It is somewhat ironic that three of the most popular works by Bohemian composer Antonin Leopold Dvorak (1841–1904) were written in the United States during a three-year stay in New York City and Spillville, Iowa. But only somewhat. The 19th century was the era of nationalism, and what better place for a composer to be than in the ferment of a brand-new nation?
Before Dvorak’s U.S. sojourn of 1892–1895, which birthed the U.S.-inspired scores of the “New World Symphony,” the “American” String Quartet, and his Cello Concerto, the composer’s nationalism focused on the culture of his birth, the Bohemian and Moravian folk dances belonging to the land we now call the Czech Republic. His most accessible and enduring tribute to this tradition is a two-volume set of “Slavonic Dances” (1878 and 1886).
