Perhaps it’s a good thing I am not a parent; otherwise I’d scare the bejesus out of my kids with stories from Karel Jaromir Erben’s “Kytice,” or “Bouquet.”
Like the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Erben synthesized native folk tales into often gruesome fairy stories. In doing so, he became an important figure in the establishment of a Czech national identity. His stories are recited by Czech schoolchildren and recalled proudly by the Czech people. Despite its influence, “Kytice” did not appear in a complete English translation until 2013.
Antonin Dvořák was particularly fond of Erben’s tales. In 1896, he composed a series of symphonic poems after Erben ballads, including “The Water Goblin,” “The Noon Witch” and “The Wood Dove.” Erben’s influence also hangs over Dvořák’s most famous opera, “Rusalka.”
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we salute Erben with two Dvořák works: the symphonic poem “The Golden Spinning Wheel,” and the final scene from the dramatic cantata “The Spectre’s Bride.”
“The Golden Spinning Wheel” is a Cinderella story gone very, very wrong, as a wicked stepmother and stepsister not only murder but dismember an unfortunate maiden favored by the king. Not to give too much away, but the titular appliance proves to be their undoing.
“The Spectre’s Bride” is another in the seemingly infinite variations on the tale of a young woman being swept off by the ghost of her lover. The climax of Dvořák’s cantata places the heroine in a cottage besieged by howling spirits, as a corpse on the table, prepared for burial, stirs to do their bidding.
It’s not exactly “Songs My Mother Taught Me.” Join me, if you dare, for “Erben Legends,” as we celebrate Karel Jaromir Erben on Mother’s Day, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT on WWFM The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Over the years, I’ve written a number of program notes for Sinfonietta Nova, a community orchestra based in West Windsor, New Jersey (on the outskirts of Princeton). In 2015, I was asked by its artistic director and conductor, Gail Lee, to submit seven interesting facts about Antonin Dvořák, to be shared on the orchestra’s Facebook page, as kind of a countdown to a performance of his Symphony No. 7. On the first half of the concert was Dvořák’s Cello Concerto. I reproduce those Facebook contributions here, for the occasion of the 180th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Happy birthday, Antonin Dvořák!
DVOŘÁK FACT #1
It’s hard to believe, but before writing his famous Cello Concerto in B minor, Dvořák wasn’t particularly fond of the cello as a solo instrument. He disliked its nasal high register and rumbling bass. However, after he heard a performance of the Cello Concerto No. 2 in E minor by his colleague at the National Conservatory of Music, Victor Herbert, Dvořák changed his mind. Herbert, best-remembered for his operettas, including “Babes in Toyland” and “Naughty Marietta,” was principal cello at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He also led the cello section of the New York Philharmonic at the world premiere of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, when it was played at Carnegie Hall in 1893.
Victor Herbert’s Cello Concerto No. 2:
DVOŘÁK FACT #2
The slow, wistful passage just before the Cello Concerto’s triumphant conclusion was added by Dvořák as a tribute to his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzova, who died during the work’s composition. Dvořák was actually in love with her for many years. When she refused his proposal, the composer married her younger sister, Anna, instead. The passage quotes from the composer’s Four Songs, Op. 82, of which Kaunitzova was particularly fond.
“Kéž duch můj sám” (“Leave Me Alone”), Op. 82, No. 1:
Transcribed for cello:
DVOŘÁK FACT #3
The Cello Concerto in B minor, completed in 1896, is Dvořák’s final concerto for solo instrument and orchestra. Previously, he had written a Violin Concerto in A minor and a seldom-performed Piano Concerto in G minor, both published in 1883. The Cello Concerto is widely regarded as one of the greatest – if not THE greatest – ever written for the instrument.
Of the three, the Piano Concerto has been the poor stepchild. This has been blamed in large part on the writing for piano. Pianist and Liszt authority Leslie Howard notes, “… there is nothing in Liszt that is anywhere near as difficult to play as the Dvořák Piano Concerto – a magnificent piece of music, but one of the most ungainly bits of piano writing ever printed.” Rudolf Firkušný was the work’s greatest champion. He recorded the piece three times.
