Josef Suk Free Sheet Music, Program Notes, Recordings and Biography

From Lyricism to Tragedy

During his studies at the Prague Conservatory, the young composer Josef Suk was chided by his famous teacher, Antonín Dvořák. "Your music is always so somber," the master told him, "I advise you for once to write something different, something serene and cheerful." Taking the advice to heart, the 18-year-old Suk composed his Serenade for Strings, a work of such effortless grace, warmth, and sunny lyricism that it immediately became a classic. This joyful piece seemed to foretell a happy life, a life that would soon include marrying his teacher's daughter. But fate had a different, more tragic path in store for Suk. A series of devastating losses would transform him from a composer of Dvořákian charm into a complex modernist who would write one of the most profound monuments of grief in all of music.

Dvořák's Favorite Pupil

Josef Suk was born in a small Bohemian village where his father was the local choirmaster. A gifted violinist from a young age, he was sent to the Prague Conservatory at age 11. There, his immense talent for both performance and composition blossomed. He became the star pupil in the composition class of the great Antonín Dvořák, who was then the director of the conservatory. Dvořák became more than a teacher to Suk; he was a mentor and a second father, inviting the young composer to spend summers with his family at their country home.

The Bohemian Quartet and a Budding Romance

While still at the conservatory, Suk and three of his fellow students founded the Bohemian Quartet (later known as the Czech Quartet) in 1891. Suk played second violin in the ensemble for over four decades, until his retirement in 1933. The quartet became one of the most famous chamber ensembles in the world, touring extensively and championing the chamber music of Czech composers like Bedřich Smetana and, of course, Dvořák.

During his visits with the Dvořák family, Suk fell deeply in love with the composer's daughter, Otilie. After a long courtship, they were married in 1898. The next few years were the happiest of Suk's life. His career with the quartet was flourishing, and his compositions from this period, like the beautiful incidental music for the play Radúz and Mahulena, are filled with a tender, lyrical romanticism inspired by his love for "Otilka."

A Year of Double Tragedy

Suk's idyllic life was shattered in 1904. In May of that year, his beloved teacher and father-in-law, Antonín Dvořák, died suddenly. Devastated, Suk began composing a large-scale funeral symphony as a tribute to the man who had shaped his life. He intended the work to be a celebration of Dvořák's life and art, with a serene, peaceful ending.

But as he was working on the finale, fate dealt him an even more cruel blow. Just fourteen months after her father's death, his wife Otilie, only 27 years old, died suddenly from heart failure, leaving Suk a grieving widower with their young son. The back-to-back loss of the two most important people in his life broke him, and it fundamentally changed him as an artist.

The Asrael Symphony: A Monument of Grief

The funeral symphony Suk had begun for Dvořák now took on a new, darker purpose. It became a memorial for both his mentor and his beloved wife. He named it the Asrael Symphony, after Asrael, the angel of death in Islamic and Jewish mythology who guides souls into the afterlife. The five-movement work is a colossal monument of grief. The first three movements are filled with pain, anger, and despair. The fourth movement is a tender portrait of Otilie, its gentle melody a heartbreaking memory of lost happiness. The finale, which he had originally intended to be peaceful, becomes a struggle between devastating grief and a search for consolation. The Asrael Symphony is Suk's masterpiece, a deeply personal work that transformed him from a charming late-Romantic into a composer of immense power and modernist complexity.

The Modernist Elder Statesman

After the Asrael Symphony, Suk's musical style was never the same. His later works, such as the orchestral tone poems A Summer's Tale and Ripening, are complex, introspective, and harmonically adventurous, exploring the deepest questions of life, death, and nature. He had absorbed the influences of modern composers like Mahler and Strauss, but his voice remained uniquely his own.

He became a revered figure in his homeland, which, after World War I, had become the independent nation of Czechoslovakia. He served for many years as a professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory, where his students included the next great generation of Czech composers, most notably Bohuslav Martinů. In a surprising late-life honor, Suk won a silver medal in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles for his patriotic festival march, Into a New Life. He died in 1935, a respected elder statesman whose life and music mirrored the journey of his nation, moving from lyrical romance into the tragic and complex realities of the 20th century.

Section 4: References and Further Reading

• References and Further Reading

• Tyrell, John. "Suk, Josef." In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. Macmillan Publishers, 2001.

• Beckerman, Michael B. New Worlds of Dvořák: Searching in America for the Composer's Inner Life. W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. (Provides context on the Dvořák-Suk relationship).

• Šeda, Jaroslav. Josef Suk: Život a dílo (Life and Works). Státní hudební vydavatelství, 1961 (Czech).