Talk:Antonín Dvořák/Archive 1

message: According to the BBC this afternoon, Dvorak thought a lot of American "native" music sounded like Scottish music! I'm only passing this on! -- David Martland 18:58 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)
:Folk music from such diverse locations as Bohemia, America and China uses pentatonic scales, and I have heard Chinese compositions that sound a bit like Dvorak. --H.K. 06:20, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Scottish music and other folk styles

message: A few questions about this new "symphonies" section:
:Unlike many other composers who shied away from the symphony until their mature years (notably his mentor Johannes Brahms)...
Were there really "many" who left the symphony for a long time? I can only think of Brahms. Maybe I'm forgetting somebody obvious (I usually am...).
:mg: Beethoven, Franck, Bruckner come to mind... Some 20th Century composers were so much in awe of the symphony that they didn't write one at all... ;)
::Well, Beethoven first was premiered in 1800 when he was 29, so I don't think he counts. I'll let you have Franck and Brucker, though I don't think either of them wrote anything very much until their later years. Anyway, this isn't a very big deal. --Camembert
:::mg: Well, Beethoven had already had 20 works published at the time... Dvorak none... but as you say it's not a big deal. The main contrast here is to Brahms, who was for many years absolutely terrified of writing a symphony... :)
:There could hardly be a starker contrast to Symphony No. 8 in G major (published as No. 4), a very modern work which could almost have been written by Gustav Mahler
This seems quite a bold claim to me - Dvorak 8 sounds nothing like Mahler to me. Can we attribute this opinion to some noted writer?
:mg: Karl Schumann argues the case in his essay which comes with the Kubelik cycle. Particular mentions: "The linear instrumental writing, the many and sometimes bizarre solo passages, the technique of development and the songlike shape of the melodies all point forward to Mahler, who was to be a great admirer and interpreter of Dvorak" ... "It anticipates Mahler's practice of linking motifs" ... "A solo trumpet fanfare heeralds the finale, which combines the principles of variation and development in a manner anticipating that of Mahler".
::Interesting. I must admit, I don't buy it myself, but we can stick Schumann's name next to it, and I'm happy :) --Camembert
There are quite a lot of other things similar to this which I sort of doubt we can express as fact. I'm OK with the "this shows the influence of Beethoven" stuff, but things like "Clearly the scherzo [of the first symphony] is the strongest movement, but the others are not uninteresting" bother me. If these views are widely held then it's better, I think, to say something like "the scherzo is considered to be the strongest movement". If, on the other hand, there is no general critical consensus on these things, I think we just have to pass over them in silence - we can't go expressing an opinion on something (as per the neutral point of view policy).
:mg: It's quite clear in the case of Dvorak's first IMHO, unlike say Bruckner's 00th where Tintner considers the scherzo the selling point whereas I personally prefer the first movement... but I would be interested if you can come up with any opposed viewpoints here...
::I definitely can't - truth is, I barely know the first symphony at all (I heard it once a few years ago when I "did" Dvorak, but never since, and I don't have a recording). My point, I suppose, is that if a view is widely held, it's better to make it clear that it is by saying "the scherzo is generally considered the strongest movement", rather than just say "the scherzo is the strongest movement", which sounds like an opinion. I'll fiddle with this now. --Camembert
I'm not going to edit any of this myself just now, because I don't know Dvorak as well as I might, but I do think we could be a bit more neutral here. --Camembert
:mg: Sure, I'm a very opinionated kind of guy... but I felt the page was a bit lacking so I just went ahead and added some info, looking forward to the revision process. :)
::Well, thanks for adding it - the page was indeed rather lacking, and as you say, it'll get revised into shape over time :) --Camembert
All's well that ends well, and the page is looking good, team. Nice work. BTW, I happend to see the 8th performed live last weekend (first time I've seen it live) and came away buzzing. Wonderful stuff! It's almost a cliche to say that much of the 19th century was essentially an extended period during which composers sat around asking themselves "what do we do after Beethoven?" - quite often not coming up with any answers. Not Dvorak. 4 hours driving to see the 8th, and worth every minute
:::While there are many 20th century composers (and many 19th, ...) who have not written works called symphonies, it's also been well-said (eg by Michael Kennedy in the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music iirc) that (paraphrasing Mark Twain) (with many fine works in the genre and much that continues to reconsider what the "symphony" means as an outlet for a composer's expression) the reports of its demise are much exaggerated... (hrm, 9? by Henze, 13 by Holmboe, 11 by Simpson, 16 by Pettersson, 10-sort-of by Mahler, 9 by Vaughan Williams, 2 by Elgar, 4 by Roussel, 5 by Honegger, 9 by Atterberg, 4 by Rangstrom, 7 by Sibelius, 6 by Nielsen, 4 by Szymanowski, to name a few that came to mind and imply nothing about those I'm leaving out... and quite a few (some very good I think) moderns influenced by Dvorak rather more clearly than these... ) Schissel | Sound the Note! 18:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Symphonies section

