Antonin Dvorak Free Sheet Music, Program Notes Recordings and Biography

In 1892, Antonín Dvořák, already one of Europe's most celebrated composers, arrived in New York City to take up a lucrative post as the Director of the National Conservatory of Music. He had been given a mission: to help America discover its own national music. The Czech composer, who had built his own career on the folk melodies of his native Bohemia, took the challenge seriously. He declared to the American press that the future of their music lay not in the European tradition, but in the "negro melodies" and Native American chants of their own land. He listened intently to African American spirituals, some sung to him by his student Harry T. Burleigh, and devoured what he could of Native American music. The result of this immersion was his masterpiece, the Symphony No. 9, "From the New World"—a work born of a Czech composer's quest for the American soul, and a symphony that would become one of the most popular in history.

From a Butcher's Shop to the Prague Stage

Antonín Dvořák was born in the small Bohemian village of Nelahozeves, the eldest son of an innkeeper and butcher. It was expected that Antonín would follow the family trade, and for a time he did, training as a butcher's apprentice. But his prodigious musical talent could not be ignored. He excelled at the violin, organ, and piano, and his local teachers recognized that his gifts far exceeded what their small village could offer.

At the age of 16, he convinced his father to let him move to Prague to study at the Organ School. The years that followed were a struggle. He graduated near the top of his class but had no money and no connections. He earned a meager living as a professional violist, playing in dance bands and eventually securing a position in the orchestra of the Provisional Theatre, the main center for Czech opera. For a decade, he played in the orchestra pit, often under the baton of Bedřich Smetana, the founding father of Czech nationalist music. All the while, he was composing prolifically in private, honing his craft and searching for his own voice.

Brahms, the Slavonic Dances, and International Fame

Dvořák’s big break came in 1874. Desperate for funds, he applied for the Austrian State Prize for composition. On the jury sat one of the most powerful figures in European music: Johannes Brahms. Brahms was immediately struck by the quality and originality of Dvořák's submissions. He became Dvořák's fiercest champion and lifelong friend, using his influence to introduce the unknown Czech composer to his own publisher, Fritz Simrock.

Simrock commissioned Dvořák to write a set of lively, folk-inspired piano duets. The result was the Slavonic Dances, Op. 46. Published in 1878, their success was immediate and overwhelming. The dances, with their infectious rhythms and brilliant melodies, became a sensation across Europe. Dvořák went from being a struggling local musician to an international celebrity almost overnight. Commissions poured in from all over the world, leading to major works like his Stabat Mater, symphonies, and concertos. The butcher's son from Nelahozeves had arrived.

Answering the Call: Dvořák in America

By the early 1890s, Dvořák was a world-renowned composer and a professor at the Prague Conservatory. It was then that he received the extraordinary invitation from philanthropist Jeannette Thurber to become the Director of the National Conservatory in New York, for the then-astronomical salary of $15,000 a year. Intrigued by the challenge and the financial security, he accepted.

During his three years in America (1892-1895), he was profoundly productive. He famously spent the summer of 1893 in the small, Czech-speaking community of Spillville, Iowa. It was there, surrounded by the open spaces of the American Midwest that reminded him of home, that he composed two of his most beloved chamber works, the String Quartet No. 12 ("American") and the String Quintet in E-flat major. But his most enduring work from this period was the Symphony No. 9, "From the New World," which premiered at Carnegie Hall in December 1893 to a thunderous ovation. Its famous Largo movement, with its soulful English horn melody, captured a sense of wide-open space and deep longing that audiences have identified with ever since.

Homecoming and Final Years

Despite his immense success in America, Dvořák was intensely homesick. He missed his children, his friends, and the familiar landscape of his homeland. In 1895, he returned to Bohemia for good, resuming his professorship at the Prague Conservatory, where he would eventually become its director.

His final years were devoted to composing works steeped in Czech folklore and myth, particularly a series of symphonic poems and operas. His most famous late work is the opera Rusalka (1900), a dark fairytale best known for its heartbreakingly beautiful aria, "Song to the Moon." He also composed one of the cornerstones of the cello repertoire, the magnificent Cello Concerto in B minor, a work filled with nostalgia for his homeland and a secret tribute to his sister-in-law, whom he had loved in his youth. By the time of his death on May 1, 1904, Dvořák was revered as a national hero.

Legacy: A Voice for a Nation

Antonín Dvořák's legacy is that of a supreme melodist whose music speaks with unerring warmth and sincerity. Following in the footsteps of Smetana, he brought the voice of Czech music to the international stage, seamlessly integrating the rhythms of folk dances like the furiant and the soulful moods of the dumka into the grand forms of the symphony and concerto. His gift for melody was second to none in his era, and his works, from the "New World" Symphony to the charming Humoresques, have remained among the most popular and frequently performed in the entire classical repertoire. He was a universal composer with a distinctly Czech heart.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• Beckerman, Michael B., ed. Dvořák and His World. Princeton University Press, 1993.

• Clapham, John. Dvořák. W. W. Norton & Company, 1979.

• Dvořák, Antonín. "Music in America." Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February 1895.

• Schönzeler, Hans-Hubert. Dvořák. Marion Boyars Publishers, 1984.