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Antonín Leopold Dvořák September 8, 1841 – May 1, 1904) was a Czech composer of
Romantic music, who employed the idioms and melodies of the folk music of his
native Bohemia in symphonic, oratorial, chamber and operatic works.
 Early
career
Dvořák was born on September 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves, near Prague (then Austrian
Empire, today the Czech Republic), where he spent most of his life. His father was
a butcher, innkeeper, and professional player of the zither. Dvořák's parents
recognized his musical talent early, and he received his earliest musical education
at the village school which he entered in 1847, age 6. He studied music in Prague's
only Organ School at the end of the 1850s, and gradually developed into an
accomplished violinist and violist. Throughout the 1860s he played viola in the
Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, which from 1866 was conducted by Bedřich
Smetana. The need to supplement his income by teaching left Dvořák with limited
free time, and in 1871 he gave up playing in the orchestra in order to compose.
During this time, Dvořák fell in love with one of his pupils and wrote a song
cycle, Cypress Trees, that expressed his anguish at her marriage to another man.
However in 1873 he married his pupil's sister, Anna Čermakova. They had nine
children.
At about this time Dvořák began to be recognized as a significant composer. He
became organist at St. Adalbert's Church, Prague, and began a period of prolific
composition. Dvořák composed his second string quintet in 1875, and in 1877, the
critic Eduard Hanslick informed him that his music had attracted the attention of
Johannes Brahms, whom he later befriended. Brahms contacted the musical publisher
Simrock, who as a result commissioned Dvořák's Slavonic Dances. Published in 1878,
these were an immediate success. Dvořák's Stabat Mater (1880) was performed abroad,
and after a successful performance in London in 1883, Dvořák was invited to visit
England where he appeared to great acclaim in 1884. His Symphony No. 7 was
commissioned for London; it premiered there in 1885. In 1891 Dvořák received an
honorary degree from Cambridge University, and his Requiem Mass premiered later
that year in Birmingham at the Triennial Music Festival.
America
(1892–1895)
From 1892 to 1895, Dvořák was the director of the National Conservatory of Music in
New York City, at a then-staggering $15,000 annual salary. The Conservatory had
been founded by a wealthy and philanthropic socialite, Jeannette Thurber; it was
located at 126-128 East 17th Street , but was demolished in 1911 and replaced by
what is now a high school. Here Dvořák met with Harry Burleigh, one of the earliest
African-American composers, although Burleigh was never his pupil. Burleigh
introduced traditional American Spirituals to Dvořák at the latter's request.
In the winter and spring of 1893, while in New York, Dvořák wrote his most popular
work, the Symphony No.9, "From the New World". He spent the summer of 1893 with his
family in the Czech-speaking community of Spillville, Iowa, to which some of his
cousins had earlier immigrated. While there he composed two of his most famous
chamber works, the String Quartet in F (the "American"), and the String Quintet in
E flat, as well as a Sonatina for violin and piano.
Over the course of three months in 1895, Dvořák wrote his Cello Concerto in B
minor, which was to become one of his most popular works. However, problems with
Mrs. Thurber about his salary, together with increasing recognition in Europe — he
had been made an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna —
and homesickness made him decide to return to Bohemia. He left New York before the
end of the spring term.
Dvořák's New York home was located at 327 East 17th Street near Perlman Place . It
was in this home that the Ninth Symphony was written. Despite protests, from the
then Czech President Václav Havel amongst others, who wanted the house preserved as
a historical site, it was demolished to make room for a Beth Israel Medical Center
residence for people with AIDS. To honor Dvořák, however, a statue of him was
erected in Stuyvesant Square .
Later
career
During his final years, Dvořák's compositional work centred on opera and chamber
music. In 1896 he visited London for the last time to hear the premiere of his
Cello Concerto. In 1897 his daughter married his pupil, the composer Josef Suk.
Dvořák was director of the Conservatory in Prague from 1901 until his death in
1904. He is interred in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague.
Works
Dvořák wrote in a variety of forms: his nine symphonies generally stick to
classical models that Beethoven would have recognised, but he also worked in the
newly developed symphonic poem form and the influence of Richard Wagner is apparent
in some works. Many of his works also show the influence of Czech folk music, both
in terms of rhythms and melodic shapes; perhaps the best known examples are the two
sets of Slavonic Dances. Dvořák also wrote operas (the best known of which is
Rusalka); chamber music (including a number of string quartets, and quintets);
songs; choral music; and piano music.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Antonin
Dvorak - Manifesting Generator - Biography
