On the 2nd November 1856, after two years of
apprenticeship, Dvofak was awarded the necessary
certificate entitling him to carry on the trade of
butcher. Fortunately, at the same time he was having
violin lessons and making his first acquaintance with
the piano and organ, taught by his local organist and
choirmaster.
Born about 20 miles from Prague, the eldest of
nine children, his early years were spent in a typical
Bohemian village of the time. His father rented the
local inn and his butcher’s business, and the com-
poser’s early encounters with music were in the
village Church and at home in the inn, where any feast
day, wedding or other event to celebrate would bring
out the village band to play its exuberant versions of
Bohemian folk-music. Such music was above all a
natural means of expression to these people, a second
nature which the young Dvofék could not have evaded
even had he so desired. Its influence is never far
away from his music.
With DvoFék, this rather bucolic approach is
strictly relevant to any appreciation of his orchestral
music. His astonishing rise from this humble back-
ground to his ultimate triumphs in America and
England made very little difference to his temperament
or his musical instincts. He remained a simple and
perhaps naive, but sincere and genial son of his native
Bohemia throughout his life. He was able to accept
his success without conceit or flamboyance, with
sincere gratitude and a great pride in the honour it
brought to his homeland.
His genius depended to a greater extent than most
on sheer inspiration and an innate instinct for sound
colour, and it is difficult to avoid a comparison with
Schubert. The two composers had a great deal in
common in their endless supply of fresh and vital
ideas, with a fund of rhythmic and harmonic surprises
at their command, especially in their modulations.
There is however not a trace of the urbanity which
informs Schubert’s music and gives his work a sense
of polish. Dvofak’s ideas were of such a rustic
artlessness and exuberance that any form of sophisti-
cation would deprive them of their spontaneity. The
subtle nuance is missing, yet is not missed.
Hence it is no service to Dvofak to refine his
dynamic indications or look for non-existent points of
subtlety. His impact is made by the robust nature of
his ideas and their uninhibited working out. The lack
of profundity is completely obviated by the endless
interest in his treatment of his ideas. Their emotional
mood is of the moment, and changes frequently or
even abruptly, but with a sincerity and lack of
complexity which makes them immediately appealing
and convincing.
The Scherzo Capriccioso is an extended and
exuberant Slavonic dance, largely built on the opening
horn motive and the lilting waltz of the violins. There
is no change of tempo indicated for the latter, from
the opening allegro con fuoco, and in fact the first
moment of respite is at the cor anglais solo of the
trio—poco tranquillo. Another violin motive very
reminiscent of the Slavonic Dances leads to a further
development of the first two ideas, until a Tchaikov-
skian harp cadenza heralds the short but exciting coda.
Written in the spring of 1883, four months after
his mother’s death, the work has been credited with a
prevailing sadness which is hard to sustain. There is
more utter despair in the second movement of the G
major Symphony, in the tragic outburst of the horns
and then strings (after the falling thirds of the
clarinets) than in the whole of the Scherzo, and the
opening bars of the symphony have a more poignant
air than the saddest part of the earlier work.
A direct result of Dvofak’s type of inspiration was
that it tended to create forms to suit its ideas. His
eighth symphony (1889) is the most “unorthodox” of
his symphonies in the classical sense, without being
self-consciously so, and yet is formally completely
satisfying through the composer’s instinctive ability
to use his ideas in such a way as to give the impres-
sion of a firm formal! structure. But the sheer abundance
of ideas in the work is so great that the resulting
forms are impossible to imitate since they depend for
their very existence on the ideas themselves, and a
formal analysis would be of little assistance.
Dvofék composed very quickly and hated to revise
his symphonic works, The nearest he came to revision
(apart from the Fifth Symphony opus 76, known as the
No.3 in F) was his genius for adding counter melodies
when he came to orchestrate his sketches. Of this
there are innumerable examples, but two will suffice —
the writing for trombones and trumpets before the coda
of the first movement, and the trumpet counterpoint to
the first part of the flute variation in the last
movement.
The G major symphony is fundamentally based on
the alternating tonalities of minor and major. The first
and third movements (with frequent excursions into
other keys) rest firmly on G minor and major, the
second on C minor and major, and the finale, which is
a very free form of theme with variations, between G
major and C minor. This in itself makes the work both
novel and interesting, while the writing for the
individual sections of the orchestra is so vital that
performers derive as much pleasure from it as the
listener. The writing for horns and violas is as varied
as it is for any of the woodwind, and contributes its
full share to the exuberance of the result.
Dvorak himself is reported to have said thatin this
symphony he wanted to write a work with individual
ideas worked out in a new way. He succeeded in doing
this and yet in giving the work an impression of unity
which belies its unorthodoxy. Having done so, he first
of all presented it to the Franz Josef Academy in
Prague (on being elected a member), and then offered
it as his “thesis” to the University of Cambridge on
receiving an honorary Doctorate of Music. The irony of
offering such an academically “incorrect” work to both
of these distinguished bodies seems to have passed
without Comment. RAY MINSHULL
Printed in U.S.A.
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