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Antonin Dvorak: from the point of view of contemporary musicology and the New Complete Edition of his works.

Article Excerpt
It was at the beginning of 2002 that we first provided brief information on the pages of this magazine about the planned project for a New Complete Edition of the Works of Antonin Dvorak. After more than five years we now have an opportunity to write on the theme once again. What is the state of play now with regard to Dvorak's music, the reactions of audiences and musicologists and the critical edition?

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On the one hand we are very pleased to be able to say that Dvorak's fame is truly immense and goes far beyond the frontiers of today's Czech Republic, that his music has travelled throughout the world and made an impression on the public in the German-speaking lands, Great Britain, the United States, Japan and Australia. On the other hand, it remains true that the composer's fame rests--today as it did a hundred years ago--on a small number of "evergreens" like the New World Symphony, The Slavonic Dances and Humoresque in G flat major, while many of his chamber works, songs, choral songs and especially operas continue to be overlooked. In the past few years and decades the interest of specialists (musicologists) has tended to fluctuate, with waves of comment and analysis occurring around the jubilee years of 1991 and 2004.

In 1991, when the Czech and world music public commemorated the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth, three major international conferences were organised for the occasion: in New Orleans (Louisiana, USA), Saarbrucken (Germany) and the Chateau of Dobris (CR). The published proceedings of these conferences brought us a colourful mosaic of views on Dvorak the composer and the man, and also new and ground-breaking research findings on Dvorak's work and activities as a musician. At the same time two remarkable treatments came out in German. These were Klaus Doge's monograph Dvorak. Leben-Werke-Dokumente, designed for a broader reading public, and Hartmut Schick's doctoral dissertation on Dvorak's string quartets.

From the 8th to the 11th of...

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