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Read on for our guide to the life and music of the Czech composer Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k, creator of some of the masterful and meloduc music of the late 19th century.<\/p>
Anton\u00edn Dvo\u0159\u00e1k is one of the most important composers of the 19th century – and also one of the easiest to love. <\/p>
His importance lies partly in the way he synthesised the folk music of his native Bohemia and neighbouring Moravia (now Czech Republic) with classical music, arriving at a very successful late Romantic style with vivid folk inflections and rhythms.<\/p>
In this way, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k belongs at the centre of that flowering of 19th-century classical music with strongly national roots – just as, for example, Sibelius<\/a>‘<\/strong> music draws on the myths and legends of his native Finland, or the music of Musorgsky<\/strong><\/a>, Rimsky-Korsakov<\/strong><\/a>, Balakirev and others has a pungently Russian soundworld, operating at a remove from the separate Western classical tradition.<\/p> But another huge part of the draw of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k is the sheer melodic joy of his writing, whether for full orchestra, string quartet, solo voice or many other combinations. Listen, to, for example, the first five minutes of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k’s Eighth Symphony and you hear a composer simply bursting with melodic and rhythmic ideas.<\/p> The classical tradition is heard in a rich and vital form; the birdsong of Dvo\u0159\u00e1k’s beloved Bohemian woods and fields is evoked; and the result is one of the most exciting and atmospheric few minutes in the whole of classical music. Dvo\u0159\u00e1k’s closest musical contemporaries were Brahms<\/strong><\/a> and Tchaikovsky<\/strong><\/a>, and music like this stands should to shoulder with the great works of those two.<\/p>