I
DAYS OF PREPARATION

The village of Nelahozeves lies on the Moldau, about a mile to the north of Kralup. The clean, well-kept cottages sun themselves upon a slope of the low hills, or nestle among the trees by the river bank; a tiny street comes trickling along the shallow dale like a tributary; at its mouth a great square castle rises on a spur of jutting sandstone and seems to dominate the very landscape by feudal right. Behind are uplands of corn and pasture and orchard, where you may idle for half a summer's afternoon, watching the play of light tremulous among the leaves, the smoke curling lazily from the cluster of red roofs, and below them the brown turbid river and the long timber-rafts floating down to the Elbe.

It is one of the quietest of places: hardly a sound, hardly an animal, hardly a sign of life. There are a few geese meditating undisturbed in the roadway, there is a knot of children busy with some inexplicable game in a corner of waste ground; now and again a couple of gossips come to fill their shapely wooden cans at the village well, or a slow, patient ox-cart bears down its fragrant load from the hay-field. For the rest, everything is fast asleep, secure in a bounteous land that asks but little labour for the satisfaction of daily needs, and secure, too, under the government of Prince Lobkowitz, who owns the castle and the village and half the country-side, and who, though he never comes to live among his own people, has always administered his territory with justice and beneficence.

At the bottom of the street a lane turns across toward the church, passing on its way a homestead which could take rank with an English farm-house of moderate pretension. An arched gateway gives access to a long, narrow court-yard, flanked on the one side by a solid, two-storey building, white-walled and red-roofed like its neighbours; on the other by a lower range of offices and storehouses; while at the back, behind the stable, runs a rough wall, surmounted by a statue of St Florian; and, carrying the eye upward, through a strip of coarse paddock, to the hedgerows and cornfields of the higher slope. A sign over the entrance announces that the place is still the village inn, as it was half a century ago, when PÁn FrantiŠek DvorÁk held it in tenancy and served his customers in the little taproom by the door.

Among the villagers PÀn DvorÁk was a person of some consequence. For one thing, he belonged to a family old and respected—a peasant stock that had grown and flourished from the earliest times that memory could record; for another, he had married the daughter of one of the Prince's bailiffs, and so caught a faint reflection from the remote and inaccessible glories of the castle. Again, he was butcher as well as innkeeper, and so represented the centre of village trade, as well as the focus of village conviviality; and, to crown all, he was personally popular—a handsome, active youngster of eight-and-twenty, vigorous, alert, clean-limbed; and a good musician, too, who of an evening would bring his zither under the great walnut tree and delight his guests with 'Hej SlovanÉ' or 'SedlÁk SedlÁk,' or the new national anthem that was going to rouse Bohemia against Austrian oppression. It is only natural that he should figure large in the public gaze, and that there should be great rejoicings when, on September 8, 1841, the villagers assembled to drink the health of his firstborn.

The child grew up into a sturdy, broad-shouldered boy, with brown eyes, dark complexion, and a tangle of black hair—keen and adventurous in character, ready to join in any sports that were afoot, and, as tradition still attests, well able to hold his own in conflict. From the first he was passionately fond of music—listening in eager enjoyment when his father played to him, or when, on some lucky day, a band of wandering musicians would come from Kralup or Prague or even Pressnitz, and earn itself a welcome at the inn door. Better still were the times of village holiday, when the street was gay with stalls, and the dancers wore down the evening sun—Lenka in snowy hood and bright kirtle, Hanik in jaunty hat, long coat and drab knee-breeches, threading the mazes of Polka and Furiant until the fiddlers gave in for very weariness. It was a childhood of simple pleasures and healthy out-door life, full of colour, full of melody, the first preparation for a brilliant and honourable artistic career.

Meantime the more serious part of DvorÁk's education was entrusted to an amiable pedagogue called Josef Spitz, who kept the village school at the street corner, and who not only taught his new scholar the rudiments of letters, but, what was more important, gave him his first lessons in singing and the violin. When he was twelve years old, the boy was sent to live with an uncle at Zlonic, in the coal country, where there was a better school and a wider opportunity of study. He had already made some advance in his two branches of music—enough, at any rate, for him to have taken the solos in the church choir at home, and to have borne an efficient part in the local orchestra: now, under the tuition of Liehmann, the Zlonic organist, he ventured out into new fields, and learned something not only of organ and piano but of the elements of musical theory. No doubt the instruction was very imperfect and very narrow of range, but within its limits it was gratefully accepted; and the old kapellmeister deserves some honourable mention as having been the first to discover evidences of unusual capacity in his shy, simple-hearted pupil. In 1855 came another transference; this time to BÖhmisch-Kamnitz, where DvorÁk learned German, and continued his musical studies with the organist Hancke; and then appeared an obstacle which seemed likely to block progress altogether. His father had recently removed to Zlonic in order to open a new shop on a larger scale; another hand was wanted to carry on the trade; and Antonin, at the age of fifteen, was told to regard his education as finished, and to return at once to the real business of his life.

It is easy enough to emphasise the incongruity of the situation: to recall Burns the gauger and Keats the apothecary's drudge: to condole with an artist who, like Fortuny, has to seek inspiration from the shambles. It is still easier to be wise after the event, and condemn, as tyrannous and unreasonable, a decision which time has signally refuted. But there are here two considerations which may serve, in some degree, to modify judgment. In the first place, the condition of music in Bohemia was, at this time, entirely different from that in France or Germany: its outlook far more desperate, its prizes far more unattainable. Nearly all the posts were held by Germans, and native talent, unless it could afford the price of expatriation, might readily find itself reduced to gathering pence by the wayside, or at most, would earn its reward in some village organistship—scanty, obscure and ill-paid, with little opportunity in the present and with no hope of further advance. No one could have foreseen that, within six years, a national art would spring into sudden and unexpected existence—bringing with it a means of expression which, in 1856, lay outside the reach of the most sanguine hope. It may be true that the darkest hour is that which precedes the dawn; but, for all this, it takes a robust faith to infer the dawn from the darkness. And, in the second place, the boy had as yet neither the education nor the material to offer his father any convincing proofs of genius. So far as we know, he had never written a note of music, and, though he could play skilfully on two or three instruments, there was no very great likelihood of his making his name as a virtuoso. His credentials were the reports of three village schoolmasters: his attainment was but a promise which the subsequent career might have failed to ratify. In a word, the capacity was uncertain, the chances of a career were almost non-existent: surely it was not unnatural that a plain man, who had no gift of prophecy, should balance present alternatives and sum them up in favour of competence and comfort.

At any rate, whether justified or not, the order was irrevocable. Pleas and entreaties proved equally unavailing, Hancke's protests fell upon deaf ears, and at last DvorÁk reluctantly prepared to leave Kamnitz and to sacrifice all prospects of an artistic profession. But before yielding, he determined to make one more bid for freedom. Hitherto his father had known him only as an executant: perhaps the case would be altered if he could present himself as a composer. There were plenty of people in the country-side who could sing and play; it was little wonder if, amid that undistinguished crowd, his abilities were unnoticed; but to write music brings a man to the forefront, and shows a gift which it may be profitable to stimulate and encourage. He therefore prepared his last appeal in the shape of an original polka; copied the band parts, distributed them secretly among the Zlonic musicians, and, after a few days of breathless anticipation, launched his coup de thÉÂtre for the conversion of an unexpectant household. It is better to draw a veil over the performance. The composer did not know that the trumpet is a transposing instrument: strings and wind contended strenuously in different keys; there was an agonised moment of jagged and excruciating discord; and it is not surprising that the family remained unconvinced. There is some little irony in the disaster, if it be remembered that among all DvorÁk's gifts the instinct of orchestration is perhaps the most conspicuous. He is the greatest living exponent of the art; and he was once in danger of forfeiting his career through ignorance of its most elementary principle.

After so inopportune a failure, there was nothing left but submission, and for little short of a year DvorÁk set himself with a good grace to accept the inevitable. But by the spring of 1857 he began to feel that the position was impossible, and once more assailed his father with urgent entreaties. There were his brothers—FrantiŠek, Josef, Adolf, Karel—growing up to take his place in the shop; there was no pressing need that he should remain any longer at work which he found wholly uncongenial; he was sure that he could succeed as a musician, and whether he succeeded or not, his whole heart was set upon the attempt. At last, after some months of anxious discussion, he carried his point, and in October set out for Prague—full of hope, full of ambition, eager to explore a realm of which hitherto he could hardly be said to have passed the frontier.

At Prague he entered the Organ School (founded some thirty years before by a society for the encouragement of ecclesiastical music), and, from 1857 to 1860, worked his way through a period of diligent and laborious studentship. The difficulties that beset him were even greater than those that traditionally obstruct the path of genius. At first, no doubt, his father was able to make him a small monthly allowance; but even this slender income had soon to be withdrawn, and the boy, at sixteen years of age, was left to maintain himself by an art of which he knew little more than the rudiments, in a city which was almost wholly barren of opportunities. And it was not only the material problems of food and lodging that pressed him for a solution. He had learned next to nothing of composition, he was totally unacquainted with the great classics, he had no books and no money to buy them; even the teaching of his school seems to have been mainly concentrated upon organ technique, and to have given little or no assistance in wider fields of study. Berlioz was poor, but at least he had the library of the Paris Conservatoire. Wagner spent two years of grinding poverty, but at least he could compensate them with 'Rienzi' and the 'Flying Dutchman.' Here is a case in which everything alike is denied—not only recognition but power, not only the rewards of life but its very appliances. The most certain confidence, the most indomitable courage, might well have lost heart at a prospect so dreary and so disspiriting.

In order to obtain the bare means of livelihood he joined a small band of some twenty performers, and went about with them, earning a meagre pittance at the cafÉs and restaurants of the city. On Sundays he played the viola at a private chapel, where there was some show of an orchestral service, and, between his two engagements, contrived to amass a revenue of rather more than thirty shillings a month. Of course all systematic study, except at his organ classes, appeared to be out of the question. He could no more have hired a piano than he could have purchased the crown jewels; even music paper was a luxury of the rarest indulgence; and concerts were only attainable, when, now and again, some good-natured bandsman would see him standing wistfully at the door and would let him in as a stowaway. But in spite of all discouragements, he continued his work with unabating enthusiasm, and, in 1860, graduated at the Organ School as second prizeman of his year.

By a notable coincidence it happened that the fresh-levied forces of Bohemian music received their marching orders at almost exactly the same time. As DvorÁk emerged from the training-yard to take his place among the ranks, there was already assembling a council of war which, before it rose, should appoint a national leader and proclaim a national advance. True, another decade was to pass before the new recruit bore any prominent part in the movement. As yet he was only a trooper, carrying his marshal's bÂton in his knapsack, but bound, nevertheless, to wait in patient subservience until the fortune of battle gave him his opportunity. Yet, for all that, the difference made by the winter of 1860 was almost incalculable. It is one thing to idle in barracks with no cause to defend and no victory to share: it is another to stand at attention on the outskirts of the field when the front is busy with the enemy and at any moment an aide-de-camp may ride up with orders to engage. Hardly in the whole of artistic history shall we find a stranger chance than that which, against all expectation, brought the two centuries of bondage to so opportune a close.

It is beyond the scope of the present essay to describe the national movement in any detail. There are so many lines of progress, there are so many conflicting issues, that the task cannot adequately be attempted from the standpoint of a single art. But, to estimate the music of DvorÁk, it is first requisite that we should understand his relation to his country, and trace, in however brief an outline, the course of revolution that culminated in his triumph. He plays so important a part in the later acts of a patriotic drama, that we may well be excused for prefacing his entry with some slight epitome of the plot.

Up to the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia maintained an honourable place in the fore-front of European civilisation. She was printing books when hardly any of her neighbours could read them: she inaugurated one of the greatest religious movements of the Middle Ages: her university took rank with Paris and Oxford: her teaching was accepted by scholars from every corner of Christendom. But in 1620 the whole national life came to a sudden and tragic end—shot down by Tilly's mercenaries at the battle of the White Mountain. The loss of political independence was followed by an almost entire cessation of intellectual activity: the language was prohibited, the literature was destroyed, arts and sciences either passed into servitude or fled with the 'Winter King' to a distant and inglorious exile: the voice that was once eloquent in the congress of the nations died away into silence and oblivion. 'Better a desert,' said the Emperor Ferdinand, 'than a land full of heretics,' and his order was followed with only too literal an obedience. For the next hundred and fifty years the history of Bohemia is a blank page: her highest achievement to bear the yoke of an alien power, her utmost hope to forget that she was once a people.

It is true that, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, a few Bohemian musicians began to make their appearance: it is equally significant that, without exception, they left their native land and tried their fortunes as free-lances in a foreign service. Myslivecek won his title of 'Il Divino' from the careless enthusiasm of Italy; Reicha settled in Paris, where his lectures on composition embittered the early years of Berlioz: Dussek, the greatest of them all, became frankly German in aim and method: from first to last they turned their steps across the border in search of a career which their own country was too fast in prison to afford. It is, of course, idle to reproach them with a want of patriotism: there was no cause to which patriotism could attach itself: but none the less we may find in their denial of their country a conclusive reason for their ultimate failure. They were men of undoubted gifts—rapid, facile and copious of production, well-read in the musical learning of their time, fluent of phrase, prompt of resource, skilful and dexterous in the treatment of their material; and yet, at the distance of a century, there is only one of the whole band who is anything more than a name to us. Even Dussek has but a fading reputation: his work is lost under the shadow of its own laurels: and for the rest, it is not once in a decade that some student takes down their dusty volumes from the shelf and marvels at the misapplied talent and the wasted ability.

A curious illustration, half pathetic and half humorous, may be found in the career of Anthony Heinrich. He was born at SchÖnbÜchel in 1781, served his apprenticeship at Covent Garden, and finally established himself in America, where, for some five-and-thirty years, he produced a continuous series of ineffectual compositions. There is an oratorio, written in ten real parts, and 'scored,' as its author proudly affirms, 'for all known orchestral instruments:' there are symphonies, such as the Eroica and the Tower of Babel; there are overtures—one to Washington, another to Niagara, another to the great Condor of the Andes; there are 'Mythological concerti grossi;' there are scenes from the Autobiography of a Troubadour; there are songs, studies, virtuoso-pieces without limit. It should be added that the official catalogue, which is appended to the excerpts in the National Museum at Prague, mentions with particular emphasis a concert overture per recte et retro, entitled 'The Advance and the Retreat.' If this incredible composition was ever written, it says something for Heinrich's counterpoint, and at the same time explains his total failure to win any position as an artist. But, apart from this, the explanation lies open on every page. Here is talent, here is technical skill, here is even some approach to originality: and the whole is ruined by uncertainty of aim and by want of earnestness. It all lies on the surface; it has no character, no stability, no inherent power of growth, and because it has no root it withers away.

We may conclude that the first efforts of the Bohemian renaissance were wholly misdirected and unavailing. The national art was no more to be created by 'La Consolation' than by mythological concerti grossi and overtures to the great condor. But in the meantime a small body of men was beginning at home to collect the scattered ruins of past achievement, and to lay them in order as the foundation of a more durable superstructure. Scholars like Dobrovsky set themselves to regather the language from the valleys and uplands of a rustic dialect: poets like Tyl and HÁlek built up a fabric of literature from the artless rhymes of the country village: music itself began to stir, to awaken, to stand on the alert until its time should come. There could be little organisation, for the citadel was still in the hands of an adverse power; there could be little publicity, for the work might be at any moment prohibited by official censorship: but, in spite of all obstacles and difficulties, the movement gradually took shape and direction—now hampered by popular indifference, now thrown back by some political outbreak, never losing heart or turning aside from its purpose. Yet, before its purpose could be attained, there were two further conditions to satisfy. Hitherto the pioneers of Bohemian music, like those of the French language, had conducted their research as a matter of private interest and private enterprise: before they could combine into an academy of any mark or moment, they needed a parliamentary charter, and they needed a Malherbe. In other words, to encourage the hope of any further progress, it was necessary—first, that Austria should allow its dependent State a fuller measure of intellectual freedom; and secondly, that there should appear some man of sufficient authority and genius to undertake the leadership.

A sudden turn of the wheel, and the two conditions were fulfilled. In October 1860 the gift of liberty was granted by Imperial diploma; a few months later came news that Smetana had resigned his appointment at Gothenburg, and that he was returning to assume the direction of the national forces. His arrival was welcomed with an enthusiasm to which Bohemia had long been a stranger; new hopes were formed, new plans were discussed, the whole land shook off its lethargy and applied itself eagerly to the work. For his own part, the leader announced his method without hesitation. He had no sympathy with the more developed classical forms: in any case, he found them unsuitable to a music of which the very foundations were still to be laid: the first need, he said, was to engage the popular ear, and to show the true value and import of the national melodies. Bohemia should cut her corner-stone from her own quarries, and build her art on the peasant tunes in which the whole of her musical tradition was comprised. The next generation might look to questions of treatment; the business of the present was to gather material, and to utilise the abundant store which lay neglected in every village and hamlet of the country-side.

It is interesting to see the new Malherbe making his appeal to the people, and 'finding his masters in language among the porters at the hay-gate.' But there can be no doubt that, under existing conditions, his method was the only means of attaining success. The first requisite for a national art is the establishment of a national speech; and until this is done in its simplest and most unsophisticated shape, there is no proper material for the artist to work upon. Of course, the great structures of sonata and symphony are only developments of the form that is already held in germ by the folk-song: still they are developments, and to begin with them is to begin at the wrong end. The same life runs through the whole course of artistic evolution, but, if there be life at all, it will trace its origin from its most rudimentary embodiment.

Again, it was a stroke of good-fortune that Smetana's genius should turn at once in the direction of opera. Among all means of artistic expression, the theatre is the most direct and the most comprehensive: it draws on the resources of literature, of painting, of music; it can reach a public that has not yet learned to appreciate the separate forms. The golden age of French poetry began with the Cid; the whole history of modern music began with Eurydice: in like manner, Bohemia may date her renaissance from her first school of operatic composers. In 1862 the Interimstheater was opened; in 1863 came Smetana's 'Brandenburgs in Bohemia,' then followed a long and unbroken series of dramatic works—tragedy that took its theme from patriotic legend, comedy that turned to account the picturesque humours of the village life—all of native growth and of native origin, racy of the soil, simple, genuine, unaffected. To us, who look upon Prague from the standpoints of Dresden or Vienna, the music of these men may seem unduly artless and immature: with Wagner on the one side, with Brahms on the other, we have little time to bestow on tentative efforts and incomplete production. Some day we shall learn that we are in error. The 'Bartered Bride' is an achievement that would do credit to any nation in Europe; and, apart from its intrinsic value, it claims our interest as the turning-point of an artistic revolution. There is little wonder that Smetana has been almost canonised by his people. He was, in the truest sense of the term, the first Bohemian composer; and, though his country has one son to whose work she may look with a fuller admiration, she has none to whom she owes the debt of a more profound and cordial gratitude.

Such was the cause in which DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk'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 DvorÁk'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[191]
[192] 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 DvorÁk 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, DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk 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, DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk 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.

DvorÁk, 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 DvorÁk, 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 DvorÁk'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, DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk 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 DvorÁk, 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 DvorÁk 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.

But DvorÁk could not wholly give up to mankind what was meant, in the first instance, for a patriotic party. The opening of the New Bohemian Theatre in 1881 recalled him from Legends and Rhapsodies into the full stir and impetus of national life, and set him once more in the van of that strange, half-artistic, half-political movement that had found its type and representative in the 'Heirs of the White Mountain.' The two works which he wrote this year for the stage have almost the tone of manifestoes; curiously alike in scope and plan, curiously different in the measure of their ultimate value. Both make direct appeal to popular sympathy; both recall some notable period in the history of Bohemia; both draw their inspiration from melodies that have gained acceptance among the folk-songs of the people. But here parallel gives way to contrast. The Husitska overture, founded on a famous battle-song of the Hussite wars, is a masterpiece which turns to a noble use, one of the finest themes in Bohemian art—the incidental music to Samberk's 'Tyl,' takes perforce the poor melody of the national anthem, for which Tyl had written the words, and so foredooms itself to failure by a fault that is not its own. Of course in the latter case the choice was inevitable. A drama which had the revolutionary poet for central figure, could only be set by motifs that made reference to the best known of his works, and in Bohemia, as in many other countries, the national anthem has been accepted by accident, and maintained by force of association. Still, the comparison of the two results is a lesson of the highest significance. In Husitska, DvorÁk selected a genuine folk-song, and raised it into a national monument that will stand the test of time. In Tyl he borrowed the tune of a Prague Kapellmeister, and with all ingenuity of treatment, could lift it to no higher level than that of a piÈce d'occasion. It was perfectly natural that both works alike should obtain an immediate welcome. They appeared at a moment of crisis; they addressed a sentiment of loyalty; they stood for the time outside the range of dispassionate criticism. But to us, who may regard the matter from a purely artistic standpoint, the difference between them is incalculable. Both are well written; both have accessory themes of great beauty; both are scored with all their composer's accustomed skill, but one is built upon the bed-rock of the Bohemian mountains, the other upon an artificial basement that only holds together by external support.

Having once more gained access to the Theatre, DvorÁk proceeded to occupy the position, and in 1882 strengthened it by the production of Dimitrij, which, among all his operas, is the largest in scale, and the most dramatic in treatment. He had, indeed, a subject made to his hand. The romance of history contains no more striking episode than that of the false Demetrius; a story of heroism and imposture, of honour in conflict with ambition, of love that betrays a trust, and jealousy that wrecks a life. Marina's character is one of singular interest and complexity, torn between allegiance to her nation and loyalty to her husband, aiding him to usurp the throne which he believes to be his by right, denouncing him in anger when he uses his power against her countrymen, watching his assassination on the spot where she had shared his triumph. Here are no foregone conclusions; no idle displays of theatrical ingenuity; no stage lay figures clad in traditional garb; the whole event is a transcript from nature, vivid, real, convincing, and the more tragic for the cross issue upon which it turns. It may be added that DvorÁk has accomplished his part in the work with unusual care and anxiety. After the first performance some important changes were made, notably in the overture, and in the closing scenes, and though the music has since been printed in its revised form, the composer, still dissatisfied, has recently submitted it to a new process of recension. Yet in its earlier shape the score contained passages and numbers which the world would be the poorer for losing. The most relentless self-criticism could hardly have bettered the entry into Moscow, or Xenia's flight, or the great duet in the second act.

Meantime the curtain was rising upon another scene, which had England for its stage, and DvorÁk himself for its hero. As early as 1879, the attention of English musicians had been aroused by a performance of the Slavische TÄnze; the interest once excited had steadily grown and gathered as new works made their appearance; and, in March 1883, the composer was invited over to conduct his Stabat Mater at the Albert Hall. His reception was one of the most cordial ever offered by our land to a foreign artist. The house was crowded and appreciative; the press for once raised a unanimous voice of approbation; the example set by London was soon followed by other great centres throughout the country. No doubt there was something of fashion and novelty in the movement:—every great stream of tendency carries these attendant bubbles upon its surface: but at least the current was set in a right direction, and was destined to maintain its course without swerving. The lapse of years may have brought us a cooler judgment; it has certainly brought us a stronger and more reasoned admiration.

In 1884 the Stabat Mater was repeated at Worcester, where it met with so brilliant a success, that DvorÁk was at once commissioned to write a cantata for next year's Birmingham Festival. As libretto he took a Slavonic version of the Lenore legend, a vampyre story, even wilder and more savage than the famous ballad which Burger wrote, and Scott translated. It is not, perhaps, a very satisfactory subject for a long work. There is too much monotony of suffering: there is too much gloom and terror and pain: a tragedy so unrelieved comes near to over-straining the sympathy of the spectator. But for all this it offers certain points of vantage which DvorÁk was abundantly qualified to seize. In setting the words, he wisely treated the musical aspect as paramount, brought to the task all his resources of rhythm and harmony and melodic invention, and produced a poem in which horror itself is made beautiful, and darkness lightened with flashes of electric genius. Grant that the 'Spectre's Bride' is too long, that it needs compression; that it loses effect by repetition and redundance; none the less it can show some of the finest numbers that its composer has ever written, and with such summits attained, may well look down upon any censure of inequality.

