-half years old, succumbed to smallpox.
Within a short period Dvorak had lost all three of his children. After the death of the first child he wrote the piano version of what would become one of his most celebrated works: Stabat mater. Slavic period Slavonic Dances - title page of the score In order to try to forget the recent tragic events as quickly as possible and probably also because of their neighbours, whose piano playing disturbed the composer in his work, the Dvoraks moved from Na Rybnicku street to a new address, Zitna 10 today 14 , which became their permanent home.
The following three years c. Dvorak produced a large number of works during a relatively short space of time, among them, further Moravian Duets, the Serenade for Wind Instruments in D minor , the three Slavonic Rhapsodies , a series of piano pieces, String Quartet No. These were followed by Symphony No. From the time of Handel, the country had cultivated a strong tradition in the performance of oratorios and cantatas and, once discerning London audiences had been introduced to the Stabat mater, the die was cast.
Dvorak was invited to London, a visit which proved crucial for his entire subsequent career. This particularly concerned Symphony No. Dvorak travelled to the British Isles a total of nine times and each visit was a triumph both for the composer and for Czech music.
His connections with England culminated in the conferral of an honorary degree from Cambridge University in June In Prague was visited on two occasions by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. During his visits he also met up with Dvorak and invited him to perform in Russia, a tour to Moscow and St Petersburg which was organised for March of The concerts were very well received by the public, however, the critics surprisingly claimed that Dvorak lacked invention.
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky American period In Dvorak received an offer which would have fundamental consequences for his life and work: an invitation to the United States of America. The enterprising president of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, Jeanette Thurber, decided to raise the prestige of the school by offering the post of director to a leading figure in European music circles.
The Czech maestro was chosen for this role. After much hesitation the composer finally signed a contract which obliged him to head the music institution and teach composition, and this for a salary that was thirty times higher than the amount the Prague Conservatoire was able to offer. As soon as he arrived he assumed his obligations and began acquainting himself with his new, unfamiliar environment. In the summer Dvorak and his family travelled for their holidays to the village of Spillville in the state of Iowa, where descendants of Czech emigrants live to this day.
Here the composer felt quite at home. In a joyful frame of mind, within just a few days, he penned the sun-filled String Quartet No.
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