Antonin Dvorak

Claire Lee Purdy has written a fascinating and vital biography of Antonin Dvorak from his peasant boyhood in Bohemia to his place of great renown as one of the world's most gifted composers.

In Spillville, Iowa there is a plaque over the door of a charming old-fashioned house that reads:

    ANTONIN DVORAK
    THE GREAT COMPOSER
    LIVED IN THIS HOUSE
    WHEN HE COMPOSED THE
    HUMORESQUE

This inscription was placed there by the expatriot Czech citizens of the little mid-western town out of love and pride for their countryman who wrote this haunting melody during a summer spent among them.

Dvorak lived in the United States for three years and was the Director of the then newly-formed National Conservatory of Music in New York. During that time he wrote From the New World. Although he wrote nine symphonies, this one in which he expressed his feeling for America, has become the world's favorite. It was inspired by Longfellow's Hiawatha and by themes hummed for him by Henry Burleigh, talented Negro singer and composer, and with Humoresque, made him as beloved in America as our own Stephen Foster. Other works America has also taken to its heart are the sentimental Songs My Mother Taught Me, Gypsy, and his wild, passionate, Slavonic Dances. 

Antonin Dvorak lived through a period of great historical moment—the Crimean and Franco-Prussian wars, our own Civil War, the famous Dreyfus Case, the establishment of Italy as a Kingdom, the emancipation of the Serfs in Russian, and the collapse of the House of Hapsburg. And this, like the early history of his country is reflected in his music. Stories and legends of the Austrian states are all part of his work—"Good King Wenceslaus"; Charles IV who founded the University of Prague when the rest of Europe still floundered in the Dark Ages; John Huss whose martyrdom started the thirty years war; Rabbi Lowe and the legendary "Golem"; and later revolutionaries like the Hungarian Kossuth who brought reforms to the Austrian States and an end to serfdom.

During the years of Nazi domination, the works of Dvorak, with those of Smetana were outlawed and it was a crime to play his music, but with the liberation of Czechoslovakia, the first act of a thankful nation was to play publicly again the music of Antonin Dvorak. But whatever the destiny of Bohemia, his music, though colored with the moods and emotions of the Slavic people, has an eloquence and simplicity that appeals to the whole world and it will continue to be heard wherever people lift their heads in dignity and freedom.

—from the dust jacket