(You can read about the first work on the program, the string quintet by Karl Goldmark, in this earlier post. This will take you to the post about Wednesday's final concert in the series, with string sextets by Niels Gade of Denmark and Erno Dohnanyi of Hungary.)
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| General Panorama of Spillville, Iowa (1895) |
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| Antonín Dvořák |
Having taken Jeanette Thurber up on a paycheck he couldn't refuse, Dvořák became the Director of her National Conservatory in New York City, and sailed across the ocean blue to arrive on Manhattan on September 27th, 1892, just in time for the 400th Anniversary of Columbus' “discovery.” In August, he'd already begun a 20-minute cantata based on a belatedly submitted text, The American Flag, but since it couldn't be ready in time for the planned Columbus Day celebrations, it ended up not being premiered until May, 1895, by which time Mrs. Thurber's money had run out and Dvořák had already returned to his native Bohemia.
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| Dvořák & Family posing on the steps of their New York home, 1893 |
But within days of finishing his “Columbus Cantata” (as he called it) one cold January day, he began a new symphony, the one he called From the New World, which he completed on May 24th, 1893. A week later, the rest of his family arrived from Bohemia for the summer, posed for a group photo on the steps of the Dvořáks' home at 327 E.17th Street, and then in a few days they would leave for Spillville, Iowa.
It was his secretary and translator, Josef Kovarík, an American-born Czech who'd suggested the holiday destination: it was his home town and Kovarík's father was still a prominent businessman there. Given its large Czech population, it seemed a good way to assuage Dvořák's homesickness and his interest in seeing more of America than just noisy and crowded New York City.
Shortly after they arrived, he began sketching a new string quartet, completed in eight days. Three days later, he began a string quintet, adding another viola to the standard quartet (perhaps in Kovarík's honor: he was a violist), and then finished that on August 1st, a little over a month later. Obviously, the town of Spillville agreed with him.
The quartet incorporated the song of the scarlet tanager Dvořák heard on his walks in the town's Riverside Park – he was delighted to have heard birds singing for the first time in eight months – and in the fourth movement one could detect echoes of the organ from the local church which he would play every morning before walking along the Turkey River. In the quintet, listeners claim to hear the sound of the Native American drums accompanying the ritual song of the Iroquois Indians – from the Kickapoo tribe – who visited Spillville that summer to sell their herbal remedies. “Dvořák was enchanted by the performances they gave to promote their wares and, for the duration of their stay in the village, he apparently attended every one.”
Aside from an unexpected disruption to attend the Chicago “World's Fair” in mid-August to celebrate “Czech Day” where he conducted a hastily organized concert of his works, he had only two more weeks of his holiday before Dvořák reluctantly left to return to New York on September 16th.
Unfortunately, he never had a chance to return to Spillville: ten years later, a year before his death, he told a friend he'd thought Spillville “was an ideal spot; that’s when I felt happy, and I should have stayed there.”
The Quintet is in the standard four movements – (1.) Allegro non tanto; (2) Allegro vivo; (3) Larghetto (4.) Finale: Allegro giusto. This performance was recorded at Music from Marlboro.
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This is, above all, relaxed and pastoral music, the kind of souvenir one might expect following a Big City Adventure, a chance to return a bit to his roots, however transplanted to the New World. Dvořák claimed he wanted to write “something really melodious and simple” that summer. Dvořák was known for his melodies – his effortlessness with a tune was one of the things that attracted Brahms' attention in the first place almost twenty years earlier – and there is certainly nothing remotely academic-sounding about the structure or harmony, flowing with an unbuttoned ease from one tune to another, despite its own formal integrity. It's easy for a listener to imagine “an Indian drumbeat” in the second movement's scherzo or in the second theme of the finale, perhaps evidence of the Kickapoo “medicine show” Dvořák had witnessed.
Many of these tunes are built on “exotic-sounding” pentatonic scales – just as there are in the “New World” Symphony – but they're no more primitive Americana than they are when you find them in Czech, East-European, or even Scottish folk music, much less the stereotypical sound of Asian music when played just on the black keys of the piano.
In the third movement, after the somber introduction, you'll hear a hymn-like theme, the basis for a set of variations, that might well be Dvořák's attempt to set a new tune to the words of “My Country 'Tis of Thee” (it had been suggested he try to write a new “American anthem” to those famous words). And while there can be nothing simpler than the childlike joy of the humoresque that opens the finale – you remember Dvořák's Humoresque, the famous one? – it's more likely you'll hear a new “open-hearted,” untroubled, straightforward, and certainly less rigorous style. This was the America Dvořák found in the rolling countryside of northeast Iowa, a sensibility he embraced wholeheartedly.
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So what's the connection between Dvořák and Brahms, you ask?
Dvořák first came to Brahms' attention in 1874 – Brahms had yet to finish his 1st Symphony – when Dvořák, then 34 and living in his native Bohemia, had submitted a “massive” amount of scores to the “Austrian State Stipendium” whose mission was “to award financial support to talented composers in need” within the borders of the Austrian Empire. Brahms had reluctantly joined the three-man jury that year along with the critic Eduard Hanslick and the Director of the Opera, Johann Herbeck.
Encountering some fifteen scores including two symphonies, Brahms was “overcome by the mastery and talent of this unknown individual.” As a result of this support, Dvořák received the stipend that year – it was awarded officially in February of 1875 – as well as in 1876 and 1877. Incidentally, Karl Goldmark served as another juror on these later panels.
