Antonín Dvořák
“The Wood Dove”, Symphonic Poem op. 110

Antonín Dvořák was tormented by homesickness. In 1892, he had taken up a well-paid post in New York as director of the first American conservatory. His mission: to guide the still relatively young nation toward its own musical identity. For the descendants of Indigenous peoples (where they still existed), European settlers, and formerly enslaved Africans did not yet feel like one people – each group sang its own songs. At first glance, it may seem curious to entrust such a lofty task to the son of a Czech butcher. But back home in Prague, Dvořák had made a name for himself as an architect of national musical culture, weaving authentic folk music into his works and thus shaping a distinctive idiom. This was precisely what the USA expected of him. And with his Symphony from the New World, he actually provided something like a founding document of American classical music.

Yet although the musical world in New York worshipped at his feet and he had not served the duration of his contract, Dvořák packed his bags after two and a half years and returned to Prague. He missed his wife and children too much, as well as his familiar surroundings and his native language. And as if to reaffirm his bond with the homeland that had always played such a central role in his artistic life, he wrote four symphonic poems within a single year, all based on fairy tales by Karel Jaromír Erben – something of a Czech Brother Grimm. He considered this statement important enough to risk even the displeasure of his old mentor Johannes Brahms, who firmly rejected the idea of narrating a story through music. Furthermore, the influential critic Eduard Hanslick, allied with Brahms in taste, was appalled by what he called the “horrid subjects” Dvořák had chosen.

It is hard to disagree with him. One after another, innocent children fall victim to cruel mythical figures – witches, water goblins, and the like. The Wild Dove is not for the faint of heart. It opens with a funeral march to the graveyard. The lamented young widow is in truth her husband’s poisoner. Her motive: to marry in his place the dashing young man who woos her in the following section – successfully, as the strains of Bohemian wedding music reveal. Only a wild dove, the spirit of her murdered first husband, raises an accusatory voice with its insistent cooing. In the end, the woman can no longer escape this personified guilty conscience and takes her own life. At least Dvořák, himself a father of several children, softened the ending with a conciliatory violin solo.

Dvořák employed one more device to reflect the tale’s moral in musical form: the funeral march from the beginning recurs throughout the subsequent sections. In this way, it not only binds the work together like a leitmotif, but also casts a shadow over the seemingly cheerful episodes – a shadow from which the murderous widow ultimately cannot escape.