The Golden Spinning Wheel, orchestral ballad, Op. 109

Dvorák had long been an admirer of Karl Jaromir Erben's poetry, particularly a collection of Czech folk ballads published as The Garland in 1853. But it wasn't until 1896, when his nine symphonies and all the other orchestral works by which we know him best were behind him, that he was able to undertake a project he had had in mind for years - which was to write a series of colourful orchestral ballads based on stories in The Garland. He started work on no fewer than three at the same time - The Water Goblin, The Noonday Witch, and The Golden Spinning Wheel - completed them within a matter of weeks, and added a fourth, The Wild Dove, within a few months.

Dvorák had such faith in Erben's ballads that he allowed their narrative shape to determine the construction of his music. What happens in The Golden Spinning Wheel, which is particularly daring in this respect, is that the work assumes a kind of rondo form while making extensive use of variation techniques. The main theme, representing the King on horseback, is the horn fanfare heard over the galloping triplet rhythms in the opening bars. In its original form it makes four reappearances, each of the first three at the beginning of an important episode in the story, the last at the very end of the work. In variant forms it is scarcely ever absent.

The first episode, after the King rides into the forest on the main theme in F major, is devoted to his meeting with the peasant girl, Dornicka, who interrupts her spinning to hand him a drink of water - a gesture tenderly characterised by a solo violin in A major. He declares his love for her with a passionate C sharp major melody for first and second violins in octaves.

At the beginning of the second episode the King returns to Dornicka's cottage to instruct her stepmother to take her to the Castle. But the stepmother, represented by a sinister variant of the King's horseback theme on two bassoons, has other ideas: she and her own daughter set out with Dornicka and, in a ghastly scherzo in B minor, hack her to death in the forest, secretly taking her feet, hands, and eyes to the Castle.

The King rides out to meet them and, mistaking the stepsister for Dornicka, celebrates their wedding with a polka based on his horseback theme. But he has to go off to the wars and a passionate love scene dissolves into the distant sound of military horn signals and trumpet calls.

Dvorák cuts directly from here to the next episode, introducing it not with the King's fanfare but with a solemn variant, a Wagnerian brass chorale. This new theme represents a mysterious old man who, discovering the remains of Dornicka's body in the forest, determines to bring her back to life. He sends a boy on three separate errands to the Castle, where he persuades the false Queen to part with Dornicka’s feet, hands and eyes in return for a golden spinning wheel, a golden distaff and, finally, a golden spindle. The old man's chorale is heard for the last time as he restores the missing parts to Dornicka's body. She returns to life to the sound of the tender solo violin melody in A major.

At this point the King returns from the wars - signalling the beginning of the last episode of the story and, in musical terms, the start of the recapitulation. The meeting of the King and his false Queen echoes their wedding music. The golden spinning wheel, however, breaks into song and, recalling the gruesome details of the scherzo in the second episode, reveals how the King has been cheated. The reunion of the King and Dornicka both recalls and transcends the earlier love scenes and their joyous entry into the castle finally fixes the King's theme not in his bachelor F major but in Dornicka’s A major.

Gerald Larner ©2004