Firkušný performs Dvořák’s Piano Concerto:
Dvořák’s Violin Concerto performed by his great-grandson, Josef Suk:
DVOŘÁK FACT #4
Like William Shakespeare, Antonin Dvořák was the son of a butcher. He was the first of fourteen children, eight of whom survived infancy. As a violist in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, he performed under Bedřich Smetana and visiting conductor Richard Wagner. It was Johannes Brahms who was the first outside of Bohemia to recognize Dvořák’s genius as a composer. Brahms labored on his behalf to secure a grant, so that Dvořák could rise above impoverished circumstances and devote himself to composition full-time. In gratitude, Dvořák dedicated his String Quartet No. 9 to his new friend and champion. Brahms also provided an introduction to his publisher, Simrock, who commissioned Dvořák to compose something in the vein of Brahms’ “Hungarian Dances.” The resulting “Slavonic Dances” became an international smash.
Dvořák’s “Slavonic Dances”
String Quartet No. 9 in D minor, Op. 34
DVOŘÁK FACT #5
Dvořák was crazy for trains. During his tenure at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, he was frequently seen “trainspotting,” and when at home he took daily walks to the train station in Prague. So perhaps it is hardly surprising that on one such walk the first subject of a brand-new symphony flashed into his mind. The impetus was the arrival of a festive train full of countrymen returning from Pest. He sketched the first movement of his 7th Symphony in only five days. It was Dvořák’s intention for the work to reflect the political struggles of the Czech nation and his own feelings of patriotism. An atmosphere of obstinate defiance seems to hang over the piece. It is the most cosmopolitan of his last three great symphonies, with the composer keeping the reins tight on his penchant to bubble over into folk-inflected rhapsody. The work’s classic formal structure makes it arguably the greatest of his symphonies, though it has never achieved the popularity of the 8th or 9th, which wear their charms like the vibrant colors and patterns of Bohemian traditional dress.
Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7:
DVOŘÁK FACT #6
Earlier in his career, Dvořák composed another concerto for cello, in the key of A major. He wrote it for Ludevit Peer, a fellow musician in the Bohemian Provisional Theatre Orchestra (with which Dvořák played viola). It didn’t go anywhere, and in fact it lay undiscovered until 1925. Its existence remains obscure enough that whenever anyone refers to “the Dvořák Cello Concerto,” they mean the famous concerto in B minor – which, in fact, is the Cello Concerto No. 2!
Dvořák’s “forgotten” cello concerto:
DVOŘÁK FACT #7
“God grant that this Czech music will move the world,” Dvořák said of his 7th Symphony. He was riding high on the euphoria of composing at white heat. He completed the sketch of the symphony’s first movement in five days.
Ten days later, he finished the second. It is said that the sadness of the passing of his mother and possibly the recent death of his eldest child are reflected in this music. However, he also intimated to a friend, “What is in my mind is Love, God and my Fatherland.”
He completed the third and fourth movements over the next month or so. Dvořák suggested that the fourth movement enshrines the capacity of the Czech people to display stubborn resistance to political oppressors.
With the publication of his Symphony No. 7 in 1885, it could be said that Dvořák experienced the struggle for Czech independence in a deeply personal way.
PHOTOS (left to right): Well-trained composer Antonin Dvořák, Victor Herbert, and Josefina Kaunitzova
For Flag Day, two works inspired by Old Glory – one, one of the most famous pieces of American music ever, and the other, virtually forgotten:
On Christmas Day, 1896, John Philip Sousa received the bolt of inspiration that would become “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” He knocked off his quintessential march in a New York hotel room in a matter of hours. Sousa’s magnum opus was first performed in Philadelphia on May 14, 1897.
