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Antonín Dvořák

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Performers and composers

   Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( [ˈantoɲiːn ˈlɛopolt ˈdvor̝aːk] ; September 8,
   1841– May 1, 1904) was a Czech composer of Romantic music, who employed
   the idioms and melodies of the folk music of his native Bohemia in
   symphonic and chamber music.

Biography

Early career

   Dvořák was born on September 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves, near Prague (then
   Austrian Empire, today the Czech Republic), where he spent most of his
   life. His father was a butcher, innkeeper, and professional player of
   the zither. Dvořák's parents recognized his musical talent early, and
   he received his earliest musical education at the village school which
   he entered in 1847, age 6. He studied music in Prague's only Organ
   School at the end of the 1850s, and gradually developed into an
   accomplished violinist and violist. Throughout the 1860s he played
   viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theatre Orchestra, which from 1866
   was conducted by Bedřich Smetana. The need to supplement his income by
   teaching left Dvořák with limited free time, and in 1871 he gave up
   playing in the orchestra in order to compose. During this time, Dvořák
   fell in love with one of his pupils and wrote a song cycle, Cypress
   Trees, that expressed his anguish at her marriage to another man.
   However in 1873 he married his pupil's sister, Anna Čermakova. They had
   nine children.

   At about this time Dvořák began to be recognized as a significant
   composer. He became organist at St. Adalbert's Church, Prague, and
   began a period of prolific composition. Dvořák composed his second
   string quintet in 1875, and in 1877, the critic Eduard Hanslick
   informed him that his music had attracted the attention of Johannes
   Brahms, whom he later befriended. Brahms contacted the musical
   publisher Simrock, who as a result commissioned Dvořák's Slavonic
   Dances. Published in 1878, these were an immediate success. Dvořák's
   Stabat Mater (1880) was performed abroad, and after a successful
   performance in London in 1883, Dvořák was invited to visit England
   where he appeared to great acclaim in 1884. His Symphony No. 7 was
   commissioned for London; it premiered there in 1885. In 1891 Dvořák
   received an honorary degree from Cambridge University, and his Requiem
   Mass premiered later that year in Birmingham at the Triennial Music
   Festival.

America (1892–1895)

   From 1892 to 1895, Dvořák was the director of the National Conservatory
   of Music in New York City, at a then-staggering $15,000 annual salary.
   The Conservatory had been founded by a wealthy and philanthropic
   socialite, Jeannette Thurber; it was located at 126-128 East 17th
   Street , but was demolished in 1911 and replaced by what is now a high
   school. Here Dvořák met with Harry Burleigh, one of the earliest
   African-American composers, although Burleigh was never his pupil.
   Burleigh introduced traditional American Spirituals to Dvořák at the
   latter's request.

   In the winter and spring of 1893, while in New York, Dvořák wrote his
   most popular work, the Symphony No.9, "From the New World". He spent
   the summer of 1893 with his family in the Czech-speaking community of
   Spillville, Iowa, to which some of his cousins had earlier immigrated.
   While there he composed two of his most famous chamber works, the
   String Quartet in F (the "American"), and the String Quintet in E flat.
   In the same vein of American inspiration, he also wrote a Sonatina for
   violin and piano.

   Over the course of three months in 1895, Dvořák wrote his Cello
   Concerto in B minor, which was to become one of his most popular works.
   However, problems with Mrs. Thurber about his salary, together with
   increasing recognition in Europe — he had been made an honorary member
   of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna — and homesickness made
   him decide to return to Bohemia. He left New York before the end of the
   spring term.

   Dvořák's New York home was located at 327 East 17th Street near Perlman
   Place . It was in this home that the Ninth Symphony was written.
   Despite protests, from the then Czech President Václav Havel amongst
   others, who wanted the house preserved as a historical site, it was
   demolished to make room for a Beth Israel Medical Centre residence for
   people with AIDS. To honour Dvořák, however, a statue of him was
   erected in Stuyvesant Square .

