I thought I would share a couple of ideas about the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. I’m not a music expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoy listening to classical music on the Music Choice Classical Masterpieces channel.
Music Choice always have interesting bits of biographical information about the musicians. The items about Dvorak are very interesting. For example, a couple of them mention that he had idiosyncrasies. One was that he stole all of the pencils at a place where he was supposed to be working because the pencils were “perfect for composing.” Another factoid is that he was fascinated with the trains in Prague and, in fact, had memorized the entire train schedule.
This makes me wonder if he was something more than eccentric and might have had some form of autism spectrum disorder (formerly Asperger’s Syndrome). On the other hand, I’ve always been a little suspicious of the Music Choice channel’s little biographical blurbs. I couldn’t verify from a quick internet search whether or not he had the disorder or not—and probably he didn’t.
On the other hand, Dvorak did visit Spillville, Iowa during the summer of 1893. There’s a short video which tells about his visit. One of the images shows a picture of a scarlet tanager, and the voice over mentions that Dvorak was often inspired by birdsong. In fact, there is an online reference to an anecdote about Dvorak basing one of his compositions, String Quartet in F major (op. 96, the ‘American’), on the song of a bird.
There was some controversy about whether it was more likely he based it on the song of the red-eyed vireo or that of a scarlet tanager. But after an extremely long article, the authors of the reference conclude that Dvorak’s composition was based on the song of the red-eyed vireo, which doesn’t resemble a scarlet tanager at all (McKone MJ, Beccue DA. The Iowa Bird That Inspired Antonín Dvořák’s American String Quartet in 1893: Controversy over the Species’ Identity and Why It Matters. Nineteenth-Century Music Review. 2021;18(3):521-537. doi:10.1017/S1479409820000282).
I’m an amateur bird-watcher and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard or seen a red-eyed vireo. I have seen a scarlet tanager but I can’t remember what its song sounds like. I’m pretty sure Dvorak didn’t mistake either bird’s song with the well-known howl of Bigfoot, who may have been sneaking around Spillville, hunting for beef jerky.
Let’s see Music Choice channel try to add that to the anecdotes about Dvorak.
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