Though the piece was enthusiastically received, it wasn’t until the Spanish-American War in 1898 that sales went through the roof. This was precipitated in part by the composer having organized a spectacle involving hundreds of performers, complete with flag-bearing soldiers and a ravishing beauty decked out in red, white and blue. With a dash of canny showmanship, “The Stars and Stripes Forever” surfed a wave of wartime patriotism to world-wide and lasting renown.
The same year, the respected Czech composer Antonin Dvořák put the finishing touches on his cantata “The American Flag.” The work had been planned to celebrate the composer’s arrival in the U.S., in 1892, to take up the directorship of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. But the text, by Joseph Rodman Drake, arrived too late, and the cantata didn’t receive its first performance until 1894. Though he submitted the vocal score for publication in 1895, Dvořák did not consider the work complete until three years later.
Scored for tenor, baritone, chorus and orchestra, the cantata falls into eight sections:
I. The Colors of the Flag
II. First Hymn to the Eagle
III. Second Hymn to the Eagle
IV. Orchestral Interlude: March
V. First Address to the Flag (The Foot-Soldier)
VI. Second Address to the Flag (The Cavalryman)
VII. Third Address to the Flag (The Sailor)
VIII. Apotheosis (Prophetic)
Part of the reason the work remains such an obscurity is likely the fact that it doesn’t sound particularly American. This is not the Dvořák of the “New World Symphony” or the “American” String Quartet.
It was Henry T. “Harry” Burleigh, the composer’s African-American assistant at the conservatory, who introduced Dvořák to the Negro spiritual. Travels to the Midwest would get him thinking about Native American folk music. Dvořák was thrilled to learn of these untapped musical resources. He set about exhorting his American colleagues, who had been churning out largely forgettable scores on European models, to embrace these overlooked treasures and, in doing so, forge a distinctive national sound.
Mindful of their invaluable contributions, Dvořák lobbied to waive tuition to the conservatory for talented African American and Indigenous composers who could not afford the fee. His perceptivity, his enthusiastic support for, and his elevation of sounds that really were in the American ear all along earn Dvořák his place as the honorary Grandfather of American Art Music.
Here is his neglected cantata, “The American Flag”:
On this date in 1894, Antonin Dvořák, then serving as director of the newly-established National Conservatory of Music in New York, presented a concert of African-American choral music at Madison Square Garden.
The event, which also featured at least some of Rossini’s “Stabat Mater,” was given to benefit the New York Herald Tribune’s Free Clothing Fund. The program was performed by members of St. Philip’s Colored Choir, with the participation of vocal soloists Sissieretta Jones and Harry T. Burleigh.
Jones was a graduate of the New England Conservatory, a soprano equally at home in the singing of grand opera, light opera, and popular music. She wound up touring internationally and sang for four consecutive U.S. presidents. One critic dubbed her “The Black Patti” – a reference to Italian singer Adelina Patti – an epithet that Jones, a modest woman, disliked.
However, given the limited opportunities for black singers at the time, ultimately she decided to capitalize on the association, founding the Black Patti Troubadours, a successful revue that ran for 20 years. By 1895, she had become the best-known and highest-paid African-American performer.
As for Burleigh, American art music might have developed very differently without him. Born in Erie, PA, in 1866, he was accepted into the National Conservatory, a progressive institution for the time. On Dvořák’s insistence, students were not to be discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity.
There, he studied with, among others, Rubin Goldmark, the hidebound pedagogue who would later give lessons to Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. He also played double-bass and timpani in the school’s orchestra, which Dvořák conducted.
One day, the story goes, while seated at his desk, Dvořák overheard the most soulful, plaintive air being sung in an adjacent corridor. He was transfixed. This was his first exposure to the African-American spiritual, and it had the force of an epiphany. Thereafter, Burleigh was a regular guest at the Dvořák home.
Reflecting on his own debt to the folk idioms of his native land, for his part in the development of a Czech national sound, Dvořák was eager to share his impressions with American composers, and to encourage them to embrace this unique and neglected resource.
“I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies,” he wrote. “This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States. When I first came here last year I was impressed with this idea and it has developed into a settled conviction. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American.”