Later career

   During his final years, Dvořák's compositional work centred on opera
   and chamber music. In 1896 he visited London for the last time to hear
   the premiere of his Cello Concerto. In 1897 his daughter married his
   pupil, the composer Josef Suk. Dvořák was director of the Conservatory
   in Prague from 1901 until his death in 1904. He is interred in the
   Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague.

   He left many unfinished works, including the early Cello Concerto in A
   major (see Concerti below).

Works

   Dvořák wrote in a variety of forms: his nine symphonies generally stick
   to classical models that Beethoven would have recognised, but he also
   worked in the newly developed symphonic poem form and the influence of
   Richard Wagner is apparent in some works. Many of his works also show
   the influence of Czech folk music, both in terms of rhythms and melodic
   shapes; perhaps the best known examples are the two sets of Slavonic
   Dances. Dvořák also wrote operas (the best known of which is Rusalka);
   chamber music (including a number of string quartets, and quintets);
   songs; choral music; and piano music.

Numbering

   While the majority of Dvořák's works were given opus numbers, these
   often bear little relationship to the order in which they were either
   written or published. To achieve better sales, some publishers such as
   Simrock preferred to present budding composers as being well
   established, by giving some relatively early works much higher opus
   numbers than their chronological order would merit. In other cases, the
   same opus number was given to more than one work. In yet other cases, a
   work was given as many as three different opus numbers by different
   publishers. This understandably led to a great deal of confusion, which
   was exacerbated by the facts that: (a) his symphonies were initially
   numbered by order of publication, not composition; (b) the first four
   symphonies to be composed were not published until after the last five
   were published; and (c) not all of the last five symphonies were
   published in order of composition. This explains why, for example, the
   New World Symphony was originally published as No.5, it was later known
   as No. 8, but is now referred to as No. 9.

   To shed some light on this confusion, Dvořák's works were
   chronologically catalogued in 1960 by Jarmil Burghauser in Antonín
   Dvořák. Thematic Catalogue. Bibliography. Survey of Life and Work
   (Export Artia Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1960). Dvořák's works are now
   more generally known by their B numbers (for Burghauser) than their
   opus numbers. In this catalogue, for example, the New World Symphony,
   Op. 95 is B.178.

Symphonies

   During Dvořák’s life only five symphonies were widely known. The first
   published was the 6th, dedicated to Hans Richter. After Dvořák’s death,
   research uncovered four unpublished symphonies, of which the manuscript
   of the first had even been lost to the composer himself. This led to an
   unclear situation in which the "New World" symphony has alternately
   been called the 5th, 8th and 9th. This article uses the modern
   numbering system, according to the order in which they were written.

   Symphony No. 1 in C minor was written when Dvořák was only 24 years
   old. Later subtitled The Bells of Zlonice after a village in Dvořák's
   native Bohemia, it shows inexperience but also genius with its many
   attractive qualities. It has many formal similarities with Beethoven's
   5th Symphony (for example, the movements follow the same keys: C minor,
   A flat major, C minor, C major), yet in harmony and instrumentation,
   Dvořák's First follows the style of Franz Schubert. (Some material from
   this symphony was reused in the Silhouettes, Opus 8, for piano solo.)

   Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 4, still takes Beethoven as a
   model, though this time in a brighter, more pastoral light.

   Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 10, clearly shows the sudden and
   profound impact of Dvořák's recent acquaintance with the music of
   Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. (A portion of the slow movement was
   reused in the sixth of the Legends, Opus 59, for piano duet or
   orchestra.) There is no scherzo.

   Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 13, still shows a strong influence of
   Wagner, particularly the second movement, which is reminiscent of the
   overture to Tannhauser. In contrast, the scherzo is strongly Czech in
   character.

