Antonín Dvořák * – Was a man that loved reading his Bible. He owned copies in English and in modern and ancient Czech. Scriptural references are found throughout the letters that he wrote and many of his manuscripts began with the words “With God” written in and ended with “God be thanked”. He spoke of his genius as “the gift of God” or as “God’s voice”. He proclaimed “Faith, hope and love to God Almighty and thanks for the great gift of being enabled to bring this work in the praise of the Highest and in the honor of art to a happy conclusion.” Then he added, “An artist who is not religious could not produce anything like this. Have we not examples enough in Beethoven, Bach, Raphael and many others?” He became friends with Johannes Brahms in his early thirties.
He came to America in 1892 as the Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. He traveled about the country listening to Native American Songs and African-American Spirituals. He once commented on them, "I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on these melodies. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them."
The Slavonic Dances Op. 46 that we will be performing today were written first for piano for four hands. Before he completed it he started arranging it for orchestra. The first performance of three of the movements took place only 2 months after he began working on it. These Slavonic Dances quickly traveled around the world and within a decade Dvorak was known world-wide.
* References on Dvorak come from a marvelous book from Zondervan Publishing House
ISBN: 0-310-20806-8 called: Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers by Patrick Kavanaugh
pages 151-157.
Antonín Dvořák 1841-1904
