The Water Goblin, orchestral ballad, Op. 107

Dvorák had long been and admirer of Karol Jaromir Erben’s poetry, above all a collection of Czech folk ballads published as The Garland in 1853. But it was not 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 undertae the 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 with a matter of weeks and added fourth, The Wild Dove within a few months.

Dvorák had such faith in Erben’s ballads that he allowed the demands of the narrative to determine the construction of the music. In this case the basic shape is that of a scherzo framed by a funeral march although, because of the late intervention of the wood dove in Erben’s story, the funeral march at the end is rather different from its first appearance at the beginning.

In the opening bars muted horn and muffled drums initiate the funeral march and, their melody rising and falling over the stead tread of the procession, flute and violins introduce the pretty young widow. At this point in the story she seems appropriately demure in her bearing but, on the entry of a second subject on oboe and trumpet, the flutes and violins now offer a hint in a sardonically harmonised weeping motif that the widow’s tears might not be totally sincere. However that my be, in a short Allegro episode in A major, the approach of the handsome young man is signalled on a distant trumpet. The funeral march resumes but a cheerful transformation of the widow’s them in sprightly triplet on a solo flute indicates that she is far from inconsolable.

The central section of the work celebrates the wedding of the pretty widow and the handsome young man. It is a characteristicsally energetic Dvorák scherzo in C major with a more relaxed trio section in A flat. At the same time it is a highly entertaining development of the themes associated with the two characters in the story. The one theme which is not developed here – the one to which, in fact, all the others relate – is the second subject of the funeral march. Its reappearance is reserved for a dramatic moment of truth at the end of the scherzo. According to Erben’s balad, an oak tree hs grown over the first husband’s grave and from its branches the mournful voice of the wild dove can be heard – an eerie combination of rustling harp and strings, warbling tremolando flutes and a plaintive oboe. A shocked bass clarinet utters and F minor version of the second subject, which we at last recognise as an admission of the widow’s guilt. Over come by passionately harmonised and vividly orchestrated remorse for having poisoned her husband, she resolves to drown herself. The returning funeral march is now a lament for the widow.

Although Erben has no pity for her, the ever-compassionate Dvorák absolves her be recalling the song of the wild dove in the closing bars and by resolving its F minr harmonies into a serene C major

Gerald Larner © 2010

Dvorák had long been an admirer of Karl Jaromir Erben's poetry, above all 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. Although most musicians of his time would have considered this an excessively risky process, the story of The Water Goblin does fall quite naturally into a kind of sonata-rondo form, with the Water Goblin himself providing the main theme and the other characters in the story some of the episodes.

When we meet the Water Goblin in the opening bars – “sitting on a poplar branch by the edge of the lake in the pale moonlight, making himself a coat of green and shoes of red” – he seems harmless enough. He has a playful little allegro vivo theme in B minor coloured only by the brighter woodwind and upper strings at first. But there is something stubborn and rather frightening in the way he keeps repeating it and increasing the orchestral weight and the dynamic intensity he applies to it.

As the climax subsides and the tempo slows down to andante sostenuto the scene changes to a house in the village nearby. In this first episode the girl informs her mother, in a lyrical B major melody on clarinets, that she is going down to the lake to do her washing. The mother, in an equally shapely but worried B minor melody on muted violins, tells her daughter of a bad dream she has had and warns her not to go. At the same time as the girl sweetly replies on oboe and violins in B major that she is going, whatever her mother says, the Goblin quietly but ominously taps out his characteristic three-note rhythm on the timpani.

The rondo theme returns allegro vivo in B minor and the scene is the edge of the lake again. The Water Goblin watches the girl at her work and then, with ferocious glee and a triumphant fanfare on trumpets and trombones, sees a plank collapse beneath her. As the tempo slows to andante once more she sinks gently to the bottom of the lake – he, of course, going with her.

The central episode, which also begins in B minor, is both a development section and a vivid account of the girl’s unhappy underwater existence as the Goblin’s wife. A melancholy melody first hear on clarinets and violas is passionately taken up by the violins, and all the time the Goblin’s three-note rhythm pulses on timpani or pizzicato cellos or horns. Her one consolation is her half-goblin baby, to whom she ings a B major lullaby, a variant of the theme associated with the first in the first episode – much to the annoyance of her husband, who would prefer her to sing a goblin tune. She tries to calm him and pleads with him in a rising legato melody on violins to let her go and see her mother. He eventually agrees, but very grudgingly and with the dire warning that she must return to him before the evening bells ring.

Just before the recapitulation there is a remarkably eloquent, almost improvisatory little lento assai episode in which the daughter, heavy-hearted on trombones and cellos, is re-united with her mother, querulous on the flute. But a storm rises on the lake and the Water Goblin reappers on the scene in B minor. Wind and water surge in angry chromatic gusts on the lower strings and, even more alarmingly, the evening bells start to ring – which is the signal for the Goblin’s rhythm to be transformed into a peremptory knocking at the door, first on violas and cellos and then on the whole orchestra. Getting no response, the Goblin takes his revenge by killing the baby in three vicious chords and by throwing the decapitated body against the door.

Erben’s ballad ends at that point but Dvorak, the compassionate musician, adds an andante coda which both completes the recapitulation, by recalling the mother and daughter themes, and commiserates with them in their grief. In the last few bars, according the the composer, “the Water Goblin mysteriously disappears into the lake.”

Gerald Larner ©2007