Inside Chamber Music with Bruce Adolphe: Dvorák's “American” Quintet in E-flat major
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- Опубликовано: 28 окт 2019
- Bruce Adolphe, CMS resident lecturer
Antonín Dvořák: Quintet in E-flat major for Two Violins, Two Violas, and Cello, Op. 97, “American” (1893)
Filmed live in the Daniel and Joanna S. Rose Studio on
October 9, 2019.
Artists: Arnaud Sussmann, Angelo Xiang Yu, violin; Paul Neubauer, Matthew Lipman, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, cello. 
Видеоклипы
What some said about Dvořák.
LEOS JANACEK, czech composer
“You know when someone takes the words right out of your mouth before you have even managed to express them? That’s how it always was for me in the company of Dvorak. As a person, he was like his music, they were one and the same. His melodies truly echo what is in my heart. Nothing on Earth can break such a bond.”
BOHUSLAV MARTINU, czech composer
“Dvorak was one of those who showed me the path that an artist and composer should take. Perhaps because he expressed his national affinity and his Czechness with such sincerity and because in this approach was something that I, myself, wanted to express. As an individual Dvorak emanated some kind of rare affability, a sense of humanity and well-being. If anyone expressed a healthy and joyful attitude to life, it was him. Music should always be joyful, even when it is tragic. Happy is the man who leaves behind a legacy such as this.”
JOSEF SUK, czech composer
and Dvořák´s son in law
“Truth without superficiality, true democracy which doesn’t court the powerful or elevate its own greatness above those “lower down”, self-confidence of the Chosen One without conceit, the most profound emotion without sentimentality, ineffable joy from his work, a pure and genuine relationship with God and people - these were the qualities of his soul. But still the constant creative unease! I can see the Maestro’s hand now, even during a lull in the conversation, his fingers continually playing restlessly on his lapel, as if on the keys of a piano. It seemed as if he were thinking only through music.”
FRANTISEK ADOLF SUBERT, director of Prague’s National Theatre 1883 - 1900
“He used to come to my office, either when he had finished something he was working on, or when they were rehearsing one of his works. I don’t remember him ever sitting down. He usually walked about the room, sometimes he would approach my desk or go over to the window, and he would speak or listen while often staring into the distance. And it would happen that, in the middle of a sentence, he would suddenly stop and lose himself in thought. Deep within him a lark would take to the air and begin singing some melodies which he might start whistling there and then. After a while, he would come back down to earth and take up the conversation once more. And then, at other times, he would turn on his heel and rush out of the room without another word. He would perhaps come back a few days later “to finish what we were discussing”. It was music that was doing all this. You could almost tell from the look in his eyes and the expression on his face that, within him, whirling around constantly, was a fountain of notes in those innumerable melodic combinations which he used to create his works.”...well this is funny story....He came back down to earth, to reality.
VITEZSLAV NOVAK, composer
“How did he regard the great composers? He revered Beethoven, whom he continually cited as an example to us, he admired Wagner and Berlioz, he had great respect for Brahms, and he loved Schubert, his kindred spirit. This list of names, if incomplete, demonstrates that Dvorak’s taste in music was in no way partisan. The master was aware of everything beautiful and original that had been created in music, and his comments and comparisons were fascinating, and often highly original as well...”
www.antonin-dvorak.cz/en/pronouncements/about-him
This was a great and enjoyable lecture on one of my favorite classical composers. Thank you.
I am not educated musically, but first notes in 39:16 reminds Dvořák´s American suite....Video of American suite is on youtube, from Poland conducted by some lady.
It seems that great composers can put into some piece the mood...gentle or sharp, or both......And Dvořák, Wagner, Tchaikovsky , Beethoven and all great composers had ability to put the mood in the pieces and symphonies, with other melodies that we notice later in the pieces.....not just arange the piece.
People polemise whether Dvořák made 9 symphony to sound like czech european or american music..I think maybe the tones in 9 symphony may be also czech influence, but the style of writing may be american...I mean the various styles in the piece, various techniques. So maybe he didnt want to influnce by the music, the tones....but the varieties of sounds and various styles.
