Antonin Dvorak: Songs

Description

Between 1874 and 1878, the young Antonín Dvo?ák received help from the Austrian government to compose musical works. At that time, he was a promising composer who, having been brought up in Bohemia, not only spoke German but also demonstrated a profound knowledge of the Central European musical tradition. The composer, with all this, very quickly faced reality: in the Vienna of that time what they wanted of a Czech composer was music that sounded Czech, and not German music. Of the works he wrote in those years (among those the Serenade for Strings in E Major, the piano trio in g minor and the Stabat Mater), the one that caught the publisher´s and Brahm´s attention was his song cycle, Moravian Duets. They particularly stood out if we keep in mind, as mentioned by Michael Beckerman, that to the Bohemian composer the Moravian culture was as foreign as any other. This is how history, with its selective forgetfulness, has prolonged for years the European rule has been to label Dvorak a nationalistic Czech composer and author of various worthy symphonies. That he left more than a hundred songs written, that his inspiration went far beyond Bohemian folklore and that he was one of the most prolific Opera composers of his time are irrelevant questions. Only his Rusalka was saved from this collective forgetfulness. The efforts of people like Hanslick to vindicate Europeanism and the intrinsic value of Dvo?ák in phrases like the one that heads up this commentary fell on dead ears.