Great composers of music, second series

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Part of The Young Citizen: The Magazine for Young People

Title: Great composers of music, second series
Year: 1941
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Fulltext: AuousT, 1941 THE YOUNG CITIZEN • MUSIC APPRECIATION SECTION GREAT COMPOSERS OF MUSIC SECOND SERIES Hy BERT PAUL OSBON* VIII. DVORAK ANTONIN Dv ORAK was born in a. village in the musical land of Bohemia in 1841. He was a Bohemian peasant,- with all the peasant's love of color, of stamping rhythms, and bright melody. His father · intended to make him a butcher, but the village schoolmaster saw the boy's musical ability, and taught him to sing and play_ the violin. He was twelve y;ears old when he learned to play the organ. A year as innkeeper-butcher at fifteen co n v i n c.e d him that sausage-making was not his vocation, and he ·per suaded his father, against strong . opposition, .to al low hirp to enter the organ �chool at Prague. Then financial reverses came and young Dvorak (pronounced dvor-zlzak) b e c a m.e a wandering musician, p 1 a y i � g the violin and viola in small orchestras m theatres Finally he secured a regular pos1t10n as church organist and began to compose. His music met with favor and before long he was Bohemia's best composer. The Slavonic Dances, produced in 1878, brought him fame overnight, thanks partly to his friend Lisz4;. Dvorak went to bed one night, comparatively unknown, and awoke to find himself hailed as a great Bohemian composer. In '1892 he was calle-d to America to become the dir1ector of the National Conserv atory of Music in New York. Dvorak believed · that a national school of American music would be founded upon the folk music of the southern negro of the United St�tes and the American Indian. and restaurants Handi- Dvorak, Foremost Bohemian Compour Americans love him especially, because, while he was director of the New York conservatory capped as he was by lack of money, without books, or scores, or music-paper, with only what he could earn by playing at cafes, he still managed to be graduated in 1860 and win the sec ond prize. And he managed to spend the next twelve years studying, in his poor lodgings, from borrowed scores the works of the gr.eat masters. • Formerly of the Department of IHusic Educa tion, School of Education, New York University, New York City, U.S. A. from 1892 to '1895, he became so much interested in the negro tunes sung for him by one of his students tpat he embodied them in theN ew World Symphony. In the largo (slow) move ment of this symphony he introduced a theme played by the English horn, which suggests the old negro melody Massa Dear, although some say this is an origin al Indian melody which Dvorak collected from American Indians. (Please turn to page 301.) AuGusT, 1941 THE. YOUNG CITIZEN 301 DVORAK ARCHIMEDES THE WOODEN HORSE (Continued from page 285) (Continued from page 280) (Continued from page 279) Out on the plains of the in addition their greatest two sons, crushed them to . midwestern part of the inventor. He was first to death. United States Dvoralt went realize the enormous power "Surely this is a punish to visit a colony of Bohe- that can be exerted by m·ept for the· priest's sac mian immigrants. Som e means of a lever. He also rifege against the sacred ·people gay that the lone- invented t h e compound gift," cried the Trojans. liness of these country-men, pulley, and a spiral screw Since the gates were not living in a foreign land, in- for raising water and other wide enough, a breach was spired the composer to substances which is still made in the wall, and the write the haunting melody called "A r c h i m e d e s' Horse was brought into the of this Largo in his The screw." city. Then there was reNew W or!{/ Symphony. By Now for the famous story JOicmg. All m-en went to all means hear it played by about Archimedes: When sleep, secure in the belief an orchestra or on a phono- Syracuse in Sicily, the that the go<i:s were kind. graph (there are excellent native city of Archimedes, But while they slept, the phonograph records of this was besieged by the Ro- Greek who had been cap· symphony) whenev.er you mans, the Romans took the tur.ed-for so it had been have an opportunity. city, after a siege of three planned-drew the bolts Dvorak should have been years. It is sai.d that what from the door of this "gift happy in America, where particularly angered the to Athena," an.d out came he was appreciated, but Roman soldiers was that the hidden Greeks. Then homesickness drove him when they burst into his a fire was lighted as a signal back to Prague to spend the house, Archimedes was ab- to the ships, which had last years of his life com- sorbed . in the study of turned back to sight of posing and directing the geometrical figures which land. Soon thousands of co n s e r v a t o r y of music he had drawn on the Greek warriors swarmed in there. He died in 1904. sand. To the soldier who the streets of Troy. Dvorak wrote a beauti- interrupted him, he merely All night the slaughter f 1 d Sa.1·d, "Don't disturb my cir- continued, and by morning u s a c r e compos1t10n called Stabat Mater which cles." Archimedes was slain only a mass of smouldering . folruins marked the place. where once had stood· the you should hear when pos- in the massacre which sible. You should also hear lowed. his short co m p o s i t i o n proud city. The Trojan king's headless body lay on H umoreske. He wrote in these things; ( 1) the prop- the seashore. So perished all five symphonies, some er spellin"g and pronuncia- the Trojans except the few symphonic poems, chamber tion of the name Dvorak who escaped. music, and lovely songs, (dvor-zlzall); (2) that he which are popular in the is considered the greatest A REVIEW best sense, for they are be- Bohemian composer; ( 3) I. What do you know of loved by the people.· that he wrote the famous ancient Greec:e? (See the You should remember New World Symphony. encyclopedia.)