Dvorak.... the kwisatz haderach...
he term itself is Hebrew, literally, "The Leap of the Way," by means of which an initiate may travel some distance instantaneously, appearing to be in two or more places at once
Brilliant lecture, but I can find no substantiation for Adolphe’s claim that Bruckner ‘formed an anti-Semitic music society’, though Bruckner’s placement in the Wagner camp would certainly have put him in contact with the standard anti-semitism of Viennese society at that time (to which Bruckner was in many ways a struggling provincial parvenu).
bingo. I'm a devout Bruckner fan, and read about his life several times from several sources and never did I come across anything antisemitic from him. Its mere guilt by association by Mr. Rudolphe. On the contrary I have read the venomous insults against Bruckner by Eduard Hanslick and other Brahmsians.
There is an article by Franz Marschner titled “Bruckner’s Anti-Antisemitism” in which he describes the instances in which Bruckner was known to be critical of the antisemitism of his time, both in words and actions. For instance, he defended the purchase of an organ built by a Jewish firm for the Vienna conservatory, which the conservatory leadership wanted removed. Bruckner was championed by and worked closely with Jewish musicians (so was Wagner, but that’s another matter). Bruckner was a devout catholic and he lived in a city that was in his time full of antisemites. And yet he seemed to have been free of antisemitism himself.
@@fritzpoppenberg3921 Thanks for this information. Norman Lebrecht has made similar claims that Bruckner was actively anti-Semitic, citing no sources whatsoever. The lack of substantiation is the only issue here.
@@fred8097 there are some second-hand sources, most prominently the Bruckner biography by Göllerich and Auer, which refers to Bruckner’s antisemitism, giving it Catholic roots, but it has been said that these passages may just as well be fabrications. It’s not possible to use them as proper evidence, but of course they are useful to anyone who wants to find clues to Bruckner the antisemite. The most noteworthy anecdote to me is the one of Bruckner asking a Jewish music student whether he really did not believe that the messiah had come. Of course this is one of those stories told to showcase the alleged naïveté and simplemindedness of Bruckner. I wasn’t in the room at the time, and therefore I’d rather avoid any allegations.
Dvořák´s family thinks that Dvořák´s symphonies have something to do with the birds in his garden, that he created all symphonies by listening the the birds.....in Vysoká, where he used to plant the trees and listen the birds...He said Listen to the birds they what insired him.are greatest masters. He thought he understands their language...Everybody has own opinion we..Maybe he was inspired by both the different styles of music that he studied and by the nature..He used to go for a walk in forest every morning, then he came to villa, to compose some music, then he went again to nateru and continued to compose during a walk....Maybe the musicologists are wromg....Maybe he was copywritting the birds....because he loved them so much. he was very spiritual person....and he didnt like when American press wrote glory and praised him ...He said "american newspapers wrote such horrible stuff, that I am some savior of the music I dont know what else."...He seemed offended, in his letters, maybe because he was modest and religious and he was private person.
According to czech documentary czech composer Leoš Janáček influenced Antonín Dvořák to moravian czech folk music...so Dvořak made Moravian duets...send it to Vienna to get the grand for artists, because he was poor, Johannes Brahms noticed Dvořák and he liked the Moravian duets very much and sent them to Simrock...Smetana and Leoš Janaček were also influencers in his career...and of course, Dvořák loved Schubert and made article of him, about the historians studying Schuberts work, because Schubert was poor and very talented. .Also he loved Wagner and Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Tchaikovsky..Dvořák said he saw Wagner on Wagner´s rehearsals talking to conductor, but he couldnt talk to him, because nobody knew him at that time...Brahms and Tchaikovsky became his friends. Tchaikovsky invited him to Russia to conduct his pieces. Smetana said about him that Dvořák is composing the themes, or topics in the style of Beethoven. Smetana also wanted to be as good as Beethoven artistically and technically as good as Liszt.
I know Anton Bruckner was a devout Wagnerian and that Wagner was anti Semitic, but I didn't know of Anton Bruckner's anti antisemitism. That seems to be guilt by association. Liszt was also a Wagner fan but to say that Liszt was anti-semitic is pushing it. And it was the Brahms faction who really persecuted Bruckner because they couldn't get to Wagner.
I feel uncomfortable seeing those musicians sitting there idle during that long talk...they could have come on after it.
Max Bruch an anti-semite? Yet one of his most famous works is a setting of the 'Kol Nidrei'...