Antonín Dvořák

Antonín Dvořák was born on 8 September 1841 at Nelahozeves, a Bohemian village on the Vltava north of Prague. His father, František, was a butcher and innkeeper who played the zither. The eldest of nine children, Antonín learned the violin from the village schoolmaster and played in the family inn and at church. His father wanted him to take over the butcher’s shop and sent him to Zlonice to learn German and the trade. But his teacher, the organist Antonín Liehmann, noticed his talent and persuaded the family to let him study music.

In 1857 he entered the Prague Organ School, where he received a solid training. He played viola in a dance band and then, from 1862, at the Provisional Theatre in Prague, where operas were performed in Czech. He played there for nine years, partly under Bedřich Smetana, whom he admired. He earned little and gave piano lessons. He composed a great deal in secret but destroyed many of his early works, which did not satisfy him.

In 1873 he married Anna Čermáková, a singer and the sister of a pupil he had once loved. That same year he had his first success with a patriotic cantata, The Heirs of the White Mountain. He became organist of St Adalbert’s Church. In 1874 he won an Austrian state grant for young, poor artists. Among the jury was Johannes Brahms, who was enthusiastic about his music. Brahms recommended him to his Berlin publisher, Fritz Simrock, and became a loyal friend and supporter.

Simrock commissioned Slavonic Dances for piano four hands, modelled on Brahms’s Hungarian Dances. Published in 1878, they were an immediate international success, and their orchestral version was played throughout Europe. Dvořák became famous. He composed symphonies, chamber music and sacred works such as the Stabat Mater (1877), written after the deaths of his first three children. In 1884 he made his first trip to England, where he was acclaimed; he returned eight more times.

In 1891 he became professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory. The following year a wealthy American patron, Jeannette Thurber, invited him to direct the National Conservatory of Music in New York at a salary twenty-five times higher. She wanted him to help Americans create their own national music. Dvořák took an interest in African American spirituals, sung to him by his pupil Harry Burleigh, and in Native American music. He declared that the future music of America should be founded on these melodies.

In America he composed in 1893 his Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”, triumphantly premiered at Carnegie Hall, and then, on holiday in Spillville, a Czech village in Iowa, the “American” Quartet. He also wrote the famous Cello Concerto (1895), completed after his return. Despite his success he was homesick and returned to Bohemia in 1895. A train enthusiast, he spent hours watching locomotives at Prague station, knowing all their timetables; he also bred pigeons.

Back in Prague he composed mainly symphonic poems inspired by Czech legends, and operas. The most famous, Rusalka (1901), tells the story of a water nymph who wants to become human for love of a prince; her “Song to the Moon” has become a very popular aria. In 1901 he became director of the Prague Conservatory. He died in Prague on 1 May 1904 and was buried in the Vyšehrad cemetery. In 1969 a recording of his New World Symphony accompanied the astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission.