Antonin Dvorak's visit to Spillville, Iowa in 1893


			Dvorak in Spillville - 1893



Home \| About Spillville \| Dvorak in Spillville \| Michael Klimesh \| Nearby Historic Settlements \| Events \| Czech Heritage Partnership, Inc. \| Links Spillville Research Papers and Presentations
	Antonin Dvorák's Visit to the village of Spillville Summer - 1893 by Jeff Abbas Monona, Iowa





	On September 27th, 1892, the SS Saale arrived in New York Harbor. On board were Antonin Dvorák and his wife Anna and two of their children (four additional children stayed in Bohemia), Otilka, age 14 and Antonin age 9. The family was accompanied by Jan Joseph Kovarik acting as Dvorák's personal secretary. Kovarik was a native of Spillville, Iowa and had been studying cello at the Prague Conservatory so he was more than happy to come to America with "The Master". Dvorák's arrival was facilitated by an invitation from Jeanette Thurber in New York. In the Spring of 1891, Mrs. Thurber had asked Dvorák to come to New York to direct the National Conservatory of Music. He was at the peak of his career and had been enjoying considerable notoriety worldwide as a composer.





But, he was ready for a change in his life and the offer was a good one. At the time, he was earning just less than $500 a month as a professor at the Prague Conservatory. Mrs. Thurber was offering full directorship with a four month vacation and a salary of $15,000 yearly. A two-year, renewable contract with the Conservatory and the chance to live in America was just what he was looking for and by the end of 1891 he had made up his mind and decided to accept the offer.
Dvorák and his family began their life in America in the Clarendon Hotel on East 18th Street in New York, but did not care for hotel life. They then moved to an apartment in a brownstone-style building at 327 E. 17th Street, directly across the street from the National Conservatory of Music. He soon settled into his new regimen, teaching composition three mornings a week and conducting choir and orchestra another three mornings. One of the things that delighted Antonin about the conservatory was their "ability to pay" policy. It allowed those deserving students who might not have been able to attend the Conservatory otherwise, to find the means to do it. It is with little surprise that we find he had a profound influence on his students at the Conservatory. He encouraged them to develop their own, distinct "American style". He encouraged them to seek out and develop the folk songs and "plantation music" of the American South; it was music free of form and melody and unconstrained by the bounds of European tradition. To the point, the following excerpt was written by Dvorák for the February 1895 issue of Harper's Magazine: "These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American. They are the folk-songs of America, and your composers must turn to them. In the negro melodies of America, I discovered all that is needed for a great and noble school of music." "There is more than enough material here and plenty of talent. I have pupils from as far away as San Francisco. They are mostly poor people, but our institute teaching is free of charge, anybody who is really talented pays no fees! I have only eight pupils, but some of them are very promising.			The inscription (just visible in the upper left corner) on this photograph reads as follows - "To Miss Adele Margulies - The object of the divine musical art should always be the refinement and dignity or our heart and spirit. New York - 1893 - Antonin Dvorák"














And not less so are the entries for the competition for prizes offered by Mrs. Thurber. 1000 dollars for an opera, 1000 dollars for an oratorio, 1000 dollars for a libretto, and 300 dollars each for a cantata, and a concerto. A great deal of music has come in from all over America and I must go through it all. It does not take much time. I look at the first page and I can tell straight away whether it is the work of a dillettante (sic) or an artist. As regards operas, they are very poor and I don't know whether any will be awarded a prize. The other kinds of compositions, such as symphonies, concertos, suites, serenades, etc. interest me very much. The composers are all much the same as at home, brought up in the German School, but here and there another spirit, other thoughts, another colouring flashes forth, in short, something Indian (something á la Bret Harte). I am very curious how things will develop."			Josef Kovarik - 1893









