Studies in Modern Music Part 7

The village of Nelahozeves lies on the Moldau, about a mile to the north of Kralup. The clean, well-kept cottages sun themselves upon a slope of the low hills, or nestle among the trees by the river bank; a tiny street comes trickling along the shallow dale like a tributary; at its mouth a great square castle rises on a spur of jutting sandstone and seems to dominate the very landscape by feudal right. Behind are uplands of corn and pasture and orchard, where you may idle for half a summer's afternoon, watching the play of light tremulous among the leaves, the smoke curling lazily from the cl.u.s.ter of red roofs, and below them the brown turbid river and the long timber-rafts floating down to the Elbe.

It is one of the quietest of places: hardly a sound, hardly an animal, hardly a sign of life. There are a few geese meditating undisturbed in the roadway, there is a knot of children busy with some inexplicable game in a corner of waste ground; now and again a couple of gossips come to fill their shapely wooden cans at the village well, or a slow, patient ox-cart bears down its fragrant load from the hay-field. For the rest, everything is fast asleep, secure in a bounteous land that asks but little labour for the satisfaction of daily needs, and secure, too, under the government of Prince Lobkowitz, who owns the castle and the village and half the country-side, and who, though he never comes to live among his own people, has always administered his territory with justice and beneficence.

At the bottom of the street a lane turns across toward the church, pa.s.sing on its way a homestead which could take rank with an English farm-house of moderate pretension. An arched gateway gives access to a long, narrow court-yard, flanked on the one side by a solid, two-storey building, white-walled and red-roofed like its neighbours; on the other by a lower range of offices and storehouses; while at the back, behind the stable, runs a rough wall, surmounted by a statue of St Florian; and, carrying the eye upward, through a strip of coa.r.s.e paddock, to the hedgerows and cornfields of the higher slope. A sign over the entrance announces that the place is still the village inn, as it was half a century ago, when Pan Frantiek Dvorak held it in tenancy and served his customers in the little taproom by the door.

Among the villagers Pan Dvorak was a person of some consequence. For one thing, he belonged to a family old and respected--a peasant stock that had grown and flourished from the earliest times that memory could record; for another, he had married the daughter of one of the Prince's bailiffs, and so caught a faint reflection from the remote and inaccessible glories of the castle. Again, he was butcher as well as innkeeper, and so represented the centre of village trade, as well as the focus of village conviviality; and, to crown all, he was personally popular--a handsome, active youngster of eight-and-twenty, vigorous, alert, clean-limbed; and a good musician, too, who of an evening would bring his zither under the great walnut tree and delight his guests with 'Hej Slovane' or 'Sedlak Sedlak,' or the new national anthem that was going to rouse Bohemia against Austrian oppression. It is only natural that he should figure large in the public gaze, and that there should be great rejoicings when, on September 8, 1841, the villagers a.s.sembled to drink the health of his firstborn.

The child grew up into a st.u.r.dy, broad-shouldered boy, with brown eyes, dark complexion, and a tangle of black hair--keen and adventurous in character, ready to join in any sports that were afoot, and, as tradition still attests, well able to hold his own in conflict. From the first he was pa.s.sionately fond of music--listening in eager enjoyment when his father played to him, or when, on some lucky day, a band of wandering musicians would come from Kralup or Prague or even Pressnitz, and earn itself a welcome at the inn door. Better still were the times of village holiday, when the street was gay with stalls, and the dancers wore down the evening sun--Lenka in snowy hood and bright kirtle, Hanik in jaunty hat, long coat and drab knee-breeches, threading the mazes of Polka and Furiant until the fiddlers gave in for very weariness. It was a childhood of simple pleasures and healthy out-door life, full of colour, full of melody, the first preparation for a brilliant and honourable artistic career.

Meantime the more serious part of Dvorak's education was entrusted to an amiable pedagogue called Josef Spitz, who kept the village school at the street corner, and who not only taught his new scholar the rudiments of letters, but, what was more important, gave him his first lessons in singing and the violin. When he was twelve years old, the boy was sent to live with an uncle at Zlonic, in the coal country, where there was a better school and a wider opportunity of study. He had already made some advance in his two branches of music--enough, at any rate, for him to have taken the solos in the church choir at home, and to have borne an efficient part in the local orchestra: now, under the tuition of Liehmann, the Zlonic organist, he ventured out into new fields, and learned something not only of organ and piano but of the elements of musical theory. No doubt the instruction was very imperfect and very narrow of range, but within its limits it was gratefully accepted; and the old kapellmeister deserves some honourable mention as having been the first to discover evidences of unusual capacity in his shy, simple-hearted pupil. In 1855 came another transference; this time to Bohmisch-Kamnitz, where Dvorak learned German, and continued his musical studies with the organist Hancke; and then appeared an obstacle which seemed likely to block progress altogether. His father had recently removed to Zlonic in order to open a new shop on a larger scale; another hand was wanted to carry on the trade; and Antonin, at the age of fifteen, was told to regard his education as finished, and to return at once to the real business of his life.