   Symphony No. 5 in F major, Op. 76, and Symphony No. 6 in D major, Op.
   60, are largely pastoral in nature, and brush away nearly all the last
   traces of Wagnerian style. The Fifth has a dark slow movement that
   seems to quote Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto for its main theme.
   The Sixth shows a very strong resemblance to the Symphony No. 2 of
   Brahms, particularly in the outer movements, though this similarity is
   belied by the third-movement furiant, a vivid Czech dance.

   Symphony No. 7 in D minor of 1885, Op. 70, is sometimes reckoned to
   exhibit more formal tautness and greater intensity than the more famous
   9th Symphony. There is emotional torment in the Seventh that may
   reflect personal troubles: around this time, Dvořák was struggling to
   have his Czech operas accepted in Vienna, feeling pressure to write
   operas in German, and arguing with his publisher. His sketches show
   that the Seventh cost him much hard work and soul-searching.

   Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, is, in contrast with the 7th,
   characterised by a warmer and more optimistic tone. Karl Schumann (in
   booklet notes for a recording of all the symphonies by Rafael Kubelík)
   compares it to the works of Gustav Mahler. As with the 7th, some feel
   the 8th is the best of the symphonies. That some critics feel it
   necessary to promote a symphony as "better than the 9th" shows how the
   immense popularity of the 9th has overshadowed the earlier works.

   Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, may be better known by its subtitle,
   From the New World, and is also called the New World Symphony. It
   written between January and May 1893, while Dvořák was in New York. At
   the time of its first performance, he claimed that he used elements
   from American music such as Spirituals and Native American music in
   this work, but he later denied this. The first movement has a solo
   flute passage reminiscent of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, and one of his
   students later reported that the second movement depicted,
   programmatically, the sobbing of Hiawatha. The second movement was so
   reminiscent of a negro spiritual that William Arms Fisher wrote lyrics
   for it and called it Goin' Home. Dvořák was interested in indigenous
   American music, but in an article published in the New York Herald on
   December 15, 1893, he wrote "[In the 9th symphony] I have simply
   written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian
   music."

   Complete cycles of these symphonies have been recorded under conductors
   such as István Kertész, Rafael Kubelík, Otmar Suitner, Libor Pešek,
   Václav Neumann and Neeme Järvi.

Concertos

   Music critic Harold Schonberg expressed common critical opinion when he
   wrote that Dvořák wrote "an attractive Piano Concerto in G minor with a
   rather ineffective piano part, a beautiful Violin Concerto in A minor,
   and a supreme Cello Concerto in B minor" (The Lives of the Great
   Composers, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, revised edition, 1980). All
   the concertos are in the classical three movement form.

   The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G minor, Op. 33 was the first
   of three concertos that Dvořák composed and orchestrated, and it is
   perhaps the least known of those three. Dvořák composed his piano
   concerto from late August through September 14, 1876. Its autograph
   version contains many corrections, erasures, cuts and additions, the
   bulk of these made in the piano part. The work was premiered in Prague
   on March 24, 1878, with the orchestra of the Prague Provisional Theatre
   conducted by Adolf Cech, and the Czech pianist Karel Slavkovsky as
   soloist. As Dvořák wrote: "I see I am unable to write a Concerto for a
   virtuoso; I must think of other things." Instead, what Dvořák thought
   of and created was a concerto with remarkable symphonic values in which
   the piano plays a leading part in the orchestra rather than opposed to
   it. The Czech pianist and piano teacher Professor Vilém Kurz
   subsequently wrote an alternative, somewhat more virtuosic piano part
   for the concerto, which may, depending on the performer's preference,
   be played either partially or entirely in lieu of Dvořák's part. In
   1919 concert pianist Ilona Kurzová played the first performance of the
   Kurz version, conducted by Václav Talich.