In light of his feelings for American folk music, Dvorák developed close relationships with many of his African-American students. A huge debt of gratitude is owed by all to one of those particular Conservatory students, Henry Thacker Burleigh. Even though he denied it over the years (or at the very least, did not readily admit it), some of the music that inspired the melodies and form of the New World Symphony came from American songs, especially the African-American spirituals. It was at the Conservatory where he first heard and enjoyed these spirituals and indeed, took breaks while composing the 9th to listen to some of them. One of the young African-American students attending the Conservatory was Henry Thacker Burleigh. During the five months Dvorák was composing the New World in New York, he would often ask Burleigh to sing some of those songs for him. Other students of note spending their young lives with Dvorák were Will Marion Cook, one of the early contributors and founders of jazz, Rubin Goldmark, who went on to become the director of the Julliard School of Music and teacher to Gershwin and Copland, Harvey Worthington Loomis, a leading authority on the music of Native Americans, Harry Rowe Shelley, who composed many well-known hymns and church music, and Edward Franco Goldman who would eventually develop the concert band repertoire. As nationalistic as he was in his earlier works back home, the New World was, in a large sense, a nationalistic composition for America. Ironically, the time he spent composing the work made him more and more homesick for his native Bohemia. Even in those days, the stress of living in the hustle and bustle of New York was telling on Antonin and his family. After the New World was completed, he desired a change of scenery and he needed a little spiritual renewal, being so far from his homeland. It was his personal secretary and former resident of Spillville, Iowa, Joseph Kovarik who suggested the family retreat to the tiny Czech Community in Iowa. The arguments presented by Kovarik were convincing - 1. The little village is located on a river and the rolling hills and beautiful countryside was very much like the Dvorák's native Bohemia. 2. Everyone spoke Czech 3. The Catholic Church (St. Wenceslaus) had an organ which Dvorák would be able to play. Knowing the kind of man he was, I can almost hear Dvorák quizzing Kovarik well beyond the solid reasons he had already given, "...but Joseph, why Spillville? Just what kind of town is this Spillville?"			The New York Brownstone where the Dvorak family stayed for a time in New York City




















Spillville panorama photographed by Charles Andera in 1893
It may well have been Kovarik's answers to Dvorák's final questions about Spillville that convinced Dvorák the summer would be well-spent there. Kovarik told him quite matter-of-factly, "Master - the population is 350 people and they are all Bohemian - except for one German, one Swiss, and one Norwegian. And there are no railroads." Dvorák loved train stations and railroads. He once told a reporter that there was no better way to relax than to watch the people go back and forth at a train station. He also asked Kovarik to prepare for him a plat of the town, including all the houses and the names he could remember. It is storied that Dvorák studied this map and the information provided by Joseph for several days without comment. Associates at the conservatory, knowing full well the influence of the music of the southern United States on Dvorák, suggested he visit the South. In his own inimitable manner, Dvorák settled it then and there by announcing, "No! We go to Spillville." The matter was quite settled.
He completed the New World, his most famous work, in May of 1893. (Later, when Dvorák sent the completed manuscript to his publishers in Prague, he wrote on the envelope, in his native language, Z Noveho Sveta - "From the New World"). The symphony became immediately popular with the American public. Performances in Chicago were to sold-out crowds; standing ovations and spontaneous applause filled the symphony halls between movements whereever it was performed. Dvorák often commented that when he was present for a performance, he found himself deeply moved at the continuous appreciation of his work. Having received the recognition for his work in Europe many years before, it was this symphony which finally moved him up the ladder to the status of one the great composers of all time. Finally, the moment arrived - It was time to prepare for the Spillville sojurn. The family made the arrangements for the four children remaining in Prague - Anna, Magda, Otakar, and Aloise - to come to new York. Traveling with the children were his wife's eldest sister Terezia Koutecká and the family maid. On the last day of May, 1893, they arrived in New York and the stage was set for the Dvorák family vacation to Spillville. On the morning of Saturday, June 3, at 8 AM, the family departed New York and went by rail (AD absolutely loved the thought of traveling by rail) through Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to Chicago where they would arrive at 11 AM on the morning of the 4th. They spent the day in Chicago and boarded another train the following morning to continue the trip to Iowa. By today's standards, the trip from New York to Chicago would seem an eternity. In comparison to the next leg of their journey, it was the very model of efficiency. In Chicago they boarded a train for the 250 mile journey to McGregor, Iowa (by way of Dubuque) that would take them 11 hours. There was a one hour layover in this beautiful little Mississippi River town while they waited to board yet another train that would take them to Calmar, Iowa. They were met at the depot in Calmar by Joseph Kovarik's father, Jan (Johann) and two priests, Thomas Bily of Spillville and Frantisek Vrba of Protivin - still six miles short of their final destination, Spillville. The senior Kovarik would take them by carriage the rest of the way,		1892 plat of Spillville. It could well have been this very plat map Joseph Kovarik worked from to create the plat for Dvorák.


























Arriving in Spillville, they were driven to the building on Main Street that would be their home for the next 100 days (pictured at far left, below). The ground floor of this building was a tin shop operated by Jacob Schmitt; the family would occupy the second story during their stay. It is said locally (and this may well be born of legend) the first words uttered by Dvorák upon their arrival were, "It is so beautiful here...so much like my native land." More to the factual end is a testament to the Master's desire to become a part of the little community as soon as possible. As told to friends in a letter from Joseph Kovarik - he recounted to them that as they arrived in Spillville, Dvorák recited the names of the residents as they passed their homes - just as he had memorized them from Kovarik's map. Another detail of the arrival comes from a 1958 interview with Alois Kovarik (then a professor of physics at Yale and one of the last residents of Spillville to recall firsthand the Master himself) by Robert W. Mashek. He vividly recalled the first day Dvorák arrived as he had been fishing in the Turkey River nearby. Young Alois was walking down the street when he was approached by Dvorák. The journey had apparently left him quite hungry and he asked Alois if he might have a couple of the fish on his stringer for his supper. As imposing a figure as was cut by Dvorák, the boy was undaunted and remained steadfast to his first allegiance; his Mother. He told the Master that they were for his family supper! As stories like this often do, it ends happily with Alois' Mother consenting to give the freshly caught fish to the family as they were new in town and courtesies should be extended.












The rail depot in Calmar, Iowa (this photo circa 1920) where the Dvorák party arrived from Marquette, Iowa. Left - The upstairs apartment where the Dvorák's stayed while in Spillville St. Wenceslaus Curch and School, ca. 1890. Both structures still stand in Spillville today St. Wenceslaus Curch on a Sunday morning, 1893
On his first morning in Spillville, Dvorák was struck by the fact he had just heard his first bird call in eight months, since his arrival in America. He reacted with such joy and excitement to the tanager's sweet call, the locals were sure the man was quite daft! He made his way to St. Wenceslaus Church and expressed his pure, unadulterated joy by sitting at the new organ and playing "Lord, Before Thy Majesty". The walls of the solid stone church fairly shook, reverberating to the old familiar melody and the enthusiasm in which the Master played it. Some of the elder women of the church were in the pews below as Antonin literally pounded out one traditional Bohemian hymn after another so impressing these stolid Midwesterners of Bohemian descent, that he played the organ in church every Sunday after that. The impression he made on the women of the church served to establish his reputation as a person of some worth in town, as well. They all knew he was a famous composer and musician, but he would still have to undergo the closest scrutiny of his life; he would still have to prove himself as Dvorák the man. These first few relaxing, peaceful days in Spillville were very productive. Within two days of his arrival in Spillville Dvorák completed sketches for the String Quartet in F, opus 96, the American, sometimes referred to as the Spillville Quartet. He completed the quartet on June 23, 1893. At the bottom of the manuscript he wrote, "Thanks be to God. I am satisfied. It went quickly!" There was another notation regarding the "damned bird" that inspired the piece, the tanager, a red bird with black wings. It is believed the adjective referred to the bird's intriguing color combination and was not a profane condemnation; he loved birds. The first performance of the quartet was in Spillville; the master at first violin, Kovarik Senior, second violin, and Kovarik's two children, Cecelia and Joseph, viola and cello. This was in fact, a rather impromptu performance. He asked Joseph to copy the manuscript immediately because he wanted to play it as soon as possible. They resurrected an old Cello from the attic for Joseph, Jan and Cecelia put in a couple of hours of much-needed practice and the Master tuned his violin. On that summer evening in Spillville, the quartet premiered to little more than a few neighbors who could hear it being played through the open windows. Much later, when the work was performed professionally in New York, Dvorák grumbled to the performers, "I liked it better the way we played it in Spillville." Shortly after the completion of Opus 96, he began work on a quintet for strings. In the quintet's second movement is the first definite suggestion of Native American musical influence. While still at home in Bohemia, Dvorák had become entranced with a translation of Longfellow's "Hiawatha". (Some time before his arrival in the New World, he had begun sketching an opera based on Hiawatha . Nothing ever came of the sketches, he could never find a suitable libretto, but he did incorporate a couple of ideas from it into the New World Symphony. The cor anglais tune in the slow movement was inspired by the death of Minnehaha and the scherzo found it's inspiration in a Native American dance.) So, it was with great eagerness he attended the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Show traveling through Spillville. He attended every performance, sitting in the very front row so as not to miss a thing. The following excerpt is taken from the Quasquicentennial History Book, 1860 - 1985, St. Wenceslaus Church and Spillville : "According to Frank Kapler's boyhood recall, the medicine show group was made up of two negroes who could really sing "old-time" songs -- which may have contributed to Dvorák's Humoresque -- and three Indians named Big Moon, John Deer, and John Fox. Kapler also shared that the Indians made bows and arrows out of ironwood for the children; the Dvorák children were among them."
There is ample evidence Dvorák felt immediately at home in Spillville and wanted desperately to be accepted by the residents. It was a carbon copy of the countryside around Vysoká and he easily picked up the same routine he had been comfortable with there. Kovarik wrote in his Reminiscences : "The Master's day in Spillville was more or less as follows: He got up about four in the morning and went for a walk to the river and returned at five. After his walk, he worked; at seven he was sitting at the organ in church. Then he chatted a little, went home, worked again and then went for a walk. He usually went alone - here he had none of the nervous tension from which he sometimes suffered in Prague - and often nobody knew where he had gone. Almost every afternoon he spent in the company of some of the older settlers. He got them to tell him about their bitter and difficult beginnings in America; the old men told him how they went to help with the building of the railway 40 miles from Spillville, and how they went the long way to work on foot, while their wives and children toiled on the farms. In Spillville, The Master scarcely ever talked about music and I think that was one of the reasons he liked being there and why he felt so happy." There were factors that worked against the new family's acceptance in town. In the eyes of most of the residents of Spillville, the family was rich, having made a fortune in cities like Prague and New York. They, on the other hand, had earned their living by sweat and toiling in the fields. Admittedly, being a world renowned composer did have a certain aristocratic air to it; it was extraordinary for America in the 1890's and even more extraordinary on the "frontier". The Dvorák family also employed a maid and a that was big strike against them. This is where things become a little hazy in the research on these early days. Some accounts refer to Dvorák as being "everyone's friend". Yet for every friendly account is another saying the Dvorák family was not easily accepted because they were considered to be aloof or aristocratic. Some accounts even refer to his "laziness and drinking habits" (please see the note in the sidebar regarding this allegation). Persevering above all those who may not have approved of his lifestyle, Dvorák remained steadfast in his desire to be a part of the community.


























In the latter days of the 19th century in America, as had been the European custom for at least the previous two centuries, taverns served as informal meeting places. Dvorák absolutely loved the time he spent in the local tavern chatting with the men of Spillville. He sat for countless hours listening to the men tell stories about settling the frontier, the struggles associated with clearing the land and plowing the fields. It was in the tavern, too, where he enjoyed playing cards, especially Darde , a game from the taverns in the Old World. In due time, the family and the man were generally accepted. In fact, Dvorák mentions several of the townspeople regularly in correspondence to friends in Bohemia; Mathias Bily, John Kovarik and John Klimesh were most frequently mentioned as being his friends. Often, beginning his early morning walk, he would stop by the blacksmith shop to chat with Wenzil Balik. He would then head for the Turkey River with his violin in one hand and a pail of beer in the other. After the walk, he often visited with Frank Benda at his cobbler shop or Jan Kovarik, the postmaster, school director and choir director. Again, from the Quasquicentennial History Book, 1860 - 1985, St. Wenceslaus Church and Spillville and the memories of Frank Kapler: "Kapler also told about the time Dvorák, always curious, wanted to see a skunk. Knowing his Father's straw stack was home to a family of skunks, he offered to lead the expedition. Kapler ended up the recipient of a very undesirable perfume -- four days later when the scent was almost gone and when Dvorák saw him, he was all but doubled over with laughter. The Kapler family lived near the Dvorák family and Frank recalled the children often played together, flying kites and roaming the woods together. Young Kapler also accompanied Dvorák fishing. He confirmed the story that when Dvorák heard a bird he would drop everything and start recording notes; he also listened intently to hoot owls, cows mooing, and barking dogs, but it was the birds that really fascinated him. Kapler personally sampled Anna Dvorák's Bohemian rye bread and described it as 'the best'. He also fetched Dvorák's half-gallon pail of beer which cost a dime. Rye bread and beer were two of the Maestro's favorite snacks." He had the endearing (perhaps annoying to some) habit of stopping anyone he would meet on the street and ask them about their life; inquiring as to their birthplace was his favorite opener. The old Bohemians of Spillville loved few things more than reminiscing about their homeland. Many of the settlers had come from villages near Vysoká and he could reminisce with the best of them! He would ask the farmers about their crops and livestock, chat about the weather (just try to stop a farmer from talking about the weather!), he asked the businessmen how their businesses were doing, the women would be queried about their gardens...but to no single person on the street did he ever talk about music beyond what was sung in church. Contact: Jeff@KitchenTableWebs.com Copyright © 1997 - 2006 - Jeff Abbas All rights reserved.