It is easy enough to emphasise the incongruity of the situation: to recall Burns the gauger and Keats the apothecary's drudge: to condole with an artist who, like Fortuny, has to seek inspiration from the shambles. It is still easier to be wise after the event, and condemn, as tyrannous and unreasonable, a decision which time has signally refuted.

But there are here two considerations which may serve, in some degree, to modify judgment. In the first place, the condition of music in Bohemia was, at this time, entirely different from that in France or Germany: its outlook far more desperate, its prizes far more unattainable. Nearly all the posts were held by Germans, and native talent, unless it could afford the price of expatriation, might readily find itself reduced to gathering pence by the wayside, or at most, would earn its reward in some village organists.h.i.+p--scanty, obscure and ill-paid, with little opportunity in the present and with no hope of further advance. No one could have foreseen that, within six years, a national art would spring into sudden and unexpected existence--bringing with it a means of expression which, in 1856, lay outside the reach of the most sanguine hope. It may be true that the darkest hour is that which precedes the dawn; but, for all this, it takes a robust faith to infer the dawn from the darkness. And, in the second place, the boy had as yet neither the education nor the material to offer his father any convincing proofs of genius. So far as we know, he had never written a note of music, and, though he could play skilfully on two or three instruments, there was no very great likelihood of his making his name as a virtuoso. His credentials were the reports of three village schoolmasters: his attainment was but a promise which the subsequent career might have failed to ratify. In a word, the capacity was uncertain, the chances of a career were almost non-existent: surely it was not unnatural that a plain man, who had no gift of prophecy, should balance present alternatives and sum them up in favour of competence and comfort.

At any rate, whether justified or not, the order was irrevocable. Pleas and entreaties proved equally unavailing, Hancke's protests fell upon deaf ears, and at last Dvorak reluctantly prepared to leave Kamnitz and to sacrifice all prospects of an artistic profession. But before yielding, he determined to make one more bid for freedom. Hitherto his father had known him only as an executant: perhaps the case would be altered if he could present himself as a composer. There were plenty of people in the country-side who could sing and play; it was little wonder if, amid that undistinguished crowd, his abilities were unnoticed; but to write music brings a man to the forefront, and shows a gift which it may be profitable to stimulate and encourage. He therefore prepared his last appeal in the shape of an original polka; copied the band parts, distributed them secretly among the Zlonic musicians, and, after a few days of breathless antic.i.p.ation, launched his _coup de theatre_ for the conversion of an unexpectant household. It is better to draw a veil over the performance. The composer did not know that the trumpet is a transposing instrument: strings and wind contended strenuously in different keys; there was an agonised moment of jagged and excruciating discord; and it is not surprising that the family remained unconvinced.

There is some little irony in the disaster, if it be remembered that among all Dvorak's gifts the instinct of orchestration is perhaps the most conspicuous. He is the greatest living exponent of the art; and he was once in danger of forfeiting his career through ignorance of its most elementary principle.

After so inopportune a failure, there was nothing left but submission, and for little short of a year Dvorak set himself with a good grace to accept the inevitable. But by the spring of 1857 he began to feel that the position was impossible, and once more a.s.sailed his father with urgent entreaties. There were his brothers--Frantiek, Josef, Adolf, Karel--growing up to take his place in the shop; there was no pressing need that he should remain any longer at work which he found wholly uncongenial; he was sure that he could succeed as a musician, and whether he succeeded or not, his whole heart was set upon the attempt.

At last, after some months of anxious discussion, he carried his point, and in October set out for Prague--full of hope, full of ambition, eager to explore a realm of which hitherto he could hardly be said to have pa.s.sed the frontier.

At Prague he entered the Organ School (founded some thirty years before by a society for the encouragement of ecclesiastical music), and, from 1857 to 1860, worked his way through a period of diligent and laborious students.h.i.+p. The difficulties that beset him were even greater than those that traditionally obstruct the path of genius. At first, no doubt, his father was able to make him a small monthly allowance; but even this slender income had soon to be withdrawn, and the boy, at sixteen years of age, was left to maintain himself by an art of which he knew little more than the rudiments, in a city which was almost wholly barren of opportunities. And it was not only the material problems of food and lodging that pressed him for a solution. He had learned next to nothing of composition, he was totally unacquainted with the great cla.s.sics, he had no books and no money to buy them; even the teaching of his school seems to have been mainly concentrated upon organ technique, and to have given little or no a.s.sistance in wider fields of study.

