D is for Dvorak

Antonin Dvorak

Another pretty mainstream guy but its for a good reason. He's also a decent indication of things to come as we proceed down this musical alphabet (or tonal hit list, whichever you prefer). I would say he worked primarily in the symphony genre. Other stuff is there, but 9/10 times when you hear Dvorak, you're hearing a symphony (and 9/10 times of those you're hearing the 9th). He did write in other modes as well, but deep down, this guy's a symphonist and if I had to pick, the symphony is my listening drug of choice. So you'll be seeing a lot of symphony writers here. Get used to it.

Dvorak is a bit of a middle ground and I think that's what I enjoy most about him. He wrote classically structured symphonies that resemble Beethoven more than they do Mahler. They have a nationalistic flair that make them a bit more exotic than Brahms but not quite as blatant as what Smetana and Sibelius (not to mention those wacky Russians) were doing. His music is emotional, but not over the top. He doesn't need a 120 piece orchestra to make a point. He wrote quality music and when you listen to it you're not distracted by anything else. Not to say I don't like all that other music, but every once in a while this unadorned (not the best word, but I think you get the point) music is good for the soul.

"Core" Dvorak - The Three major works you should definitely listen to.

Symphony 9 "From the New World" - Might be called some other number, quite often symphony 5, but anyway you slice it, this is the one that you probably know already. Does it sound distinctly new world to anyone? Not to me, but I still love it.

Symphony 8 - Doesn't get nearly enough play compared to 9, but is a mighty fine work.

Slavonic Dances - A bunch of symphony movements that never found a home. Well, not really, but that's one way to think about them. In reality it plays like a "best of" clips. A lot of great music in a condensed form.

I'll leave you with one such slavonic dance, played here (complete with unfortunate clarinet error (Hate it when that happens)) by the somethindy philharmonia symphonic players of earth (Youtube comments say Jerusalem symphony, but I can't confirm anything).



Kind of funny I mention all that middle ground stuff and then link to this video of wild sounding nationalistic music played by a huge orchestra. Oh well, there are no easy categories in music. Just overly broad generalizations.