Husitská (Hussite Overture), Op.67

Before he wrote Husitská Dvorák had been reluctant to get involved with music designed to tell or illustrate a story. The invitation, however, to provide a work for the opening of the National Theatre in Prague in 1883 - as a prelude to a trilogy of plays on the Hussite period in Czech history by the director of the theatre, Frantisek Subert - was an offer that he could not resist. As it happened, the plays never got written but the overture was duly performed at the opening of the theatre and proved strong enough to stand on its own without any literary scaffolding round it. Even so, it is as well to know that Subert’s three plays were to be about “the origins of the Hussite movement, the battle and finally peace after the long war.” The three parts of Dvorák’s overture - a slow introduction, a very much longer quick section, and a triumphant coda - correspond broadly with Subert’s outline of events.

Writing music for a great national occasion, the composer naturally drew on national melodies. Bearing in mind the subject of the projected plays, the Hussite chorale, “Who are the warriors of God,” was an obvious choice. The St Wenceslas chorale was less obvious and, indeed, there were objections that the two (one Protestant and the other Catholic, one 15th century and the other 13th) were ideologically and historically incompatible. That is no doubt true but, from a purely musical point of view, they are well chosen. The best tune, however, and the most patriotic in feeling - the melody quietly presented on woodwind in the very first bars of the Lento introduction - is one of Dvorák’s own. While it dominates the introduction, comparatively little will be heard of it later: even at this early stage there are allusions to both chorales on clarinets, St Wenceslas emerges clearly on the first entry of the violins, and the repeated notes of the Hussites are rapped out on trumpets and trombones.

At the beginning of the main Allegro section Dvorák turns his attention to other material. But once the chorales make their appearance -the Hussites in grandioso mode on trumpets and horns supported by every one else, St Wenceslas espressivo in modest colouring and at a slower tempo on violins - one or the other of them is rarely absent from what turns out, in spite of a couple of more poetic episodes, to be a a tumultuous development. At the sustained climax of this section both chorales are recalled, on after the other, in full glory. It is only later, boldly interrupting a brilliant Presto coda, that Dvorák’s own patriotic melody is given the broad maestoso treatment it so richly deserves.

Gerald Larner ©2006