Dvořák Biography
Knowing little about Dvořák, I read Paul Stefan’s biography, Anton Dvořák, translated by Y.W. Vance and published by DaCapo Press, 1971 (a reprint of the 1941 ed.) The following distillation is based on this source. Enjoy! —
Joyce Kirkpatrick
Antonín Dvořák was born September 18, 1841 in Nelahozeves, a small village of red-tiled roofs on the Moldau River, in and area of farmlands, orchards and woodlands north of Prague. Franz, his father played the violin, zither and in the village band, as did many in the Bohemian culture of that time. Franz, the son of a publican and butcher, ran a less-than-thriving inn. Antonín’s mother, Anna Zdenĕk, had been a servant in the nearby Lobkowitz palace. (The Lobkowicz Palace in Prague is open and worth visiting, I’m told.)
The eldest of 8 children, Dvořák attended the village school where the schoolmaster and village organist, Josef Spitz, taught him to play the violin. At 14, Antonín was sent to the town of Zlonitz to live with an uncle and learn to speak the German essential to innkeeping. Both his schoolmaster, Josef Toman, and the German teacher, Anton Liehmann, were excellent musicians. The latter conducted his own orchestra and gave lessons among families of the palace officials and town burghers. The music that Liehmann composed for his orchestra showed the influences of Bohemian folk music and of classical music. He taught the young Antonín to play the viola, piano and organ.
Giving up their poor inn at tiny Nelahozeves, the Dvořák family acquired another in the larger Zlonitz, but sent Antonín to Bőmisch-Kamnitz, away from these musicians and to learn more German. However he found another music teacher there and was soon conducting the village choir. After a year he returned to Zlonitz to help in the inn. He also composed dances and marches for Liehmann’s orchestra.
In 1857 Uncle Zdeněk offered to pay for 16 year old Antonín to attend to Prague’s Organ School. The Organ School, which later merged with the Prague Conservatory, had Prague’s best musicians as faculty and it produced many practicing musicians and composers. Antonín also played the viola in the orchestra of the St. Cecilia Society where he learned of Schumann and Wagner.
In 1859 Antonín graduated from the Organ School, stronger in the “practice” of music than in theory, which perhaps may be attributed to his still imperfect mastery of German. He is known to have intentionally composed in false relations and in consecutive fifths, both forbidden according to the time’s music theories, yet he was 2nd of 12 in his class.
According to his biographer, the prolific composer made music in the joyous spirit of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven was his ‘spiritual guide’ in symphonic and chamber music. He also felt himself akin to Schubert, with a jubilant love of life, melancholy and melodies. Writing at a time of emerging nationalism, Dvořák gave his people the national music they lacked.
In 1865 Dvořák still lacked a piano which he felt was necessary for composing, so he shared quarters with five other young musicians in the Czech National Theater Orchestra that also had to play three times a week in the inns of Prague. He also gave music lessons, and thus met Josefa and Anna at the home of their father the goldsmith Čermak. Josefa did not return his love and later married Count Kaunitz.
About this time he began to be published by the Prague publisher Simrock, and even by Novello in London. Now that he was earning more money, Dvořák moved back to his Uncle Dusek’s and rented a piano from a tailor. At this point, in his thirties, he became drawn to Brahms’ music. On November 17, 1873, Dvořák and Anna Čermak, who was also a gifted contralto, were married. Dvořák’s career continued to develop and he became Organist at St. Adalbert Church.
1875 – In this year Dvořák applied for and was awarded a yearly stipend in the form of the Austrian State Prize. Johannes Brahms, one of the Commissioners on the judging panel, declared that Dvořák had youth, poverty and talent! This brought Dvořák to the attention of Hans Richter, conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. Several years later Dvořák and Brahams met face to face and became lifelong friends.
Also in 1875 the first of several tragedies befell Dvořák. His little daughter died. The following year, from February 19 to May 7 he sketched out the poignantly beautiful Stabat mater. In September of that year his three year old son had a fatal accident, and in October his second daughter died. He returned to the Stabat mater and finished on November 13. It became extraordinarily popular, and was performed first in Prague in 1880, then Budapest in 1882, London in 1883 (with an orchestra of 150 and a choir of 900!) and Vienna in 1886.
In 1878 Dvořák’s daughter Ottilie was born and he won the Austrian State Prize for the fifth time. It may be noted that Anna and Antonín eventually had five more children — all healthy. This same year he composed 149th Psalm for Prague’s Choral Society (Hlahol) for its spring concert in 1879. According to Stefan, it is an expression of joy and clarity with alternating voices against a background of sustained chords in the strings. It recalls Handel, Gluck and a theme in Wagner’s Meistersinger.
Brahms vs. Wagner was an ongoing debate in the musical circles of the time and many viewed Brahms to be Richard Wagner’s prime antagonist. Dvořák, friend of Brahms, also liked Wagner, but was advised against expressing that opinion publicly. Ten years older than Dvořák, Brahms had become a magnanimous friend, often correcting Dvořák’s proofs for him.
In the 1880’s Dvořák became a citizen of the world, although he always claimed to be a simple man of peasant background. In 1884 he was invited to London to conduct the Albert Hall Choral Society in the Stabat mater. There were 800 in the choir, 24 first violins in the orchestra, and 12,000 people in the audience. It was overwhelming. He was much loved in England. At this time he was approached by the American composer Dudley Buck about coming to America. Eight years later he did, to much acclaim.
Finally Dvořák became well paid by his publishers Simrock in Prague and Novello in London. At last he was able to buy some property in the hills and forests of Vysoká, about 1½ hours’ walk from the mining town of Příbram. He rehabilitated a one story granary and turned it into a summer house. After 1885 his beloved Vysoká became his second home.
1885 - Dvořák made his third trip to London to conduct his D minor Symphony for the Philharmonic Society to which he had been elected an Honorary Member. During his stay, from April16 to May 14, perhaps homesick for his family, he wrote a Lullabye.
In August he returned to London a fourth time in August for the premiere in Leeds of his oratorio St. Ludmilla.
Mass in D
From March to June, 1886 in Vysoká, Dvořák wrote the Mass in D. Josef Hlávka, a wealthy patron of the arts, commissioned it for the consecration on September 1st of a chapel on his estate. The first public performance was in 1888 at Prague’s Pilsen Municipal Theater. It was very successful. After Simrock hesitated to publish it, Novello did so with a piano score as Opus 86 in 1892. It should have been Opus 76, but Simrock had already used that number for another piece. According to Stefan, the Mass had simplicity and colloquial idiom — the influence of the Nature that Dvořák so loved. He states that Dvořák had a unique way of letting God speak through music; that this is more “idyllic” than the Stabat mater or the Requiem. [The Mass in D] seems the “spontaneous speaking of Dvořák’s heart.”
About this time, Simrock wrote to Brahams: “It is extraordinary what a lot of music that man has in his head and, inspite of his silence (in Prague, his wife tells me, he is called ‘Bohemian Moltke’), he is a charming fellow…”
That brings us to the point where the Greater Middletown Chorale is in 2006, and again, in 2008, but many more adventures awaited Dvořák and his family — their trips to America, and great musical successes. See your local library for those stories.
JK
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