message: I've removed: "(pronounced Vojak)". I admit, I don't know exactly how Dvorak himself pronounced his name, nor how modern Czechs would pronounce it, but I would pronounce "Vojak" to rhyme with "Kojak", and that's definitely wrong. --Camembert
It would be nice to have a pronunciation of his name. Does anyone know what it is? Rmhermen 20:55, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
:I know how to pronounce it (as well as a non-native Czech speaker can be expected to), but what's the accepted way of representing pronunciations here?  Do we use one of the IPA-in-ASCII schemes, or something else? Tim Bell
::According to a CD I have of Dvorak the presented pronounciation is ("dah-VORE-zhahk").  I would think this is pretty accurate, it's better than refrencing another on-line website.  Reference: Dvorak: The Greatest Hits, Reference Gold.  I have changed the main page to reflect this but not the .ogg sound file (I don't know how to open such a file anyway) -MarlonG
:::That may be the most common English pronunciation, but the previous version (dvorzhak) was closer to the authentic Czech pronunciation. The word presents two problems to English speakers: the consonant cluster "dv" and the sound [r̝] (a trilled "r" and zh pronounced simultaneously). I believe the .ogg file was made by native Czech speakers. The most precise way of indicating the pronunciation is IPA; I will attempt a transcription. Lesgles (talk) 02:13, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Supposedly, in standard Czech, the accent is ALWAYS on the first syllable unless displaced by a preceding preposition, which "steals" the accent.  (In the dialect of Lašsko (the Czech portion of Silesia), from which the composer Janáček came, the accent is often on the penultimate syllable, as in Polish, to which the dialect is transitional.)Kostaki mou 03:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronunciation

message: "Three of the most highly regarded recordings of these symphonies are the cycles by Rafael Kubelik, Libor Pešek, and Istvan Kertész."
Now I'm not one to judge, but the penguin guide only gives Pesek's cycle a rating of **(*). However, Järvi's cycle is given a full ***. As somebody who owns Pesek's versions of Nos. 7 & 8, I'd also personally disagree with the idea that Pesek's cycle is especially good.
Smedley Hirkum 21:28, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Libor Pesek's cycle? 

message: It needs a lot more on his pre-U.S. period, especially references to the influence of Brahms. CalJW 08:53, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Balance of the biography

message: I personally think that there should not be a separate "trivia" section; the content either needs to be incorporated into the article or removed.  Heavy Metal Cellist talkcontribs
:Agree - it's unsourced anyway, so I'll take it away. It can come back if someone can provide a source. 86.136.24.189 13:26, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  trivia?? 

message: needs inline citations plange 23:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: Hello, I've just tweaked the final sentence of the introductory paragraph, changing "combined folk melodies with symphonic and chamber music" to "combined melodies of a folk idiom with...". The implication of "folk melodies" seemed to be that he borrowed existing folk melodies, as Bartok for example sometimes did, whereas in truth it was just the style and spirit of this folk music which he adopted in his writing. Genedecanter 07:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  tweak of summary bit 

message: a little trivia i found out doing a research project on him was that the fourth movement in his ninth symphony (allegro con fuoco) means "fast with fire." i put that in the trivia section because wikipedia does not offer a translation of "Fuoco," and i thought if anybody wanted to know i should put it in. But after I put it there it was deleted. i dont know why, so could someone tell me please??
Conman090 19:10, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are probably dozens of movements in the symphonic repertoire with this direction. I don't see why this particular article should offer a translation, or why you have chosen to translate the tempo marking of this particular movement above all others; Dvorak did, after all, write at least nine symphonies. An autobiography of a Czech composer is not the place in which to give English translations of Italian musical directions. [This article], on the other hand, would be ideal, if it didn't already have it. --Stephen Burnett 23:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It is not in Italian musical terms used in English, but it is already in List of musical terminology. Anyway the translation with fire seems too mechanical to me, I would prefer fierily. -- Okino 22:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Must have imagined it, then; I had a delusion that it was about halfway down the page, in section 6: "Moods". --Stephen Burnett 23:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I missed it. So it is on both places. :-) Okino 23:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  trivia