A remarkable contrast is afforded by the Oratorio of St Ludmila, which was produced at the Leeds Festival of 1886. The theme is fertile in opportunity, the book is written by the first of living Bohemian poets, the music dates from the centre of DvorÁk's richest period, and yet the whole impression left on the hearer is one of failure and disappointment. For this our own reputation is chiefly to blame. It is a matter of common belief abroad, that the only works which can really attract a British audience are the Elijah and the Messiah; that in them we find all music comprised, that from them we construct a standard by which we test the entire range of composition. Perhaps our past history in some degree justifies the charge; perhaps we have unduly favoured the two great masterpieces that were written for our country; in any case the tradition obtains, and St Ludmila may stand as the most salient example of its effect. The opening chorus is characteristic enough; the rest is all dominated by the influence of Handel and Mendelssohn; a labour that is lost by conformity with an alien method, a gift that is marred by the very means taken to render it acceptable.

But during all these years, the best record of DvorÁk's genius is to be found in his instrumental compositions. Even the Spectre's Bride is not of more account than the Symphony in D minor, the Symphony in G, and the array of chamber-works that reach their climax with the famous Pianoforte Quintett. To these may be added the trifles of a lighter mood—waltzes, mazurkas, dainty little sketches for the pianoforte—all too slight to establish a reputation, but all beautiful enough for its adornment. At the same time he was gaining strength and experience as a song-writer. The Zigeunerlieder had already marked a new stage in his lyric method; they were now followed by three volumes of equal charm and of a style even more fully developed. Indeed, as we look through the pages of successful attainment, we are in no mind to cavil because one effort has missed its mark. Assuredly, there was no lack of power in the artist who could retrieve a single defeat with so many victories.

In 1889 he brought out his sixth opera, Jakobin—a sentimental comedy of a type that held the stage some half-century ago. The play is somewhat spoiled by a double intrigue, of which it may be said that the less prominent strand is the better woven. We grow rather weary of Count Bohus and his peasant-wife; driven from home by an unbending father, supplanted by a wicked cousin, restored by a reminiscence of early childhood; but we can all sympathise with the old Kapellmeister who arranges the castle pageants, and who, on the eve of his cantata, has to choose a son-in-law between the burgomaster of the town and its only tenor.

Later events are of too recent a memory to require any detailed description. In 1889, DvorÁk was decorated by the Austrian Court; in 1890 he was admitted to the Honorary Doctorate at Cambridge; in the same year, Prague elected him Doctor of Philosophy, and appointed him Professor of Composition at the Conservatorium. Next autumn he again visited England, to conduct his Requiem at the Birmingham Festival, and shortly afterwards accepted the post of Musical Director at New York, where, with an occasional holiday in Bohemia, he remained until 1895. During his residence in America he was much attracted by the sweetness and naÏvetÉ of the negro melodies, and, though he never actually transferred any of them to his own pages, yet in more than one composition he shows clear traces of their influence. This is particularly the case with his symphony, 'From the New World' (Op. 95), so named because it was the first work of his written in the United States, and with the String Quartett in F major (Op. 96) and A flat major (Op. 105). In all these the most conspicuous themes are intimately affected by the 'Plantation Songs,' and it is interesting to note with what skill DvorÁk has absorbed their character into his own style and method.

Among other notable works published at this period should be mentioned the set of 'Elegies' (Dumky) for Pianoforte trio, the three great concert overtures, 'In der Natur,' 'Carnaval,' and 'Otello,' a quintett in E flat minor, and a collection of 'Bible Songs,' the words of which are mainly taken from the Psalms. His last Transatlantic composition was a cantata, 'The American Flag,' written for the Chicago Exhibition of 1895. Shortly afterwards, influenced, it would seem, by sheer nostalgia, he resigned his appointment and returned to Bohemia, where he has since resided; partly in Prague and partly in his country house some thirty miles away. His restoration to his own country was marked by another outburst of composition, and in 1896 there appeared the Violoncello Concerto, the String Quartetts in A flat and G, and the three symphonic poems, 'Der Wassermann,' 'Die Mittagshexe,' and 'Das Goldene Spinnrad.' In the same year was published the 'Te Deum,' which had been produced at the Birmingham Festival of 1894, but the work, in spite of some brilliant passages, is not one of his greatest and needs here no more than the bare mention. After 1896 came an interval of silence; doubtless to be explained by the cares of office at the Prague Conservatorium: then in 1899 followed 'Die Waldtaube,' and 'Heldenlied,' and in 1901 the new opera of 'Roussalka.'

III
NATIONAL AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

The statical conditions which aid in the formation of character may roughly be classified under three principal heads. First, there is the broad general basis of humanity, the common foundation of thought and feeling which enables us to sympathise, in some measure, with distant lands and remote ages. Secondly, there is the individual element, the particular blend of personal characteristics, the special idiosyncrasy that marks the difference between one man and his fellow. Third, and intermediate between the other two, is the debt that we owe to our nation the long inheritance that our forefathers have accumulated, that has been put to interest from the beginning of our race, and augmented by every occurrence in our history. And since art is essentially the outcome of character, it would seem to follow, that the artist should display in his work some trace of these three conditions, that his manner should be affected by causes which belong partly to mankind at large, partly to his own temper and circumstances, partly to the distinctive attributes of his people.

The first two of these have never been called in question. All criticism admits that art is at once human and personal, that its aim is to particularise, through the medium of the artist, some ideal or truth which is universal in its ultimate essence. But the admission of the national element has been so strenuously attacked, that a few words may perhaps be offered in its defence; and there could be no more fitting occasion than the study of a composer whose best work has been devoted to the service of a national movement. Hence, before beginning any detailed investigation of DvorÁk's method, it will be advisable to consider, first, what is precisely implied in the statement that he was influenced by the character of his country, and secondly, whether this influence was a source of strength or of weakness?

