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Antonín Leopold Dvořák (, 1841 – May 1 , 1904 ) was a Czech composer of Romantic Music . BIOGRAPHY Dvořák was born on September 8th, 1841 in Nelahozeves near Prague (then Austrian Empire , today the Czech Republic ) where he spent most of his life. His father was a butcher, innkeeper, and professional player of the Zither . Antonín's parents recognized his musical talent early, and he received his earliest musical education at the village school which he entered in 1847. He studied Music in Prague's only Organ School at the end of the 1850s, and slowly developed himself as an accomplished violinist and violist. Throughout the 1860s he played Viola in the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra, which was from 1866 Conducted by Bedřich Smetana . The need to supplement his income by teaching left Dvořák with limited free time, and in 1871 he gave up the orchestra in order to compose. He fell in love with one of his pupils and wrote a song cycle, ''Cypress Trees'', expressing his anguish at her marriage to another man. However, he soon overcame his despondency and in 1873 married her sister, Anna Cermakova. In 1891 he wrote his '' Requiem Mass '', a work which shows much of the tonal colour and simplicity of his mature work. From 1892 to 1895, Dvořák was the director of the and African American students, who could not afford the tuition, had to be admitted for free—an early example of need-based financial aid. She agreed to his conditions, and he sailed to America. It was during this time as director of the Conservatory that Dvořák formed a friendship with Harry Burleigh , who became an important African-American composer. Dvořák taught Burleigh composition, and in return, Burleigh spent hours on end singing traditional American Spirituals to Dvořák. Burleigh went on to compose settings of these Spirituals which compare favorably with European classical composition. In the winter and spring of 1893, while in New York, he wrote his most popular work, the Symphony No.9 '' "From The New World" ''. Following an invitation from his family, he spent the summer of 1893 in the Czech speaking community of Spillville, Iowa . While there he composed two of his most famous chamber works, the Quartet In F ("The American"), and the String Quintet In E Flat . Also while in the United States he heard a performance of a Cello Concerto by the composer Victor Herbert . He was so excited by the possibilities of the cello and Orchestra combination displayed in this concerto that he wrote a cello concerto of his own, the '' Cello Concerto In B Minor '' ( 1895 ). Since then the concerto, considered one of the greatest of the genre, has grown in popularity and frequently performed today. He also left an unfinished work, the ''Cello Concerto in A major'' ( 1865 ), which was completed and orchestrated by the German composer Günter Raphael between 1925 and 1929 and by Jarmil Burghauser in 1952. In addition to music, there were two particular passions in his life: locomotive engines and pigeon breeding. He eventually returned to Prague where he was director of the conservatory from 1901 until his death in 1904. At the end of his life, Dvořák was in serious financial straits, as he had sold his many compositions for so little he had hardly anything to live on. He is interred in the Vyšehrad Cemetery in Prague. WORKS Dvořák's wrote in a variety of forms: his nine Symphonies stick to classical models that Beethoven would have recognised, but he also worked in the newly developed Symphonic Poem form and the influence of Richard Wagner is apparent in some works. Many of his works also show the influence of Czech folk music, both in terms of rhythms and melodic shapes; perhaps the best known examples are the two sets of Slavonic Dances . Dvořák also wrote Opera s (the best known of which is '' Rusalka ''); Chamber Music ] (including a number of String Quartet s, and quintets); songs; choral music; and Piano music. Dvořák's works were catalogued by Jarmil Burghauser in ''Antonín Dvořák. Thematic Catalogue. Bibliography. Survey of Life and Work'' (Export Artia Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1960 ). In this catalogue, for example, the ''New World Symphony'' (Opus 95) is B178. {Link without Title} Dvořák's Symphonies During Dvořák’s life only 5 symphonies were widely known. The first published was the 6th, dedicated to Hans Richter . After Dvořák’s death, research uncovered four unpublished symphonies, of which the manuscript of the first had even been lost to the composer himself. This led to an unclear situation in which the "New World" Symphony has alternately been called the 5th, 8th and 9th. This article uses the modern numbering system, according to the order in which they were written. Dvořák wrote his ''. '' Symphony No. 2 In B Flat Major '' still takes Beethoven as a model. But '' Symphony No. 3 In E Flat Major '' clearly shows the sudden and profound impact of Dvořák's recent acquaintance with the music of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt . The influence of Wagner was not lasting, however; it is greatly reduced in '' Symphony No. 4 In D Minor ''. Again the scherzo is the highlight, but Dvořák shows his absolute mastery of all