Czech's Anniversary

The centenary of the birth of Czech Composer Antonin Dvorak was celebrated last week. In London, Eduard Benes and members of the Czech Government attended Dvorak memorial concerts in Albert Hall. But in what is now the protectorate of Bohemia the birthday went virtually without public notice.

In Bohemia, orchestras are no longer allowed to play Dvorak's bouncing Slavonic Dances, his mournful Dumky (elegies), his evocations of Bohemia's folklore. For Dvorak's nationalist music speaks patriotically plain to Czech hearts.*

Although Dvorak accepted honors from Emperor Franz Josef (he was the first musician to sit in the window-dressy Austrian House of Lords), he kept his Czechishness. A family man whose only hobby seems to have been looking at ships and locomotives, Dvorak spent three years in the U.S. in the 1890s, made $15,000 a year as head of Manhattan's National Conservatory of Music, but was homesick. The composer's happiest months were spent vacationing in the Czech village of Spillville, Iowa, where he played the organ in church.

Dvorak was the first symphonic composer to use U.S. Negro and Indian themes, which he usually Dvoraked into something pretty Czech. Still living is the man who gave him such tunes as Swing Low Sweet Chariot (used in the New World Symphony): Harry T. Burleigh, dapper, 75-year-old choir singer at Manhattan's St. George's Episcopal Church.

In one way, Composer Dvorak repaid the U.S. for what he took. To the tune of the most popular of the many Humoresques he wrote, many a U.S. convivium sings: Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is standing in the station, I love you.

Shock-haired, bespectacled Dmitri Shostakovich, No. 1 Soviet composer, joined Leningrad's defenders digging trenches. Said he: "I am also writing my seventh symphony. It will attempt to depict the Battle of Leningrad and tell the story of the city's Home Guards." Last great Russian battle piece: Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, depicting Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.

*Music has often carried political meanings. When the Marseillaise was banned in Austria in 1840, Robert Schumann deftly quoted from it in his Patchingsschwankaus Wien (Viennese Carnival Joke). The mere name of Verdi was a slogan for Italian nationalists, because it was an acrostic for the then uncrowned "Victor Emmanuel Red'ltalia" (King of Italy). Sibelius' Finlandia rallied Finns when Finland belonged to Russia. And nowadays the opening "Fate" theme of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (corresponding to the Morse code . . . ) symbolizes occupied Europe's V campaign.

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