Jaromir Weinberger was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on January 8,
1896. After completing his music study at the Prague Conservatory, and
privately with Max Reger in Berlin, he came to the United States in
1922, teaching for one season at the Ithaca Conservatory in Ithaca, New
York. Following his return to Europe he held various posts as teacher
and conductor. He achieved international renown as a composer with a
Bohemian folk opera, _Schwanda, der Dudelsackpfeifer_ first performed in
Prague on April 27, 1927, then successfully heard throughout Europe and
in the United States. Weinberger wrote many operas after that, and a
considerable amount of orchestral music. Up to 1937 his home was in
Prague, but since 1939 he has lived in the United States. One of his
most successful works for orchestra was introduced in the United States
soon after his arrival, _Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree_.
Among the numerous works by Weinberger are two that can be said to have
a more popular appeal than the others. One is in an American idiom and
manner which Weinberger assumed for many of his major works after coming
to this country; the other is in the Bohemian style with which he first
became famous.
That in the American style and spirit (but technically in a fugue idiom)
is a delightful treatment of the popular American tune by Dan Emmett,
“Dixie.” “Dixie” had originated as a minstrel-show tune, being written
by Emmett as a “walk-around” (or closing number) for a minstrel-show
production at the Bryant Theater in New York in November 1859. It became
an immediate favorite with minstrel troupes throughout the country.
During the Civil War it became the Southland’s favorite battle hymn,
despite the fact that it was the work of a Northerner. The charge at
Gettysburg by General George Pickett was made to the strains of this
music. After the surrender at Appomattox, President Lincoln invited a
band outside the White House to play the tune for him maintaining that
since the North had conquered the Southern army it had also gained its
favorite song as a spoils of war. In 1940 Weinberger wrote the _Prelude
and Fugue on Dixie_ for symphony orchestra. The prelude devotes itself
to a simple statement of the melody, after which comes the lively fugal
treatment of its main theme. The treatment is throughout so skilful and
musical that we never feel any sense of contradiction in the use of a
popular minstrel-show tune within a soundly classical structure and
through soundly classical means.
Out of the composer’s most famous opera, _Schwanda, der
Dudelsackpfeifer_ (_Schwanda, the Bagpipeplayer_) comes a _Polka and
Fugue_ for orchestra that is undoubtedly the most familiar excerpt from
the opera. The vivacious _Polka_—which has a lusty peasant vitality in
its marked accentuations—comes from Act 2, Scene 2; the fugue (whose
main theme is suggested in the polka) is used in the opera’s closing
scene. Just before the end of the fugue, the polka melody is heard
again, set contrapuntally against the fugue tune in a powerful climax in
which the full orchestra, as well as an organ, is utilized.