Brahms opened the door; America made Dvořák immortal
Antonín Dvořák folded Bohemian and Moravian folk rhythm into symphonic craft until critics called him his era's most versatile composer. International fame, though, arrived through a Brahms jury prize, bestselling Slavonic Dances, and a homesick New York sojourn that produced the New World Symphony and the American Quartet.
Born 8 September 1841 in Nelahozeves near Prague, Dvořák was the eldest of fourteen children, eight of whom survived infancy. His father František kept an inn, played zither, and worked as a butcher; his mother Anna came from a Lobkowicz bailiff's family. Village teacher Joseph Spitz put a violin in his hands. At thirteen he was sent to Zlonice to learn German, studying with the temperamental Antonín Liehmann. At sixteen his father allowed a music career on the condition he train as an organist. He graduated second in his class from Prague's Organ School in 1859, then earned pennies as a violist in theater bands—once under Wagner's baton in 1863—while giving piano lessons to stay afloat.
Public premieres in Prague in 1872–73 finally announced him at thirty-one. Seeking wider notice, he entered Austro-German competitions and first won in 1874 with Brahms on the Austrian State Competition jury. After a third win in 1877, Brahms steered him to publisher Simrock, whose commission became the Slavonic Dances, Op. 46. Sheet-music sales detonated his reputation; a London Stabat Mater in 1883 opened Britain, America, and by 1890 Russia. He followed Smetana's nationalist path, weaving folk materials into symphonic forms rather than treating them as costume.
In 1892 he became director of New York's National Conservatory. There he wrote the Symphony From the New World and his celebrated Cello Concerto; a Spillville, Iowa summer in 1893 yielded the American String Quartet, Op. 96. Pay cuts and homesickness sent him back to Bohemia in 1895. Of ten operas—nearly all with Czech librettos meant to carry national spirit—Rusalka (1901) stands tallest. He died on 1 May 1904. The irony sticks: a Czech nationalist's global calling card was stamped in Manhattan and Iowa.
Source: Antonín Dvořák
