PROKOFIEV – THE WAR YEARS AND POST WAR (1941 – 1953)
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 came as a complete surprise to most Russians including Prokofiev who related that, having first learned about it from the caretakers wife, he sought confirmation from Eisentstein. The invasion did at least resurrect Alexander Nevsky particularly in showing the Teuton hordes. The news of the invasion is said also to have come as a surprise to Stalin who became frozen by inaction. It was on Stalin’s orders that the cultural élite were ordered out of Moscow, in Prokofiev’s case to Nalchik in the Caucasus where he was established for three months in a kind of ex-pats’ artists’ colony.
At the time he had been at work on writing his ballet “Cinderella” but he turned now to something else he had been thinking on for some time, “War and Peace”. Lina has stated he had been speaking of it as early as 1935. Some years later Mira would read to him from Tolstoy’s novel and he planned an opera based on the personal circumstances of its leading characters against the background of Napoleon’s retreat. In April 1941 he had drafted an outline libretto. With the outbreak of war, his focus switched from the individual destinies to the creation of a national epic. The link to Hitler and the Nazi invaders with that of Napoleon at the head of the French army was obvious. The villains were not the problem. The more difficult association might have been between the Tsar Alexander 1 and Josef Stalin, a connection that the latter might well have deprecated. This work, as monumental as the novel which inspired it, would become the most challenging task to face Prokofiev. It took up all his energy in writing it and in his obtaining a production over the course of nearly ten years.
These war years were to be amongst the most prolific in Prokofiev’s output. Yet the compositions which emerged were written against the background of his deteriorating health. He first suffered a heart attack in the Spring of 1941. Later in January of 1945, Prokofiev fell and suffered severe concussion. He nearly died in the following days, his recovery hampered by his earlier heart attack and general fatigue from overwork. He would suffer recurring headaches and periods of dangerously high blood pressure until his death eight years later. Prokofiev never fully recovered from this accident, although the greatness of works which were to follow gave no indication of it.
The period spent in Nalchik was short but productive and Prokofiev was happily ensconced with friends, particularly Miaskovsky who was preparing his twenty third symphony, and other musical acquaintances. He described it there as a small town nestling in the foothills of the Caucasus with a delightful park (subsequently destroyed by the Germans) and a mountain range in the background. It was the chairman of the Arts Committee who told Prokofiev of the collection and recordings, made by Tanyev, of Kabardinian folk music, which he suggested was abundant in material that was untapped. Prokofiev contemplated using it as the basis of a second quartet but began to wonder whether the primitive nature of the original could adapt itself to his compositional style and at the same time be understood. The chairman however, reassured him that he should write as he felt. “If we don’t understand your quartet now, we will later on”. His first quartet had been written under the classical inspiration of Beethoven. Now he produced a string quartet (already illustrated by Matthew) based on Russo-Oriental folk melodies, but his approach had nothing in common with that of Rimsky Korsakov or Borodin nor of Ippolitov-Ivanov with his exotic Caucasian Sketches, in particular the Procession of the Sadar which sounds as if it was written to bring the tourists out to watch. What to my mind Prokofiev was able to achieve was a successful assimilation of folk-tune and sonata form. It was Constant Lambert in his “Music Ho!” , a study of music in decline, written in 1934, my constant reading companion over sixty years, who wrote of the conflict between nationalism and form . Incidentally, if I had my way, I would have every hotel replace its Gideon bibles with Music Ho! National expression was a prevalent musical movement in many countries during the 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps no more so clear cut as in Russia. The basis of traditional Austro-German sonata form is the exposition of two main themes and their subsidiary ideas and to develop them by dissecting them, reversing them and cross pollinating them before recapitulating them . The principal means of expression of nationalism was usually folk dance or song, music which, at its most basic is not susceptible to symphonic or quartet development without at the same time losing its national character. As Lambert wrote, “To put it vulgarly, the whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it again and play it rather louder”. This is best exemplified by the first movement of Borodin’s second symphony. The equivalent movement in his first symphony was less national but much better structurally developed.
The themes of the first movement of the Prokofiev quartet evidence their Caucasian roots and atmosphere but, though seemingly repetitive, Prokofiev is able to ring the changes in developing them in sonata form without any sense of loss of their initial national character. By the time the quartet was finished Prokofiev had moved on from the Northern Caucasus to Tbilisi in Georgia. He later learned that when the Germans had taken Nalchik, the Arts chairman had joined the partisans and had been killed in attacking enemy lines. Life in Tbilisi was hard and the winter exceedingly cold. There he continued to work constantly, despite his deteriorating health and the advancing Germans. He finished his original score for “War and Peace”, writing to Eisentstein that he would shortly be able to submit himself to his bondage”. This was a reference to the musical score he had undertaken to write for the film “Ivan The Terrible” which was now being planned as a trilogy. Soviet Film production had been moved to Alma Ata close to the Chinese border to where Prokofiev went on leaving Tbilisi and where he remained until 1943 when it became safer to return to Moscow.