Berlioz was poor, but at least he had the library of the Paris Conservatoire. Wagner spent two years of grinding poverty, but at least he could compensate them with 'Rienzi' and the 'Flying Dutchman.' Here is a case in which everything alike is denied--not only recognition but power, not only the rewards of life but its very appliances. The most certain confidence, the most indomitable courage, might well have lost heart at a prospect so dreary and so disspiriting.

In order to obtain the bare means of livelihood he joined a small band of some twenty performers, and went about with them, earning a meagre pittance at the cafes and restaurants of the city. On Sundays he played the viola at a private chapel, where there was some show of an orchestral service, and, between his two engagements, contrived to ama.s.s a revenue of rather more than thirty s.h.i.+llings a month. Of course all systematic study, except at his organ cla.s.ses, appeared to be out of the question. He could no more have hired a piano than he could have purchased the crown jewels; even music paper was a luxury of the rarest indulgence; and concerts were only attainable, when, now and again, some good-natured bandsman would see him standing wistfully at the door and would let him in as a stowaway. But in spite of all discouragements, he continued his work with unabating enthusiasm, and, in 1860, graduated at the Organ School as second prizeman of his year.

By a notable coincidence it happened that the fresh-levied forces of Bohemian music received their marching orders at almost exactly the same time. As Dvorak emerged from the training-yard to take his place among the ranks, there was already a.s.sembling a council of war which, before it rose, should appoint a national leader and proclaim a national advance. True, another decade was to pa.s.s before the new recruit bore any prominent part in the movement. As yet he was only a trooper, carrying his marshal's baton in his knapsack, but bound, nevertheless, to wait in patient subservience until the fortune of battle gave him his opportunity. Yet, for all that, the difference made by the winter of 1860 was almost incalculable. It is one thing to idle in barracks with no cause to defend and no victory to share: it is another to stand at attention on the outskirts of the field when the front is busy with the enemy and at any moment an aide-de-camp may ride up with orders to engage. Hardly in the whole of artistic history shall we find a stranger chance than that which, against all expectation, brought the two centuries of bondage to so opportune a close.

It is beyond the scope of the present essay to describe the national movement in any detail. There are so many lines of progress, there are so many conflicting issues, that the task cannot adequately be attempted from the standpoint of a single art. But, to estimate the music of Dvorak, it is first requisite that we should understand his relation to his country, and trace, in however brief an outline, the course of revolution that culminated in his triumph. He plays so important a part in the later acts of a patriotic drama, that we may well be excused for prefacing his entry with some slight epitome of the plot.

Up to the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia maintained an honourable place in the fore-front of European civilisation. She was printing books when hardly any of her neighbours could read them: she inaugurated one of the greatest religious movements of the Middle Ages: her university took rank with Paris and Oxford: her teaching was accepted by scholars from every corner of Christendom. But in 1620 the whole national life came to a sudden and tragic end--shot down by Tilly's mercenaries at the battle of the White Mountain. The loss of political independence was followed by an almost entire cessation of intellectual activity: the language was prohibited, the literature was destroyed, arts and sciences either pa.s.sed into servitude or fled with the 'Winter King' to a distant and inglorious exile: the voice that was once eloquent in the congress of the nations died away into silence and oblivion. 'Better a desert,' said the Emperor Ferdinand, 'than a land full of heretics,' and his order was followed with only too literal an obedience. For the next hundred and fifty years the history of Bohemia is a blank page: her highest achievement to bear the yoke of an alien power, her utmost hope to forget that she was once a people.

It is true that, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, a few Bohemian musicians began to make their appearance: it is equally significant that, without exception, they left their native land and tried their fortunes as free-lances in a foreign service. Myslivecek won his t.i.tle of 'Il Divino' from the careless enthusiasm of Italy; Reicha settled in Paris, where his lectures on composition embittered the early years of Berlioz: Dussek, the greatest of them all, became frankly German in aim and method: from first to last they turned their steps across the border in search of a career which their own country was too fast in prison to afford. It is, of course, idle to reproach them with a want of patriotism: there was no cause to which patriotism could attach itself: but none the less we may find in their denial of their country a conclusive reason for their ultimate failure. They were men of undoubted gifts--rapid, facile and copious of production, well-read in the musical learning of their time, fluent of phrase, prompt of resource, skilful and dexterous in the treatment of their material; and yet, at the distance of a century, there is only one of the whole band who is anything more than a name to us. Even Dussek has but a fading reputation: his work is lost under the shadow of its own laurels: and for the rest, it is not once in a decade that some student takes down their dusty volumes from the shelf and marvels at the misapplied talent and the wasted ability.