Now the differences by which national temperaments are distinguished appear to be such palpable facts, that it is hardly worth while to assert their existence. In conversation, in travel, in all intercourse we are constantly being reminded that Europe is divided by frontier lines, drawn, no doubt, over the surface of a common earth, but for all that, setting up barriers which are not solely geographical. There is some intermixture of races, but it only bars the rule with a rare exception. There is a growing development of breadth and sympathy, but it only teaches us that the foreign standpoint is as good as our own, not that it is the same. The human mind, says Bacon, is a broken and distorted mirror which can but reflect a part of the truth, and assuredly the part reflected by any individual mind is in great measure determined by national and social conditions.

Again the poet, though he be the spokesman of the whole world, is in a more intimate degree the spokesman of his own country. He has a particular set of traditions for background, he has a particular language for vehicle, and both of these give shape and colour to the abstract ideas which it is his function to express. Wordsworth, for example, is as purely English as Victor Hugo is French or Goethe German; each is the embodiment of a national spirit, each make a closer appeal to his compatriots than to the wisest and most liberal criticism across the border. And this does not depend upon the mere difficulty of translation, it is not a question of grammar and dictionary, rather it is the point of view which seems strange to a foreign reader, which requires some readjustment before the true focus can be obtained. Nor is the discrepancy less in the minuter points of rhythm and versification. The assonances of Calderon are perfectly satisfying to a Spanish ear; to us they have simply the effect of a false rhyme. Alfred de Musset threw French literature into a ferment by ending an Alexandrine with the words 'tu es;' we pass over the line without noting anything unusual in its cadence. In a word, apart from Heine, we shall hardly find an instance of great poetry which is not saturated with a national atmosphere, and even Heine is an exception easily explained, and more easily overstated.

The rule is equally applicable to painting. When Mr Whistler tells us that 'there is no such thing as English art,' and that 'we might as well talk of English mathematics,' we can only suppose that he is experimenting in paradox, at least we may wait for conviction until we have found the counterparts of Reynolds and Gainsborough, of Morland and Constable. The last of these, indeed, may be taken as a crucial case. There can be no doubt that the Barbizon School was influenced by his method and example, that in some degree it shared his aim and followed his style, yet Constable is as English as the 'Excursion,' Millet as French as the 'Feuilles d'Automne.' The distinctions may be more subtle than those of language, but they are not more unreal. The lines of demarcation may be obscured by imitators and copyists, but they still exist for those who make their art a reality. Even community of school or subject will do very little to obliterate the inherent differences of temper; a man may find his teacher in Paris and his model in Rome, and learn after all that 'cÆlum non animum mutat.'

Here an objection occurs. Grant, it will be said, that the representative arts are in some way affected by the entourage of the artist, we cannot therefore infer that the same will hold good of music. They are comparatively material and concrete, they depict the actual, they stand in direct relation to an external world, but in music we are dealing with pure abstract form, and the laws of form are universal. Hence the composer is not bound by national limitations; he stands above them, 'he alone with the stars;' he is the citizen of an ideal kingdom where there is one common language and one common scheme of life. To this it is an obvious answer, that music idealises the natural language of emotion, and that if the emotional temper differs in separate countries, the music must differ also. The abstract element is the paramount need of balance and symmetry, but there are a thousand ways in which this requirement can be fulfilled, and the method selected by any school or country will depend upon its own predilections and its own character. And if the music be true and vital, it will always be found to embody some phase of the national temperament, it will speak with a tone and cadence that are unlike those of neighbouring lands, it will express shades and nuances of feeling which are in some way special to the country that has given it birth.

There is little likelihood that we shall ever be able to reduce these distinctions to phrase and formula, but we may readily observe them by a comparison of the Volkslieder that obtain among the different races of Europe. Here we shall find the national idioms in their simplest and most unsophisticated expression, the direct primary utterance of the same ideas, which attain a fuller and more developed beauty at the hands of the great composers. Of course, as the music of a country progresses, it will advance farther and farther from the Volkslied, it will grow richer and more complex, it will treat its material by methods which the artist has inherited, not so much from his nation as from his predecessors in the art. Yet it still remains true, that the line of ancestry is continuous, that the course of genealogy may be traced, and that the masterpiece, with all its finish and civilisation, is of the same flesh and blood as its humbler compatriot. Again, there are cases where a composer has naturalised himself in a new home, and has become, in a sense, bilingual; in all these it will be found that the language of his birth holds the predominance, and that his new acquirement is only an added grace. Brahms, for instance, does not treat the Hungarian idiom in the same way as Liszt, or even as Schubert, he employs it with extraordinary ease and mastery, but he never lets us forget that he is a German.

We may conclude, then, that a composer of genius, if he write simply and naturally, will express his own character, and in so doing will express that of his country as well. More particularly will this be true if he appear during the stir and stress of a patriotic movement, if he be occupied in constructing a system for the guidance and direction of his successors. For a time of political crisis not only brings out all that is best in a man, it also draws him nearer to his people, and makes him at once more desirous and more capable of serving as its true representative. And so it has been with DvorÁk. If we compare his melody with that of Smetana, and with that of the Bohemian folk-songs, we shall find a notable resemblance of thought and feeling, they are all of one family, of one kindred, connected by a sympathy that the widest distinctions of treatment cannot annul. No doubt Smetana is often content to reproduce the methods of the folk-song, while in DvorÁk the curves are made richer, and the designs more complex and beautiful, still the emotional basis of the one is that of the other, and the distinctions between them depend partly on the personal element, partly on the accident of historical position. Smetana came first into the field; it was his work to gather the stones and to lay the foundation. DvorÁk followed him, and began, with the same materials, to raise a superstructure.

Hence it is not a little significant that his few misadventures have always marked some momentary defection from the national cause. The first version of 'King and Collier' has long passed beyond the reach of criticism, but at least we know that it was written in imitation of Wagner, and that it was unsuccessful. The 149th Psalm is merely a careful and conscientious expression of German method, and has hardly a greater value than that which belongs to an Academic exercise. The Oratorio of St Ludmila is a concession to the supposed requirements of English taste, and in the record of its composer's works it has almost dropped out of account. And if we turn for contrast to such achievements as the Pianoforte Quintett, or the Spectre's Bride, or the D minor Symphony, we are at once struck, not only with the difference of result, but with the total difference of character. Here DvorÁk is delivering his own message in his own words, here he attains a native eloquence that can readily compel our attention. It is surely no extreme inference that we should here recognise some connection of cause and effect.

At the same time we must remember that the racial element is only one among formative conditions, and that it is itself a factor in personal idiosyncrasy. 'Just what constitutes special power and genius in a man,' says Matthew Arnold, 'seems often to be his blending with the basis of a national temperament some additional gift or grace not proper to that temperament.' And of this we may find a ready illustration in DvorÁk's treatment of the scale, an illustration of double interest, partly because it shows one of the most distinctive attributes in his music, partly because even here he stands in direct relation to an ethnological background. We have already seen that the scale now in use among western nations was set in course by the Florentine revolution of 1600, and that it spread from Florence to Paris, and from Paris to Leipsic, until it was finally established by Sebastian Bach. Hence the music of Italy, France, and Germany grew with its growth, developed with its development, and constructed by its means a common body of system and tradition. With all their divergencies of emotional impulse, the composers of these three countries have this formal point of union, that they accepted the diatonic scale as their unit, and treated the chromatic rather as an appenage and an extension. From this followed an important consequence. For, in the first place, a settled scale is not only a vehicle for melody, it is also a means of modulation, and this latter function comes more into evidence as music becomes more complex and the need of modulation increases. And, in the second place, it is an essential characteristic of the diatonic scale, that some of its notes should be more nearly related than others, and that composers who found their work upon it should therefore acknowledge some modulations as comparatively easy and natural, some as comparatively remote and recondite. Of course, as time goes on, we become familiarised with effects that once appeared violent and extreme, yet even now we recognise certain relative limitations. Alfio's song in Cavalleria, for example, gives us merely the impression of deliberate defiance, it is not construction but demolition, not freedom but revolt.

For obvious historical reasons the growth of this scale system left Bohemia altogether untouched. She did not enter the field until this part of the work was completed, she bore no share in the traditions which its gradual evolutions had established in neighbouring lands. When therefore she came to the making of her own music, she could look upon this scheme from outside, she could treat it dispassionately, she could take it without any of the limitations that had hitherto marked its course. And in doing so, she produced a result to which the whole history of music affords no exact parallel. DvorÁk is the one solitary instance of a composer who adopts the chromatic scale as unit, who regards all notes as equally related. His method is totally different from that of chromatic writers like Grieg and Chopin, for Grieg uses the effects as isolated points of colour, and Chopin embroiders them, mainly as appoggiaturas, on a basis of diatonic harmony. His 'equal temperament' is totally different from that of Bach, for Bach only showed that all the keys could be employed, not that they could be arranged in any chance order or sequence. But to DvorÁk the chromatic passages are part of the essential texture, and the most extreme modulations follow as simply and easily as the most obvious. In a word, his work, from this standpoint, is truly a nuova musica, developed, like all new departures, from the consequences of past achievement, but none the less turning the stream of tendency into a fresh direction.

It may at once be admitted that from this cause the music of DvorÁk loses something of strength and massiveness: that it is Corinthian rather than Doric. But, at the same time, it compensates, at any rate in part, by a certain opulence, a certain splendour and luxury to which few other musicians have attained: and, beside this, its very strangeness constitutes an additional claim upon our interest. We rather lose our bearings when, in the second of the Legenden, we find a phrase which has its treble in G and its tenor in D flat; or when, as in the fifth number of the Spectre's Bride, the music passes from one remote key to another with a continuous and facile display of resource that is apparently inexhaustible. Often, too, the devices outmatch the utmost capacity of our recognised symbols. Mendelssohn's famous crux of 'Fes moll' would be plain sailing to a composer who, in his third Pianoforte Trio, writes passages in D flat minor, and B double-flat major, and other keys of a signature equally undecipherable. And though these matters may seem trivial enough when they are submitted to the indignity of our musical nomenclature, we should yet remember that there is nothing trivial in the habit of mind which they imply. It is to them and to their like that we owe all the warmth of colour, all the richness of tone, all the marvellous effects of surprise and crisis that are so eminently characteristic of DvorÁk in his best mood. To an imagination so vivid as his, the possession of an extended scale was a priceless opportunity; and he has used it to fill his work with incident and adventure as varied and brilliant as were ever lavished by the hand of Scott or Dumas.

His treatment of the classical forms is much influenced for good by his long and patient study of Beethoven. In the more highly-organised types he certainly falls short of his great master: he lacks the perfect balance that marks the first movement of the Appassionata or the A major Symphony; as we should naturally expect, he tends rather to restlessness of tonality and to a page overcrowded with accessory keys. But, in spite of this, his instinct for structure is real and genuine; it ranks higher than that of Chopin—far higher than that of Liszt or Berlioz; and his outline, though not always in complete symmetry, is firmly drawn and filled with interesting detail. Some of his larger forms are pure experiments in construction: such, for instance, as the opening movement of the Violin Concerto, the Finale of the G major Symphony, and the Scherzo Capriccioso for orchestra: sometimes he founds an entire number on a single melodic phrase, as in the slow movement of the Second Pianoforte Trio: more often, as in the F major Symphony and the String Sestett, he takes the established type and modifies it in some important particular. But whatever the result, his structure always gives us the impression of thought and design. He has his own method, and even when he fails of conviction, he can generally command respect.

The two forms in which he is most successful are the two most usually associated with his name—the Dumka and the Furiant. Both of these are real accessions to musical literature: not because they are new in conception, for, like all other structures, they descend in direct evolution from the folk-song, but because they have developed the primitive type in a new way, and have enriched the existing stock with a strain of collateral relationship. The Furiant is one of the national dances of Bohemia, and is frequently employed by DvorÁk as a representative of the scherzo. In adopting it he has, to a great extent, altered its character; he has enlarged its range, quickened its tempo, and replaced, with a more vigorous gaiety and abandon, its original tone of half-humorous assurance. If we compare the example in the A major Quintett with the traditional melody—either as it appears among the Volkslieder, or, as it is used by Smetana in the Bartered Bride—we shall see at once that DvorÁk has done more than borrow from the existing resources of his countrymen; that, as a matter of fact, he has taken nothing but the mould, and has used it for the casting of an entirely different metal. Even more distinctive is his treatment of the Dumka or 'Elegy,' a complex form which, like a sonnet-sequence, holds in combination a series of separate poems. It is here, indeed, that he has brought his constructive power to its highest attainment. The whole scheme is of great interest and value: varied without digression, uniform without monotony, flexible enough to answer all moods and engage all sympathies. The stanzas admit a sharper contrast than is possible to the subjects of a 'sonata movement': the key system, though it would be impracticable on a larger scale, is admirably suited to these brief moments of concentration: the recurrent themes maintain the organism in proper balance and equipoise. There is little need to speculate on the ancestry of the form, though it is worth noting, that a simple instance occurs in the Serenade trio of Beethoven: whatever its origin, it acquires in the hands of DvorÁk a special significance which is quite enough to place it among the most notable of his gifts. For illustration, we may turn to the slow movement of the Pianoforte Quintett, or to that of the Third Symphony, or to the six Elegies that have recently been published for pianoforte trio. They are all beautiful, they are all characteristic, and they fill their canvas with a most ingenious diversity of design.

This feeling for colour and movement, which appears partly in his rhythms, partly in his use of the scale, partly in his preference for lyric and elegiac forms, may also account in some measure for his unquestioned and supreme mastery of orchestration. Here at least there is no counterchange of victory and defeat, no loss in one direction to balance gain in another; here at least every achievement is a triumph and every work a masterpiece. Nor has he alone the lesser gift of writing brilliant dialogue for his instrument, of making each stand out salient and expressive against a background of lower tone; he is even more successful in those combinations of timbre which harmonise the separate voices and give to the full chord its peculiar richness and euphony. When we think of his scoring, it is not to recall a horn passage in one work or a flute solo in another—plenty of these could be found, and in a master of less capacity they would be well worth recording—but it is rather the marvellous interplay and texture of the whole that remains in our memory and compels our admiration. Look, for example, at the Husitska Overture, or the third Slavonic Rhapsody, or the slow movement of the Symphony in D minor. Hardly in all musical literature are the orchestral forces treated with such a warmth of imagination or such unerring certainty of judgment.

Hence it is not surprising that a great part of his finest work should be instrumental, and that even his masterpieces of Hymn and Cantata should be written, more or less, upon instrumental lines. He is always rather hampered than aided by the collaboration of the poet; his chromatic style is better suited to strings and wind than to the peculiar limitations of the human voice; his vigorous rhythms are in some degree impeded by the slower articulation of the words; his sense of form finds its most natural expression in symphonic and concerted music. Again, so far as the distinction is applicable at the present day, he belongs rather to the classical than to the romantic school; he is more concerned with producing the highest beauty of sound than with following, through all its phases, the emotional import of a poem. His operas are for the most part essentially undramatic, and if they hold the stage, will survive as displays of pure melody. His great choral compositions—the Stabat Mater, the Spectre's Bride, the Requiem—stand in a loose relation to the texts on which they are founded; embodying, no doubt, the general tendency of thought, but always acknowledging the melodic requirements as paramount. Even his songs offer no exception to the rule. It is true that, after the Zigeunerlieder, they undergo a remarkable change in treatment and elaboration, but although they lose the shape of the ballad, they are never out of touch with its character. Nothing, in short, is further from DvorÁk's ideal than the imposition of a programme. He is essentially what the Germans would call an 'absolute musician;' content to express the broad general types of feeling, and, within their limits, wholly engaged with the special service of his art.

This statement requires a word of qualification. The great masters of pure classical style,—Haydn, for example, and Mozart, and Beethoven, have, as their predominant gift, the sense of outline, and their sense of colour, however keen and vivid, is always kept in subservience to the requisitions of design. As a natural consequence, they are supreme in the string quartett, which, among all types of composition, demands purity of line as its first essential. But with DvorÁk, the relation of these attributes is reversed, in him the sense of colour preponderates, and the demands of pure outline, though never disregarded, are nevertheless relegated to the second place. Thus, in his music for strings alone, the Sestett in A, the Quintett in G minor, the four Quartetts, we feel that he is chafing at the restraints of monochrome, that he wants the whole palette, that he is always held in check by the absence of orchestral resources. The result is not that he writes orchestral music for the strings; he is too true an artist to fall into this error; but that he writes string music under difficulties, that he foregoes all the better part of his equipment, that he is accomplishing a task in which his special gifts have little opportunity of display. No doubt these works contain passages and even numbers of great beauty, but as a whole they do not bear comparison with the Violin Concerto or the Symphonies, or the Carnaval Overture. Here DvorÁk obtains his contrast of tone, here he has the whole gamut of colour at his command, here he can win the full measure of success from which he is in part precluded by a severer method. Yet it would be wrong to class him, for this reason, among the romantic composers. He shares with them one of the most important of their qualities, but he uses it for the furtherance of an end that is different from theirs. The fundamental distinction is one of ideals, and in ideal DvorÁk is on the side of the classics.

Hence there is no inconsistency in estimating him by the classical standard. For music is not to be summed up in terms of national language or personal idiosyncrasy; these are but the necessary conditions through which is embodied the abstract universal of form. Thus, although a man can only take rank as an artist if he express his own character and that of his people, he is only a great artist in so far as he expresses them in the best possible way. The first spontaneous conception of melody springs from the emotional temperament of the composer, and so marks him at once as a member of his particular nation, its treatment is derived from the intellectual laws of proportion and balance, and so belongs to the general evolution of the art. This distinction appears very clearly in DvorÁk's work. His melody, taken by itself, is often as simple and ingenuous as a folk-song, but in polyphony, in thematic development, in all details of contrast and elaboration, his ideal is to organise the rudimentary life, and to advance it into a fuller and more adult maturity. Of course, it cannot be said that he is uniformly successful. He has little sense of economy, little of that fine reticence and control which underlies the most lavish moments of Brahms or Beethoven; his use of wealth is so prodigal that his generosity is sometimes left with inadequate resources. The stream is so rapid that it has not always time for depth, the eloquence so prompt and unfailing that it does not always stop to select the best word. But, for all this, he is a great genius, true in thought, fertile in imagination, warm and sympathetic in temper of mind. He has borne his part in a national cause, and has thereby won for himself a triumph that will endure. He has enriched his people, and, in so doing, has augmented the treasury of the whole world.

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