Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them", and Dvořák has been described as "arguably the most versatile... composer of his time".
Dvořák displayed his musical gifts at an early age, being a talented violin student. The first public performances of his works were in Prague in 1872 and, with special success, in 1873, when he was 31 years old. Seeking recognition beyond the Prague area, he submitted scores of works including symphonies to competitions in Germany and Austria. He did not win a prize until 1874, with Johannes Brahms on the jury of the Austrian State Competition. In 1877, after his third win, Brahms recommended Dvořák to his publisher, Simrock, who commissioned what became the Slavonic Dances, Op. 46. The sheet music's high sales and critical reception led to his international success. A London performance of Dvořák's Stabat Mater in 1883 led to many other performances in the United Kingdom, the United States, and eventually Russia in March 1890. The Seventh Symphony was written for London in 1885.
In 1892, Dvořák became the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City. While in the United States, Dvořák wrote his two most successful orchestral works: the Symphony From the New World, which spread his reputation worldwide, and his Cello Concerto, one of the most highly regarded of all cello concerti. On a summer holiday in Spillville, Iowa, in 1893, Dvořák also wrote his most famous piece of chamber music, his twelfth String Quartet in F major, Op. 96, the American. While he remained at the Conservatory for a few more years, pay cuts and an onset of homesickness led him to return to Bohemia in 1895.
All of Dvořák's ten operas, except his first, have librettos in Czech and were intended to convey the Czech national spirit, as were some of his choral works. By far the most successful of the operas is Rusalka, premiered in 1901. Among his smaller works, the seventh Humoresque and the song "Songs My Mother Taught Me" are also widely performed and recorded. The Dvořák Prague International Music Festival is a major series of concerts held annually to celebrate Dvořák's life and works.
Biography
Early life
Dvořák was born in Nelahozeves near Prague, in the Austrian Empire, and was the eldest son of and his wife, . František worked as an innkeeper, a professional player of the zither, and a butcher. Anna was the daughter of Josef Zdeněk, the bailiff of the Prince of Lobkowicz. Anna and František married on 17 November 1840. Dvořák was the first of 14 children, eight of whom survived infancy. Dvořák was baptized as a Roman Catholic in the village's church of St. Andrew. Dvořák's years in Nelahozeves nurtured his strong Christian faith and the love for his Bohemian heritage that so strongly influenced his music. In 1847, Dvořák entered primary school and was taught to play violin by his teacher Joseph Spitz. He showed early talent and skill, playing in a village band and in church.The Nelahozeves train station was built during Dvořák's childhood, and he obtained a lifelong passion for trains.
František, unsuccessful as innkeeper and butcher but managed a living as a musician, was pleased with his son's gifts. At the age of 13, through the influence of his father, Dvořák was sent to Zlonice in 1853 to live with his uncle Antonín Zdenĕk in order to learn the German language. His first composition, the "Forget-Me-Not Polka" in C was written possibly as early as 1855.
Dvořák took organ, piano, and violin lessons from his German-language teacher. Liehmann also taught the young boy music theory and introduced him to the composers of the time; Dvořák had much regard for Liehmann despite his teacher's violent temper. Liehmann was the church organist in Zlonice and sometimes let Antonín play the organ at services. Dvořák took further organ and music theory lessons at Česká Kamenice with Franz Hanke, who encouraged his musical talents even further and was more sympathetic. At the age of 16, at the urging of Liehmann and Zdenĕk, František allowed his son to become a musician, on the condition that the boy should work toward a career as an organist. After leaving for Prague in September 1857, Dvořák entered the city's Prague Organ School, studying singing with Josef Zvonař, theory with František Blažek, and organ with. The latter was not only a professor at the Prague Conservatory, but also a composer for the organ; his son Josef Bohuslav Foerster became a better known composer. Dvořák also took an additional language course to improve his German and worked as an "extra" violist in numerous bands and orchestras, including the orchestra of the St. Cecilia Society. Dvořák graduated from the Organ School in 1859, ranking second in his class. He applied unsuccessfully for a position as an organist at, but remained undaunted in pursuing a musical career.
In 1858, he joined Karel Komzák's orchestra, with whom he performed in Prague's restaurants and at balls. The high professional level of the ensemble attracted the attention of Jan Nepomuk Maýr, who engaged the whole orchestra in the Bohemian Provisional Theatre Orchestra. Dvořák played viola in the orchestra beginning in 1862. Dvořák could hardly afford concert tickets, and playing in the orchestra gave him a chance to hear music, mainly operas. In July 1863, Dvořák played in a program devoted to the German composer Richard Wagner, who conducted the orchestra. Dvořák had had "unbounded admiration" for Wagner since 1857. In 1862, Dvořák began composing his first string quartet. In 1864, Dvořák agreed to share the rent of a flat located in Prague's Žižkov district with five other people, including violinist and, who later became a singer. In 1866, Maýr was replaced as chief conductor by Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák was making about $7.50 a month. The constant need to supplement his income pushed him to give piano lessons.
Marriage and children
It was through these piano lessons that he met his future wife, Anna. He originally fell in love with Anna's sister Josefína Čermáková, who was his pupil and actress colleague from the Provisional Theatre. It was apparently for Josefína that he composed the song-cycle "Cypresses". However, she never returned Dvořák's affections and later married another man, Count Wenzel Robert von Kaunitz.In 1873 Dvořák married Josefina's younger sister, Anna Čermáková. They had nine children, of whom several died in infancy. The children were: Otakar, Josefa, Růžena, Otýlie, Anna, , Antonín, and Aloisie. In 1898 Otýlie, a composer in her own right, married Dvorak's student, the composer Josef Suk, but died only seven years later. In 1960, shortly before his own death, the older Otakar wrote a book about his father.
Composer and organist
Dvořák called his String Quintet in A minor his Opus 1, and his First String Quartet his Opus 2, although the chronological Burghauser Catalogue numbers these as B.6 and B.7, showing five earlier compositions without opus numbers. In the early 1860s, Dvořák also made his first symphonic attempts, some of which he self-critically burned. The manuscript of a symphony in C minor without opus number, B.9, composed in 1865, was preserved. This symphony has come to be numbered as Dvořák's First. His early attempts at composition met with neither critical reception nor were they publicly performed. Until 1870 his compositions, according to the Burghauser Catalogue had no known premieres, or were premiered in 1888 or later. For example, the Third String Quartet, B.18, was written in about 1869 but first published posthumously in 1964 and premiered in 1969. In 1870, he composed his first opera, Alfred, over the course of five months from May to October. Its overture was first publicly performed as late as 1905, and the full opera only in 1938.In 1871, Dvořák left the Provisional Theatre orchestra to have more time for composing. Up through 1871 Dvořák only gave opus numbers up to 5 among his first 26 compositions. The first press mention of Antonín Dvořák appeared in the Hudební listy journal in June 1871, and the first publicly performed composition was the song Vzpomínání to a warm response from both audience and critics, making it an "unqualified success". Dvořák's compositions were now becoming recognized in Prague.
When Dvořák turned 33 in 1874, he was still almost unknown as a composer outside Prague and the surrounding area. That year, he applied for and won the Austrian State Prize for composition, awarded in February 1875 by a jury consisting of the critic Eduard Hanslick, Johann Herbeck, director of the State Opera, and Johannes Brahms. It seems that Brahms had only recently joined the jury, as he was not on it during the calendar year of 1874, according to Hanslick. Hanslick had first-hand knowledge, as a continuing member of the jury
. Nevertheless, Brahms had time and opportunity to appreciate Dvořák's 1874 submission. Leon Botstein says that the jury's purpose was "to award financial support to talented composers in need" in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The jury received a "massive submission" from Dvořák: "fifteen works including two symphonies, several overtures and a song cycle". Brahms was "visibly overcome" by the "mastery and talent" of Dvořák. The two symphonies were Dvořák's third and fourth, both of which had been premiered in Prague in the spring of 1874.
Clapham gives the official report for the 1874 prize, saying Dvořák was a relatively impoverished music teacher who "has submitted 15 compositions, among them symphonies, which display an undoubted talent...The applicant... deserves a grant to ease his straitened circumstances and free him from anxiety in his creative work." It says he had not yet owned a piano. Before being married, he had lodged with five other men, one of whom owned a small "spinet" piano.
In 1875, the year his first son was born, Dvořák composed his second string quintet, his 5th Symphony, Piano Trio No. 1, and Serenade for Strings in E. He again entered but this time did not win the Austrian State Prize. He did win it in 1876, and finally felt free to resign his position as an organist. In 1877, he wrote the Symphonic Variations, and Ludevít Procházka conducted its premiere in Prague.