formal aspects. Dvořák's '' Symphony No. 5 In F Major '' and '' Symphony No. 6 In D Major '', are largely pastoral in nature. The Fifth has a dark slow movement which borrows (or, rather, steals) the first four notes of Tchaikovsky 's First Piano Concerto for its main theme. The Sixth shows a very strong resemblance to the Symphony No. 2 of Brahms, particularly in the outer movements. '' Symphony No. 7 In D Minor '' of 1885 is perhaps the most Romantic symphony by the composer, and often reckoned to exhibit more formal tautness and greater intensity than the more famous 9th Symphony . The 7th could hardly be a starker contrast to the more relaxed '' Symphony No. 8 In G Major '', a work which Karl Schumann(in booklet notes to a recording of all the symphonies by Rafael Kubelik ) compares to the works of Gustav Mahler . By far the most popular, however, is Dvořák's '' Symphony No. 9 In E Minor '' , better known under its subtitle, ''From the New World''. This was written between January and May 1893, while he was in New York. At the time of its composition, Dvořák claimed that he used elements from American music such as Spiritual s and Native American Music in this work, but he later denied this. The first movement has a Solo Flute passage very reminiscent of '' Swing Low, Sweet Chariot '', and one of his students later reported that the second movement depicted, programmatically, the sobbing of Hiawatha . The second movement was so reminiscent of a Negro Spiritual that William Arms Fisher wrote lyrics for it and called it '' Goin' Home .'' Dvořák was interested in indigenous American music, but in an article published in the New York Herald on December 15, 1893, he wrote " the 9th symphony I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music." It is generally accepted that the work has more in common with the folk music of Dvořák's native Bohemia than with American music. Neil Armstrong took this symphony to the Moon during the '' Apollo 11 '' mission, the first Moon landing mission, in 1969 . Three of the most highly regarded recordings of these symphonies are the cycles by Rafael Kubelik , Libor Pešek , and István Kertész . Dvořák's Concertos As the music critic Harold Schonberg put it, Dvořák wrote "an attractive Piano Concerto in G minor with a rather ineffective piano part, a beautiful Violin Concerto in A minor, and a supreme Cello Concerto in B minor" (''The Lives of the Great Composers,'' W.W. Norton & Company, New York, revised edition, 1980). The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G minor, Op. 33 was the first of three Concerto s that Dvořák composed and it is the least known of the three. Dvořák composed his piano concerto from late August through September 14 of 1876 . Its autograph version contains many corrections, erasures, cuts and additions. The bulk of these changes were made in the piano part. The work was premiered in Prague on March 24, 1878 , with the orchestra of the Prague Provisional Theatre conducted by Adolf Cech with the Czech pianist Karel Slavkovsky as soloist. As Dvořák wrote: "I see I am unable to write a Concerto for a virtuoso; I must think of other things." Instead, what Dvořák thought of and created was a concerto with remarkable symphonic values in which the piano plays a leading part ''in'' the orchestra rather than opposed to it. The Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 53 was the second of the three Concerto s that Dvořák composed. He had met the great violinist Joseph Joachim in 1878 and decided to write a concerto for him. He finished it in 1879, but Joachim was skeptical of the work. He was a strict classicist and objected to Dvořák's ''inter alia'' or his abrupt Truncation of the first movement's orchestral Tutti and he also did not like the fact that the Recapitulation was similarly cut short and that it led directly to the slow movement. He never actually played the piece. The concerto was premiered in 1883 by the violinist František Ondříček in Prague who subsequently performed it in its debuts in Vienna and London . The concerto is in the classical three movements. The second (slow) movement is especially celebrated for its lyricism. The Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B minor, Op. 104 is the last of Dvořák's three concertos. He wrote it in 1894-1895 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan. Wihan and others had asked for a cello concerto for some time, but Dvořák always refused, stating that the cello was a fine orchestral instrument but totally insufficient for a solo concerto. Dvořák penned the concerto in New York while serving as the Director of the National Conservatory. In 1894 Victor Herbert , who was also teaching at the Conservatory, had written a cello concerto and presented it in a series of concerts. Dvořák attended at least two performances of Victor Herbert's cello concerto and was inspired to fulfil Wihan's request for a cello concerto. Dvořák's cello concerto received its premiere in London on March 16, 1896 with the English cellist Leo Stern. The concerto was well received. Brahms said of the work: "Had I known that one could write a cello concerto like this, I would have written one long ago!" SEE ALSO FURTHER READING
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