Contents of this page
- Dvořák’s and Janáček’s Dumka ►
- Dvořák’s Idea for an American National Anthem ►
- Retouches and Alterations in Smetana’s Má Vlast ►
- Bohuslav Martinů and Vítězslava Kaprálová ►
- Young Martinů and Fascination with Death ►
- Martinů in Cleveland ►
- Josef Antonín Štěpán (1726-1797): A Bicentenary Tribute ►
- Jiří Antonín Benda’s Singspiels: A Comparison with the Dramatic Works of Mozart ►
- The Melodramas: Radúz a Mahulena and Pod Jabloní by Josef Suk and Julius Zeyer ►
- Popular Melodrama in the Czech Lands: From the Paris Boulevard du Crime to Prague’s Stavovské Divadlo ►
- Czech and Slovak Musical Philately ►
Dvořák’s and Janáček’s Dumka
by Jarmil Burghauser
[Czech Music: Journal of the Dvořák Society, 20 (1997-8), pp. 41-56]
The interest of Dvořák and Janáček in the dumka, originally an east European folk song genre, stemmed partly from the nineteenth-century growth of Panslavic resistance to Hapsburg rule. In art music, as distinct from folk music, it was the practice for a sung dumka to be followed by a dance. It was also used in purely instrumental music, as for example by Liszt and Wieniawski. The first dumka composed by Dvořák appeared in the late 1870s, and this type of material appears in many subsequent compositions. Much influenced by Janáček’s attraction to the dumka, and maintaining its essential character, Dvořák transformed its inspirations into highly personal formations.
Dvořák’s Idea for an American National Anthem
by Jarmil Burghauser
[Czech Music: Journal of the Dvořák Society, 20 (1997-8), pp. 56-61]
Dvořák considered it regrettable that the North American song My Country ‘tis of Thee, a kind of second American National Anthem, should have been set to the tune of the English God Save the Queen. He sought to offer an alternative, but this never materialised. Much later, however, his one-time Secretary Kovařic added the words of My Country ‘tis of Thee to Dvořák’s sketched out proposal. If Dvořák’s tune is to be reconstructed to these words as a ‘new’ American National Anthem, however, then it is could not be musically correct for it to be shaped as Kovařic suggested. Burghauser offers a more viable version.
Retouches and Alterations in Smetana’s Má Vlast
by Jarmil Burghauser
[Czech Music: Journal of the Dvořák Society, 20 (1997-8), pp. 62-71]
A performer’s interpretation of a musical work should be distinguished from ‘retouching’ or ‘revision’, which involve a changing of the standing instructions of the score. While retouching leaves the overall parameters intact, revision means alteration of the work’s structure and instrumentation. Older conductors, particularly from abroad, were suspicious of aspects of the orchestration in Má Vlast which did not reflect current standard practice. Suspicions were strengthened by errors in the notation of the original published edition. A number of conductors retouched or even revised the work. Supraphon appointed a commission to fashion a new performing edition which avoided ‘wild retouchings’ but attended to the indisputable problems of some of the work’s passages as written by Smetana.
Bohuslav Martinů and Vítězslava Kaprálová
by Michael Henderson
[Czech Music: Journal of the Dvořák Society, 20 (1997-8), pp. 71-84]
Meeting in 1937, the promising young composer Kaprálová became a pupil of Martinů. An intimate relationship developed as they worked together in Paris. In June 1938 the two attended an ISCM festival in London where Kaprálová conducted her Military Sinfonietta. Some of their finest works were composed as political storm clouds gathered over Czechoslovakia. Early in 1939, Kaprálová decided she could not continue the affair with Martinů, though the two remained close friends. Soon diagnosed as having tuberculosis, she died in Montpellier in June 1940, aged 25. Concurrently, Martinů and his wife were fleeing occupied France for the United States. While his time in America gave his emotional wounds chance to heal, Martinů’s memories of his relationship with Kaprálová were to haunt him for the rest of his life.
Young Martinů and Fascination with Death
by Jaroslav Mihule
[Czech Music: Journal of the Dvořák Society, 20 (1997-8), pp. 85-95]
The ‘mysterious motif of death’ was a consistent thread in Martinů’s compositions and was closely related to shifts in his musical style. His preoccupation with the subject often related to life crises. The death motif had offered a similar inspiration for composers such as Mahler, Dvořák, Smetana, Novák and Suk, all of whom influenced the composer. The associated theme of martyrdom also is strong in Czech culture and it can be argued that Martinů’s life and death in exile contained such an element, representing an important and continuing facet of his art.
Martinů in Cleveland
by Greg Terian
[Czech Music: Journal of the Dvořák Society, 20 (1997-8), pp. 95-99]
During his sojourn in the United States, Martinů’s connections with Cleveland were strong. His 2nd Symphony was premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra under Leinsdorf in October 1943. Heralded as a tribute to the large Czech community in the city, it was enthusiastically received. In 1946 Szell became director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Prior to the German occupation, as director of the German Opera in Prague, he had performed Martinů works in his orchestral concerts there. He conducted the premiere of the Rhapsody-Concerto in 1953, and in 1957 gave the first American performance of the Fresques de Piero della Francesca. Less successful than these was a subsequently neglected work commissioned for the fortieth anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra, the symphonic prelude The Rock.
Josef Antonín Štěpán (1726-1797): A Bicentenary Tribute
by Howard Picton
[Czech Music: Journal of the Dvořák Society, 20 (1997-8), pp. 100-110]
Acknowledged as founder of the Viennese Lied, Bohemian-born Štěpán was also a master of the keyboard, showing a distinctive personal style in his piano music of the second half of the eighteenth century. By the 1760s his compositions were becoming known in Leipzig and Paris as well as Vienna. Štěpán’s German language songs, printed in the late 1770s and early 1780s, were epoch-making, in effect the precursors of Schubert. Štěpán also made changes to concerto design, foreshadowing the tendency of later composers to exalt the soloist. He can be regarded as the most advanced composer of keyboard concertos of his time, apart from Mozart.