Dvorák, Antonín

Antonín Dvořák – Můj Domov (“My Home”) op. 62 (1882)

(b. Nelahozeves, 8 September 1841 – d. Prague, 1 May 1904)

Overture

Preface

Between 1881 and 1882 Antonín Dvořák worked on his opera Dimitrij on a libretto by Marie Červinková-Riegrová. It was then that the National Theater in Prague commissioned him to compose entr’acte music and melodramas for the play Josef Kajetán Tyl by the Czech writer František Ferdinand Šamberk. The play deals with the life of Josef Kajetán Tyl (1808-1856), a writer, actor, and poet of special importance to the history of Czech theater. Tyl’s poem Kde domov můj, set to music by František Škroup, became the Czech national anthem. To devote himself entirely to the new assignment, Dvořák put Dimitrij aside and wrote, in short order, several melodramatic inserts and two entr’actes for the play. Within the space of only three days (from 21 to 23 January 1882) he also composed a large orchestral overture, taking the music of Johannes Brahms as his model, as we learn from a letter to his publisher Simrock: “I am also writing something new at the moment. Music to a play, ‘Kajetán Tyl.’ It consists of several pieces, an overture (which incorporates Bohemian songs), melodramas, entr’actes, etc. If it be granted to me to write a work like the ‘Academic,’ I will thank the Lord God for it.”
Whereas Brahms, in his Academic Festival Overture, developed and quoted student songs, Dvořák made use of two folk tunes: Na tom našem dvoře (“There on our farm”), which was popular at the time, and the above-mentioned Kde domov můj, which he used at Šambeck’s specific request. …

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