Prokofiev had also set to work on what are known as his Wartime Sonatas. His sixth was actually completed before the war. He completed his seventh piano sonata which was to achieve international success but did nothing to improve the reputation of its predecessor, the first performance of which had been given by Prokofiev himself in a broadcast back in 1940, the page turner being Sviatoslav Richter. The first movement in particular was considered by one critic as exceedingly brutal. What it does tell us is that with the Great Patriotic War the party had taken its foot off the cultural brake. Certainly Prokofiev seemed to be writing what he wanted fairly freely with a mixture of his “old fashioned” modernism mixed, as and when he felt like it, with his seemingly newly acquired lyricism. What it amounts to is that Prokofiev was a multi-faceted composer who could bring to bear his varied abilities and mix and match as he saw fit.
The seventh sonata was given by Richter who had learned it by heart in four days. He has related how, during the first rehearsal, there was a problem with the piano pedal. Both he and Sergei crawled under the piano to sort it out and, in doing so, cracked their heads “so hard that we saw stars”. Prokofiev later recalled , “But we did fix the pedal after all, didn’t we!” The motoric third movement is another in Prokofiev’s pre-Soviet ‘toccata’ style, unrelenting in its rhythm and power. Yet for this sonata he was awarded his first Stalin Prize. When the Eighth Sonata was completed in 1944, Prokofiev was not well enough to play the premiere. This time he selected another brilliant young Soviet pianist, Emil Gilels, in his stead. Gilels gave the first performance on 29 December 1944. Although not as popular as the sixth and seventh, the eighth was described by Richter as “the richest of all of Prokofiev’s sonatas.”
Despite the harsh conditions imposed by war, Prokofiev’s output remained prolific. Apart from the second quartet and his ‘War’ sonatas he continued work on “War and Peace”. Also during this time, Prokofiev wrote incidental music for four films, completed the epic Cinderella ballet, a number of symphonic suites, a flute sonata with a transcription of it for violin and piano (made at the request of David Oistrakh) , two military marches, several folk songs, and the towering Fifth Symphony. By any standards this is an amazing number of works and represents the fruits of his workaholicism. Cinderella, second only to Romeo and Juliet in popularity among Prokofiev’s ballets, followed a circuitous route to its premiere on the Bolshoi stage in 1945. The work was originally commissioned by the Kirov Theatre during the period of the Soviet/German pact . Prokofiev was in fact working on the piano score to the second act of the ballet when the invasion actually began. This in itself immediately placed the project on hold and Prokofiev had to focus his energies elsewhere for two years. When he did resume work on the ballet at the end of 1943, he also completed a set of piano transcriptions (Opus 95 and 97) before starting on the orchestration. The ballet received its premiere in November1945 in Moscow with Galina Ulanova in the title role. She had earlier danced the lead in Romeo and Juliet as well. As the greatest prima ballerina of her day she was used to obtaining her way. She leaned heavily on Prokofiev to get him to switch the best tunes, which he had written for the fairy godmother, to Cinderella. Ulanova had met her match. No way was Prokofiev prepared to play ball on this, Ulanova or no Ulanova.
Of all the works in the wartime period his most successful was undoubtedly his Fifth Symphony which he began in 1944 immediately after he had completed the orchestral score for Cinderella. It received its first performance in January 1945 in Moscow against the background of the end of the war being in sight and Soviet troops pressing towards victory. It was to be also the last time Prokofiev was to conduct as soon afterwards he fell dangerously ill, nearly dying, following a fall and concussion and from which he never fully recovered. The work was highly praised. It quickly emerged as his most popular symphony and remains to this day one of his greatest orchestral works. He was awarded his second Stalin Prize for it.
Here I dare to enter Matthew’s territory, just a little, if he will forgive me. Every great composer has his own sonar fingerprints, something which tells you this can only be Bach, or Vivaldi or Beethoven. Often they may be identified by their use of their preferred instrument and Prokofiev certainly has his almost to himself. It is his use of the tuba. One hears it in Lieutenant Kijé and in the Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet and I noticed this particularly about a year ago at a performance of the fifth symphony. It starts with a quiet flute over quiet violins but then comes our tuba. Now usually the tuba is there to give extra beef to the trumpets and trombones or, as with early Sibelius, to back up the double basses of the string section. With the tuba, the little guy, usually hidden by his instrument and almost certain to end up with a hernia, is generally just an added support. What Prokofiev does is to use the tuba as a soloist to roam freely as anybody else would a solo violin. Few composers do so, Ravel being the notable exception in his orchestration of Bydlo from Mussorgsky’s Pictures from An Exhibition.
When you hear the tuba in Prokofiev you know it is Prokofiev. The shattering climax to the first movement of this symphony is followed by a scherzo originally intended for Romeo and Juliet. It has something of an almost American razzmataz about it. The third movement has a sad wistfulness and am I mistaken in thinking that there is something of Beethoven’s moonlight sonata in its rocking accompaniment in the strings? In this symphony, and the second movement in particular, I sense some distant family likeness to Aaron Copland. He, like Prokofiev, had been a modernist in the 1930’s, before finding his popular voice at very much the same time, in works like Rodeo, El Salon Mexico and Billy The Kid. The two share the same sense of homespun composition and of Copland it can be said that in the Fanfare for The Common Man, in all its simplicity, he was able to achieve with ease and without political dogma or diktat what socialist realism in Russia set out so heavy handedly to try to do and couldn’t.
The triumphalism of the fifth symphony sent out the right messages as the war came to an end. They danced the hokey cokey in the streets of Moscow, or its Russian equivalent. As a commemoration, Prokofiev wrote the Ode to the End of the War for a mixed ensemble including 8 harps, 4 pianos, wind, percussion and double basses. But Prokofiev’s thoughts were far bleaker and at variance with the need for optimism set out in the party line. He dwelt more upon the loss and waste that the country had had to endure. Coupled with this was his deteriorating physical condition which could only add to the pessimism he was expressing. His doctors ordered him to restrict his hours of work but Prokofiev needed work like a drug. In any case he could manage without a piano to go on composing wherever he was. He had begun his sixth symphony before the fifth. It is set in three long movements and he completed it in November 1945. It is written for a standard sized orchestra to which are added piano and celeste. Its brief moments of apparent happiness slip away leaving a sense of unease, of troubled times ahead, reminiscent in some ways of Mahler’s sixth symphony. The slow movement has a striking middle section which recalls perhaps the clock scene in Boris Godunov. The last movement contains what could be called a peasants’ clog dance, but not with the joy of Beethoven’s merrymaking peasants. It ends with the rhythm of the peasants becoming a stumping march. Commentators jump to interpret this as being Prokofiev’s comment on the trampling of Stalin’s totalitarian regime. The sixth symphony disappointed after its first performance. It is generally considered now to be his greatest.
Sergei and Mira had returned to Moscow in 1943 where he was happy enough living at a special composers village. He did not feel particularly at ease alongside composers whom he did not regard highly but who, because of their senior official positions in the Composers Union, saw themselves as superior. It was a price he could afford to put up with and ignore. His fortunes began to change for the worse after Stalin saw Ivan The Terrible, released in 1945, and which he did not like. Prokofiev’s other great rival, Stravinsky, wrote in his diary, “Luncheon here in New York. Went to see the most stupid and provincial Russian film, Ivan The Terrible, first part, with very embarrassing music of the poor Prokofiev”.
During the war the brake on artists’ freedom which had appeared to have been somewhat relaxed was re-applied, not just with a gentle application but by a fierce emergency stop with the iron heel of Andrej Zdhanov. It was he who had probably piloted the earlier pogrom against writers and composers in 1934. He was then party boss in Leningrad. By 1948 he was in the politburo, Stalin’s chosen successor, his son marrying Stalin’s daughter and at the ready to implement the every wish of his beloved leader. As previously with Lady Macbeth, the problem started with Stalin going to the opera. One wonders why Stalin did go to the opera. He never seemed to enjoy it and it always ended up with his need for a purge. On this occasion the opera concerned was The Great Friendship by one Vano Muradeli, an otherwise unknown mediocrity. The libretto contained all the ingredients required for a really good socialist realist work of art. The only problem was that he would not have known that the hero and martyr of the story, the old leader of the Georgian Bolsheviks, had actually been executed on Stalin’s order. Immediately his award was withdrawn, as was his opera. Now Zdhanov stepped in, heading a series of terrifying courts martial with all the composers lined up and dressed down about their duties to the party and how to compose their music. Each in turn confessed their failings. Each ignobly was made to level criticisms against the others. This period became known as Zhdanovshchina, “Zdhanov’s Terror”. Prokofiev was particularly singled out and vilified for his sixth symphony. Other leading composers were savaged including Shostakovitch and Katchaturian. Moise Weinberg, who had escaped the Nazis in Poland and whose family had all been wiped out by them, was condemned because his music was said to be too Jewish. Added to his other problems, all Prokofiev could do was bear it without grinning. Gone were the days when he had been Stalin’s blue eyed boy. In November 1948, Zdhanov, who was a heavy drinker, suddenly died but the repression continued until the death of Comrade Joe.
Yet another black cloud added to Prokofiev’s troubles. He and Lina had parted in 1941, she staying in Moscow during the war. Sergei and Mira were happy together but Lina would not agree to a divorce. She had found work during the war dealing with visiting Western delegations. By the end of the war she had been ill with diphtheria and in the post war paranoia she became suspected as a spy. In January 1948 Prokofiev was able to procure an annulment of the marriage which had taken place in Bavaria in 1923. My researches give two different reasons. The first is that the Soviet Union passed a law in 1947 which made marriages to foreign citizens null and void with retrospective effect. Another source states that marriages which had taken place abroad should have been registered in the Soviet Union and that the Prokofievs had failed to do so. My own legal instincts tell me that the second is the more likely. It seems that Sergei may have advanced his own omissions as reason for the annulment. In March he and Mira married and four weeks later Lina was to disappear. Some blame Mira believing she was a government agent, unlikely as she lived with and nursed Sergei till his death. Lina had gone out after receiving a phone call and was bundled into a car. She was sentenced to twenty years in a labour camp in the Gulag and must have been thankful she had taken her fur coat with her. It is not known if Prokofiev did try to help but it I imagine that his reaction was one of self preservation. Such disappearances were not an common occurrence and even the wife of Molotov received similar treatment whilst Stalin’s loyal foreign secretary remained silent. In an interview years later, Sergei’s older son, Sviatoslav said that he believed that Shostakovitch had written a letter on behalf of Lina. He also put his neck out to have Weinberg brought back to Moscow and these acts show him to be a caring and very brave man. Lina was released after eight years, during the Khrushchev years. By then Prokofiev was dead but she was able to get the annulment itself annulled and the validity of her marriage and the legitimacy of her children restored. She tried for many years to leave and was eventually granted permission to do so in 1974, nearly twenty years after she had followed her husband to the Soviet Union. She returned to Paris and recorded the narration of Peter and the Wolf when she was 88 years old.
The last years saw the deaths of close friends, Eisentein and particularly Miaskovsky who, with 27 symphonies under his belt, had lost all heart after the repression. Prokofiev, still subject to virulent attacks and venues closed to him, made some genuine attempts to produce what the state required but he also continued to compose works of stature. Particularly notable are the works for cello written for Rostropovitch, a sweet mellow cello sonata, a bed mate on the record shelves with that of Rachmaninov, and the powerful cello symphony.
His final symphony was the seventh composed in 1951 and 1952. Intended originally as a symphony for young listeners, it achieves a comparative simplicity but there are dark emotions beneath the surface. In some parts it returns to the innocence of the Classical Symphony. The first public performance of the seventh symphony was to be Prokofiev’s last public appearance. Five years later he was posthumously awarded a Lenin Prize for the work, not that he nor Lenin for that matter, would have known about it, a guilt offering perhaps from what had been an ungrateful nation.
Socialist realism as a system could never have produced a genius, only its galloping comedians and circus music. Like Halley’s comet, genius appears rarely. Unlike Halley’s comet we never know where it is going next to appear, but when it does it will not be a result of but despite the system. Sergei Prokofiev was such a genius.
Sergei Prokofiev died of a massive brain haemorrhage on the 5th March 1953 at 9 pm. With great irony Josef Stalin died just under an hour later. Prokofiev’s death went unreported for some days, not so that of Stalin. Prokofiev’s flat was close to Red Square where the crowds came out to pay their last respects…to Stalin. The streets of Moscow were blocked off and traffic had come to a standstill. It cost a tremendous effort to move Prokofiev’s coffin from his apartment for a civil funeral. There was no room in the newspapers for an obituary. As Galina Vishnevskaya, wife of Mstislav Rostropovitch, wrote “And while hundreds of thousands of people trampled one another in the frenzy to bow one last time to the superman-murderer, the dark dank basement on Myauskaya Street was almost empty – the only people present being Prokofiev’s family and friends who happened to live nearby and could break through the police barriers”
This term Matthew Taylor will be dealing in particular with differing aspects of five major Czech composers from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Chronologically, they are:-
Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) and the particular aspect will be the symphonic poems from the cycle, Ma Vlast.
Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) particularly concentrating on his string quartets but also a comparison between his sixth symphony with that of Brahms’ second.
Josef Suk (1874 – 1935). Here Matthew has singled out for study Suk’s Asrael symphony completed in 1906
Leos Janacek (1853-1928) once described by me, in my note on Taras Bulba, as a weirdo. The particular focus in this case will be on the operas, Jenufa and the Cunning Little Vixen
Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959). His symphonies were composed at annual intervals in America between 1941 and 1945 with one stray late comer in 1951. Matthew will also introduce us to Martinu’s second string quartet written in 1925 and which will be played at the halls by the Wihan Quartet.
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Smetana, who was born in Bohemia, then forming part of the Hapsburg Empire, is said to be the first of the great Czech composers. Not quite so as there were several Bohemian composers, particularly in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, whose names do not appear in concert programmes alongside their contemporary Austrian top notchers. What there is no doubt about is that Smetana gave the lead to the emergent Czech nationalist movement during the nineteenth century. Interestingly, Smetana was primarily a German speaking Czech and only took up advocacy of the Czech language in his thirties. Even later on, in one of his most famous works, Ma Vlast, the river Vltava was also accorded its German name of Moldau.
His father was a brewer on the estate of Count Waldstein – now there’s a name to link back to Beethoven. Smetana started playing the violin at the age of five and clearly had talent. His father was himself an amateur player when he had the time. He had had three marriages and eighteen children. Anyway, he did not entertain any thought of a son of his playing professionally. That was no job for a Czech boy when you could be a brewer.
In 1840 Smetana moved to Pilsen for his general education and here he met up again with Katerina Kolar with whom he used to play piano duets in his boyhood. The 19-year-old Smetana was smitten. At this time she was studying piano in Prague with a celebrated teacher, Josef Proksch. She managed to persuade him to accept the impoverished Smetana as a student in composition and theory, allowing him to defer payment until he could afford it. This brought Smetana to Prague where he got to know the Director of Prague Conservatoire. In turn, he recommended Smetana to Count Leopold Thun to be the resident music master and piano tutor to his family. Smetana was then able to combine his extended stays in the country with the family during the summer with periods in town attending the Prague social “season”.
To begin with his ambition was to be a virtuoso in the Lisztian manner but he began to make out as a composer with a strong personality of his own. His early piano pieces, bagatelles and impromptus, had a charm which contained his already recognizable stamp. In 1848 political unrest was leading to revolution throughout Europe and with the build up and turbulence Smetana began to feel ill at ease with service in the Thun household. He decided to set up his own music school in Prague. He then sought financial help from a number of quarters including Liszt who gave Smetana his encouraging support including offering to find a publisher for Smetana’s music. With the outbreak of the 1848 uprisings (to which he felt passionately committed), Smetana left the employ of the Thun family and opened the music school. In the following year he and Katerina got married.
Unfortunately the music school did not turn out to be a financial success and Mr and Mrs Smetana, against a background of a number of childbirths only one of which survived infancy, were soon struggling. Smetana himself was getting known and admired, not only by Liszt but he also had met Berlioz and the Schumanns. Despite such hobnobbing, his music was not achieving a breakthrough in Prague. In 1855 Katerina began developing signs of consumption. With this and with the growing political difficulties in Prague he grabbed at a chance to move to Gothenberg to take up a conductorship which had been offered to him. He and Katerina moved there. Alas the climate was not kind and Katerina died in 1857. Smetana stayed on living in Sweden till 1861. It was during this Gothenberg period that he was to write his first symphonic poems, a musical form invented by Liszt. Richard III is very much Liszt influenced. Its dramatic character appears to reflect the drama of Shakespeare’s play although Smetana had in fact written the music before choosing his subject. Wallenstein’s Camp, was based on one of a trilogy of plays by Schiller. The setting was set in Pilsen, his old stamping ground, during the thirty years war. Haakon Jarl was based Norwegian history of the 10th century with fighting going on between Haakon and various people, all called Harald. A year after Katerina’’s death, Smetana married his brother’s sister in law, Bettina Ferdinandova but the marriage was not a happy one and Smetana sought other consolations over which we will draw a curtain..
In 1861 Smetana and Bettina returned to Prague which had returned to normal. Within a year of his arrival, the Provisional Theatre, dedicated to Czech language plays and operas, was opened, and Smetana became a leading light in the battle to establish it on a firm footing. This was achieved despite the fact that he had been a German speaker with considerable opposition from the conservative elements within Prague’s cultural society, who did not appreciate an ardent supporter of Wagner and Liszt, then arch-modernists, leading the way in Prague.
It was against this background that Smetana’s thoughts turned to creating musical dramas and orchestral pieces which celebrated the popular culture and history of the Czech people. There followed a series of operas, the first in 1863 being The Brandenburgers in Bohemia. This is a patriotic work which deals with Bohemia’s political history and a wholesale uprising. It was soon followed by The Bartered Bride, known by my friends in the orchestral pit at ENO as The Bastard Bride. Smetana had become the Theatre’s conductor, and things were looking up. The opera became such a runaway success that its position as the most popular Czech opera has remained unchallenged ever since. Smetana spent the rest of his life as an operatic composer trying to recreate this level of popular acclaim.
However, it was to music dramas that Smetana next turned and it is sad that these do not get sufficient performance in England. I would particularly recommend the next opera, Dalibor. It takes a more progressive musical stance. It has a plot reminiscent of Fidelio – hero locked up in prison and heroine planning his escape. Influenced by Wagner the work is based on leitmotifs but there is a greater melodic feel that only Czech music can produce. It was not well received but undaunted, he chose an equally ambitious political subject for his next opera, Libuše leading to the eventual triumph of the Czech people. Eight years passed before the first production and in the interim there were three further operas,The Two Widows (1874), a comedy, The Kiss (1876) and The Secret (1878), both inspired by stories set in the Bohemian countryside.
In 1874 Smetana began work on a cycle of symphonic poems to be entitled “Ma Vlast”, “My Country”. Effectively, having depicted his country in its many facets in his operas, he was about to do the same in his symphonic poems which he was to write over the next five years. During this period he began suffering from the physical disintegration caused by what was described as inherited syphilis, which was presumably a more respectable means of acquiring the disorder. Smetana realized he was going deaf and the incipient tinnitus was musically described in his string quartet “From My Life” with a long high pitched violin note interrupting the earlier joys. Ma Vlast finally consisted of six separate symphonic movements, the last two, Tabor and Blanik having been added later. Unlike the works written in Stockholm, these set about depicting various aspects of Bohemian history, geography, legend and dance. The best known, often played on its own, is the second, Vltava which, like the fourth, Bohemia’s Woods and Meadows, was issued separately in the days of 78 rpm records. However they are all best heard in context as part of the whole cycle. As Matthew will be analysing them, I will not attempt to do likewise but just make some passing comments.
The opening work is Vysherad, the name of a historic 10th century castle on a promontory overlooking the mouth of the Vltava river. It is much associated with legend. There is a cemetery there where the remains of Smetana and Dvorak are buried. The main theme of Vysherad is played at the start on two harps before being bandied round the orchestra. The importance of this theme becomes apparent as it appears in some, not all, the other works. For those who only know Vltava – it gets a daily performance on Classic FM – they may not realize that what sounds like a fanfare coda at the end is in fact the Vysherad theme denoting the river flowing past the castle towards the sea.
Vltava is a wonderful description of a river babbling at its source before flowing through the countryside, past peasants dancing, reaching a climax through its rapids until it flows majestically past Vysherad. The main theme of Vltava bears an uncanny resemblance to Hatikvah, the Zionist hymn of hope which became the Israeli national anthem. Co-incidence? I doubt it. Vltava is the same tune in the major to the minor of Hatikvah. Here is an abbreviated extract from one internet source:-
“The melody for Hatikvah derives from the La Mantovana, a 17th-century Italian song. Its earliest known appearance in print was in the del Biado’s collection of madrigals. Later known in early 17th-century Italy as “Ballo di Mantova” its melody gained wide currency in Renaissance Europe, and was also famously used by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana in his symphonic poem celebrating Bohemia, “Má vlast,” as “Vltava” (Die Moldau).”
The Zionist movement was born in Bohemia. The music for Hatikvah is said to have been written by one Shmuel Cohen in 1888. Either he was influenced by a common ancestor of Vltava or he had heard Vltava which had received its first performance in 1882 and thought “Now that’s the tune I’ve been waiting for”.
The third work of the cycle is Sarka who was an Amazon like figure of legend who was apart from being a feminist warrior was a misandrist who seduced her man before killing him. She must have been worth dying for.
Bohemias Woods and Meadows is a succession of themes developing from one to the other. It tells no story but is a combination of nature painting and country dancing.
The last two are both separate and linked. Tabor is based on the wars of the Protestant leader Jan Huss, who lived some hundred years before Luther. It starts with a statement of the Hussite hymn, “Ye who are the warriors of God”, used also by Dvorak in his overture, The Hussite. Its theme is like a Morse code tattoo. It is with this theme that Tabor ends with the tattoo as a question mark. It is immediately followed with exactly the same phrase for the opening of Blanik. There is even more symphonic development as it reaches a climax with the Hussite hymn combined with the Vysherad theme giving the whole cycle a feel of thematic cohesion.
Ma Vlast is a work of great national and emotional appeal. In particular it was Rafael Kubelik who conducted it with the Czech Philharmonic when the Nazis entered Prague in March 1939 and again when Kubelik returned to Prague in 1990 after the Velvet Revolution.
Smetana could not conduct Ma Vlast because of his disability. He went on to write the first act of the opera Viola in 1883, based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. However he suffered his final mental collapse in April 1884. In mid-May he died, as did Schumann, in an asylum.
Dvorak. Let’s start with the pronunciation. We have what is a perceived Czech pronunciation as Vorsjark. But is it and is that D pronounced or not? And does it matter anyway? Well in England we like to think that we pronounce foreign words as they should be… and we rarely get it right. Take lingerie, a French word where, as we all know our French, or so we think, we pronounce “lingerie” as “longerie” whilst the French pronounce “lingerie” like “langerie”! Now the French are about as bad as we are with names but they do make a point of francophoning a foreign name into a French one. I am not certain how the French president’s Hungarian ancestors pronounced it but in his native France he is Sarc-o-zee, the o being the short o for orange and not the long o for ohm. In England we tend to say Sar-cosy, like Tea Cosy. And, by the way, the French don’t pronounce the painter’s name as Day Gar but d’Ga. Still,vive la différence. So, what about Dvorak? The Czechs usually put their emphasis on the first syllable, Smetana or Martinu. My research on the Czech pronunciation of Dvorak is that it is D’vor-sjark with a distinct D and a slight lengthened emphasis on the sjark. My further researches on the internet reveal Dvorak also to be a typewriter keyboard system to compete with QUERTY; a Pennsylvanian wrestling champion and an advert for the increase of the size of the phallus. If anyone is interested they can do their own googling.
Perhaps the most lovable of composers, Dvořák was born in 1841, in a village not far from Prague (then part of Bohemia in the Austrian Empire, now in the Czech Republic). His father was a butcher, an innkeeper and a professional player of the zither. Although his father wanted him to be a butcher as well, Dvořák with full parental support pursued a career in music. Nevertheless he was a man who could be trusted to carve a joint. At 16 he studied music in Prague and became an accomplished player of the violin and the viola as well as the organ. He wrote his first string quartet when he was 20 years old, two years after graduating.
By the time he was 18, Dvořák had become a full-time musician, playing in various dance bands, usually as a violist. One of the groups with which he played formed the core of the Provisional Theatre orchestra, the first Czech-language theatre in Prague, and which Smetana directed from 1866. The income of a player in the orchestra pit was somewhat less than that my friends in the pit of the ENO would settle for and there was a constant need for Dvorak to supplement his income which he did by giving piano lessons. It was through these piano lessons that he met his pupil, Josefína Čermáková, for whom he got starry eyed and composed “Cypress Trees”. He proposed to her but he did not carve a place in her heart. No matter. There was her sister Anna next in the queue and in 1873 Dvořák married her.. They had nine children, three of whom died in infancy.
After he married, Dvořák left the National Theatre Orchestra, in which he had been playing for 11 years, and secured the position of organist at St. Adalbert’s Church in Prague. This certainly provided him with financial security, higher social status, and enough free time to focus on composing. During this early period, he was able to compose a considerable output of music, learning much by the study of the scores of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. His later influences were Lizst and Wagner and, later still, Brahms. He was gradually finding his feet and one gets the feeling that in those earlier days he lacked a certain amount of self confidence and the music quality does vary, as one would expect. Some writers say that his music showed a little awkwardness as he developed his own style but it also shows imagination and invention. As well as songs and miniatures, there is a great deal of chamber music, in addition to an opera, and a concerto.
Matthew will be spending time on the string quartets, not all, as Dvorak published 14 of them. No need for analysis here but they all are all very tuneful with the American by far the most popular string quartet in the recital rooms.
Toward the end of this opening period, Liszt and Wagner dominate, although Dvořák still tried to contain them in classical forms. The big work of this phase is the Symphony No. 1 entitled “the Bells of Zlonice” which Dvorak thought was irretrievably lost. It seems he had entered it for competition and it had not been returned. In later life, when he told his composition students, he was asked by one of them, “What did you do?” “I sat down and wrote another one,” he replied. Fortunately, it turned out that this composition wasn’t lost, merely misplaced, but it did not surface again until 1923 when discovered in the shop of a music dealer in Leipzig. It was not played until 1936 and only published in 1961.For this reason Dvorak claimed only to have written eight symphonies when of course there had been nine. On top of this, his later publisher, Simrock, would only number five of them, the ones that had been published, (four by Simrock). The numbering and order of the Dvorak canon has therefore been a nightmare. Martinu was another for writing music commissioned for performance at short notice, putting it down and losing it and then having to write a replacement work at even shorter notice.
Dvorak’s Wagner period was short lived and then, having reassessed what he was about, he switched his artistic direction, combining Czech folklore with classical forms. Major works of this period – the 1870’s – include his second string quintet in 1875, the same year that his first son was born, the Stabat Mater (1877), the symphonies 4-6, the two lovely serenades, one for strings and one for winds, the violin concerto, and the enormously successful first set of the Slavonic Dances, written originally for piano duet and even more successful when later orchestrated. The sixth symphony in particular shows an affinity to Brahms 2nd written at much the same time. Matthew will be dealing with this in his lecture No 4.
In 1874, Dvořák made the first of four successful applications for a grant from the Austrian government. Apart from easing Dvořák’s financial stress, the grants also enabled him to submit works for competition which brought him to the attention of Brahms, who was one of the members of the jury. Brahms immediately became a fan and leaned on his own publisher, Simrock, to take on Dvořák, just as Liszt had earlier done for Smetana. Brahms was only just eight years older than Dvorak but he was more than well established by then and had a huge influence over Dvořák’s work, and the two later became friends. This was where Dvořák’s career outside Czechoslovakia began to set off. At home he had become the acknowledged successor to the ailing Smetana. His admiration for Brahms not only is reflected in the sixth symphony which sounds as Czech as they come, particularly with its furioso movement (Matthew will deal with this) but also with the seventh which for many is his most cherished.
One reason that led to the international spread of Dvorak’s reputation was Austro-Hungarian politics of the time. There were periodic bans on performances of Czech composers within the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Dvorak had to endure scheduled performances of major works like the sixth symphony being cancelled in Vienna. Dvořák’s international career can be said to take off from his first visit to London in 1883 at the invitation of Sir Joseph Barnby where he conducted his Stabat Mater. The British went crazy for the music – a bit like Haydn some 90 years earlier – and Dvorak was to return to England eight more times. He was to conduct regularly at the Birmingham Triennial Festival and he certainly left an impression on one orchestra violinist from nearby Worcester. Yes, you’ve got it, Edward Elgar.
It was the Royal Philharmonic Society which commissioned the seventh symphony. It has moved on from the sixth, and is a Germanic sounding work. It is not plagiarism but Dvorak donning Brahms’ clothes. It has a Brahms-like sound opening very like that of Brahms’ Tragic Overture. There are no quotes from Brahms but his fingerprints are all over it. With his growing international reputation Dvorak began to re-establish his own individuality from this influence and his later music would develop a much broader style. Another influence was Tchaikovsky (pronounced Chee-kors-kee by the way – I have that on the authority of Vladimir Ashkenazy) following a tour to Moscow and St Petersburg.
Now Dvorak moved into academic circles, having been invited in 1889 to become professor of composition at the Prague conservatory. His best student was undoubtedly his son-in-law, Josef Suk. Dvorak turned out to be no teaching wizard, insisting that his students have a finished technique before he allowed them into his class. He would criticize student scores, put his finger on weak passages whilst in general treat his pupils as colleagues, insisting that they find their own way, as he had found his. In sum, great composers do not always turn out to be great teachers, as Beethoven had discovered after taking lessons from Haydn. Dvorak was however to receive other honours from Academia, particularly Cambridge University where he was awarded an honorary doctorate and for whom he presented his eighth symphony. This is a sublime work of nature and exquisite melody, reminiscent of some of Smetana. It ends with a thunderous orchestral sound somewhat similar to the sounds produced by Beethoven in the last movement of his seventh symphony.
1892 to 1895 was to be Dvorak’s American period. Jeannette Thurber, a wealthy American music patron had offered him the position of artistic director and composition professor at New York’s National Music Conservatory, at a salary of $15,000. Now that was irresistible. It was not just big bucks but mega bucks, about twenty-five times what he had been earning in Prague. Now there were as yet no internationally recognized American composers and no recognized American style to speak of. This was the country of Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence. It was soon made clear that Dvorak was expected to pave the way for an “American” musical style. Just like that. I mean can you imagine in 1892 before the emergence of Elgar , Brahms or Verdi being asked to come here to create a national style of English music, I ask you?
Without any precedent of “home spun folksy music” to go by, Dvorak took this charge to heart. He set about discovering “American Music” much as he had used Czech folk idioms within his music. Shortly after his arrival in America in 1892, he would write newspaper articles reflecting on the state of American music. He supported the concept that African-American and native American music should be used as a foundation for the growth of the new American music. One of his pupils was Harry Burleigh (1867-1949), one of the earliest African-American composers. It was he who, at Dvorak’s request, introduced Dvorak to traditional American spirituals. It was Dvorak who urged Burleigh to collect and arrange the spirituals he sung, which he then set about doing, about 300 of them. His works included, Deep River; Steal Away; Go Down Moses. Without Harry Burleigh there would have been no Dvorak New World Symphony as we know it, no Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett and no Swing Low, Sweet Chariot by the English rugby team supporters which would have been a good thing as they do not know what it is about anyway.
Out of this mix emerged Dvorak’s ninth symphony, “From The New World”, ever popular, ever fresh and as American as Hopalong Cassidy; then the American Quartet, originally called the Nigger Quartet but renamed in the 1950’s. There followed his American Quintet which was so named. Dvorak was however also to continue to compose in his own home spun Czech style, particularly his Te Deum and his cello concerto which could be described as Slavonic sounding. It is a masterpiece which allows the cello to be heard against the largest of orchestras in the largest of halls. Brahms, who had written his double concerto in 1887 exclaimed, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one could write a cello concerto like this? If I had only known, I would have written one long ago!” It reflects in particular, as do many of the works of the American period, his longing for his homeland. His summers were spent in Iowa with Czech speaking fiends. As Bill Bryson has written that nothing in Iowa is more than six feet high I doubt that the place afforded Dvorak much scenic pleasure. Eventually, he had had enough. Added to his home sickness came the loss of the Thurber fortune in a financial disaster long before the Wall Street crash or the Dot Com fiasco were dreamed of. She was no longer able to keep to her part of the bargain and had stopped paying Dvorak. With $15,000 dollars a year going up the Swanee, Dvořák and his family packed their bags and returned to Prague.
Thus we come to Dvořák’s final period dominated by the superbly orchestrated tone poems (The Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, and The Golden Spinning-Wheel, among others). He also turned back to opera. Dvořák considered himself primarily an operatic composer, although, only two, Rusalka and The Devil and Kate, get staged outside the Czech Republic. Yet he wrote more operas (11) than he did symphonies (9).
In 1897 Dvořák’s daughter got married to his student, the composer Josef Suk. Her death following that of Dvořák would give birth to Suk’s Asrael Symphony which Matthew will discuss in Lecture 5. Dvorak’s 60th birthday in 1901was celebrated as a national event, with concerts and a banquet in his honour.
Antonin Dvořák remains the great 19th-century Czech composer, building on the achievement of Smetana, truly international, and outstanding in symphony, concerto, symphonic overture, and chamber music