As a result of this first award, Dvořák, who'd been recently married at a time when he didn't even own his own piano, now felt confident enough to compose a string quintet (the 2nd, in G Major, Op.77), a piano trio, his 5th Symphony, and his famous String Serenade in E Major – written between May 3rd and 14th! – in quick succession.
Brahms had been impressed by Dvořák's melodic inventiveness, his uncanny sense of time, and his “dazzling sense of musical line.” Brahms’ enthusiasm for Dvořák was rooted in his recognition that “Dvořák was a composer of such tremendous capacity that he possessed more than the ability to write novel tunes; Dvořák could in fact write extended musical essays of the quality to which Brahms himself aspired – modern incarnations of classical models.”
Then, in 1877 – the third time's the charm – Dvořák received this letter from the jury's chairman, Hanslick:
“Johannes Brahms, who together with me has proposed this [award], takes a great interest in your fine talent and likes especially your Moravian Duets... The sympathy of an artist as important and famous as Brahms should not only be pleasant but also useful to you, and I think you should write to him... and perhaps send him some of your music. After all, it would become advantageous for your things to become known beyond your narrow Czech fatherland, which in any case does not do much for you.”
In 1877, Brahms arranged for Dvorák’s work to be given to his own publisher, Simrock, who not only accepted Dvorák’s Moravian Duets, Op. 20, but, through Brahms' urging, commissioned what was to become the first collection of Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, destined to become his best-selling work – like Brahms and his Hungarian Dances – and which assured Dvořák of a reasonably secure financial stability.
Both men met in Vienna in December of 1877 around the time Brahms' 2nd Symphony was first performed, conducted by Hans Richter. Becoming friends, they would visit periodically from then on, though Dvořák spent little time in the Imperial capital where he, as an ethnic minority within the empire, was looked down upon (the Viennese regarded Bohemians as back-wood bumpkins, basically). Even in 1880, after Richter premiered his Third Czech Rhapsody, the Vienna Philharmonic refused to play his new 6th Symphony the following season, ostensibly because they objected to playing works of this young, unknown composer in two consecutive seasons. It is more likely they were opposed to playing his music because he was Czech.
The symphony was eventually premiered in Prague and Richter conducted it in London in 1882. In fact the Vienna Philharmonic did not perform the work until 1942, which more than explains the real reason behind the official objection. However, the fact that Richter took the symphony to London turned out to be a blessing: it led to the commission for his 7th Symphony which became an international success and would eventually lead to, for instance, an invitation from a rich New York arts patron to come head her music school, the National Conservatory.
As a result of this initial support, Dvořák dedicated his new D Minor String Quartet to Brahms who sent back this “cautionary acceptance”:
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You write somewhat hurriedly. When you're filling in the numerous missing sharps, flats and naturals, it would be good to look a little more closely at the notes themselves and at the voice leading, etc.
Forgive me, but it is very desirable to point out such things to a man like you. I also accept the works just as they are very gratefully and consider myself honored by the dedication of the quartet.
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Later, while Dvořák was in America, Brahms was editing some of Dvořák's music for publication and, he admitted, made “slight corrections” to his counterpoint in the process.
(It's interesting to note that, in 1877, Brahms thought Dvořák's string quartets were superior accomplishments to his own attempts: after some twenty years' gestation, he finally completed his first two published quartets in 1873.)
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In 1896, prior to its official premiere, Brahms played through Dvořák's new cello concerto with a cellist-friend of his. Written mostly in New York City (inspired by hearing Victor Herbert play a concerto of his own in Carnegie Hall) it was the first really enduring large-scale concerto for an instrument otherwise overlooked in the field. His response: "If I had known that it was possible to compose such a concerto for the cello, I would have tried it myself!"
But in 1890, Brahms had already announced his “retirement” from composing, worn out for any number of reasons, and the likelihood of him taking up the challenge was quite faint, the chamber music with clarinet aside. He had already lost sufficient confidence in his own composing, having destroyed at least one new symphony and possibly a whole new violin concerto because, he felt, if it didn't appeal to his friends, it was probably not worth the effort to perform them, so, like so many works of his during his life, they ended up in one of his periodic bonfires.
Once again, a round of “What If...?” What if Brahms had succeeded in avoiding that jury for the 1874 prize committee: would Dvořák have won? If he hadn't won – if Brahms hadn't decided to champion his music and push his publisher or the conductor Hans Richter to accept Dvořák as a composer worth considering – what would have happened to Dvořák's career? Would he have felt the confidence to compose the music we know? Would he have remained in Prague, a little-known local composer, unheard of elsewhere? Would he have found himself, in the summer of 1893, enjoying the peace and quiet of Spillville, Iowa?
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Oh, and why not a game of Six Degrees of Separation! How many “degrees” do you think would separate Brahms from George Gershwin?
Let's see... George Gershwin wrote his Lullaby for String Quartet as a harmony assignment for his teacher Rubin Goldmark in 1919. Rubin Goldmark, born in New York City in 1872, taught theory at the National Conservatory in the early-1890s but also studied privately with its new director, Antonín Dvořák, during his first year there.
Well, and Dvořák was a friend and protege of Johannes Brahms – so that's, what, two degrees, no?
But let's also point out composer Rubin Goldmark was a nephew of composer Karl Goldmark, another friend of Brahms'. So, given the string quintets on this program, one by Korngold and another by Dvořák, if anyone's looking for an encore to fit under the arc of Brahms connections, perhaps Gershwin's Lullaby would take Brahms across one more border and well into a new century?
– Dick Strawser
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