A curious ill.u.s.tration, half pathetic and half humorous, may be found in the career of Anthony Heinrich. He was born at Schonbuchel in 1781, served his apprentices.h.i.+p at Covent Garden, and finally established himself in America, where, for some five-and-thirty years, he produced a continuous series of ineffectual compositions. There is an oratorio, written in ten real parts, and 'scored,' as its author proudly affirms, 'for all known orchestral instruments:' there are symphonies, such as the Eroica and the Tower of Babel; there are overtures--one to Was.h.i.+ngton, another to Niagara, another to the great Condor of the Andes; there are 'Mythological concerti grossi;' there are scenes from the Autobiography of a Troubadour; there are songs, studies, virtuoso-pieces without limit. It should be added that the official catalogue, which is appended to the excerpts in the National Museum at Prague, mentions with particular emphasis a concert overture _per recte et retro_, ent.i.tled 'The Advance and the Retreat.' If this incredible composition was ever written, it says something for Heinrich's counterpoint, and at the same time explains his total failure to win any position as an artist. But, apart from this, the explanation lies open on every page. Here is talent, here is technical skill, here is even some approach to originality: and the whole is ruined by uncertainty of aim and by want of earnestness. It all lies on the surface; it has no character, no stability, no inherent power of growth, and because it has no root it withers away.

We may conclude that the first efforts of the Bohemian renaissance were wholly misdirected and unavailing. The national art was no more to be created by 'La Consolation' than by mythological concerti grossi and overtures to the great condor. But in the meantime a small body of men was beginning at home to collect the scattered ruins of past achievement, and to lay them in order as the foundation of a more durable superstructure. Scholars like Dobrovsky set themselves to regather the language from the valleys and uplands of a rustic dialect: poets like Tyl and Halek built up a fabric of literature from the artless rhymes of the country village: music itself began to stir, to awaken, to stand on the alert until its time should come. There could be little organisation, for the citadel was still in the hands of an adverse power; there could be little publicity, for the work might be at any moment prohibited by official censors.h.i.+p: but, in spite of all obstacles and difficulties, the movement gradually took shape and direction--now hampered by popular indifference, now thrown back by some political outbreak, never losing heart or turning aside from its purpose. Yet, before its purpose could be attained, there were two further conditions to satisfy. Hitherto the pioneers of Bohemian music, like those of the French language, had conducted their research as a matter of private interest and private enterprise: before they could combine into an academy of any mark or moment, they needed a parliamentary charter, and they needed a Malherbe. In other words, to encourage the hope of any further progress, it was necessary--first, that Austria should allow its dependent State a fuller measure of intellectual freedom; and secondly, that there should appear some man of sufficient authority and genius to undertake the leaders.h.i.+p.

A sudden turn of the wheel, and the two conditions were fulfilled. In October 1860 the gift of liberty was granted by Imperial diploma; a few months later came news that Smetana had resigned his appointment at Gothenburg, and that he was returning to a.s.sume the direction of the national forces. His arrival was welcomed with an enthusiasm to which Bohemia had long been a stranger; new hopes were formed, new plans were discussed, the whole land shook off its lethargy and applied itself eagerly to the work. For his own part, the leader announced his method without hesitation. He had no sympathy with the more developed cla.s.sical forms: in any case, he found them unsuitable to a music of which the very foundations were still to be laid: the first need, he said, was to engage the popular ear, and to show the true value and import of the national melodies. Bohemia should cut her corner-stone from her own quarries, and build her art on the peasant tunes in which the whole of her musical tradition was comprised. The next generation might look to questions of treatment; the business of the present was to gather material, and to utilise the abundant store which lay neglected in every village and hamlet of the country-side.

It is interesting to see the new Malherbe making his appeal to the people, and 'finding his masters in language among the porters at the hay-gate.' But there can be no doubt that, under existing conditions, his method was the only means of attaining success. The first requisite for a national art is the establishment of a national speech; and until this is done in its simplest and most unsophisticated shape, there is no proper material for the artist to work upon. Of course, the great structures of sonata and symphony are only developments of the form that is already held in germ by the folk-song: still they are developments, and to begin with them is to begin at the wrong end. The same life runs through the whole course of artistic evolution, but, if there be life at all, it will trace its origin from its most rudimentary embodiment.

Again, it was a stroke of good-fortune that Smetana's genius should turn at once in the direction of opera. Among all means of artistic expression, the theatre is the most direct and the most comprehensive: it draws on the resources of literature, of painting, of music; it can reach a public that has not yet learned to appreciate the separate forms. The golden age of French poetry began with the Cid; the whole history of modern music began with Eurydice: in like manner, Bohemia may date her renaissance from her first school of operatic composers.

