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Symphony No. 7 in D Minor by ANTONN DVORK(Born in Nelahozeves, now Czech Republic, 8 Sep 1841; died Prague, May 1, 1904)

The Seventh Symphony was Dvork's bid to make a big noise in the world. As a young

composer, he had been hampered by living in Bohemia, then a rural backwater of the mighty

Austrian empire, and for many years his fame was strictly local. In the mid 1870s, Brahms

discovered him and generously used his power in the Viennese musical establishment to

promote Dvork's career. By 1883, the Czech composer was finally poised for international

acclaim when his choral-orchestral Stabat Materscored a major success in London.

The next year, Dvork traveled there himself to conduct his music, and the adulation reached

fever pitch. The composer remembered his reception at one of the British choral festivals: "As

soon as I appeared, I received a tempestuous welcome from the audience of 12,000. I had to

bow my thanks again and again, the orchestra and choir applauding me with no less fervor.

I am convinced that England offers me a new and certainly happier future, and one which Ihope may benefit our entire Czech art." Londons Royal Philharmonic Society promptly

requested a new symphony for their 1885 concerts. Thus was born his Symphony in D Minor,

composed between December 1884 and March 1885 and premiered by the Royal

Philharmonic under the composer's baton on April 22, 1885.

It was a very big noise indeed, and today most commentators rank the Seventh as Dvork's

greatest symphony, if not the greatest piece he ever wrote. No less an authority than Donald

Francis Tovey, the doyen of music writers, linked it with Schubert's "Great C Major"

Symphony and Brahms' four symphonies "as among the greatest and purest examples of this

art-form since Beethoven."

Dvork would have been delighted to have this work mentioned alongside Brahms'

symphonies, for Brahms was his model and mentor. Early in 1884, he had heard the German's

recently completed Third Symphony and was bowled over. But though the Seventh was

inspired by Brahms' Third, it is no copy. A more tragic work, it displays the dark defiance of

the Czech underdog. Dvork was intensely proud of his nationality and determined that his

music stand apart from the dominant Austro-German school. While striving for a more

universal tone, his Seventh still proudly flaunts its Czech origins, especially in its third-

movement Scherzo in the style of thefuriantdance.

The sonata-form first movementopens with a darkly murmuring theme in the low strings,

with ominous diminished-seventh harmonies contributed twice by woodwinds. Dvork said

that this theme came to him while watching hundreds of Hungarian patriots demonstrating

against the Austrian imperial regime disembark at the Prague railroad station; like the Czechs,

the Hungarians suffered under Austrian domination. Soon the full orchestra attacks this

theme with defiant force. But flutes and clarinets followed by violins soon sing a marvelous

flowing melody, temporarily easing the tension. In a short but powerful development section,

Dvork probes the mysteries of his opening conspiratorial theme.

Many have called the slow second movementthe finest the composer ever wrote. Its great

beauty mingles sorrow with passionate protest. Dvork had recently lost his mother, to whom

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he was very close, and the steady slide into insanity of his Czech colleague Bedrich Smetana

also grieved him. This movement is full of ravishing, poignant melodies clothed in gorgeous

orchestral hues. Notable among them are the opening theme for clarinet and bassoon, a soft

rising-and-falling melody for the violins, and the haunting music for horns immediately

following.

Dvork scholar Otakar Sourek describes the third-movement scherzo as "a wild, unhappy

dance in hard, syncopated rhythms and dark orchestral coloring, in which the expression of

wrathful defiance flares up with no less fury than in the opening movement." The inspiration

is the traditional Czech furiant dance with its provocative cross-rhythms. Despite its lovely

surface, the woodwind-dominated Trio section also shares in the agitation, its serenity

troubled by "the incessant rumbling of the basses" (Tovey).

Defiance also drives the sonata-form finale, with its baleful opening theme jumping an octave,

then collapsing back by a dissonant half step. The cellos soon offer a soaring melody, but it isthe baleful theme that dominates the action. Miraculously, in the symphony's final moments,

Dvork transforms it from dark opposition to the voice of triumph in his blazing D-major

conclusion.

Instrumentation:

2 flutes with second doubling on piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2

trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings.