Antonín Dvořák composed his Symphony No. 6 in D major, Op. 60, B. 112, in 1880. It was premiered on 25 March 1881. It was originally published as Symphony No. 1 and is dedicated to Hans Richter, who was the conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. With a performance time of approximately 40 minutes, the four-movement piece was one of the first of Dvořák’s large symphonic works to draw international attention. In it, he manages to capture some of the Czech national style within a standard Germanic classical-romantic form.
Background This symphony was composed for the Vienna Philharmonic. In order to understand the context in which he composed it, the climate and reception of Dvořák’s earlier works in Vienna should be taken into consideration.
In late 1879, Hans Richter conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in a subscription concert that included the Third Slavonic Rhapsody. According to Dvořák, in a letter dated 23 November 1879, I set out last Friday and was present at the performance of my Third Rhapsody, which was liked very much, and I had to show myself to the audience. I sat next to Brahms by the organ in the orchestra, and Richter drew me out. I had to appear. I must tell you that I immediately won the sympathy of the whole orchestra and that out of all the new works they tried over, and Richter said there were sixty of them, they liked my Rhapsody best of all. Richter kissed me on the spot and told me he was very glad to know me.…Antonín Dvořák, letter translated in David Brodbeck, “Dvořák’s Reception in Liberal Vienna: Language Ordinances, National Property, and the Rhetoric of Deutschtum,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 60, no. 1 (spring 2007): 78.
Music historians have made various conclusions regarding what this letter implies about Dvořák’s reception in Vienna. Dvořák scholar John Clapham interprets this letter to say that the audience at the concert responded with a warm ovation, and that Richter was pleased with the work.John Clapham, Antonín Dvořák: Musician and Craftsman (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 71. Yet, according to David Brodbeck, this account probably only describes the dress rehearsal (the Philharmonic’s dress rehearsals were open to a limited audience), arguing that there is no other way to explain the presence of Brahms and Dvořák on stage during a performance.David Brodbeck, “Dvořák’s Reception in Liberal Vienna: Language Ordinances, National Property, and the Rhetoric of Deutschtum,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 60, no. 1 (spring 2007): 79. Eduard Hanslick, a music critic in Vienna at this time, reported: “The Rhapsody was respectfully but not warmly received. I had expected it to make a livelier effect after the impression of the dress rehearsal.”Eduard Hanslick, in Neue Freie Presse, 23 November 1879, translated in David Brodbeck, “Dvořák’s Reception in Liberal Vienna,” 79. Even though audience reception at the actual concert may have been less than enthusiastic, Richter saw promise in Dvořák’s work and asked him to write a symphony for the orchestra. He finished the symphony the following year, in October 1880, and traveled to Vienna to play the composition on the piano for Richter, who was very excited about the work.Clapham, Antonín Dvořák, 71.
Dvořák expected to have the Vienna Philharmonic premiere his symphony in December 1880. However, Richter postponed the performance repeatedly, citing family sickness and an over-worked orchestra. Dvořák, suspicious of anti-Czech feelings in Vienna, eventually grew frustrated. He learned later that members of the orchestra objected to performing works by the relatively new Czech composer in two consecutive seasons.John Clapham, Dvořák, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1979), 50–53.
Instead, Adolf Čech conducted the premiere of Symphony No. 6 with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra on 25 March 1881 in Prague.Robert Layton, Dvořák Symphonies and Concertos, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), 30–31. The Scherzo was encored. Richter did eventually conduct the piece in London in 1882. Though he never conducted it in Vienna, he still retained an interest in Dvořák's compositions. The Vienna Philharmonic did not perform this symphony until 1942.A. Peter Brown, The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Brahms, Bruckner, Dvořák, Mahler, and Selected Contemporaries, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 373.
Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6 was originally issued as his Symphony No. 1 by Simrock, Dvořák’s German music publisher, as it was his first published work in this genre. Further confusion in numbering Dvořák’s symphonies came from several sources. Dvořák believed that his first symphony was lost, and numbered the remaining symphonies Nos. 1 to 8 by date of composition. Simrock continued to order the symphonies by publication date, ignoring the first four symphonies. Therefore, according to Dvořák, this work was his fifth symphony, according to the publisher it was his first, but chronologically (and after the first symphony was recovered) it is now known as his Symphony No. 6. The order of symphonies was first codified by Dvořák scholar Otakar Šourek.Clapham, Antonín Dvořák, 57.
Compositional context and influences The period of Dvořák's life that culminated with his Symphony No. 6 in D major was a time of experimentation and development of his personal compositional style. He developed his basic compositional voice largely from a study of the Germanic classical tradition.Clapham, Dvořák, 16. There are differing opinions about what influences were in play as he wrote his sixth symphony; it is possible to see the No. 6 as a synthesis of many influences, or as the focus of just a few.
Gerald Abraham writes, "...he had recognizable affinities with all three of the principal musical tendencies of the period, with the conservatism of Brahms and his followers, with the modernism of the Liszt-Wagner school, and with the nationalism that was in almost every country... in Europe."Gerald Abraham, "Dvořák's Musical Personality", in Antonin Dvorak: His Achievement, edited by Viktor Fischl (London: Lindsay Drummond, 1943), 194. To be sure, he had personal contact with musical giants from each of these traditions. In 1863, Richard Wagner came to Prague and conducted a program of his own works, in which Dvořák played as a violist. He was very impressed with Wagner's compositional style.Clapham, Dvořák, 22. Dvořák then applied for a stipend from Svatobor, a Prague association for the support of artists, to finance a period of study with Liszt in Weimar. He was not selected for the prize.Klaus Döge, "Dvořák, Antonin", in Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, ed. Laura Macy, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/51222, (accessed March 9, 2009). This turn of events probably greatly affected Dvořák's eventual shift to a personal integrative style of composition, as opposed to a complete devotion to the Wagner school. In 1874, Dvořák submitted numerous works to apply for the Austrian State Stipendium, money offered to young poor artists by the Ministry of Education. On the panel of judges that awarded Dvořák the prize was Johannes Brahms, who became a longtime friend and supporter of the young Czech. And in Prague itself was the older and more revered Czech nationalistic composer Bedřich Smetana who eventually supported Dvořák by being among the first to program and conduct concerts that included his compositions. David Beveridge states, "In 1880, with the composition of his Sixth Symphony, Dvořák had at last achieved an optimum balance between his nationalistic-romantic proclivities and the demands of classical form."David R. Beveridge, Romantic Ideas in a Classical Frame: The Sonata Forms of Dvořák, (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1980), 288.
Yet, it may not be quite so simple to categorically say that a mix or balance of these influences culminated in Symphony No. 6. According to David Brodbeck, Dvořák purposely utilized sources from the German tradition in order to cater to a Viennese audience and their cultural values. At that time, Viennese culture elevated German qualities, and not Czech. In keeping with this attitude, Dvořák referenced works by Brahms and Beethoven, as well as a Viennese dance.Brodbeck, Dvořák’s Reception in Liberal Vienna, pp. 90–97. The orchestral makeup, the key, the mood and the tempo marking of the Finale are all identical to the finale of Brahms's Second Symphony.
Instrumentation and score The symphony is written in four movements:
The score calls for two flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, and strings.
The piccolo is only used in the third movement. The trombones and tuba are only used in the first and fourth movements.
Orchestration and style
Dvořák's melodies are often presented in the woodwinds and horns, as well as the strings. Dvořák frequently converses back and forth between groups of instruments, sometimes finishing one another's phrases. The brass are used more as support in tutti passages, only occasionally leading the melody.
I. Allegro non tanto
The first movement is written in a traditional sonata form. It is in time and in the key of D major. Dvořák has included extra melodic material with two primary themes, two transitional phrases, and two secondary themes.Brown, The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony, 373–375. The initial primary theme has three parts that Dvořák uses in many ways throughout the piece. The first (x) is an ascending fourth, followed by a repeated D with a dotted rhythm (y), and finally descending stepwise motion from the fifth scale degree to the second (z).Brown, The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony, 374.
The transition begins in measure 78 with an upward stepwise motive that could be seen as filling in the interval of a fourth, which opened the initial primary theme (x), or as an inversion of the downward stepwise motive that closes the same primary theme (z).Otakar Šourek, The Orchestral Works of Antonín Dvořák, trans. Roberta Finlayson Samsour (Prague: Artia, c. 1950), 95. Either way, a connection can be drawn back to the initial primary theme.
The secondary area begins in measure 108. The initial secondary theme is in B minor and includes rhythmic similarities to the initial primary theme (y and z). In measure 120 the second secondary theme enters in B major. It is a lyrical theme presented in the oboe. This section begins pianissimo and gradually crescendos into the closing section in measure 161, which is also in B major.
The score includes a repeat of the exposition; however, this is not usually observed because Dvořák later decided to eliminate it. "He finally wrote in the score now owned by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra: 'once and for all without repetition.'"Brown, The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony, 375.
The development begins with the thematic elements of the first primary theme, using each of these fragments in turn, as well as material from the second transitional phrase. It begins very softly and gradually gathers excitement with an increase in orchestration, fugato sections, and circle-of-fifths progressions. Shortly before the recapitulation, the strings break into a homophonic fortissimo statement of rising quarter notes for eleven measures, marked pesante (measures 310–320), before the full orchestra joins in for the retransition into the recapitulation in D major.