In 1862 the Interimstheater was opened; in 1863 came Smetana's 'Brandenburgs in Bohemia,' then followed a long and unbroken series of dramatic works--tragedy that took its theme from patriotic legend, comedy that turned to account the picturesque humours of the village life--all of native growth and of native origin, racy of the soil, simple, genuine, unaffected. To us, who look upon Prague from the standpoints of Dresden or Vienna, the music of these men may seem unduly artless and immature: with Wagner on the one side, with Brahms on the other, we have little time to bestow on tentative efforts and incomplete production. Some day we shall learn that we are in error. The 'Bartered Bride' is an achievement that would do credit to any nation in Europe; and, apart from its intrinsic value, it claims our interest as the turning-point of an artistic revolution. There is little wonder that Smetana has been almost canonised by his people. He was, in the truest sense of the term, the first Bohemian composer; and, though his country has one son to whose work she may look with a fuller admiration, she has none to whom she owes the debt of a more profound and cordial grat.i.tude.

Such was the cause in which Dvorak found himself enlisted when he closed behind him the door of the Organ School, and set forth boldly in quest of a career. At first, no doubt, his part in the movement was humble enough: he had not yet tried his strength, he had not yet won his spurs, he had not shown any qualification that could raise him above the bare level of the rank-and-file. But, in the meantime, his opportunities of education were gradually widening. A place was offered him in the orchestra of the Interimstheater, which not only made him a member of the patriotic party, but threw him into closer relation with its more prominent representatives; and, from one of these--Karel Bendl, the composer--he received a.s.sistance and encouragement at a time when both were sorely needed. He was still too poor to buy scores; but now, thanks to the kindness of Bendl, he was able to borrow them; and his own force and energy soon recovered the ground that he had lost through the tyranny of circ.u.mstance. Every spare kreutzer was expended on music-paper; every free hour was devoted to study or composition; for nearly twelve years there followed a course of training as complete as the most rigorous self-discipline could make it. In all this period, nothing is less important than the record of its external events. There were some whispers of plot and counter-plot after Sadowa: there was some little excitement when the 'Hussite' riots took place, and Prague was declared to be in a state of siege; there was an outburst of rejoicing on the arrival of the second Imperial diploma: but these were mere matters of political change, which art had by this time grown strong enough to disregard. Even the history of the Theatre pa.s.ses for the moment into a remoter background. The true biographical interest is centred within the four walls of a meagre lodging, where, day after day, an obscure student sat poring over Beethoven, in hopes to discover the secret of that magic style which trans.m.u.tes all fancies into gold, and the elements of that unknown elixir which brings to music the gift of immortal life.

II

DURCH KAMPF ZU LICHT

The record of Dvorak's earlier compositions is involved in a good deal of doubt and perplexity. Many of the works were meant simply as exercises and were destroyed as soon as their purpose had been fulfilled: some still remain in ma.n.u.script: one or two have pa.s.sed beyond the reach of conjecture. But at least it appears certain that a string quintett was completed by 1862, that shortly afterwards followed two volumes of songs, printed later as Op. 2 and Op. 3, and that in 1865 came a symphony in B flat (Op. 4),[45] and another in E minor. There is some mention, too, of a grand opera on the subject of Alfred, the libretto of which seems to have been taken from an old German almanack; but the score has long ago vanished into s.p.a.ce, and has left behind it nothing more than the bare t.i.tle. For the rest, we can only say that they would serve to ill.u.s.trate Bacon's allegory of the 'River of Time.'

A few pages of ballad and romance have floated down to us--a dozen songs, a set of short pieces for the pianoforte, a violin tune with orchestral accompaniment--and all the more serious production has sunk on the way. Yet enough is left to give presage of future greatness.

No hand but Dvorak's could have written Blumendeutung or Die Sterne, or Der Herr erschuf das Menschenherz. The work may be slight of structure and narrow of range, but from the first it bears clear impress of its author's own character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Antonin Dvorak_]

During all this time he seems to have made no attempt at publication or performance. We can hardly suppose that his silence was altogether enforced by lack of occasion: his friend Bendl was conductor of the chief choral society in Prague; his friend Smetana was in supreme command at the opera: patriotism was searching every corner for evidences of native genius, and would scarcely have refused him the hearing that it had granted to Sebor and Roskosny. But as yet he had nothing ready to offer. His more ambitious efforts appeared, for the most part, tentative and experimental; the songs, in which alone his true personality had found expression, were to be kept in reserve until he had made his mark with a broader line: on all grounds, it was better to wait in retirement than to injure the cause by a premature display.

Once let him attain to some adequate mastery of his materials, and Fate might well be trusted to supply him with opportunity.

At last, apparently in 1871, he was commissioned to write an opera for the Bohemian Theatre,[46] and accepted the invitation with all the responsibility that a first appearance naturally entails. He had, indeed, no little reason to feel responsible. He was now nine-and-twenty years of age, he had spent two-thirds of his life in study and preparation, he was entering that field in which his country's art had hitherto reaped the richer portion of its harvest. Besides, he had recently become acquainted with some of Wagner's work, and was in a state of intense proselytising enthusiasm on the subject of the Music drama. The little folk-song operas were pretty enough, and possessed, no doubt, a true educational value; but the level of public taste was now sufficiently high to appreciate a more solid and serious form of composition. In short, the first period of Bohemian music was drawing to a close, and this commission from the theatre had come, just in the nick of time, to inaugurate the second. He therefore took for his libretto a peasant comedy ent.i.tled 'King and Collier,' set it on the most elaborate Wagnerian lines, and, having thus marked in strong relief the difference between his method and that of his predecessors, went confidently down to the theatre and distributed the parts for rehearsal.

There is no great sagacity required to foretell the result. We can imagine the consternation of Smetana, who looked for a new expression of the national idiom, and found himself confronted with a fantastic exaggeration of Meistersinger. We can imagine the dismay of the soloists, accustomed to melody as simple as that of Mozart, and now lost in a tangle of declamatory phrases. The music was at once declared to be wholly impossible, the score was returned with a few disheartening compliments, and Dvorak went back to his place in the ranks, there to meditate at his leisure on the incompatibility of alien systems. It was no doubt unfortunate that his chance should have come to him in a moment of aberration. His Wagner-wors.h.i.+p was but a sudden episode, of which no trace can be found in the earlier compositions, of which little or no effect remains in the record of the later work: and it was a sorry jest of the fates, that offered him a native audience at the one period in his life when he had forsaken the native tongue.

But on an apt pupil a lesson, even from Orbilius, is never wasted. Once recovered from the disappointment, Dvorak realised that he was on the wrong tack; that he was forcing his genius in a direction to which it was unsuited; and that if he wished to convince his countrymen, he must address them not in German but in Slavonic. After all, the recent disaster was only a parenthesis; an otiose quotation that could be readily erased: henceforward he would deliver his message in the phraseology that was its natural embodiment. So, by way of palinode, he set Halek's fine patriotic hymn, 'The Heirs of the White Mountain,' a poem which, in scope and feeling, may almost rank as the counterpart of Leopardi's 'Italia'; and, in the season of 1873, made with it an appeal to that national sympathy which his last work had done so little to conciliate. No choice could have been more happily inspired. The theme was one of which patriotism was never weary; the strong, manly verses were already familiar as household words; the music held the concert-room in breathless attention from the sombre opening to the great, glorious cadence in the final stanza. There was no longer any question of his place in Bohemian art. At one stroke the memory of old failure was obliterated; at one step the patriot pa.s.sed from obscurity into the full light of honour and reputation.

As yet, however, there was little hope of material reward. It was still the day of small things in Bohemia: posts were few; salaries were meagre; fame spread but slowly across the mountain barriers by which the frontier was encircled. But in any case, it was impossible that Dvorak should remain any longer in his present penury, and at some time in 1873 he was appointed organist to the city church of St Adalbert. The change was somewhat incongruous after eleven years' viola playing in a theatre orchestra, but at least it brought him a more individual position, opened to him some career as a teacher, and a.s.sured him a stipend upon which he found it possible to marry. A pleasant indication of altered circ.u.mstances is to be found in an 'Ave Maris Stella,' dedicated 'uxori carissimae,' and printed 'sumptibus et proprietate Emilii Stary.' When a man is raised to ecclesiastical office, the least that he can do is to a.s.sume the state and dignity of a learned language.

In the winter of 1873 appeared a notturno for strings, followed in the next year by a symphony in E flat, and the scherzo of a symphony in D minor. Meantime, the theatre, which had been keeping a watchful eye on its truant ever since his return to the paths of patriotism, once more summoned him into its presence, and made amends for past disfavour by the offer of another commission. For answer, Dvorak took the old libretto that had shared the misfortune of his _debut_, reset it from beginning to end, and in less than three months, presented to the directors a new version of the unlucky drama, in which, it is said, not one bar of the original score was preserved. The feat is one of the most remarkable in the history of opera. There are plenty of cases in which a composer has altered or revised his work--Wagner made additions to _Tannhauser_, Weber reluctantly excised an important scene from _Der Freischutz_--but it is one thing to remodel a few details; it is another to reorganise an entire structure. Some little versatility is required to set even a song in two different ways; much more to find a new musical expression for a complete cast of _dramatis personae_.

But the most curious part of the story is still to come. The second version of 'King and Collier' was produced on October 24th, and at once revealed the fact that its libretto was totally inadequate. The _tour de force_, in short, had altogether failed, and Dvorak found that he had only escaped the charge of melody that could not be sung, to meet with equally galling condolence on a play that could not be acted. No doubt the music was welcomed with acclamation, especially the overture and the scene in the collier's cottage, but its very transparency brought into clearer view the manifest imperfection of the words. It was a thousand pities, said the critics, that so great a composer should have spent his genius on a rambling incoherent farce with a poor plot, a hero eminently unheroic, and a third act merely irrelevant and absurd. He would have done far better if he had followed the more common-place method of providing himself with another subject.

Dvorak, however, was not to be beaten. He knew that his own part in the work had been satisfactorily played; he could see no reason for losing his labour; and so, after an interval which was occupied in further compositions, he set himself to look for a new librettist. In course of time he met with a poet called Novotny, who had just written an opera-book for Smetana, called him into collaboration, and produced, with his aid, a final version of the play in which the first two acts are considerably altered, and the third replaced by a more adequate subst.i.tute. There can be no doubt that the changes were of vital improvement. In its present form the intrigue runs easily enough, the characters are well drawn, the situations are mainly striking and effective, and the mock trial brings down the curtain on a climax of fitting irony. But we are here less concerned with a criticism of the result than with a sketch of the remarkable series of conditions under which it was effected. An opera of which the text is rewritten and the music recomposed is a phenomenon sufficiently unusual to demand more than a pa.s.sing word of comment. The Irishman's knife, which had a new blade and a new handle, does not offer a more bewildering problem of ident.i.ty.

It was natural that the fresh interest should bring Dvorak, for the time, into a more intimate relation with the Bohemian Theatre. By the end of 1875 he had completed two more operas; one a bright little village comedy called 'The Stubborn Heads'; one a tragedy in five acts, on the subject of Vanda, Queen of Poland. The latter is at present beyond the reach of discussion; even the opera-house at Prague possesses no copy of the score, and no part of the music has yet been printed, except the fine gloomy overture. But the former, which, for some reason, was kept in reserve until 1882, is now easily attainable, and may well claim a better fate than our indifference has accorded to it. The theme is simplicity itself. Farmer Vavra has a grown-up son; Widow Rihova, who lives over the way, has a marriageable daughter; of course they lay their heads together and decide that their children shall make a match of it. Unfortunately the young people, who would have liked nothing better if they had been left to themselves, declined altogether to have their affections forced, and break out into open mutiny. Vavra threatens, Tonik defies; Rihova pleads, Lenka snaps her fingers; and matters have come to a hopeless deadlock when there steps in old father Rericha the village diplomatist. He has been watching the failure of authority with sardonic delight, he foretold it from the beginning, but n.o.body paid any attention to him; now he takes the two mutineers, provokes them first into jealousy, then into recrimination, then into a lovers' quarrel, and finally induces them to plight their troth before they are quite certain that they have been reconciled. For reasons of stage policy, the parents are made unconscious accomplices in the plot; and there is an amusing scene in which Rericha, having lured them into a couple of unjustifiable flirtations, betrays them to the village, and has them denounced by an excited chorus. Of the music there is no need to speak in detail. It is neither great nor meant to be great, but it is all pleasant and tuneful; a stream of wayside melody that appeals the more to us for its lack of pretension. The whole work belongs to the playtime of art: it is a holiday opera, gay, careless and spontaneous, occupying its hour without a dull bar or a perfunctory phrase.

Meanwhile, other forms of composition were not neglected. At the beginning of 1875 appeared a string quartett in A minor; later in the year followed a serenade in E for stringed orchestra, a quintett in G, and, greatest of all, a brilliant symphony in F major. It is probable, too, that we may attribute to the same period the first pianoforte trio, the first pianoforte quartett, and at least three volumes of small vocal pieces; but in these, as in other of Dvorak's early works, the record is too uncertain to admit of any strict chronological accuracy.

He was still a prophet honoured in his own country alone; and his message, though heard with enthusiasm by his people, had not yet been published abroad in the ears of Europe.

However, in 1875, there occurred an event, which not only brought relief to the daily need, but opened as well a wider prospect of fame and fortune. Encouraged by the success of his work at Prague, Dvorak sent in an application to the Pension committee of the Austrian Kultusministerium, submitted an opera and a symphony by way of credentials, and received in answer a grant of some thirty pounds; the first recognition that his genius had won from beyond the border. No doubt to Imperial munificence the amount was an inconsidered trifle; to the organist of St Adalbert's it meant first the equivalent of a year's salary, and secondly the more valuable guerdon of a foothold in Vienna.

The judges who had awarded his prize were among the acknowledged leaders of musical art; supported by their authority he could hardly fail to obtain a wider hearing; and if that was once secured the future rested with himself. The frontier had at last been traversed, and before him lay the broad fertile plains that were waiting to be conquered.

