Bohemian music received their marching orders at almost exactly the same
time. As Dvořák emerged from the training-yard to take his place
among the ranks, there was already assembling a council of war which,
before it rose, should appoint a national leader and proclaim a national
advance. True, another decade was to pass before the new recruit bore
any prominent part in the movement. As yet he was only a trooper,
carrying his marshal's bâton 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
Dvořák, 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
passed 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 title 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 illustration, half pathetic and half humorous, may be found in
the career of Anthony Heinrich. He was born at Schönbüchel in 1781,
served his apprenticeship 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
Washington, 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_, entitled '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 Hálek 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 censorship: 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 leadership.
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 assume 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 classical
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 gratitude.
Such was the cause in which Dvořák 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 assistance 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 circumstance. 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 passes 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 transmutes 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 Dvořák'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 manuscript: one or two have passed
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 space, and has left behind it
nothing more than the bare title. For the rest, we can only say that
they would serve to illustrate 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 Dvořák'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.
[Illustration: _Antonin Dvořák_]
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 entitled '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 Dvořák 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-worship 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, Dvořák 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 Hálek'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 passed 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
Dvořák 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 assured
him a stipend upon which he found it possible to marry. A pleasant
indication of altered circumstances is to be found in an 'Ave Maris
Stella,' dedicated 'uxori carissimæ,' and printed 'sumptibus et
proprietate Emilii Stary.' When a man is raised to ecclesiastical
office, the least that he can do is to assume 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, Dvořák took the old
libretto that had shared the misfortune of his _début_, 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
_Tannhäuser_, Weber reluctantly excised an important scene from _Der
Freischütz_--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 personæ_.
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 Dvořák 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.
Dvořák, 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
substitute. 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 passing word of comment. The Irishman's knife, which had a new
blade and a new handle, does not offer a more bewildering problem of
identity.