Part 14

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.

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.

It was natural that the fresh interest should bring Dvořák, for the time, into a more intimate relation with the Bohemian Theatre. By the end of 1875 he had completed two more operas; one a bright little village comedy called 'The Stubborn Heads'; one a tragedy in five acts, on the subject of Vanda, Queen of Poland. The latter is at present beyond the reach of discussion; even the opera-house at Prague possesses no copy of the score, and no part of the music has yet been printed, except the fine gloomy overture. But the former, which, for some reason, was kept in reserve until 1882, is now easily attainable, and may well claim a better fate than our indifference has accorded to it. The theme is simplicity itself. Farmer Vavra has a grown-up son; Widow Rihova, who lives over the way, has a marriageable daughter; of course they lay their heads together and decide that their children shall make a match of it. Unfortunately the young people, who would have liked nothing better if they had been left to themselves, declined altogether to have their affections forced, and break out into open mutiny. Vavra threatens, Tonik defies; Rihova pleads, Lenka snaps her fingers; and matters have come to a hopeless deadlock when there steps in old father Rericha the village diplomatist. He has been watching the failure of authority with sardonic delight, he foretold it from the beginning, but nobody paid any attention to him; now he takes the two mutineers, provokes them first into jealousy, then into recrimination, then into a lovers' quarrel, and finally induces them to plight their troth before they are quite certain that they have been reconciled. For reasons of stage policy, the parents are made unconscious accomplices in the plot; and there is an amusing scene in which Rericha, having lured them into a couple of unjustifiable flirtations, betrays them to the village, and has them denounced by an excited chorus. Of the music there is no need to speak in detail. It is neither great nor meant to be great, but it is all pleasant and tuneful; a stream of wayside melody that appeals the more to us for its lack of pretension. The whole work belongs to the playtime of art: it is a holiday opera, gay, careless and spontaneous, occupying its hour without a dull bar or a perfunctory phrase.

Meanwhile, other forms of composition were not neglected. At the beginning of 1875 appeared a string quartett in A minor; later in the year followed a serenade in E for stringed orchestra, a quintett in G, and, greatest of all, a brilliant symphony in F major. It is probable, too, that we may attribute to the same period the first pianoforte trio, the first pianoforte quartett, and at least three volumes of small vocal pieces; but in these, as in other of Dvořák's early works, the record is too uncertain to admit of any strict chronological accuracy. He was still a prophet honoured in his own country alone; and his message, though heard with enthusiasm by his people, had not yet been published abroad in the ears of Europe.

However, in 1875, there occurred an event, which not only brought relief to the daily need, but opened as well a wider prospect of fame and fortune. Encouraged by the success of his work at Prague, Dvořák sent in an application to the Pension committee of the Austrian Kultusministerium, submitted an opera and a symphony by way of credentials, and received in answer a grant of some thirty pounds; the first recognition that his genius had won from beyond the border. No doubt to Imperial munificence the amount was an inconsidered trifle; to the organist of St Adalbert's it meant first the equivalent of a year's salary, and secondly the more valuable guerdon of a foothold in Vienna. The judges who had awarded his prize were among the acknowledged leaders of musical art; supported by their authority he could hardly fail to obtain a wider hearing; and if that was once secured the future rested with himself. The frontier had at last been traversed, and before him lay the broad fertile plains that were waiting to be conquered.

To equip himself with a greater freedom, he resigned his post in the year 1876, and began to devote his life almost entirely to the more pressing requirements of composition. It was a bold step, for it left him with a growing household, and an income chiefly dependent upon his pen; but like all true artists he had the courage of inspiration, and felt that victory was certain, if he were allowed to maintain his cause with his own weapons. The immediate result was the creation of a masterpiece, which, had he written nothing else, would suffice to rank him among the greatest composers of our time. It may be possible that in the Stabat Mater there are a few imperfections, that the sterner qualities are wanting, that some of the phrases are a thought too ingenious and recondite. But its opulence of melody, its warmth of colour, its exquisite beauty of theme and treatment, are far more than enough to condone any real or imaginary defects. With its completion the music of Dvořák passed out of adolescence into the full vigour of maturity and manhood. In its achievement the long years of unsparing labour found at last a befitting reward.

