Antonín Dvořák

Born: September 8, 1841, in Nelahozeves, Bohemia
Died: May 1, 1904, in Prague

The Noon Witch, Op. 108

• Composed: 1896
  
• Premiere: Semi-public performance June 3, 1896, at the Prague Conservatory, Antonín Bennewitz conducting; public premiere November 21, 1896 in London, Henry Wood conducting
  
• CSO Notable Performances:
  • First: February 1897, Frank Van der Stucken conducting
  • Most Recent: March 2019, Sir Mark Elder conducting
• Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, chime, crash cymbals, triangle, strings
• Duration: approx. 17 minutes

By the end of Antonín Dvořák’s life, he was an internationally renowned composer who greatly influenced the development of American classical music during his tenure teaching in the U.S. Yet, for most of his early years Dvořák lived a sheltered life in rural Bohemia, a land ruled by the Austrian Empire. He grew up in the village of Nelahozeves, now part of the Czech Republic, north of Prague on the Vltava River. His father was an innkeeper and butcher, and his mother bore 14 children, eight of whom survived past infancy. It was expected that Dvořák would take over the family business, but his talent for music could not be ignored and he left home at the age of 16 to study at the Prague Organ School. He was a shy and sensitive teenager who was laughed at for his provincial ways and chided for his poor language skills. He had grown up speaking only Czech with his family and his lack of fluency in German marked him as a second-class citizen in Prague, where all the wealthy residents grew up speaking the language of the Austrian Empire.  

His first professional job was playing viola in a dance band, and he later joined the orchestra of the new Provincial Theatre in Prague. The Austrian government had loosened its hold on the Czech provinces and the theater was now allowed to stage Czech plays and operas. It was there that he met Bedřich Smetana, the father of a new style of Czech national music. Smetana conducted many of his own pieces at the theater and profoundly influenced the young composer, who built on the work of his elder by forging his own style that drew on Czech folk dances and songs as well as the great German musical traditions.  

At the age of 30, Dvořák applied for and was awarded an Austrian State Stipendium, which gave him the financial support to pursue composing full time. Johannes Brahms, then at the height of his fame, had served on the jury for the awards and boosted the young composer’s career with his fervent endorsement. Brahms connected Dvořák with his own publisher and, within four years, Dvořák’s music was widely accessible, allowing orchestras across Europe and America to perform his works for the first time. Enthusiastic audiences and rave reviews helped to establish an international career for the once isolated composer.  

By 1891, Dvořák had composed eight symphonies and was a professor at the Prague Conservatory when he was invited by Jeannette Thurber, an American philanthropist, to become the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. She had founded the school with the hopes of establishing a distinctly American style of classical music on par with the European traditions. Since Dvořák was known for defining his own country’s musical identity, Thurber believed he was the perfect person to help develop a new generation of American composers.  

Dvořák and his family arrived in New York City in 1892 and stayed for three years. During that time, he composed some of his most beloved works, including the “American” String Quartet, the New World Symphony  and his cello concerto. The family returned to Bohemia in 1895, and, aside from occasional trips abroad to conduct and attend performances of his music, Dvořák remained there for the rest of his life, dividing his time between Prague and a country home in Vysoká.  

A very patriotic man, Dvořák was thrilled to be home and turned his musical sights toward national subjects. In 1896, he began work on three symphonic poems based on poetry by Karel Jaromír Erben, the official archivist of the city of Prague. Erben had published a small volume of ballads based on traditional folktales in 1841. From this collection, Dvořák chose to depict The Water Goblin, The Golden Spinning Wheel and The Noon Witch. Like so many folktales, these stories are gruesome and violent: The Water Goblin captures a young woman to live in his kingdom and destroys her child when the woman escapes to visit her frail mother; in The Golden Spinning Wheel, a beautiful village girl who is betrothed to the king has her feet and hands cut off by her stepmother and stepsister, who are in turn thrown to the wolves for their brutal murder.  

The plot of The Noon Witch is no less disturbing. A mother threatens her son to behave or else she will summon the Noon Witch to take him away. The witch heeds the mother’s words and, at the stroke of noon, demands the naughty child. The terrified mother grasps her child but faints, accidentally smothering the boy in her attempts to protect him from the witch. Later, the father returns home to find his wife on the floor with their child dead in her arms.  

Dvořák’s music closely follows this grim story, expressing the characters and drama through colorful orchestration. The work consists of four loose sections, the first of which illustrates the mother and child at home in a peaceful atmosphere. The music is charming and light. The oboe interjects, representing the stubborn child, and the orchestra gathers momentum as the mother scolds her son. This pattern continues as the pair go back and forth, the scolding growing more forceful with the mother’s impatience.  

The mood shifts suddenly as the bass clarinet sustains long ominous notes and the strings move quietly above in an eerily chromatic back and forth figure. The witch has entered. Bass clarinet and bassoon depict the sinister witch with a slow-moving melody that the trumpet takes over to more forcefully announce the evil presence.  

The witch begins a dance as woodwinds, pizzicato strings and triangle veer into a high-pitched frenzy. The dance is off-kilter, with accented trills and quickly alternating rhythmic meters. As the energy fizzles, a bell strikes 12 times while the deceptively sweet violins play fragments of a lilting phrase.  

After the stroke of noon, the fourth section begins with the strings playing a halting melody and the oboe entering with a mournful solo. The quiet moment is disrupted by a dramatic crescendo and the reappearance of the witch’s theme in an unnerving and mocking tone, signaling her tragic triumph. The orchestra builds to a delirious swirl that ends with a thrilling jolt. 

—Catherine Case