This was quite the pronouncement for 1893.
African-American spirituals, of course, would profoundly influence Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony. Interestingly, another Dvorak pupil, William Arms Fisher, was responsible for transforming the work’s famous Largo into the neo-spiritual “Goin’ Home.” Since the symphony was intended, in part, as instructional, an attempt to lead American composers by example, Burleigh’s significance becomes inescapable.
Burleigh himself went on to a distinguished career as a composer and arranger. Not only did he popularize a great many spirituals, he also wrote hundreds of original songs. Isn’t it ironic that one of the great, unsung figures in American music wound up changing the course of our music through singing?
Here’s one of the works that received its premiere on that 1894 Madison Square Garden concert – Dvořák’s arrangement of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home.”
Burleigh’s setting of “Goin’ Home”
Sissieretta Jones:
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Dvořák (doing his best Sean Connery impression), Burleigh, and Jones
Take the Czech master, Leoš Janáček. Janáček started out as a fairly unremarkable, albeit wholly capable composer, essentially following in the footsteps of his pioneering countrymen Bedřich Smetana and Antonin Dvořák. But then two things happened: (1) he discovered a way to distill his folkloric interests into a uniquely personal, modern idiom; and (2) he fell in love.
Yet another overnight success decades in the making, Janáček began churning out masterpiece after masterpiece at an age when most respectable folk were teetering into retirement. His prolific Indian summer is attributable, in part, to his sublimated passion for Kamila Stösslová. Stösslová was a married woman some 38 years the composer’s junior.
On the next “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear a string quartet written under the influence of his muse.
The composer’s ardent feelings for Stösslová could be said to color both of his surviving quartets. At the time he undertook the first of these, Janáček was 69. (He composed the second, in the year of his death, at the age of 74.) The String Quartet No. 1 was written at white heat in October of 1923. Janáček revised it the following month.
Subtitled “Kreutzer Sonata,” the work was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s novella – which in turn takes its name from Beethoven’s famous violin sonata, dedicated to Rodolphe Kreutzer. Tolstoy’s story is a study in ungoverned passions – a triangle (real or imagined) between the first-person narrator, his wife (a pianist), and her perceived lover, a violinist, with whom she plays Beethoven’s sonata. The husband returns from a trip, finds the two dining together, and stabs his wife in a fit of jealous rage.
Janáček made no attempt to follow a detailed program in the writing of his quartet. Instead, the music is reflective of the characters’ emotional and psychological states. In particular, he sympathizes with the wife.
The music is heightened by certain “special effects” – harmonics, ostinatos, trills, pizzicatos, and muted passages, with the musicians employing a technique known as “sul ponticello,” playing on the bridges of their instruments, to achieve a kind of eerie quality. In the third movement, there is a veiled allusion to the slow movement of Beethoven’s sonata.
We’ll hear it performed at the 2009 Marlboro Music Festival, by violinists Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu and Arnold Steinhardt, violist Yura Lee, and cellist Susan Babini.
Then Antonin Dvořák demonstrates how it used to be done, with his String Sextet in A major, Op. 48. Dvorak’s sextet was composed largely in May of 1878, making it contemporaneous with his first set of “Slavonic Dances.” In fact, the work’s two inner movements bear overtly Czech nationalist titles: Dumka and Furiant.
In music, dumka (literally, “thought”) signifies a kind of melancholy introspection. A furiant is a rapid and fiery Czech dance.
The sextet holds an important place in Dvořák’s development. Thanks to a government subsidy, Dvořák was able to concentrate solely on composition, and he was determined to confirm his worth.
The work was performed at the 2017 Marlboro Music Festival, by violinists Stephen Tavani and Scott St. John, violists Rosalind Ventris and Rebecca Albers, and cellists Alice Yoo and Judith Serkin.
Happy birthday, Leoš Janáček. We’ll be picking up the Czech this week, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page
“Kreutzer Sonata,” René François Xavier Prinet (1901)