The score was sent off to try its fortune in Vienna, and, by some incredible error, was rejected.[47] Perhaps the judges were afraid of creating a precedent, perhaps they thought that dewdrops of celestial melody should be either invaluable or of no value, in any case they withheld their guineas and added another item to the long catalogue of academic injustice. To Dvořák the loss must have been a serious matter, for he had now no official position, and his pupils had never brought any great accession to his revenue, but with his usual sturdy patience he refused to be disheartened by the mischance, and gathered his forces into winter quarters, there to make preparation for another campaign. After all the disaster was but a temporary check; it could retard his progress, it could cut off his supplies, but it could neither impair his capacity, nor turn the edge of his resolution. He had already gained one success at Vienna: next year it should go hard, but he would match it with a second.

Accordingly, in 1877, he again made appeal to the Kultusministerium, offering in defence of his claim the Moravian duets, and a few of the more recent chamber-works. They arrived at an opportune moment, for Brahms had just been appointed a member of the awarding committee, and, under his guidance, there could no longer be any doubt of its decision. The grant was at once renewed and augmented, the composer was welcomed with cordial and generous commendation; finally the duets were sent off to Simrock, franked by a letter of introduction that was more than enough to secure their acceptance. Back came an answer from the great publishing house at Berlin--the duets should be printed without delay; other manuscripts might be despatched for consideration, in the meantime would Herr Dvořák accept the commission to write a set of characteristic national dances? To such an offer there was only one possible response. Before the close of the year the Slavische Tänze were finished; at the beginning of 1878 they were in print, in a few months they had roused the whole of Germany to the appreciation of a neglected genius. Henceforward his reputation was established beyond dispute. Like Byron, he awoke to find himself famous, and to look back upon the times of darkness and disappointment as a man looks back upon his dreams.

Among the other compositions of 1877 may be noted a set of symphonic variations, and a new comedy, the Cunning Peasant. In the latter Dvořák was again hampered by his uncritical acceptance of a bad libretto. The plot is clumsy and ill-contrived, a medley of cross-purposes entwined at random, and severed in despair; the characters are drawn after a wholly conventional pattern, the humour is for the most part shallow and superficial. When Betuska defies parental tyranny, we all know that she will be rewarded with the suitor that she has chosen for herself. When old Martin lays a trap for the hero, we all know that the comic valet is destined to fall into it. When the count appears as a _diabolus ex machinâ_, anyone can foresee that he will end by blessing the lovers in a fit of stage repentance. And the incident on which the intrigue is made to depend, a twilight scene, with three indistinguishable heroines, forestalls its effect by elaborate preparation, and then only strikes the spectator as an extreme demand upon his credulity. But Dvořák, like Schubert, could 'set a handbill to music.' Out of this unpromising material he has made an opera, which, from overture to finale, sparkles with the merriest tunes, an opera which altogether disregards the impracticable requirements of the dramatist, and goes back openly and frankly to the lyric standpoint. As a play it offers a hundred hostages to criticism, but then it has already been betrayed by a treacherous alliance. As a musical extravaganza it is almost irresistible; brightly written, admirably scored, and charming enough to redeem the most rigorous of pledges.

In spite of its text the opera was so favourably received that Dvořák sent the score to Simrock, who at once printed the overture as a concert piece, and supplemented it later with a German version of the entire work. Indeed, during the next few years, the presses were busy with compositions by the new master, some of them fresh written, some gathered from the great pile of manuscript that had been accumulating since 1861. Day after day was filled with correspondence, with proof correction, with all the numberless details of the printing office: day after day saw another stone added to the structure that had waited so long for its foundation. And, beside this, the bare catalogue of more recent production is in itself a sign of no inconsiderable activity. To 1878 belong the Slavonic Rhapsodies, the serenade for wind, 'cello and contrabass, the bagatellen, the string sestett in A major, the 149th psalm, and a host of smaller pieces; next year came the orchestral suite, and the violin concerto; next year the Legenden, and the violin sonata in F; next year the Stabat Mater and the great D major symphony. Even these are but items in the sum, not indications of its total amount. There is little wonder that Europe should feel itself the richer for a gift so unexpected and so abundant.