Fact File:

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•  1841-1904 (age 63)

• Czech Composer

• Born in Nelahozeves, Czech Republic

• Dvorak was born into a relatively poor family. His father was an innkeeper and played zither.

• In 1865 Dvořák began giving piano lessons to the daughters of a Prague goldsmith, Josefína and Anna Čermáková. Anna later became his wife.

• Dvorak spent time in America in the late 19th Century and was inspired by Amerindian music and plantation songs. These influences can be seen in his New World Symphony.

• Dvorak was inspired by folk texts written in nine different languages: Czech, Moravian, Slovak, Serbian, Modern Greek, Russian, Lithuanian and Irish folk poetry.

• The famous composer Johannes Brahms was a close friend of Dvorak.

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Content:

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First I would like to say that before I began my research I didn’t know what a symphonic poem was, I don’t think I even knew who Dvorak was, which is shameful in itself because he was kind of a big deal. I definitely didn’t know how to pronounce his name.

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Neither do you, I hear you say? GREAT!

Well I am so far down the rabbit hole now I’m not sure where I started, and I’m about to drag you down with me. Muahaha.

We’ll start with the name. It’s ‘Dvor-Jac’ not ‘Dvo-rack’. The more you know.

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First things first Dvorak was really inspired by this author named Karel Jaromir Erben and his collection of Czech folktales named ‘Kytice’. Dvorak took four of these stories and portrayed them musically through the medium of symphonic poems. These are basically fairytales but more like Grimm’s originals than anything you’ll see in a Disney film. I mean, there are evil step mother and sister figures who try to steal the girl’s man; but they don’t just make her clean their house, they chop her up and leave her decapitated corpse in the woods. These romantics, eh?

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That particular plot is in The Golden Spinning Wheel, but the other three folktales are just as gruesome. Featuring a goblin, a witch, freaky future predicting dreams, an underwater realm, infanticide, more decapitation, murder and suicide; a fun filled emotional rollercoaster for the whole family! These are typical romantic fantastical themes, and part of the reason why many critics weren’t happy, but I will get to that.

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Dvorak was dedicated to portraying as much of Erben’s work through his own as he could, so much so that when he was sketching the main themes for the characters in his symphonic poems, he used the Czech poetry as lyrics and imitated the rhythmic values created by the syllables of the Czech words used, which I think is really cool. It is sort of like a musical translation of a literary work. The story made the most important element of the musical works. Summaries of the folktales were sent to music critics and the conductors of the performances to make sure everyone knew what it was Dvorak wanted to portray.

 

So what did everyone think of these symphonic poems?

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Well for the purpose of this short insight into why the works were received the way they were I’ll talk about three things:

·         The fact they were of Bohemian Origin.

·         The fact they were programme music.

·         The fact they were really graphic and gruesome.  

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A very useful article which I will include in the bibliography (boring stuff) section for you to read, written by Karin Stöckl-Steinebrunner, talks about what it was like to perform a piece of music that everyone knew was Bohemian in a Vienna Concert hall at the end of the 19th Century. Better explain that there was some nasty stuff brewing in Vienna at this time because there has been a massive migration of people from other non-German speaking areas of the Habsburg Empire (which was still a thing at the time) into the city. Vienna still had its reputation as powerful and a cultural capital, even though it wasn’t really as powerful or influential as it had been before. Nevertheless even the incoming migrants bought into this idea that Vienna was amazing and its native people were better than themselves. The native Viennese also held this opinion. It was encouraged that Viennese culture was the best thing ever and that the newcomers had to abandon their own customs and adapt. The Czech population wasn’t really into that idea and there were even fisticuffs in the Vienna Parliament between Viennese and Czech representatives.

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As you have learned from our short overview of romantic characteristics, many of the composers and critics were set in their ways and not very happy with changing taste. Dvorak was seen to have a mastered absolute music, so when he went to the darkside ie. Began composing programme music, there was ABSOLUTE UPROAR… well that’s an exaggeration. However, the reviews of the symphonic poems show that people weren’t happy with the change in direction. In an article posted in the New York Times on the 3rd January 1897, a critic began his review of The Water Goblin by saying ‘Dr Antonin Dvorak has been misbehaving himself again. He has written a symphonic poem called The Water Sprite.’ I know right? How rebellious of him to set music to a storyline? Around that time Mahler, another Czech composer, was appointed director of the Vienna Philharmonic Concerts. GASP, BUT HE’S NOT EVEN VIENNESE?! WHAT THE HELL? He was eventually replaced by a true Viennese guy which everyone was happier with, but this whole political context did affect how the symphonic poems were received. As Karin Stöckl-Steinebrunner explains, because I can’t read German and can’t read the actual reviews (which makes Karin my Kween) many of the reviews in response to the symphonic poems were dominated by the change in directorship. They were all like ‘ooh Dvorak is Czech but this guy Mahler is also Czech and did you hear he was made director of the Vienna Philharmonic Concerts *SHOCK, HORROR*.’

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The last big problem that affected the reception of Dvorak’s symphonic poems was the graphic and gruesome content. There was one particular review in the The Era Newspaper on November 21st 1896 which screams ‘THINK OF THE CHILDREN, WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!’ á la Helen Lovejoy of the Simpsons. The author of the piece basically says ‘There are way prettier stories out there, why did you pick the one with the decapitated goblin-human hybrid baby’ which might make sense, but folktales are a big part of a nation's culture and Dvorak had every right choose these iconic Czech stories.

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Ultimately if we ask how successful Dvorak was in his attempt to spread his Czech culture outside his own country, we can conclude that although these symphonic poems caused some controversy, all publicity is good publicity, am I right? He started a conversation, even if the conversation was ‘It’s a bit weird that they’re trading cut up body parts for pieces of a spinning wheel in The Golden Spinning Wheel, isn’t it?’ So Kudos, Dvorak. I see what you did there.

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-Niamh