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.
Happy birthday, Antonin Dvořák!
Feel free to sing along: