“I am but an ordinary Czech musician […] and despite acquiring some degree of renown in the world of music, I will remain just what I have been – a simple Czech musician.”

In the past, the music of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) was often dubbed “patriotic”, “spontaneous and joyful”, but in reality, it is much more sophisticated. It is rooted in Czech musicality and is extremely rich in its palette of musical themes. The basic features of Dvořák’s distinctive style are invention, varied rhythms, colourful orchestral sound, precise sophistication of form and depth of expression. From the initial inspiration from Viennese Classicism, his constant search for new paths brought him to the brink of emerging impressionism.

He significantly affected the fields of symphonic, chamber, vocal and vocally instrumental music and music drama. A happy family background, a firm working routine and tenacity enabled him to compose systematically and regularly, which resulted in more than 200 works. Dvořák paved the way for Czech modern music.

Antonín Dvořák was born on 8 September 1841 in Nelahozeves to František and Anna Dvořák as the first-born of nine children. The Dvořák family was well established in this region. They were mostly small farmers and tradesmen. Dvořák’s father owned a butcher’s shop and an inn in the village but was mostly struggling to keep his business alive. He was a music lover and an avid amateur musician – he had a license to play the zither and accordion in the inn he ran. Although Antonín occasionally had to help his father in the butchery after school, František did not force his gifted son to follow him in the craft. The widely accepted claim that Antonín trained as a butcher was refuted by the discovery of Dvořák’s forged butcher’s guild apprenticeship certificate. František was also said to be Dvořák’s first music teacher. But it was Josef Spitz, a teacher from Nelahozevec, who took over Dvořák’s music education at the beginning of Dvořák’s schooling. Very soon, the gifted boy became a singer and a violinist in a local Nelahozeves choir and occasionally helped accompany Holy Mass in the surrounding villages. There is also a story about how a little violinist amazed the guests of his father’s inn during a performance by a local band.

Widely regarded as the most distinguished of Czech composers, Antonin Dvorák produced attractive and vigorous music possessed of clear formal outlines, melodies that are both memorable and spontaneous-sounding, and a colorful, effective instrumental sense. Dvorák is considered one of the major figures of nationalism, both proselytizing for and making actual use of folk influences, which he expertly combined with classical forms in works of all genres. Dvorák’s “American” and “New World” works arose during the composer’s sojourn in the United States in the early 1890s; he was uneasy with American high society and retreated to a small, predominantly Czech town in Iowa for vacations during his stay.

The son of a butcher and occasional zither player, Dvorák studied the organ in Prague as a young man and worked variously as a café violist and church organist during the 1860s and 1870s while creating a growing body of symphonies, chamber music, and Czech-language opera. In the 1880s and 1890s Dvorák’s reputation became international in scope thanks to a series of major masterpieces that included the Seventh, Eighth, and “New World” symphonies. At the end of his life he turned to opera once again; Rusalka, from 1901, incorporates Wagnerian influences into the musical telling of its legend-based story, and remains the most frequently performed of the composer’s vocal works. Dvorák, a professor at Prague University from 1891 on, exerted a deep influence on Czech music of the 20th century; among his students was Josef Suk, who also became his son-in-law.

SOURCE: All Music .com, Vejvodová, Veronika et al. (ed.): Correspondence of Antonín Dvořák online. Praha: The National Museum, 2021 [cite. DD-MM-YYYY]. Available from https://antonindvorak.nm.cz/.