The Noonday Witch, orchestral ballad, Op. 108 — Antonín Dvořák

Dvorak had long been an admirer of Karl Jorimir 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 symp;honies 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 new fewer than three at the same time - The Water Goblin, The Noonday With and The Golden Spinning Wheel - completed them within a matter of weeks and added a fourth, The Wild Dove, within a few months.

Dvorak had such faith in Erben’s ballads that he allowed the demands of the narrative to determine the shape of the music. In most cases the resulting construction approximates to some kind of accepted musical form. But in The Noonday Witch, perhaps because it is shorter than the others, he seems to have abandoned all such structural safety devices - although it is just possible that, since he added a scherzo episode to the story to make four main section, Dvorak had something like a symphony in mind.

The first section (Allegretto) is a delightful idyll with the child happily amusing himself (clarinet) while his mother prepares the midday meal. Irritated, however, by the toy cockerel he is playing with (oboe) she tells him to be quiet, at which he starts crying and she becomes even more irritated, finally threatening to send for the Noonday Witch - a familiar scarey figure in Bohemian folklore. The Noonday Witch’s malevolent motif is briefly heard on clarinets and bassoons before the child calms down. The domestic idyll resumes, but only to be disturbed in just the same way.

This time the Noonday Witch actually materialises, making her quietly ominous entry on bass clarinet under shivering muted strings at the beginning of the second section (Andante sostenuto). “Give me you child,” she demands on bass clarinet and bassoon and still more insistently on trumpet, while the mother runs away from her (high legato violins) clutching the child to her breast.

The Witch’s motif is transformed in the scherzo section (Allegro)into a frenzied dance on upper woodwind. The mother screams and finally collapses, still holding the child to her - just beore the noonday bell rings out and the Witch disappears.

In the last section the father comes cheerfully home (Andante) on strings in contrary motion, opens the door, and finds the mother collapsoed on the floor (solo oboe). As he attemps to revive her (flutes and clarinets) she regains consciousness in a lovely modulation to A major (flute and clarinet over string arpeggios). But the key changes again when the father, discovering that the child is dead, crushed beneath her, breaks into a passionate, full-orchestral expression of anguish. The Noonday With has the last malevolent word.