   The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 53 was the second
   of the three concertos that Dvořák composed and orchestrated. He had
   met the great violinist Joseph Joachim in 1878 and decided to write a
   concerto for him. He finished it in 1879, but Joachim was skeptical of
   the work. He was a strict classicist and objected to Dvořák's inter
   alia or his abrupt truncation of the first movement's orchestral tutti,
   and he also did not like that the recapitulation was similarly cut
   short and that it led directly to the slow movement. He never actually
   played the piece. The concerto was premiered in 1883 in Prague by the
   violinist František Ondříček, who subsequently performed it in its
   debuts in Vienna and London. The second (slow) movement is especially
   celebrated for its lyricism.

   The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B minor, Op. 104 was the last
   composed of Dvořák's concertos. He wrote it in 1894-1895 for his
   friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan. Wihan and others had asked for a cello
   concerto for some time, but Dvořák always refused, stating that the
   cello was a fine orchestral instrument but totally insufficient for a
   solo concerto.

   Dvořák composed the concerto in New York while serving as the Director
   of the National Conservatory. In 1894 Victor Herbert, who was also
   teaching at the Conservatory, had written a cello concerto and
   presented it in a series of concerts. Dvořák attended at least two
   performances of Victor Herbert's cello concerto and was inspired to
   fulfill Wihan's request for a cello concerto. Dvořák's concerto
   received its premiere in London on March 16, 1896, with the English
   cellist Leo Stern. The work was well received. Brahms said of the work:
   "Had I known that one could write a cello concerto like this, I would
   have written one long ago!"

   Over thirty years earlier in 1865, Dvořák had composed a Cello Concerto
   in A Major, but with accompaniment by piano rather than orchestra. It
   is believed Dvořák had intended to orchestrate it, but abandoned it. It
   was orchestrated by the German composer Günter Raphael between 1925 and
   1929, and again by his cataloguer Jarmil Burghauser and published in
   this form in 1952 as B.10.

Chamber music

   Dvořák composed fourteen string quartets, the most popular being the
   12th, the 'American', Op. 96. He also composed two piano quintets, of
   which the 2nd, Op. 81, is better known. He left three string quintets,
   a terzetto for two violins and viola, and four piano trios, including
   the "Dumky", Op. 90.

Operas

   Dvořák’s critical acclaim as a composer of symphonies and concertos
   gave him a strong desire to write opera. Of all his operas, only
   Rusalka, Op. 114, and, to a much lesser extent, Kate and the Devil, Op.
   112, are played on contemporary opera stages with any frequency outside
   the Czech Republic. This is due to their uneven invention, their
   inadequate libretti, and perhaps also their staging requirements — The
   Jacobin, Armida, Wanda and Dimitrij need stages large enough to portray
   invading armies.

   There is speculation by Dvorak scholars such as Michael Beckerman that
   portions of his Symphony No. 9 "From the New World", notably the second
   movement, were adapted from studies for a never-written opera about
   Pocahontas.

   The German-born conductor Gerd Albrecht has recorded many of Dvořák’s
   operas on the Orfeo and Supraphon labels.

Notable students of Dvořák

     * Vítězslav Novák
     * Josef Suk
     * Will Marion Cook
     * William Arms Fisher

Dvořák's music in popular culture

     * The American National Football League has repeatedly used part of
       his Symphony 9 (Allegro Con Fuoco) as a "comeback" theme in the
       soundtracks of a number of their documentaries.
     * The main theme of the slow movement of the symphony became famous
       in Britain as the background to a TV advertisement (directed by
       Ridley Scott) for Hovis bread.
     * An extract of Dvorak's piece Humoresque was used as the theme tune
       for the Slappy Squirrel segments on Animaniacs.
     * Movement 4 of Dvorak's New World Symphony is played in the
       background at the climax of the duel between Monkey D. Luffy and
       Sir Crocodile in the anime One Piece.
     * Neil Armstrong took a recording of the 'New World' symphony to the
       Moon during the Apollo 11 mission, the first Moon landing, in 1969.
     * During US President Ford's funeral excerpts from the 'New World'
       were played several times.

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