I notice today is the anniversary of the birth of Bohemian composer Josef Mysliveček. Who, you say? Well, I suppose you have to have done a lot of classical radio to really know his stuff. An intimate friend of the Mozarts, Mysliveček in some ways laid the groundwork for Amadeus’ later masterworks. He was insanely popular in Italy and apparently quite a hit with the ladies.
So yeah, his life fairly screams “motion picture,” but I can’t believe someone was actually able to get backers interested in the project. The resulting film, “The Bohemian” (2022), popped up in my Kanopy recommendations this weekend. I don’t know how it is where you are, but here you can sign up for the service free with your library card.
It looks like total junk food, but you know I’ll be all over it. You might say, I’ll be Czeching it out soon.
Josef Suk (1874-1935) was the one-time pupil and eventual son-in-law of Antonin Dvořák. In fact, his early works very much reflect Dvořák’s influence, sunny, romantic music full of nationalistic touches.
However, a double tragedy occurred in Suk’s 30th year. In 1905, he lost both his father-in-law and his beloved wife – Dvořák’s elder daughter – Otilie. The events directly inspired Suk’s “Asrael Symphony,” named for the Angel of Death. Not surprisingly, morbidity colors much of his mature output.
Today marks the 150th anniversary of Suk’s birth. Here are some samples of Suk, pre- and post-happiness.
Serenade for Strings (1892)
“Asrael Symphony” (1905-06)
And a personal favorite, “Pohádka,” or “Fairy Tale” (1897-98). Suk arranged the suite from incidental music he composed for a play called “Radúz and Mahulena,” in which true love conquers all. The work took on special significance for the composer, since it was the period in which he was secretly in love with his teacher’s daughter and feared the day of reckoning, when all would be revealed. He needn’t have worried, of course. Dvořák was delighted. Alas, Suk’s happiness was to be short-lived.
It seems like Husa’s barely left us, and already it is time to mark his centenary.
A former student of Arthur Honegger and Nadia Boulanger, Husa fled to the United States from his native Czechoslovakia in 1954. He became an American citizen in 1959.
Ten years later, he became the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his String Quartet No. 3. It’s ironic that an artist so highly regarded for his wind music should win the Pulitzer for a string quartet! In 1993, he was also recognized with a Grawemeyer Award for his Cello Concerto. However, it is for his “Music for Prague 1968,” inspired by the Soviet bloc invasion of his homeland, that he is probably best known.
Husa held a professorship at Cornell University from 1954 to 1992. He was also a lecturer at Ithaca College from 1967 to 1986.
Performance of his music was banned in Czechoslovakia for over three decades. At the time of his death, in 2016, he was 95 years-old.
Husa’s mode of expression can come across as a little angsty at times, but I think I’ve managed to come up with a nice cross-section of some of his more accessible works. Click the links below, and fear no Husa!
Concertino for Piano and Winds
“Music for Prague 1968”
Trumpet Concerto
Five Poems for Wind Quintet, inspired by the composer’s love of birds. As the title suggests, it’s in five movements, so if you want to hear the whole thing, let the playlist run through all five videos.
In honor of Antonin Dvořák’s 177th birthday, today’s post is about Dvořák and bathroom humor. If you find the idea unprepossessing, or if you happen to be eating, stop reading now.
Dvořák’s “Humoresques” are off-shoots of his time in America as director of the National Conservatory in New York, a position he held from 1892 to 1895. Here, Dvořák was like a kid in a musical candy shop. He enthusiastically embraced the songs and dances of African-Americans and Native Americans as untapped natural resources that could be pressed into building blocks for the foundation of a genuinely American sound.
He jotted many musical sketches into notebooks – and even onto his starched sleeve, as with the “Indian lament” that came to him on a visit to Minnehaha Falls – later to be incorporated into works like his “New World” Symphony, “American” String Quartet, and Sonatina for Violin and Piano.
The “Humoresques” were tossed off by the composer during a summer vacation back home in Prague in 1894. Many of the melodies for these seven trifles for piano were lifted from his American sketchbooks. One, easily the most famous of the collection of eight, was immortalized by a ditty that runs thus:
“Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is standing in or passing through a station.”
The words were taken from a sign posted outside the toilet in a railroad car. How fortuitous that they would so perfectly fit Dvořák’s melody. How very droll.
What I find disturbing is the implication of the sign – that somehow flushing a toilet in a station would have a very undesirable result. Was this really a thing? According to what I glean from an internet search, it may yet be. So I guess walking along the railroad tracks can be dangerous for more reasons than I had previously thought. In my half century on this earth, I had never heard this before, so I guess it’s true, we are always learning something useful.
Dvořák would spend hours visiting the tracks and overlooking train yards, admiring the different locomotives and keeping notes of their schedules. Perhaps, as such a rail buff, the composer would have appreciated the association.