To equip himself with a greater freedom, he resigned his post in the year 1876, and began to devote his life almost entirely to the more pressing requirements of composition. It was a bold step, for it left him with a growing household, and an income chiefly dependent upon his pen; but like all true artists he had the courage of inspiration, and felt that victory was certain, if he were allowed to maintain his cause with his own weapons. The immediate result was the creation of a masterpiece, which, had he written nothing else, would suffice to rank him among the greatest composers of our time. It may be possible that in the Stabat Mater there are a few imperfections, that the sterner qualities are wanting, that some of the phrases are a thought too ingenious and recondite. But its opulence of melody, its warmth of colour, its exquisite beauty of theme and treatment, are far more than enough to condone any real or imaginary defects. With its completion the music of Dvorak pa.s.sed out of adolescence into the full vigour of maturity and manhood. In its achievement the long years of unsparing labour found at last a befitting reward.

The score was sent off to try its fortune in Vienna, and, by some incredible error, was rejected.[47] Perhaps the judges were afraid of creating a precedent, perhaps they thought that dewdrops of celestial melody should be either invaluable or of no value, in any case they withheld their guineas and added another item to the long catalogue of academic injustice. To Dvorak the loss must have been a serious matter, for he had now no official position, and his pupils had never brought any great accession to his revenue, but with his usual st.u.r.dy patience he refused to be disheartened by the mischance, and gathered his forces into winter quarters, there to make preparation for another campaign. After all the disaster was but a temporary check; it could r.e.t.a.r.d his progress, it could cut off his supplies, but it could neither impair his capacity, nor turn the edge of his resolution. He had already gained one success at Vienna: next year it should go hard, but he would match it with a second.

Accordingly, in 1877, he again made appeal to the Kultusministerium, offering in defence of his claim the Moravian duets, and a few of the more recent chamber-works. They arrived at an opportune moment, for Brahms had just been appointed a member of the awarding committee, and, under his guidance, there could no longer be any doubt of its decision.

The grant was at once renewed and augmented, the composer was welcomed with cordial and generous commendation; finally the duets were sent off to Simrock, franked by a letter of introduction that was more than enough to secure their acceptance. Back came an answer from the great publis.h.i.+ng house at Berlin--the duets should be printed without delay; other ma.n.u.scripts might be despatched for consideration, in the meantime would Herr Dvorak accept the commission to write a set of characteristic national dances? To such an offer there was only one possible response. Before the close of the year the Slavische Tanze were finished; at the beginning of 1878 they were in print, in a few months they had roused the whole of Germany to the appreciation of a neglected genius. Henceforward his reputation was established beyond dispute. Like Byron, he awoke to find himself famous, and to look back upon the times of darkness and disappointment as a man looks back upon his dreams.

Among the other compositions of 1877 may be noted a set of symphonic variations, and a new comedy, the Cunning Peasant. In the latter Dvorak was again hampered by his uncritical acceptance of a bad libretto. The plot is clumsy and ill-contrived, a medley of cross-purposes entwined at random, and severed in despair; the characters are drawn after a wholly conventional pattern, the humour is for the most part shallow and superficial. When Betuska defies parental tyranny, we all know that she will be rewarded with the suitor that she has chosen for herself. When old Martin lays a trap for the hero, we all know that the comic valet is destined to fall into it. When the count appears as a _diabolus ex machina_, anyone can foresee that he will end by blessing the lovers in a fit of stage repentance. And the incident on which the intrigue is made to depend, a twilight scene, with three indistinguishable heroines, forestalls its effect by elaborate preparation, and then only strikes the spectator as an extreme demand upon his credulity. But Dvorak, like Schubert, could 'set a handbill to music.' Out of this unpromising material he has made an opera, which, from overture to finale, sparkles with the merriest tunes, an opera which altogether disregards the impracticable requirements of the dramatist, and goes back openly and frankly to the lyric standpoint. As a play it offers a hundred hostages to criticism, but then it has already been betrayed by a treacherous alliance. As a musical extravaganza it is almost irresistible; brightly written, admirably scored, and charming enough to redeem the most rigorous of pledges.

In spite of its text the opera was so favourably received that Dvorak sent the score to Simrock, who at once printed the overture as a concert piece, and supplemented it later with a German version of the entire work. Indeed, during the next few years, the presses were busy with compositions by the new master, some of them fresh written, some gathered from the great pile of ma.n.u.script that had been acc.u.mulating since 1861. Day after day was filled with correspondence, with proof correction, with all the numberless details of the printing office: day after day saw another stone added to the structure that had waited so long for its foundation. And, beside this, the bare catalogue of more recent production is in itself a sign of no inconsiderable activity. To 1878 belong the Slavonic Rhapsodies, the serenade for wind, 'cello and contraba.s.s, the bagatellen, the string sestett in A major, the 149th psalm, and a host of smaller pieces; next year came the orchestral suite, and the violin concerto; next year the Legenden, and the violin sonata in F; next year the Stabat Mater and the great D major symphony.

Even these are but items in the sum, not indications of its total amount. There is little wonder that Europe should feel itself the richer for a gift so unexpected and so abundant.